On January 8, 2011 – a lone gunman attending a political rally for Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords walked up to the legislator and shot her in the head. He then proceeded to empty his weapon by randomly shooting other attendees of the rally. Giffords is still fighting for her life. Fourteen individuals were wounded by the would-be Giffords assassin. Six people tragically died during the incident. Little else is known about the circumstances surrounding the shooting or the suspect arrested for the attack. People that claim to know him and/or to have been friends with the suspect have called the man a loner, a nihilist, a pothead and a generally unstable individual that many were afraid to be around. Little is actually known about the man, as he has been uncooperative in discussing his reasoning behind his shocking actions.
Like most of America I was spending the last few days attempting to comprehend the circumstances that would lead an individual to create such a heinous act. Is the man a lunatic? Is he a sociopath? Those were my first considerations. Though after looking at his mug shot I am not so sure. His mug shot looked very contrived and posed. In fact, my first thoughts after looking at the picture was he was attempting to create a mirror reflection of the Crazy Uncle Fester Character from the movie and television adaptations of the Addams Family. He even had a skull replica shrine in his back yard. Since the arrest, the accused shooter has obtained the services of a lawyer known for defending high profile clients involved in tragic events. Similar to other opinions I have read since the incident first took place – now that we have a high profile lawyers involved, the facts will be construed and conceptualized by those in the legal system until we probably will never know what really happened in this mans head. Lord knows the rhetoric from the last several days has given plenty of material for a lawyer to twist and shape a defense. Conspiracy and misinformation shall be tossed around until the victims will be lucky to find any justice within the judicial system. In actuality, the facts already are, that many inside the media and political arena have already turned a tragedy into a Big Top Circus Conspiracy event.
Nationally known journalists such as Paul Krugman, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and a host of other individuals have done their best to steal mourning time from the victims, their families and the rest of the country by exploiting this tragic event as a means for political and personal advancement. At some point as I read, what was an onslaught of finger-pointing: I started to track some of the intense and vile rhetoric being tossed at the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Conservatives, Conservative Organizations, Conservative leaning Media and even at any conservative ideology by the pundits and acolytes that ardently follow leftwing politic voices such as Krugman, Durbin and other leftwing pundits. In no time at all I had amassed over forty pages of rhetoric being tossed at those individuals – especially at Palin and the Tea Party. Which is an amazing correlation when you look at the accuser’s profile – the man is an atheist, a drug addict, obsessed with literature that involves communist/fascist analysis and generally hates anyone or anything in government. That is not the profile of a Tea Party member. It is not the profile of any major US political party groups I am familiar with. Still that has not stopped several days of non-stop vile accusations by those on the left trying to tie this assassin to anything Conservative. The following is a long list of a small sampling of that rhetoric, I pulled from just a handful of mainstream media sites - such as the local newspaper Internet sites – the Quad City Times, The Dispatch/Argus’ Quad-Cities Online and the National website of CNN and Yahoo!. In no particular order, I let the Lynch Mob Mentality, exploitation of the event and behavior surrounding the tragedy speak for itself by posting their unvarnished words -->
- I’m sure Sarah Palin is happy. Her first target on the map of the USA has been taken care of.
- Gads, even NYDailynews.com connects him and the Palin statement!I suppose you just have not read that.”
- Tea partiers are a threat to the American way of life. They are so threatened by American values that they result to gun violence even after a historic “win” in mid-term elections! I think we should make sure all airline security personnel are aware of the sort of people they are dealing with. Any members of the teaparty profile should be subject to a thorough body cavity search. They, after all, are the threat. The rest of us law abiding citizens should not be detained because of their predisposition to violence. I’m not saying we judge them. It is just a natural for a teapartier to be more emotional, more prone to violence, and therefore more likely to engage in poor decision making. They can’t help themselves. Since many conservatives are also members of the NRA, I suggest we get a court order so we can get a list of names from the NRA as to who our most dangerous citizens are.
- Palin should be charged with conspiracy to commit murder, NOW! It’s time she took responsibility for her actions.
- The American Reichwing has struck again.
- This is a symptom of the cancer that is right wing ideology. A symptom with a conservative shooter, probably ironically self described right to lifer.
- I bet Fox offers him his own show.
- Now, we should profile teaparty terrorists. After all the Taliban and the teaparty both wish to overthrow our American way of life.
- This is exactly the kind of radical feelings those on the right hope to instill in people with their lies and misrepresentations. It has served them well at the ballot box for two decades now. It is a strategy of building fear and desperation in the ignorant and uneducated, designed to ensure a vote. Unfortunately, a desperate, ignorant man often strikes out in other ways when he feels threatened. Though an assassination may be tragic and unintended, we cannot ignore the catalyst of vitriol.
- Previous REPUBLICAN administrations guaranteed this boy would not get the help he needed, because of republican budget cuts to mental health
- Are you happy now Tea ####? Are you happy that the “Tree of Liberty has been watered with the blood of Tyrants”? Innocent people dead because of the rhetoric of Palin, Beck, Rush, Fox News and every loud mouth idiot on the right. Assassins all.
- PALIN was the one that spewed her “ready, aim shoot”, PALIN is a trigger.You can pretend all you want to, you can’t change what PALIN said.
- The philosophy holds that there is no moral purpose higher than furthering one’s own self-interest. There is no room for the mentally ill in a budget prepared by movement ocnservatives.
- Think Progress posted this video on its YouTube channel back in November, of Democratic pollster (and former Hillary Clinton campaign manager) Mark Penn arguing that Obama needed “another Oklahoma City” in order to reconnect with the people.
- Remember Paylin’s bulls eye map? Congresswoman Gifford’s was on it. 2nd amendment remedies spouted in earnest by the nut case Bachmann…talking heads on Radio, Fox talking heads and their junkies all screaming hate for two years, do these people not see what they are doing? There are real consequences to their words and actions? Today we see the end result of all the hate, a dead innocent child who had no idea who any of these clowns are.
- GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE! They just make it a hell of a lot easier.
- The fringe is CRAZY, have been inspired to act out their HATE by the Tea Party Candidates INCLUDING and ESECIALLY Palin!
- Just maybe the Becks, Limbaughs, Palins, of our Country in to be tried TREASON!
- Actually your statement is probably going to turn out pretty accurate. The congress woman’s own father said, that the Tea Party was her biggest enemy.
- The NOT-unique aspects of Sarah Palin are simply that she is a poorly uneducated, unwordly, entitled suburban brat who spews violent hate speech at people she hasn’t spent a second trying to understand or empathize with. There is nothing unique about Sarah Palin. In fact, she TYPIFIES the right. The only group she doesn’t represent are the educated country-club conservatives who are right-wing for other reasons, such as economic conservatism and a belief that the USA is the world’s policeman.
- Because any idiot with $5 can buy a gun, strap it around his waist and walk into a Safeway without anyone blinking an eye in Arizona.
- Precisely, my friend. There is little difference between most current ‘republican’ teadippers and the frenzied nazi brownshirts that later whined “who could have known Germany gassed the Jews? Not US”.
- post I`ll have to believe anyone other than an evangelical GOP far right winger, and full fledged Par-tier would be square in the cross hairs on the same map Paylin placed 20 of those she thought deserved to be re-loaded on
- Yes, I saw the hit list before. This guy puts me in the mind of a Tim Mc Veigh The people who put these seeds of thought in his head should be held accountable.
- Hint–you are part of the problem not part of the solution with such deranged ideas and beliefs..Guess I better get my I`m American badge out and staple it to my forehead or would you prefer a tattoo for ID?
- According to his disorganized internet ramblings, he is just a young, newly sickened schizo who didn’t get the help he needed but had ready access to guns and the philosophy of the Tea Party to feed his deranged thoughts.
- the tea partiers a whole group of folks known for creating false connections and being vitriolic and emotiona
- We listened to this same type of garbage response when evangelicals were trying to escape responsibility for the murder of Dr.Tiller in his own church. It never ends with your types does it.Always the fault of others for your rhetoric.
- This is exactly the kind of radical feelings those on the right hope to instill in people with their lies and misrepresentations. It has served them well at the ballot box for two decades now. It is a strategy of building fear and desperation in the ignorant and uneducated, designed to ensure a vote.
- Is anyone seriously surprsed this finally happened? When you have pundits like Sarah Palin making maps with target symbols on Congresspeople, coupel that with gun rhetoric and references to violence and revolt in nearly every speech — this is the type of stuff you get.
- He is a victim of mental illness coupled with the absorption of right-wing violent gun rhetoric and an expiration on gun bans by Republicans/Bush.
- Even for someone who is as demonstrably stupid as Sarah Palin clearly is, she should have at least had some advisor in her slavish, unctuous, half wit menagerie of toadies, and assorted morons, who could rub two neurons together, and conclude that themes focusingon “symbolic” gestures of acts of violence might actually be enough of an impetus to set off some of her “less than fully stable” admirers (of whom there seem to be very, very many).
- The only people not smart enough to realize that a teabagger did this are the ones dumb enough to support the tea party.
- There are all Christian Terrorist ready to commit crimes against our beloved Nation, we should round them all up and place them jail.
- “Sarah is a evil woman, who will be leader of this country with all her lies. All these people death are down to her she is a vile evil woman I hope she dies.”
- And so it begins – the TeaPalin Taliban’s war against democracy. NOT Democrats – democracy. It’s rather difficult to resolve the “coincidence” of this assassination attempt and the fascist hate poster one of Palin’s thousand PACs stuck up all over the country with the image of Gabrielle Giffords and a rifle-sight crosshair superimposed over her head. Speaking of “head,” Headless Jan Brewer must be cackling with glee that her “carry a concealed weapon wherever you are” law has borne the fruit she was hoping for so quickly.
- Good going CNN Media you have been pushing for this and helping to incite the ignorant Republican tea baggers.
- A Tea Party member was clearly responsible. Brewer is killing people by not allowing transplants.
- There can be no surprise that some whackos exercising their 2nd amendment rights will now feel emboldened to act. Now they will reap what they have sown.
- the far right wing hates those that neen help,discrimanate against the poor and down on their luck folks .
- This Congresswoman was on Sarah Palin’s “hitlist” map!!! Please repost or retweet that hitlist map as much as possible, Sarah Palin needs to be in jail for this BS!!
- Tea Partier. No doubt in my mind.
- congrats tea party. finally your wish has come true. you are real americans
- It had to happen,with all the demonizing Rethugs/TeaP are doing,to mix already unstable people all up~plus a lot os stable ones as well
- Finally Sarah “bagged” one. I hope this “Christian” is REAL proud of herself.
- Do Fox News and Frank Luntz finally have blood on their hands they can’t casually dismiss?
- If she died and the tea-drinkers lies were the cause then we the people should storm the capital and force out all who believe in conservatism!!
- Media, When will you start treating the right wing extremism as a dangerous cancer. An innocent woman is a victim of the hate and rage of the right. It was just a matter of time that is was going to happen
- McCain didn’t get his way on DADT so his Teabagger supporters are going to pick off Democrats one by one with Second Amendment solutions? Imagine what they would be doing if he was in the White House.
- You are right – limbaugh, beck, o;reilly, palin, bachmann, et al – THEY should be held accountable for their hate-mongering – spewing hate and telling people to use guns if the vote doen’t get the result they desire. GO AFTER THE SOURCE OF THIS BEHAVIOR.
- This event immediately brings thoughts of Palin and the “baggers”.
- That was my first thought. Had to be a teabagger
- This is what the Palin Fan club is all about, because they’re all home schooled and caant spehl nuthin. And of course lower taxes mean mohr homscoolin for em all!
- Palin should be the first one charged with sedition because of what happenned here today.
- targetted for removal by Sarah, the riflewoman, Palin. Who else is in her crosshairs.
- The Republican Party has to denounce the right wing radicals ( Palin, Rush, Hannity, O’Rielly)from riling up low information whack jobs. You wouldn’t have some 22 year old (who’s probably mentally challenged in some way) losing it and thinking that he’s doing his country a sevice by taking out someone who has had a ‘target’ put on her by Sarah Palin, if he wasn’t incited to do so.
- We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was….
- Is anyone seriously surprsed this finally happened? When you have pundits like Sarah Palin making maps with target symbols on Congresspeople, coupel that with gun rhetoric and references to violence and revolt in nearly every speech — this is the type of stuff you get. Yeah, most of us know she’s just saying that because she has no real substance to anything else she says. But people who are already unstable can perceive her as instructive. This is why we need to abandon the culture of violence, guns, and outdated rhetoric. He is a victim of mental illness coupled with the absorption of right-wing violent gun rhetoric and an expiration on gun bans by Republicans/Bush.
There are many-many more examples but I am already over a 2500 word count. I would also like to thank Quad City Examiner and her readers for many of the links I have included in this post. They reminded me of the eight years of Bush Derangement that has escalated basic political rhetoric into win at all costs combative political derangement.
more links
Zombie Time – Hall of Shame
A climate of hate.
MILP, Respecting Motherhood?
Unhinged.
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Of course we can’t use many of the possible cost saving cuts since 
