Rather than read a thousand articles that are paraphrasing the Fox News article, I went to the original article posted on FoxNews.com about the alleged link between Loughner and AR. It’s pretty barebones.
Does the DHS have good reason to investigate a link with AR? Is the leader of AR lying through his teeth? No clue. Nothing particularly damning has been released yet. That doesn’t mean the DHS doesn’t have something really solid they’re moving forward with, but if there is we don’t know it yet.
Or go ahead and start a pit thread all about me and see how you do.
Come on, bring some substance.
Edit: I think this stems from me changing the big league’s draft to auction this year. I don’t know. Oak is kind of childish and random with his tantrums.
I was wondering why this thread was in the Pit and not in GD where it would probably belong. Considering the amount of insults over the subject in this thread, I now understand.
Strange or ironic that so much people are complaining here about the incredible amount of verbal violence that has developped in US politics, and yet indulge in it at the vey first opportunity.
OOOH! Yet another “if you engage in any sort of criticism, you are morally equivelant to those who call out for the murder of their political opponents!” post! You got us. Oh, we’ve been beaten with the irony bat.
Why? That’s just American exceptionalism, “It can’t happen here”. Political leaders wanting their opponents dead is hardly new. And inflaming the extremists until they kill someone, then crying crocodile tears before doing it all over again has become a common right wing tactic. They’ve been doing so in their terror campaign against doctors willing to perform abortions for many years.
Look, the howling crowd has been wrong before, and this can especially be embarrassing when they try to pound their political theories into whatever convenient rhetorical hole they can find after a crime or tragedy.
There are threads here about the census worker found hanged in Kentucky - this was a big indication of antigovernment violence, too, until it was found that he committed suicide.
I’ll deal with whatever fallout there is from this, but I don’t know what it is yet. Neither does anyone else here. If you want to go out on a limb now, go ahead. I don’t think there is any rush.
Thus all the talk about backlashes and retribution. Or maybe there weren’t anything of the sort in this thread. I don’t see anyone painting reticles over Republican districts in here.
I’m afraid you read me as wrongly as you read amanset (must be some divide from across the oceans). I’m not saying that there’s no ground for criticizing what Tea Partiers and the like have done to political debate in the US, just that I really dont see why there’s so much insult back and forth in this thread (probably what Amanset himself meant, but I dont want to use him as my human shield).
Just because it’s the pit doesnt mean you have to throw feces in every post.
Especially when the elements of what happened are still far from being known.
P.S.: and no, it’s not another Euro rolling his eyes at Americans.
Considering that he apparently tried to make it look that way, and that like this shooting it is exactly the sort of behavior that the Right has been calling for, such an assumption wasn’t unreasonable. If a known rival of an organized crime boss, one whom the boss has threatened with death shows up dead, it isn’t unreasonable to suspect he was behind it even if it turns out the guy committed suicide. And the boss just looks silly when he tries to pretend that it is unreasonable to suspect him, just as right wing apologists look silly when they pretend that it’s unreasonable to expect calls for violence and revolution to result in violence.
I would assume that other than John Mace (who I don’t mentally categorize as a staunchly partisan right winger because he seems capable of pretty independent thought), not a single right-leaning person has come in and admitted that inflammatory rhetoric is dangerous, but instead either ignored or became an apologist for that shit. I don’t see John Mace’s neutral stand being insulted, compared to, say, Oakminster’s posts.
Either way, no one here is advocating the killing of our political opponents, so even if our insults are of the “oh man, you’re all idiots” type, it’s not even remotely near the same level.
Pardon me - I haven’t apologized for anything. I wouldn’t have run a shooting fundraiser in connection with a political campaign, for instance. Although I ought to say I have attended nonpolitical fundraisers associated with guns, without this being a terribly controversial issue.
Basically these were gun raffles in support of volunteer fire companies, and perfectly respectable.
All I pointed out was that targets on a map don’t mean much. Guess what - they still don’t.
The targets aren’t in isolation. They come with a whole lot of apocalyptic rhetoric about how liberals/socialist/communists are subverting and destroying your country and “second amendment solutions” and all that.
I mean, FFS, if I was a republican, I’d be saying “yeah, I believe in conservative values, but I really hate that Palin/Beck/Bachman are on my side” instead of “Well, they’re all republican, so I better act like I have no idea that they’re doing anything wrong”
Did they involving shooting at, say, pictures of the local sheriff or hospital director? If not then they aren’t analogous.
Oh, they mean exactly what we all know they mean; they were meant as death threats, and to whip up the fanatics & thugs which comprise the Republican base. The same kind of threats and rabble rousing the Republicans have been indulging in for many years. You can try to pretend otherwise but that doesn’t make you correct or even plausible.
If my initial impressions are correct, and this young man is a victim of schizophrenia, then his political opinions or associations don’t matter. If you’ve ever known an actual full-blown schizophrenic, you know what I’m talking about, their thinking is a strangely warped imitation of rational thought. Its like they take the bird house kit, put it together according to the instructons, which they can read and understand, but cannot fathom why it won’t fly.
If such is the case, then blaming anyone for influencing him is nonsense, his dog could have told him who to shoot just as easily as Rush or the Malign Sarah.
I do quite firmly blame the extreme rightards for poisoning our political dialogue, but that already was, is, and probably will continue to be.
Just as your repeated pretence that your eccentric personal opinions are indisputable fact, or even widely held as opinions, doesn’t make you correct or even plausible.
Sheriff Dupnik put it rather succinctly: “There’s reason to believe that this individual may have a mental issue. And I think people who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol.”
The RW leaders have ensconced themselves in the cloth of being anti-government, among other things. And their rhetoric has been literally apocalyptic. These aspects of their behavior are likely to appeal to just about every nutjob. Hence, they are partially responsible for every such instance. If they don’t like it, they should stop. If you are a Republican or conservative, you should distance yourself from the RW leaders and repudiate them.