Tucson Tragedy Link Round-up: Pushing Back Left-Wing Lies

The mugshot

The first reaction of normal Americans upon hearing the news of the horrific Tucson massacre was shock and sadness. Six people are dead, including a federal judge and a nine year old girl. A United States congresswoman was shot in the head at point blank range, and is struggling to recover after being initially reported dead. Eighteen people were injured. Such gut-wrenching, and heart-breaking news deserves a moment of  silence in the political sphere. Although it had the appearance  of political violence, having taken place at a political event, with the target of the shooter being a politician,  common decency should have prevented pols from pointing fingers of blame.

Yes, it was normal and appropriate  for people to wonder about the motives of the assailant, but it  wasn’t normal and appropriate for left-wing bloggers and the MSM (b.i.r.m) to jump in like ghouls, “reeking with the stench of hypocrisy and disingenuity”, assailing the right generally, and Sarah Palin specifically before the shooter was even identified. As more comes out about Jared Loughner, it becomes obvious that he was anything but a tea-partier or Palinista.

Via Michelle Malkin, it turns out that Loughner is a 9/11 Truther, Creep, left-wing psycho nihilist, “never really political”, an apparent grievance-monger against the US military, dream freak, delinquent, and pothead.

That does not fit the profile of a tea partier. It also turns out that Loughner had been obsessed with Giffords since 2007, before Sarah Palin had entered the national stage, and predating the tea party. Most notably,  it turns out that Jared Loughner is severely mentally ill. He’s cracked –  has bats in his belfry… is as mad as a hatter… round the bend…  has a screw loose. In short,  the boy is coo-coo for cocoa puffs, as anyone who’s spent more than 30 seconds watching any of his YouTube videos can attest.

And so are the people who are trying to blame his actions on Palin, the tea party, and/or right-wing vitriol.  It was a sick thing to do before the identity of the shooter was known – it’s even sicker now that it’s obvious that he is a demented madman with no connection at all to the tea party movement, or Sarah Palin.

Never let a crisis go to waste, huh lefties? What we’re seeing here is essentially blood libel against Republicans to score political points. An unnamed Democratic operative even suggested,“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers, just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

The race-baiting strategy that has been in play against the tea party for two years has (along with other things) resulted in “unprecedented white flight” from the Democratic party and a Dem shellacking of epic proportions in the mid-term elections.

Do these cretinous goons really think that insulting  large groups of Americans is an effective strategy?

Bryan Preston, writing at Pajamas Media, thinks, no:

In the world of 2011, President Obama will not be able to get away with politicizing tragedy, as President Clinton did.  It will not work.  Following the advice to politicize Tuscon would be a terrible mistake.

No one, anywhere, on either side of the political aisle, should politically capitalize on Tuscon.  This moment in American history demands real statesmanship and real leadership, not more divisive winner-takes-all politics.

What President Obama does in this moment will tell us much about his character.  Does he put his own political fortunes above the health of the country?  Is he willing to advance a lie, and build on that lie, to save himself and his party?  Will he keep and listen to advisers who think that he should do this?

If President Obama succumbs to the temptation that others on his side have already succumbed to, to blame Tuscon on Sarah Palin’s map or Glenn Beck’s TV show or the tea parties, it will work to his everlasting shame.  It will wreck President Obama’s personal credibility.  It may destroy his already faltering presidency beyond repair.  But more than that, it will further divide the country.  It will poison our politics, and they’re already poisonous enough.  It may damage the presidency itself.

Is President Obama willing to risk all that, just to “reconnect” and give himself a better chance at re-election?  We will soon find out.

There’s no need to wait on how the left-wing blogosphere and the MSM will proceed. They’re running with the anti-Palin, anti-tea party narrative, as if it’s a sound argument to make that Sarah Palins innocuous map crosshairs influenced Loughner.

Read Michelle Malkin’s epic post on what violent political rhetoric really looks like: The progressive “climate of hate:” An illustrated primer, 2000-2010, and then tell me that it’s right wing rhetoric that is over the top.

Yet, over and over and over again, we see the MSM and the left jumping to the conclusion that  political acts of violence are done by deranged right wingers:

Ace  says, Let us count this all up. The following people have been alleged, with hope in their black hearts, to be white conservative anti-government types:

1. The DC Sniper.

2. The IRS Plane-Bomber.

3. The Discovery Channel Shooter.

4. The Times Square Bomber.

5. The census worker hanged in the woods with the word “FED” not, in fact, written on him.

6. The Fort Hood shooter.

Some lefties have also set up not one, but two fake Facebook accounts for Loughner, showing him to be a  big Fox News fan. Sad, but true.

Here are 22  real examples of left-wing violence and intimidation.

And that Pima County Sheriff who was so quick to blame “vitriolic” rhetoric? It seems that he may be trying to deflect the blame away from himself:

Ace: Dupnik’s Report: Yeah, Loughner Did Make Death Threats

I had left a question mark about this element of the charge. But as commenters, and Moe Lane, tell me, Dupnik himself confessed that Loughner had made death threats.

He didn’t say against whom, but I have a pretty good guess that Gabrielle Giffords was one of the targets.

Gateway Pundit: James Taranto: Sheriff Dupnik Is Distracting Public From Looking At His Contacts With Killer Loughner (Video)

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Andrew Klavan , after noting the “the real-world failure of leftist policies everywhere”, opines:

But all that might be tolerable to leftists if they weren’t starting to lose control of the one weapon in which they have the most faith: the narrative. The narrative is what leftists believe in instead of the truth. If they can blame George W. Bush for the economic crisis, if they can make Sarah Palin out to be an idiot, if they can call the Tea Party racist until you think it must be true, they might yet retain power in spite of the international disgrace of their ideas. And though they still mostly dominate the narrative on the three broadcast networks, most cable stations, most newspapers, and much of Hollywood, nonetheless Fox News, talk radio, the Internet, and the Wall Street Journal have begun to respond in ways they can’t ignore.

That’s the hateful rhetoric they’re talking about: conservatives interrupting the stream of leftist invective in order to dismantle their arguments with the facts. As for leftists’ reaction to the Arizona shooting, call it Narrative Hysteria: a frantic attempt to capitalize on calamity by casting their opponents, not merely as racist or sexist or Islamophobic this time, but as somehow responsible for an act of madness and evil. Shame on them.

And Marc Theissen concludes his piece in The Washington Post, nicely:

On Sunday, the New York Times published a front-page story, “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics.” Nowhere did it mention the vitriol hurled at Tea Party activists, who are routinely derided to as “tea baggers” and racists, and now stand accused of incitement to murder. If you want an example of the lack of civility plaguing our political discourse, look no further than this weekend’s shameful efforts to use this tragedy to demonize the Tea Party.

The last two links are via Ace of Spades, who for some reason, is talking like a robot:

SINGULAR HUMAN [THIESSEN: MARC] ACTIVE-VERB WRITES [SIN=OPPOSITE/HYPOTENEUSE] ON [DEFINE FUNCTION=INSIGHT] HYPOCRISY

Finally, Doug Ross has uncovered this curious fact:

Curious: Rep. Giffords’ Official YouTube Channel Subscribes to Only Two People: Rep. Ike Skelton and… Jared Lee Loughner

MORE:

Hot Air: WaPo: Loughner was a registered independent, didn’t vote this year

What, supposedly, makes mentally ill grassroots liberals so innately disinclined to violence that there’s really no reason to worry about any of the stuff in Michelle’s post or the “Bush = Hitler” meme from Dubya’s second term or Olby saying things like “Fox News is worse than Al Qaeda”? Is there a special civility gene that kicks in to calm down a leftist with schizophrenia when he suddenly decides that he’s ready to snap? After the past two days, for Sarah Palin’s sake, I sure hope so.

Oh good lord….tell me you’re joking: Ultimate Hypocrisy: ‘Taliban Dan’ Alan Grayson Blasts Palin, Bachmann & Right’s Violent Speech

Rush Limbaugh’s comments on his show, today – An Embarrassment for the Media and the Sick, Desperate American Left

Part one:

Part two:

Part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9 , part 10.