Arizona Democratic Congresswoman gunned down

[diegobueno]

I don't say the Tea Party is responsible for the shooting. To the contrary, I say they're irresponsible.

[Barry]

Should We Blame Sarah Palin for Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting?

by Howard Kurtz Info
Howard Kurtz

Already, people are pointing fingers at Sarah Palin and her "target map" for fostering the tragedy in Arizona—but Howard Kurtz says military terminology has been part of politics for ages.

I hate to say this, but the blame game is already under way.

It began within hours of Saturday's horrifying shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and nearly 20 others, even before the gunman was identified.

Article - Kurtz Palin Political Target Map as seen on Sarah Palin's website. Inset: Sarah Palin and Gabrielle Giffords (AP Photo)

One of the first to be dragged into this sickening ritual of guilt by association: Sarah Palin. Last March, the former Alaska governor posted a map on her Facebook page with crosshair targets representing 20 Democratic lawmakers she was singling out for defeat after they voted for President Obama's health care plan. One of them was Giffords. Palin, who touts her caribou-hunting heritage, also tweeted, "Don't retreat, RELOAD!"

This kind of rhetoric is highly unfortunate. The use of the crosshairs was dumb. But it's a long stretch from such excessive language and symbols to holding a public official accountable for a murderer who opens fire on a political gathering and kills a half-dozen people, including a 9-year-old girl.

On her Facebook page, Palin offered her "sincere condolences" to Giffords and the others who were shot, saying that "on behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice."

This isn't about a nearly year-old Sarah Palin map; it's about a lone nutjob who doesn't value human life.

Liberals were quick to denounce Palin at the time of the map posting. And after Giffords' Tucson office was vandalized that same month, the Democratic congresswoman told MSNBC, "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list. But the thing is, the way she has it depicted it has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. And when people do that, they've got to realize there are consequences to that action."

Giffords had every right to ask Palin and others to tone it down. But is it now fair for the rest of us to tie Palin to the accused gunman, Jared Lee Loughner?

Let's be honest: Journalists often use military terminology in describing campaigns. We talk about the air war, the bombshells, targeting politicians, knocking them off, candidates returning fire or being out of ammunition. So we shouldn't act shocked when politicians do the same thing. Obviously, Palin should have used dots or asterisks on her map. But does anyone seriously believe she was trying to incite violence?

Palin seemed to pull back in a subsequent campaign appearance for her former running mate, John McCain. "We know violence isn't the answer," she said. "When we take up our arms, we're talking about our vote."

But she also mocked the criticism as politically correct, using her Facebook platform to apply the same language to basketball's Final Four: "To the teams that desire making it this far next year: Gear up! In the battle, set your sights on next season's targets! From the shot across the bow—the first second's tip-off—your leaders will be in the enemy's crosshairs, so you must execute strong defensive tactics."

A fellow Arizona Democrat, Rep. Raul Grijalva, said that the Palin “apparatus” shares responsibility for creating a climate of extremism. "Both Gabby and I were targeted in the apparatus in that cycle [saying] these people are 'enemies,’” Grivjalva told Mother Jones’s David Corn. He added: “The Palin express better look at their tone and their tenor.”

And MSNBC's Keith Olbermann made the link even more explicit on Saturday night: "If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics."

Of course, some rhetoric is deliberately incendiary. U.S. District Judge John Roll, one of those shot and killed in Tucson, had ruled in 2009 that a lawsuit by illegal immigrants against an Arizona rancher could go forward. Afterward, U.S. Marshal David Gonzales said that talk radio shows fanned the flames and prompted hundreds of calls to the judge, some of them threatening. "They said, 'We should kill him. He should be dead,'" Gonzales told the Arizona Republic.

The act of transforming tragedy into political fodder has deep roots in American history. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, President Bill Clinton attacked "the purveyors of hatred and division" for "reckless speech," saying the nation's airwaves were too often used "to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate, they leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable."

Rush Limbaugh, who had tangled with Clinton, responded that "liberals intend to use this tragedy for their own political gain." He blamed "many in the mainstream media" for "irresponsible attempts to categorize and demonize those who had nothing to do with this."

When George Tiller was murdered at a Kansas church in 2009, liberal critics savaged Bill O'Reilly for having attacked the abortion doctor more than two dozen times, labeling him "Tiller the Baby Killer." The Fox News host called the criticism "nonsense," saying "evidence shows that Tiller was a gross human rights violator. Yet, because most media people are pro-choice, they looked away. Now they are trying to justify their apathy by attacking us."

Last summer, after an unemployed carpenter named Byron Williams shot and injured two California police officers, we learned that he had told investigators that he wanted "to start a revolution" by "killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU." Some commentators blamed Glenn Beck, who had repeatedly attacked the obscure foundation, which calls for economic justice—especially after Williams's mother told the San Francisco Chronicle that the ex-felon watched television news and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items."

And here we go again in Arizona, as people with political agendas unleash their attacks even before the victims of this senseless shooting have been buried. I find it depressing beyond belief.

This isn't about a nearly year-old Sarah Palin map; it's about a lone nutjob who doesn't value human life. It would be nice if we briefly put aside partisan differences and came together with sympathy and support for Gabby Giffords and the other victims, rather than opening rhetorical fire ourselves.

Howard Kurtz is The Daily Beast's Washington bureau chief. He also hosts CNN's weekly media program Reliable Sources on Sundays at 11 a.m. ET. The longtime media reporter and columnist for The Washington Post, Kurtz is the author of five books.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and- ... columnists

[living_stradivarius]

Forget the politics. What have we learned from all this? Apparently nothing. Some other deranged person could pull off this very same act tomorrow in Tucson and nobody would be able to prevent it. Why? Lack of gun regulations.

[John F]

It's certainly much too early to be assigning blame, we don't yet know enough to do that. But we also don't know enough to say that no one but the murderer is to blame, as some are now claiming. Howard Kurtz is trying to acquit Sarah Palin and the media of any responsibility, not just for this killing but for others too. As well he might, being a journalist himself. But words have consequences, especially when they come from supposed authorities, and to assert that they don't is either naive or, in the case of a seasoned journalist such as Kurtz, not just self-serving but dishonest. What are editorials and TV's political polemicists about, what is politics about, if not trying to persuade?

Kurtz characterizes the murder as "about a lone nutjob who doesn't value human life." But this is so generalized as to falsify what actually happened. Eye witnesses tell us that the killer specifically sought out Rep. Giffords and shot her, then started shooting indiscriminately. It looks very much like a planned political assassination, but we don't know that yet. The true explanation, if we ever have it, seems to me very unlikely to involve Sarah Palin and her infamous map, at least in any direct way. But we'll have to wait and see what it really does and doesn't involve.

[John F]

Eye witnesses tell us that the killer specifically sought out Rep. Giffords and shot her, then started shooting indiscriminately. It looks very much like a planned political assassination, but we don't know that yet.

Well, now we do.


January 9, 2011

Federal Charges Cite Assassination Plan
By MARC LACEY

TUCSON — Prosecutors charged Jared L. Loughner, a troubled 22-year-old college dropout, with five federal counts on Sunday, including the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, in connection with a shooting rampage on Saturday morning that left six people dead and 14 wounded.

Evidence seized from Mr. Loughner’s home, about five miles from the shooting, indicated that he had planned to kill Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, according to documents filed in Federal District Court in Phoenix.

Special Agent Tony M. Taylor Jr. of the F.B.I. said in an affidavit that an envelope found in a safe in the home bore these handwritten words: “I planned ahead,” “My assassination” and “Giffords.”

Mr. Loughner, who is believed to have acted alone, is in federal custody and is scheduled to make his first court appearance before a magistrate judge in Phoenix on Monday.

Ms. Giffords was in critical condition after surviving, against the odds, a single gunshot wound to the head at point-blank range. Her doctors were cautiously optimistic that she would survive, and said on Sunday that they had removed nearly half of her skull to prevent damage from the swelling of her brain.

An outpouring of grief was on display all over Tucson, where friends of the many victims joined complete strangers in lighting candles and offering tear-filled prayers. From the back of the temple Ms. Giffords attends, Naomi Present, the distraught daughter of a rabbi, cried out on Sunday morning, “Why, why, why, why?”

Many across America were asking the same thing, and the state found itself on the defensive, with its top lawmakers asserting that Arizona was not a hothouse of ugly rhetoric. President Obama called on Americans to observe a moment of silence at 11 a.m. Monday in honor of the wounded and dead.

Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., traveled to Tucson to oversee the shooting investigation at Mr. Obama’s request. He said an intensive investigation was seeking to determine “why someone would commit such a heinous act and whether anyone else was involved.” Mr. Mueller added that discussions were under way to increase security for all members of Congress.

Capitol security agencies are planning to join the F.B.I. on Wednesday in a security briefing for members of Congress. Already, the United States Marshals Service has increased protection for federal judges in Arizona.

Investigators here focused their attention on Mr. Loughner, whom they accused of methodically planning the shootings, which occurred outside a supermarket. The court documents said Mr. Loughner bought the semiautomatic Glock pistol used in the shooting at Sportsman’s Warehouse, which sells hunting and fishing gear, on Nov. 30 in Tucson.

The gun was legally purchased, officials said, prompting criticism of the state’s gun laws, which allow the carrying of concealed weapons. Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik of Pima County, a critic of what he calls loose gun restrictions, bluntly labeled Arizona “Tombstone.”

The documents also indicated that the suspect had previous contact with the congresswoman. Also found in the safe at Mr. Loughner’s home was a letter from Ms. Giffords thanking him for attending a 2007 “Congress on Your Corner” event, like the one she was holding Saturday morning when she was shot.

Along with being accused of trying to kill Ms. Giffords, Mr. Loughner was charged with the killing and attempted killing of four government employees: John M. Roll, the chief federal judge in Arizona, who was killed; Gabriel Zimmerman, a Congressional aide, who was also killed; and Pamela Simon and Ron Barber, aides who were wounded. Mr. Loughner could face the death penalty if convicted.

The indictment against Mr. Loughner indicated that the authorities had surveillance video, which was not released, that captured events outside the supermarket. Outside lawyers said the footage would probably be saved for court. The authorities did release 911 tapes of the minutes after the shooting, at 10:11 a.m. Saturday, in which caller after caller, many out of breath, dialed in to report shots fired, many shots, and people falling, too many to count.

Mr. Mueller said additional state charges might be filed, and he did not rule out the filing of terrorism charges.

Mr. Loughner has refused to cooperate with investigators and has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights, the Pima County sheriff’s office said.

Judy Clarke, a federal public defender who has handled major cases, has been appointed to represent Mr. Loughner, CNN reported. Ms. Clarke has defended Theodore J. Kaczynski, who was convicted in the Unabomber attacks, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the Qaeda operative.

Early Sunday, the authorities released a photograph taken from the surveillance video of a possible accomplice in the shooting. But the man later contacted sheriff’s deputies, who determined that he was a taxi driver who had taken the suspect to the mall where the shooting took place and then entered the supermarket with him when he did not have change for the $14 fare.

Seasoned trauma surgeons, used to seeing patients in distress, were shaken by the scale of the shootings.

“I never thought I would experience something like this in my own backyard,” said Dr. Peter M. Rhee, chief of trauma surgery at the University Medical Center, who has experience on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq and who likened what happened in Tucson to the mass shootings in those places.

Doctors treating Ms. Giffords said she had been able to respond to simple commands, an encouraging sign.

At a news conference at the hospital, surgeons said she was the only one of the victims to remain in critical care at the hospital. They said she was lucky to be alive but would not speculate about the degree of her recovery, which they said could take months or longer.

“Over all, this is about as good as it’s going to get,” Dr. Rhee said. “When you get shot in the head and a bullet goes through your brain, the chances of you living are very small, and the chances of you waking up and actually following commands is even much smaller than that.”

Dr. G. Michael Lemole Jr., the chief of neurosurgery, who operated on Ms. Giffords, said the bullet traveled through the left side of her brain “from back to front.” It did not cross from one side of the brain to the other, he said, nor did it pass through some critical areas that would further diminish her chances of recovery.

Officials said the attack could have been even more devastating had several victims not overwhelmed the suspect as he tried to reload his gun. A bystander, Patricia Maisch, who was waiting to meet Ms. Giffords, grabbed the gun’s magazine as the gunman dropped it while trying to reload after firing 31 rounds, officials said. Two men, Roger Salzgeber and Bill D. Badger, then overwhelmed the gunman, and another man, Joseph Zamudio, restrained his flailing legs.

In addition to Judge Roll, 63, and Mr. Zimmerman, 30, who was the director of community outreach for Ms. Giffords, the others who died were identified as Christina Green, 9; Dorothy Morris, 76; Dorwin Stoddard, 76; and Phyllis Schneck, 79.

The new House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, denounced the attack in an early Sunday appearance in West Chester, his hometown, and said it was a reminder that public service “comes with a risk.”

Mr. Boehner urged people to pray for Ms. Giffords and the other victims and told his House colleagues to persevere in fulfilling their oath of office. “This inhuman act should not and will not deter us,” he said. “No act, no matter how heinous, must be allowed to stop us.”

He also said the normal business of the House for the coming week had been postponed “so that we can take necessary action regarding yesterday’s events.” That business had included a vote to repeal the health care overhaul.

Mr. Loughner had exhibited increasingly strange behavior in recent months, including ominous Internet postings — at least one showing a gun — and a series of videos in which he made disjointed statements on topics like the gold standard and mind control.

Pima Community College, which he had attended, said he had been suspended for conduct violations and withdrew in October after five instances of classroom or library disruptions that involved the campus police.

As the investigation intensified on Sunday, the police were still at the scene of the shooting, a suburban shopping center known as La Toscana Village. Investigators have described the evidence collection as a monumental task given the large number of bullets fired and victims hit.

All of the cars in the parking lot were scrutinized in search of a vehicle the gunman might have driven to the scene. Then the taxi driver stepped forward to help explain how the suspect had arrived.

Nobody knew for sure what compelled the gunman. Ms. Giffords, who represents the Eighth District, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, has been an outspoken critic of the state’s tough immigration law, which is focused on identifying, prosecuting and deporting illegal immigrants, and she had come under criticism for her vote in favor of the health care law.

[living_stradivarius]

Pima Community College, which he had attended, said he had been suspended for conduct violations and withdrew in October after five instances of classroom or library disruptions that involved the campus police.

And yet someone like that can legally purchase a gun in Arizona.

[Agnes Selby]

Pima Community College, which he had attended, said he had been suspended for conduct violations and withdrew in October after five instances of classroom or library disruptions that involved the campus police.

And yet someone like that can legally purchase a gun in Arizona.

True, if anyone wants to play the blame game, perhaps it should be
directed at those who allowed him to buy a gun.

[John F]

More from the Washington Post about Jared Loughner:


New accounts emerged Sunday about the last few years of Loughner's life, showing that the slim, dark-haired man had undergone a frightening transformation after high school.

In his years at Mountain View High School, friends remembered him as odd but generally amiable. He wore shorts some days, like many of the other students, and dark "Goth"-style clothes with chains on others.

Loughner had had a bitter streak and showed signs of drug use, they said, but was still enough of a joiner to play in the jazz band.

"He was just a normal kid who doodled and wrote things on his notebooks," said high school classmate Michelle Martinez, 22. She remembered Loughner having a girlfriend at one point. "He was just a little weird, he kept to himself," Martinez said.

If Loughner was living at the edge of the mainstream at Mountain View, afterward he fell off it.

After high school, Loughner showed growing signs of mental instability. By last summer, when he was a student in an elementary algebra class at Tucson's Pima Community College, he was a terrifying presence for both teachers and students.

A student in the class, Lynda Sorenson, 52, said she was immediately worried about Loughner. She said Loughner sat in class with a crazed-looking grin and she had seen him walking in tight circles, around and around, in the school courtyard. She feared that Loughner might become violent, and she would have to flee - concerns she shared with friends and family in a series of e-mails.

"We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today," Sorenson wrote on June 1. "He scares me a bit . . . Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon."

Ten days later, Sorenson was writing about Loughner again: "Class isn't dull as we have a seriously disturbed student in the class, and they are trying to figure out how to get rid of him before he does something bad."

Sorenson's fears grew more acute four days after that, when her e-mail said that "we have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird.''

"I sit by the door with my purse handy," the e-mail continued. "If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast."

The instructor of the class, Benjamin McGahee was no less concerned. "I always felt, you know, somewhat paranoid," McGahee said. "When I turned my back to write on the board, I would always turn back quickly - to see if he had a gun."

McGahee said Loughner disrupted his very first class by yelling, "How can you deny math instead of accepting it?" In later classes, he shouted, listened to his mp3 player and wrote nonsensical answers on his tests. One said "Eat + Sleep + Brush Teeth = Math."

McGahee said he sought repeatedly for college officials to remove Loughner, but they did not.

"They just said, 'Well, he hasn't taken any action to hurt anyone. He hasn't provoked anybody. He hasn't brought any weapons to class,' " McGahee recalled. " 'We'll just wait until he takes that next step.' "

College officials did not respond to questions about McGahee's account on Sunday. After about three weeks of class, McGahee said, there was a final confrontation: Loughner arrived and pointed to a copy of the U.S. Constitution on the wall.

" 'You're violating my First Amendment right of free speech,' " McGahee recalled him saying."That's when I went to go get the dean." A college official came, and Loughner was removed permanently from the class.

He was not suspended from the school for another few weeks, until college officials discovered Sept. 29 that he had posted a video on YouTube calling the college "unconstitutional." After that, Loughner agreed to withdraw.

Loughner posted a series of other videos on YouTube, in which he espoused bizarre and often incoherent arguments about mind control, grammar and government abuses. In another video, which he listed as a "favorite," a hooded figure burns an American flag in the desert, while on the soundtrack a hard-rock singer shrieks "Let the bodies hit the floor!"

In one of the videos, Loughner referenced applying to join the U.S. Army. He was rejected for Army service in 2008, Army officials said. A military official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Loughner failed because of drugs. It was unclear, however, if he had failed urinalysis testing or if his drug history or related questioning led to his rejection.

On Sunday, Loughner's home on Tucson's North Soledad Avenue was empty of the investigators and police cruisers that had crammed the street a day earlier. There was no sign of life at the Loughner home - set among modest ranch houses and split levels.

Neighbors said their interactions with the family were largely limited to watching Loughner's father restore old cars in his driveway. They said they had little interaction with the family and described Loughner's parents as loners who rarely spoke even to their immediate neighbors.

"You try to say something, they'd just ignore you and turn around and walk back into the house," said Ron Johnson, 60, a retiree who lives directly opposite the Loughners' tan, one-story home. "The kid - I never talked to him. He acted just like his parents and ignored you."

[jbuck919]

Every time another class of targets is reached by this kind of killer, another layer of security cautions is put into place. Now I would not be surprised if town meeting type gatherings of "ordinary" members of Congress are severely reduced in number and openness, not to mention the cost of additional security for them. With respect to protecting high-visibility targets from shooters, the U.S., leading with its right, seems to be committed only to reaction rather than prevention (i.e., gun control). You know, same as with anthropogenic global warming.

[living_stradivarius]

You know, same as with anthropogenic global warming.

Not really preventable at this point, whether you believe it or not. And yet states are throwing money at so-called solutions. Not that any of this is relevant to gun restrictions.

It's not just a matter of reaction, it's a matter of media attention on the pols. People die from gun violence every day and only now do pols really react. Not that this will change how people vote...

And where was the reaction after the Fort Hood shooting?

[John F]

More about the gunman's "politics," from NY Times Online:


The exact role of politics in Mr. Loughner’s life — or whether he had a specific political perspective at all — is harder to pin down. Investigators will have to wrestle with the difficult question of whether Mr. Loughner’s parroting the views of extremist groups was somehow more a cause of the shootings or simply a symptom of a troubled life.

Mr. McGahee, the algebra instructor, said that after he went to school officials to complain about Mr. Loughner, he was told by a counselor that Mr. Loughner had caused problems in other classes and had “extreme political views.”

But one classmate, Steven Cates, said he had tried on occasion to engage Mr. Loughner in political discussions, with no luck. He instead liked to talk about philosophy, or logic or literature, Mr. Cates said. He added that one topic that Mr. Loughner seemed to be obsessed with was the American dollar.

“He had talked about not liking the currency,” Mr. Cates said. “And he wished that the U.S. would change to a different currency because our currency is worthless.”

Some people who study right-wing militia groups and those who align themselves with the so-called Patriot movement said Mr. Loughner’s comments on subjects like the American currency and the Constitution, which he posted online in various video clips, were strikingly similar in language and tone to the voices of the Internet’s more paranoid, extremist corners.

In the text on one of the videos, for example, Mr. Loughner states, “No! I won’t pay debt with a currency that’s not backed by gold and silver.” He also argues that “the current government officials are in power for their currency” and he uses his videos to display text about becoming a treasurer of “a new money system.”

The position, for instance, that currency not backed by a gold or silver standard is worthless is a hallmark of the far right and the militia movement, said Mark Potok, who directs research on hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“That idea is linked closely to the belief among militia supporters that the Federal Reserve is a completely private entity engaged in ripping off the American people,” Mr. Potok said.

But Mr. Loughner also posits in his Web postings the idea that the government is seeking to control people through rules and structure of grammar and language.

This is similar to the position of David Wynn Miller, 62, a former tool-and-die welder from Milwaukee who describes himself as a “Plenipotentiary-judge” seeking to correct, through a mathematical formula, what he sees as the erroneous and manipulative use of grammar and language worldwide. The Southern Poverty Law Center considers Mr. Miller a conspiracy theorist, some of whose positions have been adopted by militias in general.

“The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar,” Mr. Loughner said in a video. He also defiantly asserted, “You control your English grammar structure.”

Mr. Miller, in an interview, said the argument sounded familiar. “He’s probably been on my Web site, which has been up for about 11 years,” Mr. Miller said. “The government does control the schools, and the schools determine the grammar and language we use. And then it is all reinforced by newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and everything we do in society.”

Law enforcement officials said they suspected that Mr. Loughner might also have been influenced by things like American Renaissance, a conservative magazine that describes itself as “America’s premiere publication of racial-realist thought.”

“We think that white Americans have an entirely legitimate reason to want to remain a majority in the United States because when a neighborhood or a school or an organization changes in demographics and becomes majority black or Hispanic, it is no longer the same institution or neighborhood,” said Jared Taylor, its editor.

He added, “It may be shocking to hear something stated so bluntly.”

Mr. Taylor said that his organization had searched its subscriber list going back 20 years, as well as lists of those who had attended the group’s conferences since 1994, but that there was no record of a Mr. Loughner.

[JackC]

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valley ... hooter.php


Ans he are some people who knew him who say he was a "left-wing pothead". Just as meaningless as if he were a right wing pothead

The common thing that is coming in from all sides is that he fits the classical profile of these killers - withdrawn, isolated, delusional.

[Cosima___J]

At the time of the attemted assassination of Ronald Reagan, I was not of an age to be following the newspapers very closely. At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo?

[JackC]

At the time of the attemted assassination of Ronald Reagan, I was not of an age to be following the newspapers very closely. At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo?

There has been a very concerted effort on the part of the liberal establishment in this country to try to delegitimize the "tea bag" movement. It has been relentless. It started with calling the movement rednecks and hicks "clingling to their guns and religion", then moved on to calling the movement racist. Because they were so loud and angry, there was some characterization of them as dangerous/violent too.

Now the effort is to further shut them up by calling them the cause of this act of madness.

They fact is that the Dems are every bit as much to blame for the rotten political climate as the Republicans. It you want to see hate, forget Sarah Palin, go look at the speeches of Dick Durbin and other Dems in Congress - the worst probably being Alan Grayson.

[lennygoran]

>At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo?<

My memory could be gone but I don't remember any alluding to political blame gaming--he was just a weirdo. What did come up if my memory is correct is there was a discussion of a need for better gun control laws. Regards, Len

[karlhenning]

>At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo?<

My memory could be gone but I don't remember any alluding to political blame gaming--he was just a weirdo. What did come up if my memory is correct is there was a discussion of a need for better gun control laws. Regards, Len

NO! The right of Americans to possess the weaponry of their choice is SACRED!

Yeesh,
~Karl

[Barry]

>At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo?<

My memory could be gone but I don't remember any alluding to political blame gaming--he was just a weirdo. What did come up if my memory is correct is there was a discussion of a need for better gun control laws. Regards, Len

NO! The right of Americans to possess the weaponry of their choice is SACRED!

Yeesh,
~Karl

Most people, myself included, don't think that's the case Karl. Where so many differ with those on the left is that there IS, in fact, a right for individuals to own a gun for self defense. That doesn't mean they should be free to keep a machine gun or grenade launcher in their homes. And it doesn't mean there can't and shouldn't be further restrictions, possibly including some sort of background checks to prevent people with a history of crime or mental instability from purchasing any type of gun (in fact, I heard a story on the radio yesterday about a national survey in which 70 percent of Americans think the second amendment gives individuals the right to own a gun, but many more than 30 percent are open to all sorts of specific restrictions).

But if you want to equate a right derived directly from the Bill of Rights as sacred, then yes, the right to own a gun is sacred in this country; just not without limits.

And to those who are trying to take the opportunity of this tragedy to turn this into a gun control issue or who think gun control laws will prevent these types of incidents, I'll remind you that in China over the past couple years, there have been a series (and I don't mean just a few) mass murders of children in schools by deranged men with knives who stabbed people to death.

[HoustonDavid]

United in Horror

By Ross Douthat
Published: January 9, 2011
The New York Times

When John F. Kennedy visited Dallas in November of 1963, Texas was awash in right-wing anger — over perceived cold-war betrayals, over desegregation, over the perfidies of liberalism in general. Adlai Stevenson, then ambassador to the U.N., had been spit on during his visit to the city earlier that fall. The week of Kennedy’s arrival, leaflets circulated in Dallas bearing the president’s photograph and the words “Wanted For Treason.”
Josh Haner/The New York Times

But Lee Harvey Oswald was not a right-winger, not a John Bircher, not a segregationist. Instead, he was a Marxist of sorts (albeit one disillusioned by his experiences in Soviet Russia), an activist on behalf of Castro’s Cuba, and a man whose previous plot had been aimed at a far-right ex-general named Edwin Walker. The anti-Kennedy excesses of Texas conservatives were real enough, but the president’s assassin acted on a far more obscure set of motivations.

Nine years after Kennedy was killed, George Wallace embarked on his second campaign for the presidency. This was the early 1970s, the high tide of far-left violence — the era of the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army — and Wallace’s race-baiting politics made him an obvious target for protests. On his final, fateful day of campaigning, he faced a barrage of coins, oranges, rocks and tomatoes, amid shouts of “remember Selma!” and “Hitler for vice president!”

But Arthur Bremer, who shot Wallace that afternoon, paralyzing him from the waist down, had only a tenuous connection to left-wing politics. He didn’t care much about Wallace’s views on race: he just wanted to assassinate somebody (Richard Nixon had been his original target), as “a statement of my manhood for the world to see.”

It’s possible that Jared Lee Loughner, the young man behind Saturday’s rampage in Tucson, will have a more direct connection to partisan politics than an earlier generation’s gunmen did. Indeed, many observers seem to be taking a kind of comfort from that possibility: there’s been a rush to declare this tragedy a teachable moment — an opportunity for people to cool their rhetoric, abandon their anger, and renounce the kind of martial imagery that inspired Sarah Palin’s PAC to place a target over Gabrielle Giffords’s district just months before Loughner gunned down the Arizona congresswoman.

But chances are that Loughner’s motives will prove as irreducibly complex as those of most of his predecessors in assassination. Violence in American politics tends to bubble up from a world that’s far stranger than any Glenn Beck monologue — a murky landscape where worldviews get cobbled together from a host of baroque conspiracy theories, and where the line between ideological extremism and mental illness gets blurry fast.

This is the world that gave us Oswald and Bremer. More recently, it’s given us figures like James W. von Brunn, the neo-Nazi who opened fire at the Holocaust Museum in 2009, and James Lee, who took hostages at the Discovery Channel last summer to express his displeasure over population growth. These are figures better analyzed by novelists than pundits: as Walter Kirn put it Saturday, they’re “self-anointed knights templar of the collective shadow realm, not secular political actors in extremis.”

This won’t stop partisans from making hay out of Saturday’s tragedy, of course. The Democratic operative who was quoted in Politico saying that his party needs “to deftly pin this on the Tea Partiers” was just stating the obvious: after a political season rife with overheated rhetoric from conservative “revolutionaries,” the attempted murder of a Democratic congresswoman is a potential gift to liberalism.

But if overheated rhetoric and martial imagery really led inexorably to murder, then both parties would belong in the dock. (It took conservative bloggers about five minutes to come up with Democratic campaign materials that employed targets and crosshairs against Republican politicians.) When our politicians and media loudmouths act like fools and zealots, they should be held responsible for being fools and zealots. They shouldn’t be held responsible for the darkness that always waits to swallow up the unstable and the lost.

We should remember, too, that there are places where mainstream political movements really are responsible for violence against their rivals. (Last week’s assassination of a Pakistani politician who dared to defend a Christian is a stark reminder of what that sort of world can look like.) Not so in America: From the Republican leadership to the Tea Party grass roots, all of Gabrielle Giffords’s political opponents were united in horror at the weekend’s events. There is no faction in American politics that actually wants its opponents dead.

That may seem like a small blessing, amid so much tragedy and loss. But it is a blessing worth remembering nonetheless.

[Cosima___J]

Thanks David. The article you posted is a well reasoned reminder that cold blooded murderers march to their own drummer.

[jbuck919]

At the time of the attemted assassination of Ronald Reagan, I was not of an age to be following the newspapers very closely. At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo?

It was known almost immediately that John Hinckley was a mentally disturbed young man who was trying to impress Jody Foster.

Aside from that, Americans who were opposed to Reagan for political reasons were extraordinarily passive during his presidency. I am not saying that liberals are incapable of having factions that might exhibit a quasi-up-in-arms mentality, but they certainly did not during that time.

[Barry]

At the time of the attemted assassination of Ronald Reagan, I was not of an age to be following the newspapers very closely. At that time, were there all sorts of people playing the blame game like they are now? Or did people just accept that the perpetrator was a weirdo?

It was known almost immediately that John Hinckley was a mentally disturbed young man who was trying to impress Jody Foster.

Aside from that, Americans who were opposed to Reagan for political reasons were extraordinarily passive during his presidency. I am not saying that liberals are incapable of having factions that might exhibit a quasi-up-in-arms mentality, but they certainly did not during that time.

I think the last time they did beyond isolated individuals was during the Vietnam era.

[Barry]

Sometimes A Tragedy Is Just A Tragedy
The media try--and fail--to make sense of the Tucson massacre.
12:00 AM, Jan 10, 2011 • By STEPHEN F. HAYES

Even before anything at all was known about Jared Lee Loughner, who went on a deadly shooting spree outside a Safeway in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday, a narrative was beginning to take shape.

Partisans on the left immediately blamed the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, “talk radio,” and Republicans more generally. That’s regrettable but probably inevitable. Agitators like Markos Moulitsas, whose Twitter feed on Saturday is full of such charges, make fact-free accusations as a matter of course. So he wrote: “Fucking American Taliban” and “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” He wasn’t alone. Paul Krugman blamed talk radio for a “climate of hate” and Keith Olbermann blamed Sarah Palin and others.

The mainstream media has operated with the same assumptions. And so despite the lack of evidence that Loughner had political motivations, journalists have wondered aloud whether – or to what extent – “political rhetoric” on the right is to blame.

One of the most important things journalists can do is to provide context for major events, to take a seemingly disparate set of facts and explain their meaning in a way that allows readers, viewers and listeners to understand better what has happened and perhaps even why. Providing such a framework is usually helpful. But not always. Sometimes you cannot make sense of the senseless.

In their attempts to provide such context many journalists – at prominent newspapers and magazines, at the networks, and on cable – are doing more to obscure the truth than to reveal it.

The resulting stories are often incoherent with reporters and commentators acknowledging that Loughner did not appear to have been driven primarily by politics but nonetheless offering vague indictments of political rhetoric on the right. So rather than actual reporting we have lots of “simmering” and “swirling” in “a climate of hatred and fear” or “today’s inflamed political environment.”

The New York Times reported: “While the exact motivations of the suspect in the shootings remained unclear, an Internet site tied to the man, Jared Lee Loughner, contained antigovernment ramblings. And regardless of what led to the episode, it quickly focused attention on the degree to which inflammatory language, threats and implicit instigations to violence have become a steady undercurrent in the nation’s political culture.”

And after quoting a denunciation of the shooting by a Tea Party leader, the Times noted, “others said it was hard to separate what had happened from the heated nature of the debate that has swirled around Mr. Obama and Democratic policies of the past two years.”

As a consequence, Republicans spent the day after the shooting responding to requests from print reporters and Sunday talk-show hosts to defend “Tea Party rhetoric” and to explain the culture of violence it has allegedly produced.

George Packer, writing in the New Yorker, provides an example:

Judging from his Internet postings, Jared Lee Loughner is a delusional young man whose inner political landscape is a swamp of dystopian novels, left- and right-wing tracts, conspiracy theories, and contempt for his fellow human beings. He refers to the gold and silver standard; that doesn't make Ron Paul responsible for the shootings. He is fond of “Animal Farm”; George Orwell didn't guide the hand that pulled the automatic pistol's trigger. Marx and Hitler produced a lot of corpses, but not the ones in Tucson.

Packer, though, is determined to use the incident to criticize conservatives.

But even so, the tragedy wouldn't change this basic fact: for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale. Instead of “soft on defense,” one routinely hears the words “treason” and “traitor.” The President isn't a big-government liberal—he's a socialist who wants to impose tyranny. He's also, according to a minority of Republicans, including elected officials, an impostor.

Let’s momentarily set aside the calumny in that paragraph and deal with the confusion. Packer writes that the “tragedy” doesn’t change the “basic fact” that conservatives have tried to delegitimize their opponents. He’s right, in a very limited way. The tragedy in Tucson doesn’t change his “basic fact,” because if Loughner was not motivated by politics the tragedy has very little to do with his “basic fact.”

And what of his claim that conservatives “routinely” speak of opponents as traitorous and treasonous rather than merely “soft on defense?” If such rhetoric is so common, one might have thought Packer could produce an example of a prominent conservative doing this.

He goes on to claim: “This relentlessly hostile rhetoric has become standard issue on the right. (On the left it appears in anonymous comment threads, not congressional speeches and national T.V. programs.)”

Really? Senator Dick Durbin compared U.S. soldiers to Nazis and defended his comments for days before eventually apologizing. Last month, Senator Robert Menendez compared discussions with Republicans on the tax compromise to negotiations with “terrorists.” Representative Alan Grayson claimed that Republicans want old people to die. Later, he ran a campaign ad comparing his opponent to the Taliban. And during the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama, speaking in Philadelphia, said of Republicans: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

The point here is not to suggest that Democrats do this more than Republicans, or that liberals do it more than conservatives. Who cares? Let’s stipulate that fringe elements on both sides do this and that some of the rhetoric is irresponsible.

The question is whether in this specific case such rhetoric played a role. The facts may change, but at this point the answer is no.

But Packer isn’t building his argument so much as laying two separate points next to one another. The result, of course, is to create an impression that the two are related even when the facts don’t support such a conclusion.

Packer seems to understand this, but it doesn’t keep him from making the association. He concludes his piece: “The massacre in Tucson is, in a sense, irrelevant to the important point. Whatever drove Jared Lee Loughner, America's political frequencies are full of violent static.”

Similar “logic” flowed from virtually every mainstream news outlet throughout the weekend.

The lead piece from Politico included this passage: “By day’s end, the argument that the political right—fueled by anti-government, and anti-immigrant passions that run especially strong in Arizona—is culpable for the Tucson massacre, even if by indirect association, seemed to be validated by the top local law enforcement official investigating the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D).”

Validated how? Did this official provide evidence that Loughner was fueled by anti-government and anti-immigrant passions that run especially strong in Arizona? The article quotes him.

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government—the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” said Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, an elected Democrat, at a news conference Saturday evening. “And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

Unsubstantiated accusations from an authority figure do not “validate” the irresponsible claims of conservative culpability; they merely echo them. Unless he has seen evidence he is not sharing with the public, Dupnik was little more than Markos Moulitsas with a badge.

We will certainly learn more about Jared Lee Loughner. And it’s possible, perhaps likely, that some more coherent political ideology will emerge. But until it does, journalists would do well to stick to the facts available to them.

Sometimes a crazy guy is just a crazy guy. And sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/som ... 26935.html

[jbuck919]

Another assassination (there have been so many) that comes to mind is JFK. Here was a loony acting alone, who just happened to have attempted to defect to Cuba and had lived for a considerable amount of time as a defector in the Soviet Union. Yet after an initial scare his Communist connections were never much played up, and the most reasonable conclusion is that they were related to his act if at all then only in his own mind (how we will never know), (Interestingly, that angle also does not figure in many of the conspiracy theories).

[Barry]

JANUARY 10, 2011
The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel
Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don't help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

By GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS

Shortly after November's electoral defeat for the Democrats, pollster Mark Penn appeared on Chris Matthews's TV show and remarked that what President Obama needed to reconnect with the American people was another Oklahoma City bombing. To judge from the reaction to Saturday's tragic shootings in Arizona, many on the left (and in the press) agree, and for a while hoped that Jared Lee Loughner's killing spree might fill the bill.

With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's words, a "climate of hate."

Pima County, AZ Sheriff Clarence Dupnik held a press conference during which he blamed vitriolic political rhetoric for provoking the mentally unstable, and lamented Arizona's becoming the "mecca of prejudice and bigotry." Video courtesy of AFP.

The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—"lock and load"—and talked about "targeting" opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's district on a list of congressional districts "bullseyed" for primary challenges. When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.

There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.

Jared Lee Loughner, the man suspected of a shooting spree that killed a Federal Judge and critically wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had left a trail of online videos in which he railed against the government. WSJ's Neil Hickey reports.

American journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" the press was full of cautions about not drawing premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist terrorism. "Where," asked Mr. York, "was that caution after the shootings in Arizona?"

Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no waiting for the facts on Saturday. Likewise, last May New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and CBS anchor Katie Couric speculated, without any evidence, that the Times Square bomber might be a tea partier upset with the ObamaCare bill.

So as the usual talking heads begin their "have you no decency?" routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?

To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on "rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?

Mr. Reynolds is a professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He hosts "InstaVision" on PJTV.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... on_LEADTop

[JackC]

There is nothing wrong in asking for more restrained political discourse, but it seems more and clear that this shooting was the act a delusional loner and had no real political implications.

It is obscene that some in the media are trying to paint this as the consequence of vocal opposition to government policies voiced by Palin and the Tea Party.

I suspect that the many in Hollywood have already concluded that the "right" is responsible for this, as if Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck or whomever are giving orders. Yet they never even consider looking into the mirror and seeing ANY fault on their part for the violent culture that I believe they have directly and signifcantly contributed to.

[Cosima___J]

OMG, here's a horrible thought: Oliver Stone is probably salivating about making a movie of this tragedy, putting the famous Stone spin on it.

[jbuck919]

At the risk of sounding too clinical considering the magnitude of the tragedy, here is a shooter who neither killed himself nor is likely to be killed in the near future, i.e., he can provide information. When mass murderers have only one real target but intentionally kill many, it is usually as a cover-up so that no one will track them down by motive. Obviously, that scenario does not apply here. What made him shoot many if his explicit target was one, and he had no intention of trying to evade detection? Perhaps any insight we gain into that kind of deranged thinking will be useful to law enforcement in the future.

[Cosima___J]

Please read this and consider whether there are some people out there in our great country who need to retract their irresponsible statements blaming the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, etc. There seems to me like there are way too many people out there with a political ax to grind who are trying to score political points out of this tragedy.


THE TUCSON TRAGEDY
By Neal Boortz @ January 10, 2011

What SHOULD we be talking about in the aftermath of the horrible shooting in Tucson? We should be praying for the compete recovery of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. We should be expressing our sympathy of the families of the other victims. We should be discussing the irony of a little girl born on September 11, 2001 being killed in a senseless act of violence nine years later. There should be discussions on failures in our system that permits mentally deranged people access to weapons and political leaders. Discussion on security for our elected officials would also be appropriate. Though these items were included in the conversation over the weekend .. they all took a back seat to talk driven by the left and the ObamaMedia over the supposed role that evil right wingers, Sarah Palin and the Tea Parties in particular, played in this situation.

We all remember Rahm Emmanuel's comment at the beginning of the Obama reign: "Never let a crisis go to waste." We only need to change one word there. "Crisis" to "tragedy."

The shooting rampage in Tucson on Saturday was horrific, and by any definition a tragedy. Today we know that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, is clearly deranged. Classmates and acquaintances alike speak of his strange behavior. Click here to see a picture of a shrine this maniac had in a tent in his back yard. This was not a political act. It was not an act of terrorism. A terrorist kills people in order to spread terror for the purpose of effecting political change. Loughner was acting on the impulses of mental illness, not a desire for political change. His first encounter with Congresswoman Giffords pre-dated the Tea Parties. This didn't matter, though, to the left. There was a tragedy to be exploited, and time was wasted. Jared Loughner just had to be pinned on the very people who, just a bit over two months ago, delivered a historical political drubbing to the left.

This is a script the left has followed before. Tragedy occurs ... and blame is immediately assigned to the right. Do you remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy? In the hours following the shooting in Dallas the blame was placed squarely on conservative groups. Republican Party offices were vandalized across the country. Later we find out that Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist sympathizer. The Times Square Bomber? That was just a few months ago. And just who did New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg blame for that attempt? Tea Partiers. Later, of course, we discover that the bomber was another follower of the peaceful and serene peace-loving religion of Islam.

The immediate reaction from our ObamaMedia is nothing short of disgusting. Without knowing any motive of the deranged shooter, the media immediately jumped to the convenient conclusion: He must be a right-winger and it is all the fault of Sarah Palin, Fox News, the Tea Party and talk radio. Here are just a few examples gathered from the coverage throughout the weekend ...

· Paul Krugman Blames Giffords Shooting on Palin, Limbaugh and Beck

· One-Sided CBS Report Paints Palin as Responsible for Giffords Shooting

· Dem Leader Clyburn Ties AZ Shooting To Sharron Angle Statement

· AP Determined to Pin Giffords Shooting, Multiple Murders on Right, Ignores Leftist Rage at Her Failure to Back Pelosi

· Jane Fonda Blames Giffords Shooting on Sarah Palin

[jbuck919]

Please read this and consider whether there are some people out there in our great country who need to retract their irresponsible statements blaming the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, etc. There seems to me like there are way too many people out there with a political ax to grind who are trying to score political points out of this tragedy.

Yeah, they may be inciting unstable liberals to go out and shoot right wing politicians.

[Barry]

Please read this and consider whether there are some people out there in our great country who need to retract their irresponsible statements blaming the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, etc. There seems to me like there are way too many people out there with a political ax to grind who are trying to score political points out of this tragedy.

Yeah, they may be inciting unstable liberals to go out and shoot right wing politicians.

Is that the only issue at hand? I take it by your sarcasm that as long as that doesn't happen, you think it should be a free for all for those on the left to throw around blame and those of us on the right should just turn a deaf ear to those charges?

I see your lecture to me last night on how to react to those charges in a new light. "Idiotic" and beneath contempt are perfectly apt descriptions for what I've been reading the past couple days on line.

Kind of ironic that so many on the left are fond of throwing around the charge of "McCarthyism."

[Barry]

· Jane Fonda Blames Giffords Shooting on Sarah Palin

Talk about someone having NERVE.

[jbuck919]

Please read this and consider whether there are some people out there in our great country who need to retract their irresponsible statements blaming the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, etc. There seems to me like there are way too many people out there with a political ax to grind who are trying to score political points out of this tragedy.

Yeah, they may be inciting unstable liberals to go out and shoot right wing politicians.

Is that the only issue at hand? I take it by your sarcasm that as long as that doesn't happen, you think it should be a free for all for those on the left to throw around blame and those of us on the right should just turn a deaf ear to those charges?

No, I think that if the right can disclaim that their politically motivated noise is part of the problem then so can the left, and in both cases for the same reason, namely freedom of speech. How outrageous either side is being is from that point of view beside the point.

Shoe on other foot, no?

[Barry]

No, I think that if the right can disclaim that their politically motivated noise is part of the problem then so can the left, and in both cases for the same reason, namely freedom of speech. How outrageous either side is being is from that point of view beside the point.

Shoe on other foot, no?

Not even close. Apples and oranges is more like it.

There is quite a difference between claims that the right or segments of it are responsible for a violent crime without any actual evidence to support those claims and defensive counter claims from the targets of those unfounded charges that the charges are either not grounded in evidence or are politically motivated. Again, those of us on the right are under no duty to sit back and take this B.S. If left wingers have evidence to support their charges, they should either put it out to see or be prepared to be called what people who put out groundless charges under tragic circumstances deserve to be called.

Besides that, deflecting that piece that Cosima posted by saying false charges by public figures are no big deal because it's unlikely anyone will be physically harmed is one of your weaker efforts. It barely reaches the level of a logical response. Since when is failure to result in physical harm a defense for lying or drumming up false charges during a tragedy?

[jbuck919]

No, I think that if the right can disclaim that their politically motivated noise is part of the problem then so can the left, and in both cases for the same reason, namely freedom of speech. How outrageous either side is being is from that point of view beside the point.

Shoe on other foot, no?

Not even close. Apples and oranges is more like it.

There is quite a difference between claims that the right or segments of it are responsible for a violent crime without any actual evidence to support those claims and defensive counter claims from the targets of those unfounded charges that the charges are either not grounded in evidence or are politically motivated. Again, those of us on the right are under no duty to sit back and take this B.S. If left wingers have evidence to support their charges, they should either put it out to see or be prepared to be called what people who put out groundless charges under tragic circumstances deserve to be called.

Besides that, deflecting that piece that Cosima posted by saying false charges by public figures are no big deal because it's unlikely anyone will be physically harmed is one of your weaker efforts. It barely reaches the level of a logical response. Since when is failure to result in physical harm a defense for lying or drumming up false charges during a tragedy?

You are correct that what is coming from the left and what is coming from the right are two different things rather than two versions of the same thing, but the point is that it is what is coming from the right that is the problem. Here is Krugman's column, and he seems to me to be right on the money. The only thing he does not make clear is that restraining "eliminationist rhetoric" cannot be a matter of coercion because of First Amendment freedoms, though I doubt that he thinks it should be.

# The New York Times Reprints

January 9, 2011
Climate of Hate
By PAUL KRUGMAN

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?

Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008 campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.

Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

And there’s not much question what has changed. As Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings, put it, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” The vast majority of those who listen to that toxic rhetoric stop short of actual violence, but some, inevitably, cross that line.

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.

And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

Of course, the likes of Mr. Beck and Mr. O’Reilly are responding to popular demand. Citizens of other democracies may marvel at the American psyche, at the way efforts by mildly liberal presidents to expand health coverage are met with cries of tyranny and talk of armed resistance. Still, that’s what happens whenever a Democrat occupies the White House, and there’s a market for anyone willing to stoke that anger.

But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t been happening: the purveyors of hate have been treated with respect, even deference, by the G.O.P. establishment. As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, has put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”

So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?

If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning.

[Cosima___J]

"a mildly liberal president"

Oh please!!! Give me a break!!!!

Krugman has never made any attempt to hide his very leftist opinions. He is someone who has consistently helped promote that "climate of hate".

[Cosima___J]

Paul Krugman’s Libel Against Conservatives: It’s All About Forcing “A Return Of The Fairness Doctrine To The Media”
by Joseph Klein
Posted on January 10 2011 2:00 pm


Left-wing New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman is exploiting the tragic shooting in Arizona Saturday, which claimed six lives, including the lives of a federal district court judge and a 9 year-old girl, and which critically wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. In a disgraceful op-ed column today entitled “Climate of Hate,” Krugman pinned the blame for the shooting on the Right.

Krugman’s discredited spend-and-borrow economics are bad enough. But his attempt to pin the senseless acts of a deranged young man on conservative politicians and political commentators is libelous. It is an obvious attempt to squelch free speech in America by justifing what Krugman has long advocated:

a return of the Fairness Doctrine to the media

In his op-ed piece today, Krugman makes only a fleeting reference to the mental state of the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner. Krugman skips over entirely Loughner’s apparent three-year obsession with Representative Giffords since he first saw her at an event back in 2007 and his alleged plans to target her. Krugman also leaves out Loughner’s alleged drug problem, his rejection by the Army and his suspension from community college for acts that appeared to evidence a severe mental disorder.

Instead of acknowledging the fact that deranged assassins are sadly nothing new in American history, Krugman blames “the national climate” today fed by what he calls “eliminationist rhetoric” of “the purveyors of hate” on the Right. He includes in his blameworthy category Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Fox News in general.

For someone who prides himself on relying upon empirical evidence, Krugman displays his true ideological zealotry with such an unsubstantiated accusation. Where, for example, in Krugman’s column is any acknowledgment that Loughner, whose favorite reading matter included The Communist Manifesto as well as Mein Kampf, was described by a former classmate as “left wing?”

More importantly, how do the following quotes from President Barack Obama himself and his supporters on the Left fit in with Krugman’s theory that the “toxic rhetoric” is “coming, overwhelmingly, from the right”?

if they bring a knife to the fight, we’ll bring a gun (President Obama)

We’re gonna punish our enemies ( President Obama)

My two favorite philosophers are Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa…In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over. Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, “How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this, against all of the odds against you?” And Mao Zedong said, you know, “You fight your war, and I’ll fight mine.” (Former Obama Communications Director, Anita Dunn during a high school graduation speech)

[W]e prefer to use the power of persuasion, but if that doesn’t work we use the persuasion of power ( Andy Stern, former president of SEIU)

Dick Cheney’s heart’s a political football. We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him. ( Ed Schultz, host of “The Ed Show” on MSNBC)

Obama’s critics keep blasting him for Chicago-style politics. So, fine.Channel your inner Al Capone and go gangsta against your foes. Let ‘em know that if they aren’t with you, they are against you, and will pay the price. (CNN columnist Roland Martin)

You’ve given it your best shot, you’ve tried numerous times to talk with the Republicans, to negotiate, to meet them halfway on every single matter before the American people. But they hate you for many reasons. It’s time you break kneecaps (bold in original) ( Huffington Post columnist David Bourgeois , “Obama Better Start Breaking Kneecaps”)

a map, included in a Democratic Leadership Committee publication in 2004, featured nine bullseyes over regions where Republican candidates were considered vulnerable that year, and was accompanied by a caption reading: TARGETING STRATEGY. A smaller caption, beneath the bullseyes, read: BEHIND ENEMY LINES. The map illustrated an article on campaign strategy by Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute.



And how about Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who literally shot through the health care bill with a rifle during his political campaign?

Make no mistake about what Krugman and his pals on the Left are trying to do. They are setting up the argument for more government regulation of the Internet and the need to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine. They cannot compete with conservatives in the marketplace of ideas, so Krugman and company want to go back to the good old days when

The “fairness doctrine” forced broadcast media to give comparable representation to opposing points of view.

Only then can the Left achieve its goal of suppressing free speech which disagrees with its ideological agenda.

[jbuck919]

AP Determined to Pin Giffords Shooting, Multiple Murders on Right, Ignores Leftist Rage at Her Failure to Back Pelosi

And who, pray tell, offered us this one? The AP, which is liberal but still a news service, editorializing to that point? And that fishing expedition about "leftist rage"? You know, that same churning of emotion that caused maybe hundreds of liberals to say "oh darn" when Obama compromised on the Bush tax cut extension? Where are you getting this?

[Cosima___J]

Hey, check out the map (the one with the bullseyes) on this website: http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contenti ... &subid=171

How is that map (the one with the bullseyes) so very much different from Sarah Palin's map???? Hmmmm????

[jbuck919]

Hey, check out the map (the one with the bullseyes) on this website: http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contenti ... &subid=171

How is that map (the one with the bullseyes) so very much different from Sarah Palin's map???? Hmmmm????

I don't know, but if I lived in the center part of any of those states I'd be looking up for bombers overhead.

[HoustonDavid]

I read Paul Krugman's Op-Ed piece in the NYT this morning and made conscious decision
not to repeat it here. Even for my liberal blood, it is outrageous and one-sided. Very early
in this thread, the day of the shooting, I speculated it was the work of a madman, and
apparently that is indeed the case. There is no evidence - at least so far - that his act
had anything whatever to do with the right- or left-leaning rhetoric so prominent these
days. I am no fan of the outrageous rhetoric from either side, and would hate to see it
stretched to the point of actually inciting violence - it's getting very close, these days -
and if that happens, we may need to seek legislation to make such statements equally
illegal as shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded place to incite panic.

[John F]

There is no evidence - at least so far - that his act had anything whatever to do with the right- or left-leaning rhetoric so prominent these days.

To focus this: Loughner's political rants on YouTube appear to have a great deal to do with the contents of some extreme-right anti-government web sites, as detailed in a New York Times piece that I excerpted here at 8:16am yesterday. Surely that counts as "right-leaning rhetoric." It has played no part in recent mainstream politics in Arizona or anywhere else, as far as I know, and is nothing to beat up on Sarah Palin with. But to dismiss Loughner as a mere looney, not subject to the influence of others' political arguments and rhetoric, doesn't agree with the evidence we have.

[John F]

The rampage on Saturday that left six dead and Ms. Giffords gravely wounded may prove to be an isolated act of violence by a mentally disturbed man. The suspect attended at least one of Ms. Giffords’s town meetings before the event Saturday.

Still, the shootings came after a disconcerting run of episodes in this district of mountains and desert, raising temperatures here in a way that some that some of Ms. Giffords’s friends argue fed an atmosphere that might encourage violence.

Several of them pointed back to the smashed door of her district headquarters at 1661 North Swan Street last March as a turning point; a time when a cloud of unease settled over Ms. Giffords and her staff.

She and aides began expressing worry about what they saw as an escalation of threats after a year of brutal town hall meetings over health care. They began to take precautions. “When we did a swing through the district, we began telling the police what we are doing: We let them know where we were going to be,” said Rodd McLeod, her campaign manager.

And Ms. Giffords made no secret at that time of saying she owned a handgun.

“She was extremely concerned about it,” said Thomas Warne, a friend and fund-raiser. “She was concerned about various threats that the office had received: they were general threats on the office itself, on her life.”

There have been no arrests related to the attack on her district office, said Sgt. Diana Lopez of the Tucson Police Department. It came after months in which Ms. Giffords, like other Democrats, found herself being battered at loud town hall meetings on health care. At one of her public meetings on health care, a man with a gun showed up. “There was a sense, even in ’09, that there was a real anger in the district,” Mr. McLeod said.

And in an interview with MSNBC the day after the attack, Ms. Giffords said: “We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of protesters over the last several months. Our office corner has become a place where the Tea Party movement congregates and the rhetoric is incredibly heated, not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.”

Last summer, Ms. Giffords found herself challenged by Jesse Kelly, a Republican candidate with Tea Party backing, who assailed Ms. Giffords on health care and immigration. He held a “targeting victory” fund-raiser in which he invited contributors to shoot an M-16 with him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11district.html

No comment.

[JackC]

The rampage on Saturday that left six dead and Ms. Giffords gravely wounded may prove to be an isolated act of violence by a mentally disturbed man. The suspect attended at least one of Ms. Giffords’s town meetings before the event Saturday.

Still, the shootings came after a disconcerting run of episodes in this district of mountains and desert, raising temperatures here in a way that some that some of Ms. Giffords’s friends argue fed an atmosphere that might encourage violence.

Several of them pointed back to the smashed door of her district headquarters at 1661 North Swan Street last March as a turning point; a time when a cloud of unease settled over Ms. Giffords and her staff.

She and aides began expressing worry about what they saw as an escalation of threats after a year of brutal town hall meetings over health care. They began to take precautions. “When we did a swing through the district, we began telling the police what we are doing: We let them know where we were going to be,” said Rodd McLeod, her campaign manager.

And Ms. Giffords made no secret at that time of saying she owned a handgun.

“She was extremely concerned about it,” said Thomas Warne, a friend and fund-raiser. “She was concerned about various threats that the office had received: they were general threats on the office itself, on her life.”

There have been no arrests related to the attack on her district office, said Sgt. Diana Lopez of the Tucson Police Department. It came after months in which Ms. Giffords, like other Democrats, found herself being battered at loud town hall meetings on health care. At one of her public meetings on health care, a man with a gun showed up. “There was a sense, even in ’09, that there was a real anger in the district,” Mr. McLeod said.

And in an interview with MSNBC the day after the attack, Ms. Giffords said: “We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of protesters over the last several months. Our office corner has become a place where the Tea Party movement congregates and the rhetoric is incredibly heated, not just the calls but the e-mails, the slurs.”

Last summer, Ms. Giffords found herself challenged by Jesse Kelly, a Republican candidate with Tea Party backing, who assailed Ms. Giffords on health care and immigration. He held a “targeting victory” fund-raiser in which he invited contributors to shoot an M-16 with him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11district.html

No comment.

You are truly pathetic to try to paint this as consequence of right-wing anything. Just serves as yet another of the mindless/PC left feeling entitled to exercise its own bigotry - which it always considers deep insight.

I'll bet it never occured to you to hold the left responsible for JFK's assassination.

[John F]

Jack, I said "no comment." I did not "try to paint this as the consequence" of anything. We still don't know what Loughner's killing spree is a consequence of - or what it's not a consequence of. Unquestionably it's a consequence of something, and we need to know what that is. But we won't find out if we reflexively deny the relevance of any information that doesn't agree with what we may want to believe.

[JackC]

Jack, I said "no comment." I did not "try to paint this as the consequence" of anything. We still don't know what Loughner's killing spree is a consequence of - or what it's not a consequence of. Unquestionably it's a consequence of something, and we need to know what that is. But we won't find out if we reflexively deny the relevance of any information that doesn't agree with what we may want to believe.

Of please - by posting this drivel, you're trying to make to draw the causal connection. You started this thread trying to make that connection. You can try to look as if you are a merely looking to understand the facts, but it is obvious that you are doing your best to try in some way to blame the "right."

You say -- "Unquestionably it's a consequence of something, and we need to know what that is." That's total baloney. Whatever it was that existed in his warped mind that may have led to this, that is insignificant. Nut cases will always have their "reasons." The killing was a "consequence" of a deranged mind.

Look - Oswald was a marxist/leftist who was part of a "Free Cuba" something or other. He was someone who clearly would have in on for the US and JFK, in particular, over the Bay of Pigs. But people rightly focused on the fact that he was a pathetic misfit loner with delusions of grandeur who wanted to make his statement. No one blamed the left for his act.

Try as you might to develop or infer some, all the evidence so far, including the nature the massacre itself, suggests a very deranged person. That is the issue, and the right cannot be blamed for whatever might have set this off - anymore than can say that leftist ideology was the cause of and responsible for JFK's death.

No doubt when Hasan went on on his rampage, you came to the conclusion that it had "WAS NOT CAUSED BY ISLAMIC IDEOLOGY" -certainly all the people in the liberal estbalishment and MSN came to that conclusion - even though he was a Muslim who had contacts with radical Islamist and was shouting "Alla Akbar" while he was shouting everyone. Frankly there is a lot more evidence that Hasan might havbe been on a ideolgical mission of terror - all of which has been rejected and/or ignored by the liberal MSM - than there is this fruitcake in Tuscon was on a political mission.

Why don't you excerise some retraint here. Why are working hard to lay blame for this killing on right-wing rhetoric??

[HoustonDavid]

The Politicized Mind

by David Brooks
Published: January 10, 2011
The New York Times

Before he allegedly went off on his shooting rampage in Tucson, Jared Loughner listed some of his favorite books on his YouTube page. These included: “Animal Farm,” “Brave New World,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Through the Looking Glass” and “The Communist Manifesto.” Many of these books share a common theme: individuals trying to control their own thoughts and government or some other force trying to take that control away.

Loughner also made a series of videos. These, too, suggest that he was struggling to control his own mind. Just before his killing spree, Loughner made one called “My Final Thoughts.” In it he writes about different levels of consciousness and dreaming. He tries to build a rigid structure to organize his thinking. He uses the word “currency” as a metaphor for an inner language to make sense of the world.

“You create and distribute your new currency, listener?” the video asks. “You don’t allow the government to control your grammar structure, listener?”

All of this evidence, which is easily accessible on the Internet, points to the possibility that Loughner may be suffering from a mental illness like schizophrenia. The vast majority of schizophrenics are not violent, and those that receive treatment are not violent. But as Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a research psychiatrist, writes in his book, “The Insanity Offense,” about 1 percent of the seriously mentally ill (or about 40,000 individuals) are violent. They account for about half the rampage murders in the United States.

Other themes from Loughner’s life fit the rampage-killer profile. He saw himself in world historical terms. He appeared to have a poor sense of his own illness (part of a condition known as anosognosia). He had increasingly frequent run-ins with the police. In short, the evidence before us suggests that Loughner was locked in a world far removed from politics as we normally understand it.

Yet the early coverage and commentary of the Tucson massacre suppressed this evidence. The coverage and commentary shifted to an entirely different explanation: Loughner unleashed his rampage because he was incited by the violent rhetoric of the Tea Party, the anti-immigrant movement and Sarah Palin.

Mainstream news organizations linked the attack to an offensive target map issued by Sarah Palin’s political action committee. The Huffington Post erupted, with former Senator Gary Hart flatly stating that the killings were the result of angry political rhetoric. Keith Olbermann demanded a Palin repudiation and the founder of the Daily Kos wrote on Twitter: “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Others argued that the killing was fostered by a political climate of hate.

These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.

Yet such is the state of things. We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons.

I have no love for Sarah Palin, and I like to think I’m committed to civil discourse. But the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.

The good news is that there were a few skeptics, even during the height of the mania: Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast, James Fallows of The Atlantic and Jonathan Chait of The New Republic. The other good news is that the mainstream media usually recovers from its hysterias and tries belatedly to get the story right.

If the evidence continues as it has, the obvious questions are these: How can we more aggressively treat mentally ill people who are becoming increasingly disruptive? How can we prevent them from getting guns? Do we need to make involuntary treatment easier for authorities to invoke?

Torrey’s book describes a nation that has been unable to come up with a humane mental health policy — one that protects the ill from their own demons and society from their rare but deadly outbursts. The other problem is this: contemporary punditry lives in the world of superficial tactics and interests. It is unprepared when an event opens the door to a deeper realm of disorder, cruelty and horror.

[JackC]

I would add that this is going to have further backlash against the liberal MSM. It has been on a mission to discredit the tea party for year. It tried to label the movement "racist" when it was full of millions of people (and many millions more were sympathetic to some of the positions) who did not feel they desrved to be called racist for opposing Obama's agenda.

Now the liberal MSM is trying to hold these same people responsible, in some way, anyway they can, for this horrible massacre. It will have the same efect as the charges of racism had - it will just serve to further marginalize those in the liberal MSM who go down this path.

[HoustonDavid]

I couldn't agree more, David Brooks gets it right. And by "right" I mean he is a respected
conservative columnist but here takes a very moderate view that just happens to echo
everything I've said and continue to believe about the assassin Jared Loughner. I initially
speculated this was not an assassination but a mass murder. I will modify that to say Loughner
chose a politician to vent his madnes, but turned it into a mass murder, probably believing the
people at the rally were supporters of Gabrielle Giffords.

Everything I've read so far indicates there "might have been" some connection by Loughner
with a "right wing" organization that most on the right would not want anything to do with:
it is both anti-government in general, and virulently anti-Semitic. I doubt that any mainstream
conservative movement or party would want to be associated with them. They themselves
want nothing to do with Loughner either, apparently. If this is Loughner's only connection with
either the right or the left, then we are back to madness as the causation for this tragedy.

[John F]

Before he allegedly went off on his shooting rampage in Tucson, Jared Loughner listed some of his favorite books on his YouTube page. These included: “Animal Farm,” “Brave New World,” “Alice in Wonderland,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Through the Looking Glass” and “The Communist Manifesto.”

Also "Mein Kampf." That's surely significant. Why the omission?

"Allegedly"???

He uses the word “currency” as a metaphor for an inner language to make sense of the world.

As I read those videos, he uses the word "currency" to mean money, which he thinks should be on the gold or silver standard. Brooks's metaphorical interpretation would not have occurred to me, and I don't think it's valid.

the evidence before us suggests that Loughner was locked in a world far removed from politics as we normally understand it.

Such evidence as we now have certainly supports that inference, and I've said pretty much the same thing myself earlier in this thread. But we know there is more evidence to come, such as the documents in which Loughner planned the assassination of Rep. Giffords. It's too early to be reaching any conclusions.

Brooks is right to criticize the attempts to pin Loughner's actions to the rhetoric etc. of last year's campaign. There isn't yet enough public evidence about Loughner's motives for the killings to be sure what they were - the YouTube videos do not mention assassination - and this is the only kind of evidence that can really close the question one way or the other. So it's reasonable to characterize some of what's being said as irresponsible. But for all Brooks knows, which isn't enough to be sure one way or the other, it could nonetheless turn out to be true. To dismiss that possibility at this early stage of the game is irresponsible too.

[Cosima___J]

So John F, obviously you must have something in mind to mention the omission of "Mein Kampf" in David Brooks' article, since you stated that the omission is "surely significant. Why the omission?".

Let's hear you theory about the significance, i.e., the significance to Loughner's demented brain and the significance of Brooks omitting it from his article.