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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (402913)	1/9/2011 11:37:54 AM
From: Tom Clarke	6 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

A disgrace to nuts everwhere January 9, 2011 Posted by Scott at 9:24 AM The race is on to place Jared Loughner among conservatives and attribute responsibility for yesterday's murders to the political opponents of President Obama. It is a handy device to stifle resistance to the left. As you might expect -- see, e.g., "Don't Leave it to Cleaver: Last call" -- the folks at McClatchy News pull out all the stops. The evidence doesn't quite fit the first prong of the syllogism. More than anything else, Loughner appears to be victim of severe mental derangement. He appears to belong to the free floating assembly of nuts that inhabits a big country. Loughner is a disgrace to nuts everywhere, but I doubt that is a message we'll be hearing much of from other anyone other than the attorneys who end up defending him. Byron York puts it this way: "Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings." Greg Farrell, a Power Line reader and close student of the left, puts it this way: The murders yesterday in Arizona were a despicable act of murder and hopefully the gunman and accomplices if any will be executed after a trial without delay. All condolences go out to the families of the deceased and the wounded. With that being said, a line must be drawn in the sand hard and fast against the slew of irresponsible journalists and left-wing political activists, in the rare case the two are different, and their attempts to pin blame on conservative Americans who advocate for the role of a smaller government. The party of ELF, ACORN, ECO-TERRORISTS, THE BLACK PANTHERS, THE NEW BLACK PANTHERS, THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, THE WINTER SOLDIERS, MUMIA ABU-JAMAL and his supporters, CAIR, LAMONT HILL, VAN JONES, SAUL ALINSKY, CODE PINK , RASHID KHALIDI , REV WRIGHT, BERNARDINE DOHRN the cop killing wife of Obama confidant, proud domestic terrorist, cop killer accomplice BILL AYERS whose hero SIRHAN SIRHAN assassinated Robert Kennedy, must never get away with trying to blame a senseless isolated act of violence against an entire political group or advocates for a political group such as the Tea Party, Glenn Beck and/or Rush Limbaugh. This incident should not be turned into a political issue. That is the lecture we get from left-wing advocates every time an Islamic terrorist or left-wing soldier with obvious political connections commits or attempts to commit an act of murder, violence and/or terrorism. But right on cue, the first chance the radical left has to become hypocritical while constantly lecturing the majority of America not to jump to conclusions in most other incidents, left-wing soldiers in the media and in the national spotlight (again in the rare case that there is a difference) are out there putting the blame on conservative personalities and political parties. With more of an eagerness to make false political points to stir up anger against the Tea Party rather than reporting the story and showing respect for this tragedy, soldiers such as Paul Krugman of the NY TIMES, are already out there demanding people like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party be held to account. This can not and will not go unchallenged this time. Although we really have no power to control what they say or write or desire it like the radical left wants with the fairness doctrine or an overreaching FCC, we do have the power of response and must [respond]. If the party of "GET IN THEIR FACES" want to try to spin this into a conservative vs liberal incident they must be met with fierce intellectual resistance. For over a year now the radical left and the media (again in the rare case that there is a difference) have been trying to lay the foundation of belief that the Tea Party and its advocates are racists, violent, and a threat to the nation. With the constant bombardment of false allegations, trumped up charges and flat out made up stories of racist chants and violence which ironically have been found many times on the left and ignored by the leftwing media this is the type of incident they need to connect to their false template. Starting with their emails, Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, people like Paul Krugman must be relentlessly bombarded with emails and posts confronting their false accusations....The network switchboards of any news division that tries to link this incident to the Tea Party of conservative personalities should be bombarded with emails and phone calls in opposition. It is the left that is turning this into a political issue with the hope of sparking a national crisis. And Rick Moran asks: "Is Daily Kos to blame for Gifford attack?" Rick's report features a screen capture of a post Kos dispatched to the memory hole yesterday as soon as it became inconvenient. UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin elaborates some related points. powerlineblog.com

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (402913)	1/9/2011 9:14:23 PM
From: KLP	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

At least Toby Harnden ~~UK Telegraph not blaming the Right: The unseemly rush to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Republicans for murder in Arizona By Toby Harnden World Last updated: January 9th, 2011 1494 Comments Comment on this article Some on the Left blame Sarah Palin (Photo: AFP/GETTY) Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, by all accounts an outstanding public servant and person, is battling for her life in hospital after being shot by a 22-year-old man at close range at a “Congress On Your Corner” event in her home district. Six people are dead, including a judge and a girl of nine, and a dozen others are being treated for their wounds. It is, as President Barack Obama said, an “unspeakable tragedy”. It is also, as he added, “a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society”. That much we know and the President wisely did not seek to make political capital out of the carnage or jump to conclusions about the motivations of the gunman, named as Jared Loughner. That, of course, hasn’t stopped some on the Left clamouring to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea Party or Republicans in general for what happened. Paul Krugman of the “New York Times” suggests darkly that Giffords was shot because she was “a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona” and “violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate” (those reponsible for such a climate being, of course, Republicans). TBogg of FireDogLake wades straight in and blames Sarah Palin for the shooting because of a graphic of crosshairs placed on the districts of moderate Democrats who voted for healthcare reform. Was the Palin graphic clever? No. But martial imagery is standard political fare and, as Matt Lewis points out, there’s no shortage of Democrats who’ve engaged in it (VerumSerum has found a Democratic Leadership Committee target map). Jane Fonda pins it on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party. Even the local sheriff (a Democrat) has been getting in on the act. Sheriff Clarence Dupnik (a Democrat) said: 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. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry. Well, we’ll see. Personally, I’d be more reassured by a sheriff who concentrated on facts rather than over-heated, sweeping generalisations. So what are the facts we know so far? From what we know about Loughner, he was a deeply disturbed young man who railed about literacy rates, spoke of flag burning and creating a new currency. Former classmates talk of “nonsensical outbursts” and a person “on his own planet”. His favourite reading apparently included “Mein Kampf” and “The Communist Manifesto”. My colleague Jon Swaine has a summary here of the raving of a person who most people would judge to be a complete nutcase even if he hadn’t gone out and shot people. Oh, and another former classmate said he was “left wing, quite liberal”. Naturally, this doesn’t stop Jacob Heilbrunn, pontificating that the shootings are evidence of that the “radical right is becoming even more radicalised and violent”. Ben Smith sums up the current picture of Loughner pretty well: The obsession with the gold standard and the hostility to the federal government resonate with the far right, the burned American flag with the left, but the discussion of mind control and grammar sound more like mental illness than politics. This is highly inconvenient for certain people on the Left so they ignore it. They would much prefer the shooter to have been a white male in his 50s, the description the sheriff gave of a second person of interest (we’ll see if such a person materialises) but they’ll still try to make hay with a weirdo like Loughner. Giffords herself doesn’t quite fit the likely victim of an enraged Right-winger. She is a Blue Dog Democrat, a deficit hawk and voted to lift the ban on guns in DC and voted against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker. On Thursday, she took part in the reading of the Constitution in the House, reading aloud the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, speech and peaceful assembly. She’s certainly not the “progressive” that Hanoi Jane tweeted about and provoked as much anger on the Left as on the Right for her political stances. Just the other day, a blogger at DailyKos said that Giffords was “dead to me” for failing to back Pelosi. Plenty more will emerge in the coming days about Loughner’s motivations and those of any accomplice. It seems certain that the attempted assassination was politically motivated but in exactly what way is, at this stage, very murky. This is a time for sombre reflection and a calming (rather than an escalation) of rhetoric. Sadly, however, some see it as another opportunity to score political points and vilify those they hate. Toby Harnden Toby Harnden is the Daily Telegraph's US Editor, based in Washington DC. You can read more about Toby here. His email is toby.harnden@telegraph-usa.com and he is @tobyharnden on Twitter. blogs.telegraph.co.uk