Sarah Palin is not responsible for the AZ murders. Neither is Glann Beck, Sharon Angle, or the ACORN reporter. There’s a lot of bs in the media – putting scoped crosshairs on a map and naming your political targets under the crosshairs is bs. Calling for “Second Amendment solutions” at events where people are reminding each other that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” is bs.
But Loughner is responsible for the murders he committed and the political assassination he attempted.
Yes, he seems to be a loon. But yes, it was political. With political motivations and results.
And in the political rhetoric storm now going on, the right and their talkers are calling it in an isolated event by a lone guy. (Except our own Pete Boyles who has it all figured out why the responsibility lies with the Pima County sheriff.)
It is not an “isolated incident’, except that Loughner appeared to have not been involved in anything like before, and nothing else happened like it last Saturday.
from David Neiwert at crooksandliars.comhttp://crooksandliars.com/davi…
Just in the past two and a half years, here’s the record of “isolated incidents” amassed so far:
— July 2008: A gunman named Jim David Adkisson, agitated at how “liberals” are “destroying America,” walks into a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two churchgoers and wounding four others.
— October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee in a plot to murder dozens of African-Americans, culminating in the assassination of President Obama.
— December 2008: A pair of “Patriot” movement radicals — the father-son team of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge, who wanted “to attack the political infrastructure” — threaten a bank in Woodburn, Oregon, with a bomb in the hopes of extorting money that would end their financial difficulties, for which they blamed the government. Instead, the bomb goes off and kills two police officers. The men eventually are convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.
— December 2008: In Belfast, Maine, police discover the makings of a nuclear “dirty bomb” in the basement of a white supremacist shot dead by his wife. The man, who was independently wealthy, reportedly was agitated about the election of President Obama and was crafting a plan to set off the bomb.
— January 2009: A white supremacist named Keith Luke embarks on a killing rampage in Brockton, Mass., raping and wounding a black woman and killing her sister, then killing a homeless man before being captured by police as he is en route to a Jewish community center.
— February 2009: A Marine named Kody Brittingham is arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate President Obama. Brittingham also collected white-supremacist material.
— April 2009: A white supremacist named Richard Poplawski opens fire on three Pittsburgh police officers who come to his house on a domestic-violence call and kills all three, because he believed President Obama intended to take away the guns of white citizens like himself. Poplawski is currently awaiting trial.
— April 2009: Another gunman in Okaloosa County, Florida, similarly fearful of Obama’s purported gun-grabbing plans, kills two deputies when they come to arrest him in a domestic-violence matter, then is killed himself in a shootout with police.
— May 2009: A “sovereign citizen” named Scott Roeder walks into a church in Wichita, Kansas, and assassinates abortion provider Dr. George Tiller.
— June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester named James Von Brunn opens fire at the Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.
— February 2010: An angry tax protester named Joseph Ray Stack flies an airplane into the building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas. (Media are reluctant to label this one “domestic terrorism” too.)
— March 2010: Seven militiamen from the Hutaree Militia in Michigan and Ohio are arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate local police officers with the intent of sparking a new civil war.
— March 2010: An anti-government extremist named John Patrick Bedell walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two officers before he is himself shot dead.
— May 2010: A “sovereign citizen” from Georgia is arrested in Tennessee and charged with plotting the violent takeover of a local county courthouse.
— May 2010: A still-unidentified white man walks into a Jacksonville, Fla., mosque and sets it afire, simultaneously setting off a pipe bomb.
— May 2010: Two “sovereign citizens” named Jerry and Joe Kane gun down two police officers who pull them over for a traffic violation, and then wound two more officers in a shootout in which both of them are eventually killed.
— July 2010: An agitated right-winger and convict named Byron Williams loads up on weapons and drives to the Bay Area intent on attacking the offices of the Tides Foundation and the ACLU, but is intercepted by state patrolmen and engages them in a shootout and armed standoff in which two officers and Williams are wounded.
— September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up a North Carolina abortion clinic. The man, 26-year–old Justin Carl Moose, referred to himself as the “Christian counterpart to (Osama) bin Laden” in a taped undercover meeting with a federal informant.
All articles are sourced and linked at the story.
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Just read the incendiary madness the darling of the tea party and the right spews from his show:
http://mediamatters.org/resear…
He’s not alone, and there oughta be a law.
but not surprising. And it sickens me that so many give him credence. And I am also sad that CP gives Rush time and space on Fridays right here too.
I used to think if we all just ignored them, then they might go away, but that was naive. There are too many in this country who hang on their every word for them to disappear so easily.
is a sorry excuse for a human being.
Just another megalomaniac, building his fortune by exploiting the fear of the masses, also known as the “Limbaugh model”.
He is worthy of disgust…nothing more.
thanks for posting this calm rebuttal to the apologists for the tragedy in Tuscon.
notion being pushed in some quarters that there is actually equivalence between the left and the right in the matter of escalating political violence.
Personally, I have taken an oath to resist name calling and anger, and limit myself to civil discourse.
Less is more, as in so many areas.
I’m, starting a bonsai tree. Wanted to ever since seeing the dispplay at the Maui County Fair last year. It’s so calming and contemplative.
During the winter months its standard operating procedure to “comb the roots”. Who’d a thunk it? The metaphor is apt, and just as in our political discourse, combing the roots is best when done carefully. Less ir more.
And you’re right, The main stream media will continue to emphasize artificial, he said/ she said “fairness” so lists like this are unlikely to come to public attention on a broad scale. Still appreciate the effort.
Calling legally enacted legislation, passed by a majority of elected representatives and signed by a popularly elected president, something that was “forced” on the American people.
Questioning the birth of our president.
Bringing guns to political rallies.
False piety, as the right showed when the news of the shooting hit. (Again, if you want to pray for the fallen, don’t mention politics while you do.)
Ari, what you express in your first sentence is the issue that has been particularly sticking in my craw. It seems the most insidious and dangerous of the extreme right rhetoric.
This is so anti-American and no one with a megaphone calls it out when it happens. The idea that if you don’t like the outcome of elections, of all stripes, you should go out with your gun and make it go away. You should threaten and intimidate and refuse to accept the way we settle political issues in America. About as un-patriotic as you can get.
The people who screech the loudest about their Holy Constitution are the ones who have absolutely no respect for what it means and has stood for for so long.
For years patients were institutionalized in private sanitariums and/or state run mental hospitals. Many were not mentally ill but victims of their family or the state which ruled them insane. It took a tremendous effort to change the rules (laws) if I recall my history to change the way society dealt with mental illness to the point where there was no profit to speak of for private sanitariums or a limited number of state run institutions.
The mentally ill go untreated and are under funded and under insured which can’t help but expose them to the most violent and vitriolic among us.
Good point.
Great point.
It’s just that they continually use rhetoric which they must know will strike a chord in some mentally unstable people, leading them to think that a little revolution now and again (mostly now) really is a good thing.
How many times will the right wing ignore the “lone gunmen” that just happen to be acting out the violent anti-government, racist, and/or Army of God viewpoints being spewed out of right wing radio, TV, and candidates’ mouths? How long before they care that their words are being put in to quite real action, regardless of how much they think it’s just words?
Loughner himself was obsessed with how words created and altered reality; it was supposedly his (very odd) question to Giffords that initiated his obsession with her death: “what is government if words have no meaning?” A similar, but much more meaningful, question might be asked of right wing public figures: if you don’t expect people to take your words seriously, why are you saying them?
It is time, and past time, for the right wing to own up to the revolutionary, violent rhetoric they spout, and to stop hiding behind the excuses, lies, and deflection that inevitably spring up each time some “lone gunman” acts on the right wing rhetoric he’s come to believe in.
This compilation is from a piece in the Washington Post:
Today the right wing is telling us these words don’t matter. A new poll shows 70% of Repubs. don’t think the words their heroes spew have anything to do with what happened.
My question to our right wing posters here, and all of them out there, including Beck/Hannity/Limbaugh/O’Reilly/Palin and many R legislators–if words don’t matter, why do you keep using them? Why do you all follow Frank Luntz as he tells how to put words together to get the sheep to follow you? What are doing talking all the time, if you don’t expect and want people to listen to you, believe you and take action?
Any takers on these questions?
Or steal their life’s labor with a death tax.
Mission accomplished.
I’ve been asking that question for days – if the purpose of the violent, extremist rhetoric is NOT to incite violent acts, then what is its purpose?
The world is upside down — we used to believe that R‘s were the party of responsibility. But now R‘s are D‘s — deniers. They deny responsibility for any consequences of their words and actions.