As should seem obvious, the bloggers of the Daily Kos have been at the forefront of talking up how the "American Taliban" are to blame in Tucson. The blogger "lutznancy" summed up Kosmonaut History in a Tuesday post-mortem: "This started decades ago. And slowly but surely it has, like a slow-growing cancer, metastasized to point of sure death, the death of America, or to be more clear, America as a beacon of a functioning democracy in the world."
Thanks for toning down the rhetoric, Daily Kos!
To this blogger, the GOP is the Party of Fear Itself: "[W]hat do Republicans have to lose by stopping the practice of hate speech, vitriol, paranoid conspiracy theories, whipping up the fear? Elections, supporters and money. Power. The power to be elected to positions where they can change policies that affect them and their rich corporate sponsors. If they can whip up fear to the exclusion of critical thinking, they can win elections. They have no other way to do that...NONE."
This same blogger was one of the quickest Internet hounds to demand on Saturday afternoon the media report as "FACT" that Republicans kill Democrats:
Do Democrats foment violence against Republicans? Really? No. Do right-wing Republicans foment violence against Democrats. You bet your life they do. In public. With the support, expressed or not, of Republican leaders. But what do the media say about this FACT?
Well, they talk about "both sides of the aisle" and they make sure that they say both parties are to blame for whatever nastiness is going on. But that is not true. We all know that it is not true. Why are we going along with that BS? We need to take action against the media who are reporting political news as if all sides are equal. They are not. Republicans foment violence. Republicans commit violence. On Democrats. Does it take a lot of research to confirm this fact? Noooooo. So why not report it?
We need to begin say it over and over again, in public, on the news, in letters to the editors of our local papers...any way we can. Democrats do not commit violence against Republicans. Republicans commit violence against Democrats. Their leaders need to stop it.
For the record, here are a listing of savage Kosmonaut postings as they unfolded:
Saturday, 10:07 Pacific time by K S LaVida:
No news yet on her condition, or that of her staff, or whether the gunman was arrested.
No need to say too much here about how the right has been threatening to take "second amendment" actions. Let's hope she and her staff are okay.
Saturday, 11:51 Pacific time by Beetwasher:
[Headlined Sarah Palin Targeted Her, So Did Her Cong. Opponent And Her Office Was Vandalized]
You can refrain from jumping to conclusions, but I won't.
Look, we all knew something like this was just a matter of time, my question is, what is going to be done about it? What are WE going to do about it? And no, I'm not talking responding in kind.
There has to be an outcry. There has to be a "connecting of dots" and it has to come from high profile people who can draw attention to it. Enough is enough.
Yeah, we here on Kos and other online places get it, but the fact is these violent acts against Democrats are happening and it IS part of a larger more dangerous pattern and the Corporate media is not doing it's job in reporting them in the proper context.
How can we force the media to connect the dots? How can we get the pattern noticed and the idea spread to more people that this is much more than just some isolated incident or lone gunman? I think it's pretty clear that we can't depend on traditional media to do this.
Saturday, 12:20 Pacific time by Devtob:
Not much more to say, until we learn more about the killer.
But I'm certain he did not vote for Giffords, I'll betcha he is a tea partier/militia type, and I wonder if he was paying attention to Glenn Beck this week (h/t Will Bunch):
We cannot as a nation survive much longer. We must take a page from our own history at the Alamo and "draw a line in the sand." We must decide who we are, what we are capable of and look to the heavens to chart our course.
Just one little bit of far-right martial/seditious rhetoric, among so much the past two years.
"The whole tea party" did not shoot and kill Democrats outside the North Tucson Safeway.
It only took one of them.
Saturday, 1:12 Pacific time by CalbraithRodgers:
It is not enough to say that Sarah Palin or losing candidate Jesse Kelly is to blame for the murder and attempted murder in Arizona today. All of the leaders of the republican party across the country are responsible.
The 'wink and a nod' appeals to violence, which have been casting an ever lengthening shadow across the political landscape since at least 2009, are all that the duped and weak-minded FOX viewers of this country need to act.
By refusing to ever condemn the violent language of republican campaigning, it is as if McConnell and Boehner and Cantor and McCain and Steele -- and Beck and Limbaugh etal -- have been telling the crazies of the right that it's acceptable to load up their guns and go kill a democrat.
Sunday, 7:05 am by the badly named adept2u:
Radio Rwanda was responsible for the culture of hatred that spurred madmen to massacre. America has an analog, and although it has not been complicit in a genocide yet, it is complicit in producing a spirit of hate that has led to the political attack of a sitting United States Congressperson, and the murder of at least 6 people including a federal judge....
Fox is America’s Radio Rwanda, and it is time for us to pull the plug on them. Beck appears to be down to only advertising for the gold that the mass murdering terrorist Jared Lee Loughner appeared to be so fixated by. Any organization or product that would advertise on Fox now deserves to have their product linked to this incident.
Boycott Fox. Boycott any organization that wants to do business with the hate merchant organization. How long does an organization have to piss in your face before you know it isn’t rain water?
Sunday, 8:18 am Pacific time by Gehrigsranch:
Jared Lee Loughner was part of an American terrorist cell that is supported and financed by the American right. He was trained by this movement's media, political leaders and his peers. He was given a local assignment and told he would be a patriot if he acted. He was trained, primed and ready to take his place with Patrick Henry and George Washington. He acted and killed innocent people. He too will be murdered as a result. But what will happen to the network that supports American terrorist cells like his? They will never wash the blood from their hands, but will it matter? Will they continue to be given contracts worth millions of dollars? Will they continue to be elected to government? Will they continue to be accepted by their elected peers? Will they continue to use the airwaves to lie and foment hate and threat?
How many more American terrorist cells must "go live" and kill before someone condemns these leaders and supporters of the terrorist network?
Sunday, 9:06 am Pacific time by CatM:
Even if Loughner didn't follow Sarah Palin closely or regularly watch Fox News, he lives in a state where the fear level has been ratcheted so high as a result of conservative rhetoric that it was nearly impossible for someone in his mental state not to get caught up in it.
Sometimes, people with mental illness that causes delusions and paranoia have lives steeped in religion, so they are paranoid about satan or have delusions that God wants them to do hateful things. Others have lives steeped in political hostility and animosity toward the government--which becomes their target.
Fox News, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and others are spreading political hostility and animosity toward the government so that those "looking" for enemies will know exactly where to find them--at Town Hall meetings at their local Safeway Grocery store.
Sunday 10:10 am by Killer of Sacred Cows [bolded in the original]:
So many people (on Twitter, on NYT, on CNN, on Facebook) seem to be distancing themselves from the facts of the case: the shooter, Jared Loughter, was embedded in a culture characterized by right-wing demands for violence against their perceived "enemies," and he acted on it. Let's not kid ourselves, folks: this is EXACTLY what Palin and her people wanted to have happen when they issued that map with the crosshairs.
The dodges and ducking and ridiculous handwashing and handwaving and attempts at retraction and sanitization of webpages and Twitter feeds - this is all an admission of guilt. Cops would look at that and say "Yeah, they're trying to hide something." And they are. The right wing is trying to hide its culpability...
This is entirely on your heads, you bastards. You can't get away from it, and you can't deny it, and it isn't going to go away. But I hope you're proud of yourselves. And for those of you who believe in an afterlife, I hope yours involves fire, pain, and unending torture for all eternity - because you created this, and that's what you deserve.
I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. The evidence is clear: the right wing has blood on its hands today. Let's remember that.
Sunday 2:48 pm Pacific time by Stranded Wind:
She didn't pull the trigger, but she placed the target and provided the moral justification, albeit from the perspective of her own twisted world view.
Mullah Sarah issued the fatwah that drove this massacre. And her own words prove it.
"Stranded Wind" is heading up a project called Progressive Congress News that's seeking grant money from the Knight Foundation, a majuor funder of "nonprofit" news like NPR.
