Jared Lee Loughner's mug shot, January 2011
* * *
‘An Embarrassment for the Media and Sick, Desperate American Left’
Rush Limbaugh
1/10/2011
…Now, what they’ve done is essentially take aim at a majority of the people in this country. A majority of the people in this country identify more with the Tea Party movement than with the Democrat Party today, with liberalism. This is not 1988. This is not 1993 when this program was the only New Media out there and they still had the ability to control the message; they had the ability to suppress the news they didn’t want anybody to hear about. They had, frankly, total control over what was news, what wasn’t news, and what was commentary on the news. And ever since they have lost that monopoly in the media, they have been their own version, to one degree or another, insane. Now, one of the first acts of insanity is to take an obviously deranged, insane, irrational kid and try to analyze him with sanity and with rationality.
We’re talking about a genuinely mentally disturbed kid. My question is: Who are the parents of this kid? I find it fascinating that the media and many in the Democrat Party want to try to blame people who don’t know this kid, that the kid never knew, that the kid never heard, that the kid never was exposed to. They want to try to blame people, genuinely, who are ancillary, who are irrelevant to this for what the kid did for pure political reason — and there is a pure political reason for this. And I’m gonna tell you what it is. Let me do this here at the outset, folks, because this is what all of this is really all about. It is all political…
…There’s one example that nobody’s talked about that I’m going to cite. Remember Jim Jones? There’s one sitting congressman who has actually been killed in the line of duty. His name is Leo Ryan, and this is Jim Jones and that cult down in Guyana. You may not be old enough to remember that, but during the course of the program today I’m gonna refresh your memory. A full-fledged communist and Democrat killed a Democrat congressman. Now, when these types of events happen, I don’t recall — and I’m not aware — of one conservative, one Republican, one conservative blogger making a mad dash to a microphone, a camera, or a computer to blame a Democrat or liberals for what happened in Arizona on Saturday. But a mad path was beaten.
Don’t kid yourself. What this was all about is shutting down any and all political opposition and eventually criminalizing it. Criminalizing policy differences, at least when they differ from the Democrat Party agenda. One of the more disturbing things about this incident is that someday the left will finally get their wish. One of these days it’s going to happen. This is all setting the table for it…
…they’re already moving off of this, folks. They’re now talking about gun control…
…Here’s a partial list of some of the incidents the left has tried to pin on conservatives. The Columbine shooters. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (specifically they tried to blame me for that). The DC sniper. The New York City Times Square car bomb attempt. They tried to blame that on some Tea Partier angry at the health law, then we find out that was radical Islamists. The February 2010 IRS plane attack in San Antonio. Remember that? It had to be an anti-government clown that flew that plane into the IRS office, had to be. The Pentagon subway shooter. The Fort Hood attack. The Discovery Channel hostage taker. And this guy [John Patrick] Bedell who went into the Pentagon and wanted to shoot these people up. This guy, by the way, is a dead ringer for Loughner. Amy Bishop who shot her colleagues at that Alabama college. The list goes on and on and on. They are countless. The list actually is never ending of incidents like this where the media is damn certain, damn well certain they can give Obama his OKC bombing. They can give a Democrat president some kind of massive murder or disaster caused by conservatives….
…Was there God in this guy’s life? The kid was evil. He was insane. Was God in his life? You can’t ask that, I guess…
Read the entire article at RushLimbaugh.com
H/T Althouse where the comments, as always, are worth reading. An example:
Related:
Flashback: Palin Answers Charges of Incitement in March 2010, ‘When we take up arms, we are talking about our votes’ via Breitbart.tv
“Don’t let the conversation be diverted, don’t let a distraction like that get you off track.”
Dr. Krauthammer Diagnoses Loughner:
Glenn Reynolds, 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.
Sometimes A Tragedy Is Just A Tragedy, by Stephen Hayes at The Weekly Standard:
…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…
Joe Trippi: The Sometimes Tragic Price We Pay to Live in a Free Society
…All this talk of “watching our language” in public debate runs counter to freedom of speech and ignores the fact that in a country of 300 million people there was only 1 person who didn’t grasp that speech is speech — that you don’t use a gun in a debate…
Tommy Christopher, Mediaite.com: Penn noted that it took the Oklahoma City tragedy in order for President Clinton to “reconnect” with the American people. He then stepped off the cliff by saying that President Obama needed a “similar event” to achieve that reconnection following his party’s midterm losses.
At Politico, Barack Obama’s Oklahoma City moment
Of all the unfulfilled campaign promises President Barack Obama made in 2008, the one that bothers the president most isn’t any squandered policy priority – it’s his failure to re-civilize what he views as an increasingly savage partisan climate. Obama idolizes Lincoln, and like his fellow Illinoisan he sees himself as a warrior by compulsion, forced by circumstance to confront political adversaries instead of following his preferred path of reconciliation, civility and compromise…
Or something.
We urge you to read the entire Politico article. It is a particularly useful article that can give normal people a glimpse into the thought process of DC political insiders and strategists. John Fund at The Wall Street Journal, ” ‘Pin This on the Tea Partiers’ “
The shootings in Tucson, Ariz., are being called a “teachable moment” for America. And I agree that there are many things to be learned from them, especially how and when to intervene after people show signs of clear mental instability such as those that Jared Loughner exhibited prior to his picking up a gun. But another lesson from Arizona is how people can exploit a tragedy for political gain. Tucson Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, the elected Democrat in charge of the investigation, accused the tea party of bigotry last September. Now he has ventured even further afield from his duties by deploring the political critics of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords…
Video: Al Sharpton, Shooting Shows We Need ‘Standards’ on the Airwaves and Tom Brokaw Praises Sheriff Dupnik.
But it’s not just the media acting shamefully. It’s our government officials, too: Representative Jim Clyburn thinks reading the U.S. Constitution is somehow inflammatory and is calling for a renewal of the “fairness doctrine.” You can read about his views, “Words can be dangerous” at The Post and Courier.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can somehow equate a mentally ill man with Muslim terrorists when she’s questioned about the Arizona shootings. Thank goodness for the British media, or we’d never know what is going on: Hillary Clinton compares Gabrielle Giffords shooting to 9/11 attacks
In a television broadcast filmed before students in Abu Dhabi US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared the man who shot Gabrielle Giffords to Islamist terrorists and the 9/11 attackers and said the incident showed America and the Arab world faced similar problems.
H/T Protein Wisdom We can’t tell whether Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine falls in the category of progressive uber-censor, or just plain stupid. From Legal Insurrection: Dem Rep–Don’t Use Term “Job Killing” In Obamacare Repeal Bill
We’ll let you decide.
But found somewhere in the midst of this chaos there are stories of heroes, and compassion, and a little humorous irony, too. At Gay Patriot, Heroes in the Arizona shooting:
Let us hope there are more stories about the heroes who helped tackle the man who shot Congresswoman Giffords this weekend. We know at least two of their names, one, a 74-year-old veteran of our armed forces, the other a 20-year-old gay college student, an intern for the Arizona Democrat…
Megyn Kelly interviewed Patricia Maisch who managed to grab the magazine as Loughner was trying to reload and helped one of the wounded heroes.
Joseph Zamudio, one of four people credited with subduing Jared Loughner before he could injure even more people, was carrying a gun, and was ready to use it…
More video, A Look at the Heroes of the Arizona Massacre, with Greta Van Susteren.
Jon Stewart Doesn’t Play the Blame Game: When citizens are given the chance to do the right thing:
Arizonans Rally to Prevent Westboro Church Disruption of Shooting Victims’ Funerals
Disgusted Arizona residents are locking arms to stop the Westboro Baptist Church from disrupting the funerals for victims of Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, with bikers and others organizing a massive counter-protest and state lawmakers fast-tracking a bill to hamstring the so-called church. The Kansas-based Westboro church is notorious for showing up at the funerals of dead soldiers and other high-profile gatherings wielding inflammatory anti-gay signs. But when the church announced it would picket the funeral Thursday for the 9-year-old girl fatally shot over the weekend by a gunman at a Tucson grocery story who killed five others and injured 14 attending a town-hall session by Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Tucson- and Phoenix-area residents started organizing immediately.
And, finally, from Blazing Cat Fur: You just knew…Bill Ayers was connected to Loughner!
Update: How John Lennon Killed Sharon Tate (and Other Ideas for MSM Narratives), Big Journalism:
John Lennon murdered Sharon Tate. Jodie Foster shot Ronald Reagan. Oliver Stone and Marilyn Manson caused Columbine. A dog ordered the Son of Sam killings. And Fox News, the Tea Party and the American right compelled Jared Loughner to shoot Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others in Tucson… …when it comes to exploiting human tragedy to “pick a target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it” (in Saul Alinsky’s words), no facts will obstruct a perfectly salvageable mainstream media narrative…
[Emphasis CAJ]
Update 2: Examples of those tolerant progressives in America. You know, free speech for them, but not for you and me. Sarah Palin gets Twitter death threats, H/T therightscoop
via Weasel Zippers, Huff Po Caught Scrubbing Site of Post Describing a Drone Airstrike on Palin’s House…
Would this classify as “vitriolic?”
The post was here.
From Verum Serum, Why that DLC Map Belongs in Every Media Report that Mentions Palin
…Palin once “targeted” Giffords for electoral defeat using a map on her Facebook page. For most Americans this raises the next sensible question. How does the map, which is just a picture, connect to the actual shooting? At this point they will listen in vain because there is no further connection. Just the map…
…The entire context changes dramatically once you show them this:…
Suddenly, Palin’s map isn’t so unusual. This is something both sides do. It’s ordinary. And that changes the calculus about why the media is raising her name in the first place. It’s no longer that Sarah Palin has gone too far, it’s that she’s being singled out because, well, she’s Sarah Palin. Having witnesses a zillion previous attacks on Palin, most Americans know what to make of this. Any reporter that mentions Palin in connection to six murders and fails to point out how ordinary her only connection to the case really was is effectively smearing Palin and misleading their viewers. It really is that simple.
Update 3: The Face of Hate …
-Chris Matthews fantasizing on air about seeing Rush Limbaugh shot in the head here -Sandra Bernhard: Sarah Palin should be GANG RAPED if she comes to New York here -The Craig Kilborn Show superimposing the words “Snipers Wanted” over the face of President George W. Bush here -Nobel “Peace Prize” winner Betty Williams publicly stating her desire to murder President George W. Bush. here …
Photo: Left wing Palin protestors.
Photo credit A List of Vile Right Wing “Eliminationist” Speech:
…“I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we’ll be there to watch.” – Chris Matthews. Okay so the above is simply to illustrate that fiery rhetoric is used on both sides of the political spectrum. As I alluded to yesterday, to restrict that right to speak freely would be disastrous to our individual rights…
H/T Weasel Zippers Via Real Clear Politics: Brit Hume’s Commentary on Jumping to Conclusions
Brit Hume: It has become a habit of the American left to equate disagreement with liberals with hate.
