UPDATE AT END OF POST: Moulitsas was less concerned about the four Oakland police officers killed just miles from his home two weeks ago.
Shortly before Markos Moulitsas blamed Glenn Beck for instigating the senseless shooting of three Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, police officers on Saturday, the proprietor of the far-left website Daily Kos said that conservatives would rather shoot cops than organize to win the next election.
He also wrote during the same Twitter discussion, "With no Veep to shoot people, folks are taking things into their own hands."
Such was revealed Sunday by a self-proclaimed Daily Kos diarist named Tommy Christopher who was so disgusted by these comments he has actually resigned his membership (h/t Hot Air via ConservaThink):
I have to say that DailyKos frontpager Dana Houle and Kos himself have earned my “Unbest Individuals Upon the Earth” award (patent pending). So badly have they made me sick to my stomach that I am resigning as a DailyKos diarist and reader. Here’s why:
This is Twitter, so you have to read from the bottom. I snipped Houle’s Tweet because it was much earlier in the day.
Dana Houle is a Daily Kos frontpager, not some tinfoil diarist, and Markos is the public face of the liberal blogosphere. Granted, his influence isn’t what it used to be, but he is still the most recognizable, the most closely-associated liberal blogger out there.
Nice discussion shortly after three police officers are senselessly murdered, wouldn't you agree? Christopher obviously does:
Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I think this is shameful. This is the kind of thing I would probably delete at Political Machine. I don’t even see the humor in it, even setting aside the heartless ghoulishness involved.
More broadly, I’m starting to feel like a lot of the liberal blogosphere is forgetting what it means to be a liberal, or maybe I’m using the wrong word. After 8 years of mortal kombat with the right, we’ve swung too far, become too belligerent. [...]
We’re supposed to be better than this, it’s why we fight...We need to know where the line is. We’re not stand-up comics, or radio entertainers. We have a responsibility to our ideals that we ought not to betray for a cheap, barely-audible laugh.
Bravo, Tommy. You're quite correct, and have a lot of guts speaking out this way.
However, be advised that this is NOT a new affectation on your side of the debate. Remember that conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer first wrote about Bush Derangement Syndrome in late 2003.
As such, the hatred you saw tweeted yesterday has been on display for many years. Maybe you're only beginning to be offended by it because your "side" is currently in power and therefore you expect better behavior from them.
But shouldn't common decency be the rule regardless of whether you're trying to attain or retain power?
In the end, Tommy, we're all Americans, and irrespective of political differences should treat each other with dignity.
Congratulations for recognizing what many on both sides of our currently polarized nation never will.
*****Update: As many of you know, four Oakland police officers were senselessly murdered on March 21 by a lone gunman. As NewsBusters reported on March 28, the killings rocked the entire community. The funeral was attended by Senators Boxer and Feinstein, Gov. Schwarzenegger, and tens of thousands of Bay Area residents.
Moulitsas lives with his family in Berkeley which is Oakland's neighbor to the north. Depending on where their home is, he could be as little as ten miles from where the March 21 killings occurred.
One of the fallen officers, Daniel Sakai, was a UC-Berkeley graduate, a former UC-Berkeley policeman, and his wife is training to be on the UCPD force.
From what I can tell by reviewing Moulitsas's posts at Daily Kos as well as from a Google search, he never mentioned this shooting which occurred virtually in his own backyard. I can also find no evidence of him tweeting about it.
But, when three officers were killed all the way on the other side of the country by someone who apparently was afraid he might lose his Second Amendment rights, Moulitsas felt the need to comment.
I guess we know where his priorities are.
