Vitriol + guns = disaster

Small brains + keyboards = articles like this.

Did Sarah Palin hope that Jared Loughner would see her Crosshair map, take a gun and start shooting? Of course not.

Sharon you are a b i t c h. Libel with malicious intent of a public figure is a crime.

The police found an envelope with a letter inside from Griffon, thanking JLL for attending her city meetup. Assissinate and Griffon were written on the envelope, in 2007. Palin wasn't even on the politcal scene, and Beck was still over at some other station, not even on Fox. But somehow this looney according to hack author saw Palin's map and went beserk. Instead of pointing fingers, which the hack is by mentioning Beck, Paln et al by name, (slime propoganda tatic), she should have left those names out completely and she would be more believable.
I wonder if this woman is competant to lead a temple, let alone write hack pieces in a major paper.

For two years we have watched as political leaders and members of the press have made incendiary rhetoric not the exception but the rule in Washington and around the country.

Amazing somehow you missed the incendiary rhetoric and death threats for 8 years when Bush was president.
partisian hack. Called out.
And now the left has lost big time in Nov. and it is all Beck's Palin's etc. fault. Yes, the left implied through malicious intent that Palin was responsible. It's called libel, and the WP should be sued.
Now this hack writer is pretending it never happened, not blaming Palin. What a hack. Backpeddaling when it is already documented libeling of Palin with malicious actual intent as inciting the massacre. WP better get their lawyers ready. I see a lawsuit from my window.

Apparently this mindless partisan hasn't gotten the memo.

First we had Truthers. Then we had Birthers. Now we have Mappers.

All three groups are made up of idiots.

Normally what comes to mind when I hear a Rabbi speak is intelligent discourse. But this one misses the mark so badly that I find it hard to believe she is what she says she is. How about my phrase "hit the mark"? Do you have a conspiracy theory for that one too? What I see here is someone who seems never to have heard or read any of the facts of this case. Perhaps she simply wrote what she wrote based on previous hate of her own without thinking. This horrid situation only gave her an excuse to bring forth her bias. Very sad and very disappointing.
Please spend a few days studying all the circumstances and history here and try again, please. You can do better.

NewsBusters: Rabbis Blame the Right for Tucson 'On Faith,' Not Facts
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2011/01/15/rabbis-blame-right-tucson-faith-not-facts

I agree with Rabbi Brous that vitriolic political discourse and easy access to guns are key factors to be addressed but in addition, this tragic event is also related to the serious inadequacy in dealing with mental health issues in this country. The administration of the college Jared Loughner was attending was concerned enough to not let him return to classes and fellow students feared he could become violent yet there was no system to follow up to ensure that Loughner was evaluated and treated before it was too late. The large majority of mentally ill people will not be violent but there have been more than enough deadly events involving mentally ill people that we should stop dismissing them as aberrations.

"This morning on “Good Morning America,” ABC’s Ashleigh Banfield sat down with Zach Osler, a high school friend of Jared Loughner, the suspect in the Tucson massacre.

Osler says his friend wasn’t shooting at people, “he was shooting at the world.” Regarding the high-pitched talk radio and cable news political rhetoric, Osler says his friend didn’t even watch the news.

He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right."
http://tinyurl.com/6bcqwnz

The only good that will come from this tragedy is that main-stream Americans have finally seen just how sick and repulsive the leftist media is.
The headlines today are already taking advantage of this opportune crisis, hoping to coax Obama in to turning the hatred they created, in to a weapon to bash the right.
It won't work this time.
It may have had some success with Clinton's speech after the OKC bombing, but now people are aware of the lies and twisted plots schemed up by the left.
Your time is almost up.
After 2012, you will never see power again for a generation.

"There are those who, predictably, were quick to classify the violence as the work of a solo individual who held no coherent political ideology. This dangerous and misleading analysis reflects a willful blindness to the context and implications of the shootings."

Absolutely on target. (Forgive the pun.)

This shooter wasn't a nut going into a department store or a school or a cultural event and emptying his gun randomly because he felt like it.

This shooter may be mentally unstable, but he had a very specific target, and that target was a U.S. Congresswoman.

Dismissing this incident as just "a nut with a gun" completely ignores some of the most critical context for understanding the motivations of angry people.

It's been absolutely disgusting to watch figures like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, running to cover their responsibility for the culture of fear and hatred they've participated in creating, with cries of their own victimhood. Disgusting, but perhaps predictable. Would we really expect, even in the face of a national tragedy, for them to risk their carefully crafted popularity for some humanity and common decency? Comments like those above are proof that they don't have to. The vitriol has been injected deep, in daily treatments, where even the death of an innocent 9 year old girl cannot penetrate.

The only possible good that could have come out of an incident like this would have been the collective realization that all this has gone to far, that we have allowed ideological differences to descend into ideological conflicts, that we have become what we beheld. Palin and Beck have squandered that opportunity as the Bush administration before them squandered the international good will that grew out of 9/11. And in their effort to cleanse themselves of blame, they have sanctified the blamelessness of those who follow to them. They could have realized what's happened, and participated in a turning of the tides, and instead chose to dig the lines a little deeper, and we are all poorer for it.

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes... Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars." -MLK jr

Absolutely nothing that even the outliers in the Tea Party movement have said or done remotely approaches the level of homicidal hatred and vindictive spite that was ceaselessly and openly expressed toward President Bush from 2003-on.

A collection of photographic evidence of this systemic, collective hate for a political figure is viewable at http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621.

We've forgotten now, as the American people have the memory of a school of jellyfish, but it bears reminding that Obama and Democratic political figures today have never confronted the same pure vitriol that was distilled by the Left for Pres. Bush.

Sarah Palin is a useful straw (wo)man, but the suggestion that Republicans and their allied movements created the conditions for Jared Loughner is cynically disingenuous and reflects a convenient ignorance of recent political history.

The current level of rhetoric is hardly unprecedented. Unfortunately, the real shame here is some using tragedy though could have brought us all together as nothing more than rhetoric and vitriol to attack those you disagree with politically.

So continue with this divisive rhetoric and vitriol. Thank God, the majority of the country disagree with you.

Another load of crap assigning blame. People are responsible for their own actions & reactions regardless of outside influences. Ban guns & all you do is make it illegal to defend yourself. This guy would have found a gun regardless, or would have made a worse weapon. People speaking out against a corrupt government is what made this country. It has been said that a people who will sacrifice freedoms for security deserve neither. Freedom comes with a certain level of risk; the only alternative to that risk is slavery to the government. Maybe that's acceptable to you, but it's not to me.

So true...it's bad enough when non-politicians make violent and hateful comments regarding a person or group of people, but it's even worse when a leader in our nation makes these remarks.

So often we point a "shame you" finger at celebrities for their bad behavior, insisting that they should consider their young, impressionable fans. It is so much more embarrassing that we now have to do this with our leaders!

Celebrities have always excused themselves because they "didn't ask to be role models." Politicians and government leaders of any kind have accepted a position in which "role model" is implied in the job description. They should be model citizens.

Obviously this tragic event was not Palin's intention; I'm also not sure it was the cause of this particular event. However, it is unacceptable for our leaders to make hateful/violent statements or to imply such sentiments.