Archive for 2011
January 9, 2011
BYRON YORK: Journalists urged caution after Ft. Hood, now race to blame Palin after Arizona shootings.
UPDATE: Jennifer Rubin: “You can almost hear the disappointment from the left that he was a pothead rather than a Tea Partyer.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Politico: Dems Want To Blame Tea Partyers:
One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did. “They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”
Because unfounded accusations of complicity in murder are what America needs right now. Well, Mark Penn said Obama needs another Oklahoma City. And they want to give it to him. But aren’t they being a bit transparent, here?
Or is it a ruse?
But whose interests are served by chewing up the wounded flesh in the meat grinder of political rhetoric and whose interests are served by pretending to be above all that? Liberals have an interest in creating a big distraction that might undercut the prevailing conservative momentum. To conservatives, I would say: Don’t help them.
Hmm.
Another former high school classmate said that Mr. Loughner may have met Representative Giffords, who was shot in the head outside the Safeway supermarket, several years ago.
“As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,” the former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote in a series of Twitter feeds Saturday. “I haven’t seen him since ’07 though. He became very reclusive.”
“He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in ’07, asked her a question & he told me she was ‘stupid & unintelligent,’ ” she wrote.
So: “Quite liberal,” and didn’t like Giffords in 2007, before anyone had heard of Sarah Palin or the Tea Party. But it’s their fault.
OUTER SPACE: Not So Great For Making Babies? A whole line of science fiction stories revolves around the idea that zero-G pregnancy doesn’t work, meaning that space-dwellers must spend time on planets or in rotating stations to have kids.
MICKEY KAUS: “Hmm. Fannie Mae. … Somehow that detail gets left out of Daley bios, including his Wikipedia page. … What did Daley not know and when did he not know it when Fannie was helping to create the housing bubble and lead the American economy into an abyss from which it has yet to extricate itself?”
MICHAEL BARONE: Deal-maker Daley: Obama’s emissary to Boehner?
RAND SIMBERG: Giffords Shooting: Don’t Just Do Something — Stand There. “No, the solution to this problem is to recognize that there is no solution to this problem, at least one acceptable to Americans, and to be thankful that with the millions of guns in the land, it happens so seldom. That’s what makes it news, unlike (say) Mexico, where the assassination of a politician in the drug wars is hardly worthy of mention any more. Like the rest of us, our politicians and public officials aren’t immortal, and there is no safety this side of the dirt. While I’ve had my differences with her on space policy, from what I know of Gabrielle Giffords, when she gets well, I suspect that she’s going to go out to the next town meeting, worrying no more about a repeat occurrence than she does about a meteorite strike. And that’s what the rest of us, who aren’t prone to use every tragic event to shove our political agendas down other peoples throats, should do as well.”
WE’RE THE GOVERNMENT, and we’re here to claim we helped you.
A ONE-DAY-ONLY SALE on Sony Home Theater speakers.
BARACK OBAMA: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
UPDATE: Reader Ron Hardin emails: “It’s time to stamp out violent figures of speech.” Heh.
MORE: In 2008, Markos Moulitsas put a “bullseye” on Gabrielle Giffords’ district. While we’re tracking those violent figures of speech . . . .
Give it up guys. Your efforts to politicize this tragedy have been pathetic.
To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Markos’s post, which is about primary challenges. But I do think there’s something wrong with pretending that this sort of language is to blame for nuts. And if you’re going to claim that, well, sauce for the goose. . . .
Related: Democrat Harry Mitchell Places Opponent in Crosshairs.
STILL MORE: Peter Ingemi weighs in.
A ROUNDUP OF VIOLENT POLITICAL RHETORIC FROM THE LEFT.
THE TEN MOST VULNERABLE HOUSE SEATS IN 2012.
WHY HOLDING A GRUDGE AGAINST YOUR SPOUSE may turn out to be rational.
AMY CHUA EXPLAINS WHY CHINESE MOTHERS ARE SUPERIOR.
It’s nice to see this stirring endorsement of rigorous bourgeois values coming from someone nonwhite. Because if it came from a white person, it would be racist. Chua even pretty much says that. . . .
Meanwhile, there’s this question: “One wonders why Asians, if they’ve got things so figured out, need to emigrate to the land of the substandard ‘Westerner’ in order to live prosperously and free.” Yes, one might also wonder what Westerners know — or, at any rate, knew until recently — that China didn’t.
UPDATE: Reader Leo Jiang writes: “What’s so superior about taking a whole decade to realize I’m not a piano prodigy? Congrats to Amy that her children are, I guess.”
January 8, 2011
PAUL HELMKE TRIES TO SEIZE ON TRAGEDY TO RESTORE HIS RELEVANCE. Nice try.
Related: Liberals blast Palin and ‘rhetoric’ following AZ shooting. “Did liberals like Congressman Raul Grijalva, Arizona Democrat, Markos, Moulitsas, and Andrew Sullivan speak too soon for the sake of hoping that the Tucson shooter could have had a tea party or a right of center affiliation? From all of their statements today, both said and written, it sure seems like it.”
As with Mike Bloomberg’s immediate effort to blame the Times Square bombing attempt on the Tea Party, this swift reaction betrays their hope for an issue that could save Obama by defaming his opposition. It also demonstrates that all their “have you no decency?” talk is a sham, since when push comes to shove, they have no decency themselves. Just desperate blood libels.
Related: The Contemptible Paul Krugman. “This would be outrageous even if Krugman himself were not one of the worst hatemongers in public life, a man whose hysterical rhetoric exceeds anything you hear from Limbaugh, Beck, or any significant figure on the right who comes to mind. But this sort of contemptible demagoguery is exactly the kind of thing we have come to expect from Krugman.” No decency. And no shame.
Meanwhile, better sense from Howard Kurtz:
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?
I guess the Democrats’ map with targets was fomenting violence, too, then.
Let me be clear, as a great man says: If you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Sarah Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting — which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie — or you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. So which is it?
UPDATE: Paul Krugman can’t Google.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, films critical of the president would be killed. And they were right!
NEWSWEEK’S EVAN THOMAS: “The health care bill is a disaster.”