A nation of Jared Loughners [Reader Post]

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Sometimes the shortest period measurable by man is the amount of time between a tragedy occuring and left wing blaming the right. One thing is for certain- no thinking can possibly take place in such short a period of time.

Early on no one knew a single fact about Loughner, let alone his name. But that did not stop the left for a second. Sherriff Clarence Dumbshit Dupnik had the answer immediately.

“Let me say one thing, because people tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol that we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that,” the sheriff said during a press conference. “That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.”

During an interview earlier in the day that aired on MSNBC via local NBC affiliate KPNX, Dupnik declared that “it’s time that this country take a little introspective look at the crap that comes out on radio and TV.”

Yup, Dumbshit Dupnik knew it all. He blamed Rush Limbaugh

“The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment, he’s irresponsible; uses partial information, sometimes wrong information. Attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior, in my opinion, is without consequence and I think he’s irresponsible,” Sheriff Dupnik told ABC News.

besides blaming Sharron Angle and, of course, Sarah Palin

“Not in any way shape or form. When you have people like Sharon Angle, in Las Vegas, running against Harry Reid, making outrageous statements such as ‘We may need to resort to taking the second amendment into certain cases.’ And for people like Sarah Palin to say ‘We have people like Gabby Giffords in our cross-hairs.’ I think those statements are totally irresponsible and they’re not without consequences. And we are seeing them here.”

Dumbshit Dupnik knew many things, including things that didn’t happen. As Ryan Witt notes,

It is important to note that Palin never verbally stated that Gabrielle Giffords was in her “cross-hairs.”

When asked what ought to happen to Limbaugh, Angle and Palin, Dumbshit Dupnik was reported to have said off the record

“Just hang ’em”

The above sentence employs the Dupnik rule for accuracy in media.

kill bush

The esteemed journalist Keith Olbermann, unencumbered by facts, also knew why the shooting occurred:

In a special comment later in the program, Olbermann linked the incident to Giffords being identified last year as one of former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin’s 20 “targets” for the November election, identified by a website showing crosshairs around 20 Democratic districts.

“This morning in Arizona, this age in which this country would accept “targeting” of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended,” the liberal host said.

jdhayworth crosshairs

Not wanting the moment to pass without proving his ignorance, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) threw in his two cents:

“The climate has gotten so toxic in our political discourse, setting up for this kind of reaction for too long. It’s unfortunate to say that. I hate to say that,” Grijalva said. “Anybody who contributed to feeding this monster had better step back and realize they’re threatening our form of government.”

The legacy networks couldn’t wait to pass judgment:

“Giffords was one of 20 Democrats whose districts were lit up in cross hairs on a Sarah Palin campaign Web site last spring,” CBS’s Nancy Cordes declared in referring to a political map, adding that “Giffords and many others complained that someone unstable might act on that imagery.” Hours later on CNN, Jessica Yellin noted “we don’t know the motive” before she proceeded to raise how “on Twitter and Facebook, there is a lot of talk, in particular, about Sarah Palin.” On Sunday’s Today, leading into a clip about Palin, NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell asserted: “Giffords, a conservative Democrat, was concerned about heated campaign rhetoric from the Tea Party.”

~~~

ABC connected Palin to the Wild West, as David Wright reported on This Week:

Congresswoman Gabby Giffords liked to joke that her district includes Tombstone and the OK Corral. Until yesterday morning, most people here would have said that rogue gunslingers were part of the distant past. On election night in November, 18 of the politicians in the crosshairs of Sarah Palin’s political action committee lost, but not Gabby Giffords.

imheretokillbush

Robert Paul Reyes gives schizophrenia a bad name in his warped blog:

Loughner hasn`t said a single word to law enforcement officials, but we can conclude form his rants posted online that his violence stems from mental disease and not political ideology.

However Loughner`s insanity doesn`t absolve Palin from her complicity in the carnage that took place in Tucson, Arizona. Loughner grabbed on to the free-floating violent rhetoric that is saturating Fox News and talk radio, and it gave him justification to unleash death and mayhem.

Sarah Palin your hands are dripping with blood!

Got that? Loughner’s motives are not from political ideology but they come from a political figure!

And while we’re dripping with blood…

Michael Daly hyperventilates and pees himself at the New York Daily News

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ blood is on Sarah Palin’s hands after putting cross hair over district

But anyone with any sense at all knows that violent language can incite actual violence, that metaphor can incite murder. At the very least, Palin added to a climate of violence.

Politico set a standard of stupidity and bias which will go unmatched for generations. Some titles:

Tea party’s message: Don’t blame usBy KENNETH P. VOGEL | 1/10/11 5:25 PM
The movement tries to distance itself.

Why does the Tea Party need to “try” to distance itself from something for which there is absolutely no evidence of involvement?

Tucson shooting marks turning point for Sarah Palin

So far, the former Alaska governor has said little, posting only a brief message on her Facebook page Saturday offering condolences to those affected by the shootings. But the rush on the left to affix some of the blame on her for the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has suddenly turned the tragedy into a defining moment in Palin’s meteoric political career.

Whether she defends, explains or even responds at all to the intense criticism of her brand of confrontational politics could well determine her trajectory on the national scene — and it’s likely to reveal the scope of her ambitions as well.

Now do you think there was a single word about what Obama should say? Noooooooooo. It was all about what Sarah Palin was supposed to say. And that was assuming that Palin was involved in the conspiracy.

Now a sampling of the lynchmob who inhabit Politico:

Bradwyoming: “THE LIST OF LOONS FROM THE RT WING IS VAST AND THE VERY EPITOME OF ABSOLUTE IGNORANCE AND DEVOID OF INTELLIGENT THOUGHT. MCSHAME FOISTED THE CRAZY WITCH ON THE USA AND THEY NOW HAVE TO LIVE WITH MCSHAME’S MOST IMPORTANT CHOICE HE MADE AS A CANDIDATE. ”

Richcpl: ” She’s a shallow, nasty, poisonous person who will never have misgivings about, let alone accept personal responsibility for, anything she says or does that others legitimately view as questionable or inappropriate.”

yomomma: “THE US SECRET SERVICE BLAMES PALIN TOO!!! The Secreat Service informed the first couple, of a massive spike in “Death Threats” that they were receiving and that they coincided, with Palin rallies, where she enflamed the crowds, until they were screaming KILL HIM!!!! KILL HIM!!!!!”

bush in crosshairs

animaliberator: “Sarah Palin has blood on her hands. And this time it is more than caribou blood.”

loretta: “She does not understand how KARMA works. You do or say something nasty to someone else for no good reason, and it comes back to you, but with much more weight. I’m thinking it is time that she “MAN UP” and take the consequences.”

Photobucket

Pam in Texas: “This tradgedy is laid at your doorstep along with the cowards in Republican leadership who refused to stand up to you”

hallaquilla: “The ranting right-wingers will all scurry away from the issue, but the same hate-speak that has made scum like Palin, Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly and other self-serving twits rich and famous brings out the worst in people not the best. The angry, right-wing teabaggers are not patriotic (few ever served their country in any way) and are not altuistic–helping others in caring professions.”

Baracknophobia: “Over on the radio, Limbaugh told his audience that President Obama is more harmful to America than our terrorist enemies. Is it any wonder then that these right-wing lunatic freaks feel a sense of duty, of obligation, to ‘right the wrongs’ that these instigators in the media hammer into their psychotic heads day after day?”

jakiamik: ” like her flock, palin’s focus on hate and vile rhetoric SHOULD be reviewed in relation to this latest assault on decency from the right. insinuating violence is encouraging violence. palin, beck, hannity, ailes, murdoch – most all of the fox talking heads – should be held accountable. and if they had a shred of conscience, they would also feel quite complicit.”

It’s execrable and pretty depressing. It’s a lynch mob, fueled by the left and the legacy media. Readers will note that the authors here were careful of their words before being able to garner some facts. Not so elsewhere.

Jared Wright is described by friends as a “leftist” and a “liberal.” An interview in Mother Jones reveals a possible motive for the slayings from someone claiming to be a good friend of Loughner.

Tierney, who’s also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He’s unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner “might have gone to some other rallies,” he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: “He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, ‘What is government if words have no meaning?'”

Giffords’ answer, whatever it was, didn’t satisfy Loughner. “He said, ‘Can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question,’ and I told him, ‘Dude, no one’s going to answer that,'” Tierney recalls. “Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her.”

Tierney describes a descent into madness:

After Loughner apparently gave up drugs and booze, “his theories got worse,” Tierney says. “After he quit, he was just off the wall.” And Loughner started to drift away from his group of friends about a year ago. By early 2010, dreaming had become Loughner’s “waking life, his reality,” Tierney says. “He sort of drifted off, didn’t really care about hanging out with friends. He’d be sleeping a lot.” Loughner’s alternate reality was attractive, Tierney says. “He figured out he could fly.” Loughner, according to Tierney, told his friends, “I’m so into it because I can create things and fly. I’m everything I’m not in this world.”

And Sarah Palin is not mentioned once. Not once.

All of the posts here, at Verum Serum and at Politico that showing that Democrat campaign committees had targeted Republicans no differently than in Palin’s map, Kos’ specifically making Giffords a target, exposing the litany of Obama’s angry words, and revealing images from the left of Sarah Palin hanging in effigy and exhorting the murder of George Bush- they made no impact.

We have become a nation of Jared Loughners. Facts don’t matter and are not allowed to intrude into the congitive process. Loughner was mentally ill. There is absolutely no evidence that Sarah Palin had any influence on him at all, but Loughner made clear he felt wronged by Giffords. None of it mattered. The truth did not matter at all. This was a terrible tragedy on its own but the left compounded it with the baseless, mindless attacks on an American citizen.

This horrible event had NOTHING to do with Sarah Palin. It had NOTHING to do with rhetoric in this country, but the left wants NOTHING to do with the truth. They only wanted the hate, as did Loughner.

A speaker on the Radio Rumble this morning on Fox News pointed out that both Kennedy’s were killed, Reagan was shot and Ford had an attempt on his life while the Fairness Doctrine was in place.

Loughner was insane. As for the rest of the left- what’s your excuse?

Barack Obama said “I don’t want to quell anger! I think people are right to be angry!”

Barack Obama said “bring a gun.”

Barack Obama said “Punish your enemies”

Loughner was angry, he brought a gun and he punished those who he perceived as his enemies.

See how easy it is to play this game?

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770 Talk Radio had very interesting duscussions on just this subject. Several Left Wing activists again voiced their false statements concerning the actual group recommending violence claiming it was the Conservatives. FALSE and provable!

In any event balming Palin for anything that went on in Arizona is ludicrous. Everyone knows that its Bush’s fault!

Again, we know now that Laughner was not motivated by any right wing “hate speech.” But if you think that is going to stop the left from using the “crisis” of six dead people to push their social agenda and engage in the politics of personal destruction, you are only fooling yourself. If anything, you should be scared shitless knowing that there are people in this country that are persuaded by the ranting coming from the left. Want proof? Read Sarah Palin’s Twitter account. I stopped counting the death threats/wishes there. At that rate, we don’t need 16,000 new IRS agents, we need 16,000 new FBI agents.

I didn’t realize the Sheriff Clarence Dupnik’s middle name was ‘Dumbshit’. Maybe by refraining from calling people names, and just sticking to the facts, we could reduce hostilities.

If you want to be entertained, watch FOX, MSNBC, or CNN. If you want real news and analysis, watch LinkTV or FreeSpeechTV.

Good review of where we are, DrJohn.
I appreciated your inclusion of Jared’s asking Rep Giffords a question that she could not answer.*
But what was left out was WHEN Jared asked Rep Giffords that question.
It was 2007.
Three years before the poster of ”crosshairs” over the districts.
And Jared’s obsession with Rep Giffords began, according to his own acquaintances, right after her failure to answer his obtuse question.

*”What is government if words have no meaning?”

Dr. John, the clinical term is “projecting”. When done willfully, as in liberal1’s case, it is called “Saul Alinsky technique”.

I have begun to refuse to mention the shooter’s name. He should only be referred to as the criminal he is. Nothing, nothing whatsoever triggered his mania. He is clearly a paranoid schizophrenic but I do not think that any of us should be willing to let him cop the insanity defense. He was capable of PLANNING the shooting and apparently started doing so in 2007. I am immensely grateful that at least Rep. Gifford was (hopefully) saved by the quick action of Mr. Hernandez and others. I am immensely sorrowful that 6 other innocent people died at the shooter’s hands. For what? The little voices in his head?

As to the leftists who are blathering on and on ceaselessly about the fact that the right-wing’s vitriol triggered this rampage – I have one comment. Bullshit! I put the blame for the beginning of this particularly nasty rhetoric squarely at the foot of James Carville who was one of the more offensively partisan operatives in the 1990s. Likewise former governor Howard Dean, who is famous for saying “I hate Republicans!” – how’s that for civil speech, kids?

Speaking of protected free speech, how about insisting that Fred Phelps and his merry band of demented followers be somehow prevented from picketing the funerals of all 6 victims, even an innocent 9-year-old girl? Shouting fire in a crowded theatre doesn’t fly; why shouldn’t this lunatics ravings be somehow prevented from adding to the grief and pain of little Christina’s parents?

@liberal1: LinkTV or FreeSpeechTV ARE LEFTY NEWS SITES. Link TV is backed by outfits such as the Annenberg Foundation and Fre Speech TV touts itself as a “progressive” TV outlet. They are not impartial.

Good article, Dr. John.

DrJohn —

If someone had shot Palin or Bush, I think you cons would have been on solid ground to blame violent imagery and language directed at them individually or cons generally, for creating a climate of violence that might lead a nut to act out. But that is not what happened, is it? No, one of the Dems targeted by cons was the one who was shot in the head in an assassination attempt, comings months after violent imagery directed at her individually and Dems in general. When libs start taking guns to con political rallies, when a con politician gets shot at, when cons are on the receiving end of violence, THEN you can play the victim. But not now.

Dr John Your hatred of the left and Obama ,to paraphrase only slightly “the shooting is Obama’s fault”, knows no bounds.No need to thank me.

Semper Fi

From Sam Smith’s Progressive Review:

Loughner reportedly used pot. But far less noted is the probability that he was also on anti-depressants.

The problem with anti-depressants is not that they don’t help a lot of people, but with factors we prefer not to discuss. For example, what if anti-depressants were a significant reason why we are unable to mount effective opposition against an increasingly failing and anti-democratic government? Could the 1960s ever occurred if it had been on Pozac instead of pot?

Nor do we discuss the far less theoretical relation between anti-depressants and mass murders. The media regularly suppresses any mention of the possibility yet an eerie correlation keeps cropping up.

– It was quite possible that Nidal Hasan – the psychiatrist who killed 13 on a military base – was using the same drugs he prescribed for his patients . He knew he had deep psychological problems and it would have been unlikely if he had not treated it.

– Andrea Yates, who drowned all five of her children, had been taking the Effexor. Four years later Wyeth Pharmacueticals would add “homicidal ideation” to the drug’s “rare adverse events” One analysis noted that since the FDA defined “rare: as less than one in a thousand, almost 20,000 Americans might suffer “homicidal ideation” from the drug.

– Columbine killer Eric Harris was on antidepressant Luvox. The Review wrote at the time:

“Following Columbine, the media ignored the possible connection between the killings and prescribed mood-altering drugs. The moral questions in a drug that works fine for most but has disastrous effects on others needs to be widely discussed.”

– Virginia Tech murderer Cho Seung-Hui had prescription drugs in his possession but officials still refuse to release the names of them. Why?

A 2001 Newsmax story listed some of the others:

– Sam Manzie, 15, attacked, raped and strangled to death an 11-year-old boy selling items door to door for the PTA. He was on Paxil.

– Kip Kinkel, 14, killed his parents and went on a shooting rampage at his Springfield, Ore., high school. He was taking Ritalin and Prozac.

– Jeremy Strohmeyer raped and murdered a 7-year-old girl one week after he started taking Dexedrine.

– T.J. Solomon, 15, who attended Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., was taking Ritalin when he opened fire on his classmates, wounding six.

– In 1998, 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden opened fire on their classmates in Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark. Young Johnson had been seeing a psychiatrist but, when questioned as to the nature of his medication, if any, his attorney, Val Price, would say only, “That is confidential information, and I don’t want to comment on that.”

A website lists 4300 cases in which prescription drugs were being used by those involved in bizarre murders, suicides, school shooting incidents and murder-suicides.

Obviously, correlation is not necessarily causation but we can not even begin to analyze this question because neither the health industry nor the media will face the problem.

The prospect is daunting: what do you do with a drug that helps millions but simultaneously helps to create an unknown number of murderers?

@DrJohn:

I have a question: are you saying that people should NOT talk about shooting people (as the Dem Senator did in your quote), or use gun imagery (like the Daily Kos posting pointed out earlier in FA), or call people “the enemy”, as Obama referred to GOPer cons as “the enemy” of Latinos? Are you saying that doing those things are wrong?

If you are saying that it is wrong to do such things, then you are tacitly admitting that GOPer cons doing the same thing is wrong. Because GOPers have done the exact same things that I just listed . . . only it was a Dem congresswoman who was shot after the GOPers put her district in cross-hairs (or “bulls-eye”, as Palin called it), not a GOPer after the DNC did the same thing.

And therein lies the problem for cons: if cons had spewed much violent imagery and no one got hurt, then you could argue that the libs were full of it for challenging you on it. But . . . that ain’t what happened, now was it?

When asked what ought to happen to Limbaugh, Angle and Palin, Dumbshit Dupnik was reported to have said off the record

“Just hang ‘em”

Reported by who? Anonymous sources?

@B-Rob #16: Let’s say all the heated rhetoric and violent imagery weren’t around…that we only engaged in kumbaya politics and polite disagreement and gave hugs to our political opponents at the end of a debate….question: Would Loughner have still targeted Giffords in his cross-hairs to deliver violence to her, and spill it over unto others within vicinity?

Have you ever considered that you’d be more effective and persuasive in hostile territory if you toned down your own rhetoric? Do you merely like butting heads or do you actually want to convince those who differ with you to reflect upon your points rather than be distracted into responding to your condescension, derision, ad hominems, and insults?

If you honestly want civility in debate, the buck begins with you.

I live in a big city with a wonderful climate.
As a result, a lot of mentally ill people gravitate to it.
You see them on the streets carrying on animated conversations…..with themselves…..all the time.
Jared was two parents away from being just like these folks.
Too many of our nation are on mood-enhancing drugs.
Sure some self-medicate while others are taking what their doctor ordered.
But the results are the same.
A large population of detached people who look askance at reality.

Thomas Szas famously opined that mental illness is primarily a housing problem.
Well, Jared showed us all that even having a roof over one’s head is not always enough.
And the vast numbers of passive, but mentally ill homeless, shows me everyday that the lack of a roof over one’s head does NOT always mean out of control.

Maybe, by and large, the most dangerous of the mentally ill are put away.

Medved:

History clearly rebuts the endlessly repeated media assertions about polarizing political rhetoric contributing to the Tucson shootings. First, no American with a memory can honestly contend that today’s political divisions count as more toxic than ten years ago — when a majority of Democrats questioned Bush’s very legitimacy as president, or the late ‘90’s when Republicans mobilized to drive Clinton from office through impeachment. Moreover, some past periods of nasty debate produced no assassinations—the McCarthy era resounded with charges of treason but no major shootings of public figures. Killings often occur in placid political climates of consensus – as with the assassinations of popular, young centrist presidents, Garfield and Kennedy, following elections in 1880 and 1960 when major candidates largely agreed on issues. Fierce rhetoric doesn’t cause shootings, any more than consensus politics guarantees safety for our public figures.

Intemperate public words do not lead to assassination attempts. This is simply not how these damaged people are put together. The narcissicsm of an assassin is the overwhelming force that drives them. Controlling public discourse will not make anybody safer because uncontrolled public discourse did not endanger anybody in the first place.

The entire point about bringing up Obama’s fighting words, or the DNC’s own election target map, or the Daily Kos’ primary target map with Giffords on it, or the Kos diarist who said that Giffords was dead to him, or all the crazy lefties who said put cross hairs on Bush and said they wanted him dead, was to show the empty cynical premise of somehow ‘causing assassinations’ with public words or images for what it is.

It’s a phony unfounded premise, and its real purpose is to put limits on freedom of speech. There is not a sudden new crisis of reckless public speech now any more than there was ten, or thirty, or a hundred years ago. Partisans have been running their mouths the whole time and would-be assassins have been self-motivated individuals all along.

I have a question. If his parents (who allowed him to live under their roof) knew he was mentally ill and a danger to himself or others, are they cupable for not having him treated or committed? Apparently law enforcement had been warned about him. And if there is no mechanism for committing the clinically mentally insane, maybe there should be.

And can we lay off the childish variations on Sheriff Limpdik’s name? It’s vitriolic hate speech and could motivate some unstable individual to do something unfortunate. Sheriff Limpdik will continue to compromise the district attorney’s case, cover up his department’s diversion of the lunatic son of a county employee away from prosecution, distract from the utter lack of security provided at the Gifford event, and demonize innocent persons unconnected to the case, as is his God-given right. Amen.

Everyone might want to review this legal case from 1992 in which Sheriff Dupnik admitted to the 9th Circuit he had no problems with denying a suspect access to a lawyer. A suspect that had been hauled in because of bad forensic work mind you.

An excert from the conclusions:
Second, to characterize the Task Force’s conduct as a mere violation of Miranda ‘s prophylactic advisement requirements is to see a hurricane as but a movement of air. The appellants in this case engaged in the premeditated elimination of Mr. Cooper’s substantive Fifth Amendment rights, not merely the disposal of the procedural safeguards designed to protect those rights. Thus, Cooper’s statements were “compelled” and “coerced.” See Part VI, infra.

Dr. John, are you a psychiatrist? You state, categorically

And as I have shown, the rhetoric had absolutely nothing to do with the shooting.

Well you might BELIEVE that, but you don’t actually KNOW that for a fact, unless you have spoken with the shooter and determined what might have influenced him to act out in this particular way. For all we know, he may have been content with just seething against this woman until she heard Sharron Engel’s “Second Amendment remedies” comment, or until Giffords won, or until he found out about her escaping Sarah’s self-described “bulls-eye”. Indeed, the whole cross-hairs thing is what Giffords was complaining about (the “consequences” of that ad) when the former half-term governor of Alaska ran the ad. For you to state, with certainty, that GOPer con unhinged commentary in no way went into his twisted mind and influenced him to shoot, . . . well I call “barnyard epithet.”

I repeat what I said before: if cons hadn’t used such violent imagery, their would be no one accusing them of stoking this nut to shoot, now would they? In my mind, this guy just might fall into the same category as the Fort Hood shooter: a mentally ill person who is influenced and triggered by apocalyptic language to act out.

In addition, Doc, you might want to BELIEVE that an atmosphere of violence has nothing to do with this guy being triggered to shoot, but a psychiatrist who works in this area begs to differ.

A leading expert in mental illness tells me that asking whether the Arizona shooter’s violent behavior might have been partly triggered by the nation’s political climate is a wholly appropriate line of inquiry — even if the shooter is found to be insane.

“It’s a reasonable question to ask,” Dr. Marvin Swartz, a psychiatry professor at Duke University who specializes in how environment impacts the behavior of the mentally ill, said in an interview this morning. “The nature of someone’s delusions is affected by culture. It’s a reasonable line of inquiry to ask, `How does a political culture affect the content of people’s delusions?'”

Dr. Swartz’s assessment goes directly to the heart of the raging debate over the shooting between right and left. Conservatives have pointed out that Jared Loughner is deeply disturbed, and that there’s no connection between his violent behavior and the current political climate — whether it be violent imagery, eliminationist rhetoric, references to armed revolution or secession, or hints that the political opposition is illegitimate.

Got that? In simple English, a mentally ill person can be pushed over the edge by cultural triggers that would go in one ear and out the other of a non-mentally ill person. I mentioned the other day an acquaintance of mine, a now-retired weather man, who was accosted by a mentally ill man with a knife; he was upset that the weather man was saying mean things about his mother. But Don was talking about a “deadly, violent, awful” hurricane with the same name as this guy’s mom. Who could have known that a mentally ill man would mentally “mishandle” something like that?

Now go back and read something about the atmosphere in Arizona in general, and the rhetoric and gun imagery aimed at Congresswoman Giffords in particular. And tell me that a mentally ill person might not latch onto all that and conclude that she is a danger who must be stopped! Indeed, terrorists groups are KNOWN to use mentally fragile people to do their deeds for that very reason: they can be convinced that someone is a threat who deserves to be eliminated for the greater good.

No, cons, I think the reason we are in Day 3 of the Great Con Meltdown is that you KNOW that things got out of hand. You KNOW people on your side went too far and got scary. If cons weren’t so shaky on the possible connections between their violent rhetoric and gun toting and this shooting, I think we would hear less of the whining about “the liberals” being so mean and calling them on their actual history of violent imagery and gun toting.

Finally, my boy Sherman quoted Medved saying:

History clearly rebuts the endlessly repeated media assertions about polarizing political rhetoric contributing to the Tucson shootings. First, no American with a memory can honestly contend that today’s political divisions count as more toxic than ten years ago — when a majority of Democrats questioned Bush’s very legitimacy as president, or the late ‘90’s when Republicans mobilized to drive Clinton from office through impeachment.

This is utter nonsense. Some people though Bush was “illegitimate” because of way the Florida election turned out, on a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court. No one questioned whether he met the Constitutional requirements to be president, as the birthers (including some GOPer con members of Congress) claim. There were no lawsuits over that, no one deserted from the Army over that, no one proposed laws to reverse his election. But you tend to forget the REAL difference between now and then — Obama is Black and Dem. The Secret Service started logging a 300% increase in death threats against Obama compared to Bush . . . 300%! You have a guy shoot four Pittsburgh cops because he is convinced (because the gun lobby said it) that Obama was going to confiscate his guns. You have nutcakes bringing guns to town hall meetings and political rallies. When do you recall ANYONE doing that before? When?

There are 309 million people in this country, and by my estimation, about 3 million of them are total wacked out delusional psychotics. The last thing we need is an atmosphere of anger and violent imagery to amp up already unbalanced people. THAT is what I fault the cons for. And as I said before, I really don’t expect cons to apologize or admit they went too far, etc. But what I do expect is . . . hell, from now on, just chill out! Clamp down on the guns, the shooting, the threats to “use Second Amendment remedies” if you lose and election and act like friggin adults! Is that asking too much?

@Gayle Miller:

You wrote:

Nothing, nothing whatsoever triggered his mania.

We don’t know that. He might have been triggered by a weather report that was consistent with some delusion he had about mind control. He has a mental disease, I bet, but what triggered this actual act is unknown at this time.

He is clearly a paranoid schizophrenic

Oh, I am not sure about the paranoid part; haven’t heard that he expressed any fear that anyone was out to get him. I do think he has some type of illness. My SO is a psychiatrist and I sent her a copy of an article drawn from a “class” taught by one David Wynn Miller, who apparently influenced the shooter’s interest in language. I quote from the class Mr. Miller taught, as recorded by someone from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

“My name is David hyphen Wynn full colon Miller,” the 53-year-old Milwaukean says, and the brows of his audience of 50 begin to furrow. This crowd of “Patriots” is used to conspiracy theories, but even at an event dominated by antigovernment ideology, Miller is tough going. “The reason I use a full colon and a hyphen in my name, the first full colon, which is full colon David, it means for the David hyphen Wynn. That’s my given name, and it’s also a noun, because it uses a prepositional phrase. … Because I use prepositional phrases, through punctuation, which is classified as hieroglyphics, which makes me a life, l-i-f-e. Now, when you don’t punctuate your name … David is an adjective, Wynn is an adjective, Miller is a pronoun. Two adjectives are a condition of modification, opinion, presumption, which modifies the pronoun, pro means no on noun. So therefore, I’m not a fact. I’m a fiction.”

My SO read this and said “Uh, yeah . . he sounds nuts, too.” It was a mentally ill person who latched on to another mentally ill person whose “explanation” of things made sense to him.

but I do not think that any of us should be willing to let him cop the insanity defense. He was capable of PLANNING the shooting and apparently started doing so in 2007.

His ability to plan the crime does not bear on whether he was insane or not. The question is whether he understood that what he did was a crime. If he was so delusional at the time of the crime that he thought that he was killing robots from the planet Zorg, then he will probably be found insane. But if he was mentally ill, hearing voices that told him to shoot her, but knew he was shooting a person, then he is not insane.

I went to a speech given by Phil Resnick, a local forensic psychiatrist who consulted on the Andrea Yates case. He said that Ms. Yates, who drowned her five kids, had a psychotic break. When she becomes lucid enough to understand that she drowned her kids, she then deteriorates again because of the awfulness of what she did. But in her case, she was initially determined NOT to be insane, though mentally ill, because under Texas law, she had to prove that she did not know she was killing them and there was some evidence (phony, it turned out) that she had seen a similar murder on TV. She was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. This guy, if he is as out there as he seems, may be mentally ill but not technically “insane.”

I used to represent school districts expelling kids who committed crimes in school. Usually fighting, weed, sometimes a gun. I always asked the kids the same question: “If you had to do it all over again, would you do things differently?”

I ask you cons the same thing. Knowing what you know now, would you cons do anything differently?

Would cons still run the cross-hairs map, would you still have all the gun play, would you still think its OK having guns at political rallies, would you still talk about “using Second Amendment remedies” if you did not get your way?

Would you change anything?

Billy Bob sez: I ask you cons the same thing. Knowing what you know now, would you cons do anything differently?

Do? What exactly did “we cons” do?

ooops….

Heard on Fox, that Oreilly, Beck, and Palin have ample security, but are sick and tired of having to beef it up to ensure the protection of themselves and their families. Its nearly a monthly affair. Lou Dobbs had shots taken on his house and Palin had her church burnt down(arson). Yup, must be right wingers.

Mantra for the left- Free speech for me, but not for thee.

Question to the left wingers- How many lives have Tiller and Kavorkian snuffed?

Too easy- thousands. Reasoning- choice. Isn’t hiding behind free speech grand? Wonderful standards of living killing “people”. Nazis, yes. Left wing- of course.

Every time these liberals blame Rush, his ratings go up. They are just increasing his paycheck each time his contract comes up. People who have never listened or possibly never heard of him before are now curious who this critter is and why he is being talked about. The best way for a business to drive away customers is to tell them not to buy from their competitors.

What Obama and his royal court needs to do is keep a list of the people and media that they say we shouldn’t pay attention to so we can avoid them. I am sure Flopping Aces would be on that list. Some that are already on the list are Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and any electronic media that can connect to the Internet. Maybe Obama wants you to be able to only buy preloaded electronic equipment with his speeches already installed, like the iPod he gave the queen of England. Anyone want to guess what she did with that iPod?

Any time King Obama tells us not to pay attention to a person or company, that is the one you want to invest in if they have stocks. All of the above are doing better after Obama told us to ignore them.

Dr John #19 says “It’s pretty clear Obama inspired this incident based on his violent language alone” REALLY I’d be interested in who agrees with this statement.

Dr John No I mean anyone on the Right who agrees with your statement in post 19. People like Mata ,A.C.,Word,Skooks.

@rich wheeler: #36

It would be easier to ask who DOESN’T agree with it. DrJohn didn’t say Obama STARTED it, but he hasn’t helped it any.

Smorg Your response expected.Hell, you’re a birther and as far out there as the good Dr.

@DrJohn: #43

If B-Rob answers honestly, he would say something like, “It depends on who they threaten.”

@rich wheeler: #45

That is one of the best compliment I have ever had. I’m almost crying.

B-Rob incorrectly claims I quoted Medved. Perhaps he’s moving way too fast to keep track of who said what.

What’s the hurry, B? What’s the all-fired urgency? Got some sort of mission to accomplish?

Got that? In simple English, a mentally ill person can be pushed over the edge by cultural triggers that would go in one ear and out the other of a non-mentally ill person.

The problem is not the cultural triggers. The problem is the mental illness. Like nearly every other culture on Earth, our culture expresses plentiful imagery and words concerning metaphors of weaponry, hunting, conflict, and war, and 99% of this does not come from politics. It comes from everyone’s daily life.

The despicable thing here was seizing upon a tiny insignificant corner of this vast and widespread cultural reality, based on a cyncial desire to create an association between a horrific event and designated political opponents. This was done almost instantly, from many directions, in advance of any facts whatsoever. This false claim was to some extent premeditated. The Democrats and the media were locked and loaded, by the admission of some of their own just waiting for something like this. They seek to undo the collapse of their statist program by creating a right-wing bogeyman. It won’t work. I predict this absurd attempt at slander will actually hasten the collapse. Too many people see the falsehood and cynicism. Too many people realize that when this desperate and defeated political movement talks about its enemies, it is actually talking about THE PEOPLE THEMSELVES.

Hmm, seems Braindead Rob is posting on this thread prolifically, but he still is too cowardly to answer my questions here.

What’s up Rob? Cat got yer tongue?