Daily Kos Week in Review: Caught Red-Handed In Newtown

The NRA wasn't the only more-or-less conservative entity that Kossacks believed was partly to blame for the horrifying massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Others included the U.S. military and media figures such as Rush Limbaugh.

As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym. Daily Kos Week in Review will return in two weeks. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

worldtrippers: Newtown, the war at home

...[T]he War on Terror – a war which will never end – has replaced the Cold War as the raison d'etre for the Military-Industrial complex. The children in Sandy Hook were mere collateral damage, much like the civilians killed by military drone strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This only brought home what is the reality in many places in the world. The violence aided by the ready availability of arms all around the world, the anger created by the use of weapons in unneccesary wars...

kate12345: Fault the Fox fear fomentors...

...For anyone who watches Fox News, or listens to conservative media, anyone who reads FreeRepublic or RedState, you know the drill.  Be afraid.  Be afraid of everything and everyone.  Be afraid of our Muslim Socialist Kenyan president.  Of illegal aliens.  The U.N.  Of economic collapse and FEMA camps...
 
...Like the gun culture, the fear culture in this country rakes in big profits.  Without fear, gun manufacturers wouldn't be enjoying their most profitable years ever. Without fear, Fox News wouldn't top the ratings...
 
...We kid about Obama Derangement Syndrome, but I have seen friends and family members who have turned their minds over to Fox News.

So as we discuss violent video games and Hollywood movies, maybe it's time to add another subject to that list. Fear-based right-wing political rhetoric...If we want to reduce the need for guns in the country, we need to reduce the fear in this country. And the only way to do that is to point a finger at Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media that created this current culture and hold them accountable, too.

Kos: ...and righty talk radio
 
...[T]hat's the crux of it—a bunch of civilian gun fetishists who fashion themselves the front lines in the defense of freedom from tyranny of something or other. Black helicopters? The U.N.? Barney Frank?...
 
...[Lanza's] idiot "survivalist" mother (how'd that work out for her?) had to purchase her small arsenal, to protect herself against phantom threats on her "freedoms"—urged on by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the gun manufacturers. And instead, she ensured her own untimely doom and that of too many innocents.

So yeah, if I were the benevolent dictator of this country, I'd simply outlaw guns with magazines. That would leave plenty of guns for people to hunt with and defend their homes...

Of course, you have a conservative movement and its NRA friends who think that 20 dead kindergarteners is an acceptable price to pay for their "freedom" to own weapons better suited for highly trained security forces. You have have a conservative movement that would fight to its last breath for those 20 when they were fetuses, but can't bring itself to get outraged once they were born...

CharlesII: Bork, ignorant and desperate

...In many ways, the life of Robert Bork illustrates what is wrong with modern conservatism. Driven by opportunism and inflated with ignorance and hubris, it has ceased to represent a reasoned defense of traditional values and, like the Confederacy, has come to represent a desperate attempt to prevent necessary reform even at the cost of destroying the nation... 
 
nuketeacher: Boehner, reptilian but reasonable
 
...Boehner is probably, at least in part, as repulsive as he is out of necessity, catering to the Tea Party and people of that ilk. Perhaps there is another, more reasonable Boehner who would eagerly embrace the idea of never having to pander to Teahadists again...
 
Boehner’s reptilian mind just might be able to see a real way forward for the Republican Party as well.  He knows full well that Republicanism as currently manifested in his caucus is headed for a dead end.  In order for a credible conservative party to hold any influence over American politics, he should realize that the sooner the Tea Party is overthrown, the better.  His only reason for putting up with them is that he cannot govern at all without them.  By offering him a way out of that dilemma, Boehner might actually become an honest broker on the other side of the table...