What’s Wrong With Sarah Palin Using the Term Blood Libel? - Big Journalism

What’s Wrong With Sarah Palin Using the Term Blood Libel? - Big Journalism

While it is true that blood libel is a uniquely Jewish experience it is not nearly as raw in the hearts and minds of modern Jews in the U.S. it is not even on the same planet! The reason for the difference is threefold. 

First all, for most Jews, the Holocaust is a more recent event .Thankfully many Holocaust survivors are still with us, are the children who grew up seeing a number tattooed on the forearm of parent, grandparent or some relative or family friend as a constant reminder. 

Secondly the Holocaust is associated with one event. The blood libel is a venomous tactic used against Jews as part of other events, be it the Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, or Crusades just to name a very few examples. (the Crusaders didn't want their families to be subject to the influence of the Jews so they killed man, women and child before they went off to fight the Muslims in the holy land). 

The third reason may be because the Holocaust was a much more concentrated event visa viz the blood libel that we have face ever since Moses left Egypt with the Children of Israel.

....

When it comes to Governor Palin's use of the term blood libel, it was totally justified. The progressive media created a lie about Palin causing the death of a child, Christina Taylor Greene. Their charge was blood libel just the same way as the media spreading the al Durah myth, or the way the media spread bogus charges of Israeli massacres during the recent war with Hamas in Gaza (or in the case of Reuters falsified pictures). 
Allow me to suggest that the media should not try to push their progressive bias by assuming the role of policing the worldwide use of the term blood libel. They would be much better served trying to ensure that they do not become the conduits for the spread of blood libels, either be it directed toward Israeli soldiers, or conservatives in the United States.

The AMA and the Myth of the “Doc Fix” | John Goodman's Health Policy Blog

The AMA and the Myth of the “Doc Fix” | John Goodman's Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org

The Collapse of the Guantanamo Myth

Yoo and Delahunty: The Collapse of the Guantanamo Myth - WSJ.com

...the president's embrace of the left's terrorism-as-crime theories collided with his responsibility to protect a great nation. Now the reality of the ongoing war on terror is helping to shatter the Gitmo myth and end its distortion of our antiterrorism strategies.

This week the intelligence community reported to Congress that one-quarter of the detainees released from Guantanamo in the past eight years have returned to the fight. Though the U.S. and its allies have killed or recaptured some of these 150 terrorists, well over half remain at large. The Defense Department reports that Gitmo alumni have assumed top positions in al Qaeda and the Taliban, attacked allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and led efforts to kill U.S. troops.

Even that 25% recidivism rate is likely too low. The intelligence community reports that it usually takes about two and a half years before a released detainee shows up on its radar. Our forces probably have yet to re-engage most of the terrorists among the 66 detainees released so far by the Obama administration.

The Bush administration released many more, but those freed by this administration are likely more dangerous. Contrary to the Gitmo myth, innocent teenagers and wandering goat herders do not fill the base. Last May, an administration task force found that of the 240 detainees at Gitmo when Mr. Obama took office, almost all were leaders, fighters or organizers for al Qaeda, the Taliban or other jihadist groups. None was judged innocent.

....

In the Gitmo myth, President George W. Bush was a Lone Ranger acting without Congressional permission, and Gitmo was a law-free zone. But the American people never opposed capturing and detaining the enemy. And now Democratic Congress has ratified Mr. Bush's policy.

Freezing the Gitmo status quo will stop the release of al Qaeda killers, but it won't end the serious distortions in Mr. Obama's terrorism policy.

The administration relies on unmanned drones to kill al Qaeda leaders hiding in Pakistan and Afghanistan. CIA Director Leon Panetta calls it "the only game in town." Drones take no prisoners, but they also ask no questions. Firing missiles from afar cannot substitute for the capture and interrogation of al Qaeda leaders for intelligence. (The real question now is whether CIA agents will decline to interrogate prisoners, thanks to Mr. Holder's criminal investigations into Bush policies.)

As long as no one is sent to Gitmo, the Obama administration will leave itself two options for dealing with terrorists: kill, or catch-and-release. Mr. Obama's drone-heavy policy means that more people will die—not only al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, but also innocent Afghan and Pakistani civilians.

The Gitmo myth also drove the Justice Department's push to prosecute al Qaeda leaders in U.S. civilian courts. Nowhere else did the Obama administration place its view of terrorism more clearly on display as a law-enforcement problem. The near-acquittal of Ahmed Ghailani, the al Qaeda operative who facilitated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, by a New York jury last month has clearly revealed that path as a dead end—even if Mr. Holder remains in denial.

The simple alternative is to continue detentions at Gitmo. Detention is consistent with the rules of war, which allow captured combatants to be held indefinitely without requiring criminal charges to be filed. It also keeps our troops and agents in the field focused on finding and killing the enemy, not on collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses.

....

After the left's long denunciation of Bush-era policies, Mr. Obama should admit that he has made his share of mistakes—not the least of which has been propagating the Gitmo myth. If Americans die at the hands of released detainees, we will know who to blame.

‘Have You No Decency, Sir?’

Commentary » Blog Archive » ‘Have You No Decency, Sir?’ Krauthammer takes on Krugman.

Even the Times‘s first public editor, Daniel Okrent, said that Krugman has a “disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.” He is no less cavalier with quotes. As John Hinderacker at Power Line shows, complete with a recording of the entire interview, Michelle Bachmann was merely using a metaphor. She was holding a town hall meeting with constituents regarding the cap-and-trade bill and said, “I’m going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back.” She was arming them with information, not bullets, so they could successfully oppose a terrible bill, not shoot politicians.

Reagan and Alzheimers

What did he not know, and when did he not know it? New Ron Reagan book: My dad had Alzheimer’s while in office « Hot Air

Reagan’s doctors and Alzheimer’s specialists have been debunking this myth for years, but no matter how many times they try to explain that occasional memory lapses in an elderly person do not an Alzheimer’s diagnosis make, the narrative rolls on. And it’ll keep rolling, thanks to Ron Jr and the explosive never-before-revealed details in his new book which, per Paul Bedard of U.S. News, … seem not to add up.

Besides playing amateur doctor, Ron Reagan reveals, if true, brain surgery on his dad never before reported. He accurately reports that Reagan, after leaving the presidency, was bucked from a horse on July 4, 1989, while in Mexico. Ron tells of how his dad, after initially refusing medical help, was transported to a San Diego hospital. “Surgeons opening his skull to relieve pressure on the brain emerged from the operating room with the news that they had detected what they took to be probable signs of Alzheimer’s disease.” Several Reagan associates, however, say there was no surgery in San Diego.

What’s more there is no reporting about any San Diego operation on Reagan. News reports at the time of his fall say Reagan was flown to a hospital in Arizona, where he was treated for scrapes and bruises and released after five hours…

Ron Reagan doesn’t mention this, but says that Reagan visited the Mayo Clinic in 1990 for tests that “confirmed the initial suspicion of Alzheimer’s.” Reagan’s post-presidency history, documented in several archives like University of Texas, reveal no such visit. And Dr. John E. Hutton Jr. his doctor from 1984 through Reagan’s retirement, told the New York Times that Reagan didn’t show the tell-tale symptoms until 1993.

The progressive “climate of hate:” An illustrated primer, 2000-2010

Michelle Malkin » The progressive “climate of hate:” An illustrated primer, 2000-2010

The Tucson massacre ghouls who are now trying to criminalize conservatism have forced our hand.
They need to be reminded. You need to be reminded.
Confront them. Don’t be cowed into silence.
And don’t let the media whitewash the sins of the hypocritical Left in their naked attempt to suppress the law-abiding, constitutionally-protected, peaceful, vigorous political speech of the Right.
They want to play tu quo que in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it.
***
The progressive climate of hate: A comprehensive illustrated primer in 8 parts:

Media meme o’ the day: Obama’s speech was much more presidential than Palin’s « Hot Air

Media meme o’ the day: Obama’s speech was much more presidential than Palin’s « Hot Air

As long as we're blaming rhetoric

5 Months Ago: Black Murders Eight Whites; Media Blames Whites

On this week's Townhall.com Weekend Journal, Dennis Prager takes listeners back to August 2010, when a black man in Manchester, Connecticut murdered 8 whites and told the 911 operator that he wished he could have killed more. Of course, the media was silent, few in America heard about this massacre, and there were no fingers pointed at liberals, Democrats or the MSM for their consistent race-baiting "vitriol" of blame whitey rhetoric. No doubt that if there were any dots to connect between an assassin and the daily media/political drum beat it would have been from this horrible event.

Well, everyone on the left says this is a racist country. Who's to blame someone for being incited to violence?

Double standards. Laughner vs Nidal Hassan

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : A Study in Contrasts: NYT on Ft. Hood and Arizona Shootings

Palin is Still the Israel of American Politics

Israel is the canary in the coal mine. What happens to Israel will, if not stopped, happen to everyone else. The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Palin is Still the Israel of American Politics

Media Jacka$$es

The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Media Jacka$$es

The column by CBS editor Dan Farber is called "Palin Plays the Victim Card." Farber wrote that Palin "appears to be tone deaf to Giffords statement that there are consequences to actions. The consequences of Palin's crosshairs may not be directly related to the shooting rampage in Tucson and assassination attempt, but they are related to the level of divisiveness in the country." And: "The likely presidential aspirant doesn't seem to take any responsibility for ratcheting up the political dialog or believe that there is any need to moderate the tone of political discourse in America."

What a crock. Palin isn't "playing the victim card" (I await the day when Farber accuses a black liberal or radical like Al Sharpton of "playing the race card," even though Sharpton does it every day of his life); she actually is a victim. The furious and outrageous verbal assault on her in the wake of the shootings has made her a victim indeed. How would Farber like being treated as an accessory to mass murder?

5 Rules for Coping with Tragedy

1. First reports may be wrong. At least, follow the "48-hour rule".
2. Don't politicize the tragedy -- you're more likely than not to be wrong.
3. Don't blame heated rhetoric. Rhetoric is always heated.
4. Keep the tragedy in context.
5. Letislate carefully. (Indeed, craft policy at any level carefully.)

Sarah Palin's Reading List -- he hates it!

Scott Johnson comments on the disdain the "educated" have for Sarah Palin's reading list: He doesn't know Jack
and
He doesn't know Jack, cont'd

Palin's citation of C.S. Lewis is interesting, though not in the sense that Wolffe means. I would be interested to know in which of Lewis's books Palin has found inspiration. Palin's citation of Lewis in any event makes perfect sense. Even more interesting than Palin's citation of Lewis is the fact that, at the time of his appearance on Hardball, Wolffe had no knowledge of Lewis as anyone other than the author of the Narnia books. Anyone who combines arrogance and ignorance in these proportions is a fool. Wolffe is hardly special in this respect, but he is a good example of the phenomenon.

Hating Palin: Any excuse will do

Patterico's Pontifications » International Scandal Revealed: Bristol Palin Fixes Strand of Sarah Palin’s Hair

In case you can’t read the caption, it says: “Dieu Nalio Chery / AP Photo. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, center, has her hair done during a visit to a cholera treatment center set up by the NGO Samaritan’s Purse in Cabaret, Haiti, Saturday Dec. 11, 2010. Palin arrived Saturday in Haiti as part of a brief humanitarian mission in an impoverished nation struggling to overcome post-election violence and a cholera epidemic. At right, Palin’s husband, Todd Palin.”

And at left, the hairdresser.

The picture was designed to make liberals choleric, and it worked.

The Daily Mail’s story was titled Ready for her close-up… Sarah Palin lands in Haiti (well, she wants to look just right for those poor cholera-stricken residents).

But my favorite reaction is from the Huffington Post’s Michael Shaw, in a post titled Reading the Pictures: Palin Does Haiti Cholera: How’s My Hair? (and, Did AP Lend a Curl?).

Her daughter adjusted her hair. Wow.

The hatred of Sarah Palin

» A Conspiracy Against the Mind, Against Life, Against Man–and the Virtue of Sarah Palin - Big Government

The ferocious, relentless attacks on Sarah Palin are a testament to her greatness, proof of how deathly afraid of her they are, like Dracula to the silver cross.

It’s envy. Ayn Rand said it: “Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves….That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.”

....

I cringe when I hear conservatives and Republicans say that Palin is not electable. Why? Because evildoers said so? Who cares? That’s what they want you to think. How wonderful it would be to have a clear thinking, rational, proud patriot for president. Who else could possibly restore America back to her standing and respect in the world? I think Palin would be spectacular, one of the greats.

The left was waiting for such an atrocity as the Arizona shooting. It didn’t matter who, what, where, when — fill in the blanks. The ghouls were waiting for Arizona to smear the right and those that best represent us.

Language evolves: From Blood Libel to Lynching

From Blood Libel to Lynching - Big Government

Palin, like Glenn Reynolds (and, independently, Andrew Breitbart) used the term “blood libel” to describe the way in which opportunistic politicians and journalists seized on the shooting spree to demonize the Tea Party and conservatives in general.

The original “blood libel” is the false accusation (originating in medieval Europe, still repeated in the Arab world) that Jews murder non-Jewish children for ritual purposes, a claim used throughout history to incite hatred and sometimes violence against Jewish communities.

Some conservatives–including Reynolds, Gov. Palin, Breitbart, and others–are suggesting that today’s media climate, in which millions of people are being falsely accused of complicity in the Tucson murders simply because of their belief in limited government, has analogous features. (Charles Krauthammer used the term “libel” today in the Washington Post, without the additional word “blood,” and it is possible that he intended to imply similar metaphor, albeit less directly.)

Of course, the Jews of medieval Europe who were the victims of the blood libel did not have the political freedom that Americans enjoy today, and which we conservatives are using to defend ourselves. That is such an obvious difference that no one felt it necessary to make the point when using the analogy–which, like any analogy, is inexact and open to debate.

There is also nothing unusual about using a term with a specific historical origin and applying it to other cases. We use the term “lynching” to describe the unfair targeting of a particular individual, even though lynching emerged from a very painful context of racial prejudice against blacks the American South. Few argue that the term “lynching” is off limits for that reason.

A tale of two speeches

Comparing Sarah Palin's speech with Barack Obama's -- as if they were in the same situation. » A ‘Comparison Of Two Speeches’..Really? - Big Government

I can appreciate why Sarah Palin’s political enemies would want to compare these two speeches..but it’s an exercise in absurdity.

No one accused President Barack Obama of being directly complicit in mass murder, and no one in Sarah Palin’s camp orchestrated a campaign to do so. If they had, we might have heard a very different speech from one of the most thin-skinned presidents in modern times.

It was not President Obama who was receiving death threats from the right calling for ‘payback’ for the Tucson murders, and no one suggested that the killings were ‘Obama’s fault’.

President Obama was in Tucson to conduct a memorial service for the victims, and he did so.

Governor Palin had a very different task to perform, and a far more difficult one.Not only did she need to address what happened in Tucson, but she needed to defend herself in the court of public opinion.

Both of them did exactly what they needed to do, and the dinosaur media demonizing Governor Palin while lauding Obama is exactly what it smells like – pure partisan horse manure.

In Praise of Alan Dershowitz

» In Praise of Alan Dershowitz: Is He America’s Last Honest Liberal? - Big Government

I’m not the least bit surprised that Professor Dershowitz has come to the aid of Governor Palin. Professor Dershowitz treats everyone with the utmost respect and civility. Why should the governor be exempt? 
I know this civility is commonplace because I have experienced it firsthand. Professor Dershowitz once plucked me from an obscure prep school, and after a debate in front of the school, offered me a job as a research assistant. There, next to him in his office and working together against the enemies of Israel, he treated me – an often brash, 17-year-old conservative, goyim – as an equal and a friend. Professor Dershowitz wrote me a glowing letter when I applied to college and I haven't the slightest doubt that his name on my resume has opened many doors for me. 
On domestic politics, Professor Dershowitz and I seldom agree. But he always disagrees respectfully, giving equal attention to all sides of a debate. His politics notwithstanding, Professor Dershowitz is the consummate gentleman-scholar. 
That’s why I hope that my old mentor and friend switches sides should Governor Palin, whom he has now defended, run for president. I am certain that Professor Dershowitz will disagree with Palin on a great many issues, but on one of the most important – standing for truth and defending America and her allies – Professor Dershowitz is as resolute as Governor Palin. Given President Obama's repeated hostility to Israel, perhaps it is time that supporters of Israel -- of all political stripes -- recognize this unique moment we have before Iran gets the bomb and act accordingly at the ballot box.

Blame Palin

Blame Palin - Katrina Trinko - National Review Online

10. Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall responded to Palin’s video message by writing, “Today has been set aside to honor the victims of the Tucson massacre. And Sarah Palin has apparently decided she’s one of them.” Not mentioned was the fact that the Left had previously castigated Palin for refusing to address her “role” in the shootings.

9. Nuanced thinking isn’t the forte of at least one New York Daily News headline writer; the paper published a column titled, “Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ blood is on Sarah Palin’s hands after putting cross hair over district.” The columnist, Michael Daly, pontificated that “Palin would no doubt say that she was only speaking in metaphor, that she only meant her followers should work to unseat Giffords and 19 other Democrats who had roused her ire by voting for health care. 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.”

8. Jane Fonda took her grievances to Twitter. “Progressive Arizona Rep Gabrelle Giffords is shot. In her ads, Sarah Palin had her targeted in a gun site. Inciting to violence,” tweeted Fonda. “@SarahPalinUSA holds responsibility. As does the violence-provoking rhetoric of the Tea Party,” she later tweeted.

7. Keith Olbermann, whose show used to feature “Worst Person in the World” segments and still features other displays of incivility, decided that Palin needed to repent. “If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 Representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics,” railed Olbermann. “She must be repudiated by the members of her own party, and if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling, and they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.”

6. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.) told Mother Jones that “both Gabby and I were targeted in the [Palin] apparatus in that cycle [saying] these people are ‘enemies,’” adding that “the Palin express better look at their tone and their tenor.”

5. Pima County sheriff Clarence Dupnik agreed that it wasn’t just Sarah Palin at fault — Sharron Angle had contributed, too. “When you have people like Sharron 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,’” Dupnik told Fox News, “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 I think we may be seeing the fruit of it here.”

4. In response to Palin’s video speech, MSNBC host Larry O’Donnell made this cheap dig: “Palin leveled a cold-eyed outrage at ‘people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.’ Palin’s self-defense seems aimed at [Giffords]. On Saturday, [Giffords] fell into the crosshairs of a gun that sent a 22-cent bullet into the back of her head exiting over her left eye. She is therefore unable to respond to Sarah Palin tonight.”

3. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was one of the first prominent pundits to jump on the blame-Palin bandwagon. “We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was,” blogged Krugman the afternoon of the shooting. “[Giffords has] been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that ‘the whole Tea Party’ was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous ‘crosshairs’ list.”

2. For liberal radio host Thom Hartmann, Palin is on par with Osama bin Laden. “Sarah Palin. She hasn’t come out of her cave up there in Alaska. Sarah bin Palin, should we call her? But she has issued a video!” he remarked. In case that hadn’t made his point, Hartmann continued to rail against Palin for being upset that she was accused of being responsible for Loughner’s actions: “Talk about making your head explode. . . . Sarah Palin is trying to conflate her being accused of this crime as being some kind of an incredible victim, as if for a thousand years, well, I mean, I don’t want to get into hyperbole here, but I just, I find this astounding.”

1. Almost immediately after the shooting, when virtually no details were known, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas tweeted, “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin,” with a link to Palin’s crosshairs map.

How The Media Botched The Arizona Shooting

How The Media Botched The Arizona Shooting | The New Republic
It's all about the narrative boilerplate.

When disaster strikes, journalists have to write something about it—and write it fast. That means they have to take mental shortcuts, calling up established narratives and laying them out like old wrapping paper for new and more ambiguous facts.

....

But sometimes the shortcuts produce a journalistic stampede at the worst possible time. That’s what happened last weekend, when 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner shot six people to death at an Arizona Safeway and gravely wounded many more, including Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The dominant storyline in the press—one that persisted in the face of all the facts—was that right-wing hysteria and lunacy had given rise to Loughner’s atrocity. Only on Wednesday night, when President Obama delivered a speech that effectively told everyone to cut it out, was the stampede halted (one hopes).

....

y Monday, The New York Times’ editorial page had kicked into action. It conceded that, sure, Loughner operated “well beyond usual ideological categories,” but, still, it was “legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge.” The Los Angeles Times followed suit. It admitted that, sure, Loughner and “his own demons were primarily to blame,” but it still condemned the “increasingly incendiary and violent rhetoric that characterizes today's political debate,” for which “the right bears the brunt of responsibility.” Meanwhile, dozens of opinion writers were busily adding related but equally ethereal musings to the heap. Writing in the Guardian, blogger Jessica Valenti blamed a “country that sees masculinity—especially violent masculinity—as the ideal.”

There is of course one advantage to all such lines of argument, if argument is the word for it. They are entirely faith-based, which makes them pretty much irrefutable. But faith-based punditry works in more than one direction.

....

So why did the press go so far astray this week? How did many fine, otherwise fair-minded journalists allow their judgment to become so clouded? Let’s venture briefly—and hopefully not too speculatively, lest I be accused of double standards—into the realm of cognition. Organizational theorists such as Karl E. Weick, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan Business School, have researched how we react to unexpected events. In his 1995 book Sensemaking in Organizations, Weick notes that we humans automatically categorize what we encounter, ushering messy new complexities into tidier established categories (“myths, metaphors, platitudes, fables, epics and paradigms,” to be precise). When something bad and inexplicable takes us by surprise, our brains reach for the handiest existing narratives, and accuracy falls by the wayside in favor of simple plausibility. “The stories are templates,” writes Weick. “They are products of previous efforts at sensemaking. They explain. And they energize.”

In essence, reporters under pressure to write about a dramatic story right now fit a blizzard of facts (and putative facts) into the narratives they have at the top of their stack. And the narratives are almost entirely leftist, with few if any colleagues offering a conservative take by way of counterpoint.

From Charles Johnson’s Hero to Arrested For Threatening to Kill Tea Party Leader on National TV

Figures. Charles Johnson’s Crackpot Hero Arrested For Threatening to Kill Tea Party Leader on National TV | The Gateway Pundit
Includes screen shots from Little Green Footballs.

Sarah Palin Criticized Over Gabrielle Giffords Presence on "Target List"

A trip in the wayback machine, thanks to MemeORandum -- 1/9/11, 1:10 pm:

Sarah Palin Criticized Over Gabrielle Giffords Presence on "Target List" - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Sarah Palin Blamed by Bloggers for Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords

First, it is sad to see folks immediately politicize such a tragedy. If your first response to such an event is to think of Sarah Palin, something is wrong.

Six hours later:

The awesome stupidity of the calls to tamp down political speech in the wake of the Giffords shooting.

Embedded in Sheriff Dupnik's ad hoc wisdom were several assumptions. First, that strident, anti-government political views can be easily categorized as vitriolic, bigoted, and prejudicial. Second, that those voicing strident political views are guilty of issuing Manchurian Candidate-style instructions to commit murder and mayhem to the "unbalanced." Third, that the Tucson shooter was inspired to kill by political debate or by Sarah Palin's "target" map or other inflammatory outbursts. Fourth, that we should calibrate our political speech in such a manner that we do not awaken the Manchurian candidates among us.

New York Daily News: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' blood is on Sarah Palin's hands after putting cross hair over district

The Daily Beast: Should We Blame Sarah Palin for Gabrielle Giffords' Shooting?

Politico: 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.

Reason "Hit and Run" blog: The Giffords Shooting, The Instant Politicization of Everything, & Why Americans Increasingly Hate Dems & Reps

How do you take one of the most shocking and revolting murder sprees in memory and make it even more disturbing? By immediately pouncing on its supposed root causes for the most transparently partisan of gains.

Instantaneous bitch-tweeting online (within moments of the shooting, it seems, messages such as "Sarah Palin has blood on her hands" were all over the place) is one thing. Stories filled with actual Democratic Party players such as Paul Begala going on about what an "opportunity" the shooting presents Obama politically aren't going to help the Dems or anyone else in the long run.

Andrew Klavan at City Journal: The Hateful Left

But while little useful can be said about the murders themselves, the rush to narrative of our dishonest and increasingly desperate leftist media does have to be addressed. The Left—which has been unable to discover any common feature uniting acts of Islamist violence worldwide—nonetheless instantly noticed a bridge between the Tucson shooting and its own political opponents. The Chicago Sun-Times ran a slavering editorial blaming “the right.” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson suggested that the killings were inspired by right-wing rhetoric. Politico’s Roger Simon did the same.

But the New York Times was perhaps the worst offender. On its front page, and in its patented smarmily suggestive style, it also implied that Loughner was somehow set off by conservative rhetoric and the Tea Party. “The original health care legislation stirred strong feelings that flared at angry town hall meetings held by many Democratic lawmakers during the summer of 2009,” said the Times, stroking its figurative chin over possible motives for the atrocity. “And there has been broader anger and suspicion rising about the government, its finances and its goals, with the discourse partially fueled by talk shows and Web sites. Tea Party activists also condemned the shooting.”

The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right

I just thought you should know a few things about the people you helped into their graves and hospital beds this weekend.

Yes, you.

You false patriots who bring assault rifles to political rallies, you hack politicians and media personalities who lied through your stinking teeth about "death panels" and "Obama is coming for your guns" and "He isn't a citizen" and "He's a secret Muslim" and "Sharia Law is coming to America," you who spread this bastard gospel and you who swallowed it whole, I am talking to you, because this was your doing just as surely as it was the doing of the deranged damned soul who pulled the trigger. The poison you injected into our culture is deeply culpable for this carnage.

Patrick Kennedy Points finger at Sarah Palin

Patrick Kennedy, who lost two uncles to assassins’ bullets, says there’s an obvious connection between the violent rhetoric of today’s politics and the massacre in Tucson.

“When Sarah Palin puts targets on people’s districts? Or you have 10,000 signs on the mall during the healthcare battle saying ‘Bury Obamacare with Kennedy’? When the vitriol and the rhetoric is so violent, we have to connect consequences to that.” said Kennedy, who left congress two weeks ago after serving eight terms representing Rhode Island.

Clyburn: Palin intellectually unable 'to understand what's going on here'

Palin broke her relative silence since the shooting, which some Democrats have attributed to an environment that allowed such an attack on a member of Congress. Democrats have homed in on the map Palin's political action committee had released, depicting targeted lawmakers in the election with crosshairs over their districts.

"Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own," Palin wrote. "They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election."

Clyburn said that Palin didn't grasp why such rhetoric was so troubling, regardless of the motivations of the alleged shooter. The No. 3 House Democrat referenced the civil rights era and said that some of the shrill rhetoric in modern politics is reminiscent of that time.

AllahPundit: Palin aide: She’s getting death threats at unprecedented levels

I almost wish that this wasn’t being reported as it’ll only inflame things further among fringe types, but after four days of screeching about Palin the murderer, who can blame her staff for wanting to show the world the ironic outcome?

Sarah Palin's statement about Tucson

Instapundit » Blog Archive » SARAH PALIN RELEASES A statement on the Tucson Shootings. UPDATE: More here. And here’s the tex…

With an extensive section on the lame complains about the term "blood libel".

NeoNeoCon also comments on the "blood libel" kerfuffle.

From Powerline

Meanwhile, one of Jared Loughner's friends tells Good Morning America:

He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn't listen to political radio. He didn't take sides. He wasn't on the left. He wasn't on the right.

That would seem to be the last nail in the Democrats' let's-blame-Sarah Palin coffin. (Can we still say "coffin"?) So the liberals' hysteria is revealed for what it really is: sheer, malignant hatred compounded with political opportunism. It's not a pretty sight.

UPDATE: As you can see if you try to play the video of hateful comments about Sarah Palin, most of which wished her dead or worse, it has been taken down by YouTube. Someone, apparently, would prefer that you not be able to see how ugly the liberal movement in America is.

Political climatology

Global warming isn't just weather anymore. It's the temperature of political rhetoric.
The Climate of Krugman - HUMAN EVENTS

Within hours of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting, lunatic “economist” Paul Krugman raced to put up a blog post blaming Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for the attack. “For those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target,” said Krugman, “the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that ‘the whole Tea Party’ was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous ‘crosshairs’ list.”

And this is the same column where Krugman described Republican rhetoric as "eliminationist". Was that term ever used before it was applied to Nazi doctrines?

Krugman throws out some vague allegations about “a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials.” Then he concedes “the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled,” BUT “that doesn’t mean his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.” Actually, yes, that’s exactly what it does mean.

Unless conservatives are involved, I guess.
Stop blaming the Tea Party for the Arizona tragedy

Left-wing bloggers and commentators blamed the attack on Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin because she had "targeted" Giffords for defeat during the 2010 elections. The New York Daily News published a column headlined "Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' blood is on Sarah Palin's hands after putting cross hair over district." And an hour after Giffords was shot, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas actually tweeted: "Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin." He conveniently failed to mention that his Daily Kos had put a "bull's eye" (their words) on Giffords in 2008 - including her on a list of centrist Democrats who should be "targeted" in Democratic primaries. Mission accomplished, Markos?

On Sunday, the New York Times published a front-page story, "Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics." Nowhere did it mention the vitriol hurled at Tea Party activists, who are routinely derided to as "tea baggers" and racists, and now stand accused of incitement to murder. If you want an example of the lack of civility plaguing our political discourse, look no further than this weekend's shameful efforts to use this tragedy to demonize the Tea Party.

George Will: The charlatans' response to the Tucson tragedy

The craving is for banishing randomness and the inexplicable from human experience. Time was, the gods were useful. What is thunder? The gods are angry. Polytheism was explanatory. People postulated causations.

And still do. Hence: The Tucson shooter was (pick your verb) provoked, triggered, unhinged by today's (pick your noun) rhetoric, vitriol, extremism, "climate of hate."

Demystification of the world opened the way for real science, including the social sciences. And for a modern characteristic. And for charlatans.

....

On Sunday, the Times explained Tucson: "It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman's act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But . . ." The "directly" is priceless.

ABC's Cheap Shot at Palin

ABC's Cheap Shot at Palin:

"

...it's time to follow up with similar outrage to this idiocy from ABC News: 'Sarah Palin, once again, has found a way to become part of the story.'

FOUND a way? Huh? Through absolutely zero fault of her own, minding her own business other than to issue a very brief and appropriate statement of condolences last Saturday as almost every national political figure did, Palin found herself thrust into this story without ever wanting to be part of it. For four days she sat by as numerous figures on the left and in the media (a redundancy) accused her of being all but an accessory to mass murder, merely because she used an absolutely common image in a political ad in an absolutely common and innocuous way. Why is she required to sit back and take it? Does ABC believe she should do what Bobby Knight once said of rape victims, that she should 'lie back and enjoy it'? Go back and read her video released today. More than 90 percent of it was eloquent and utterly pitch-perfect from ANY perspective. The self-defense part was pointed but hardly outlandish. Only the 'blood libel' line pushed the envelope the slightest bit, although even that wasn't totally outlandish (as even Alan dershowitz acknowledged while defending her use of the phrase).

Sarah Palin no more 'found a way to become part of the story' than Richard Jewell 'found a way' to be falsely accused of setting the bomb at the Atlanta Olympics.

More Evidence Liberalism Is Dead

More Evidence Liberalism Is Dead:

"
WASHINGTON -- The evidence mounts that Liberalism is dead.
The Liberal wizards, working their wonders at the New York Times and its clearing houses in the major networks, cannot even dupe the American people with an absurd conspiracy theory anymore. In Dallas back in 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, a pious communist awash in the Marxist-Leninist bilge, shot President John F. Kennedy. In no time the Liberals had the nation focused on the 'dangerous right-wing atmosphere' supposedly pervading Dallas. Soon all the talk was of 'the paranoid style' of American politics. Oswald was almost forgotten. Doubtless, today there are fervent Liberals living in haunts in Massachusetts and in Berkeley, California, who believe in their heart of hearts that the president was felled by Texas Republicans.
This time around an obvious lunatic shoots 19 people in Tucson, killing 6 (one of whom is a Republican judge) and wounding 13 (one of whom is a Democratic Congresswoman), and the Liberals try again. With artifice and craft they try to focus the nation's attention on the 'heated rhetoric' of the right. Sarah Palin is trotted out. The Tea Partiers are cited. The venerable Times editorializes, '… it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger [remember the Times' cosseting of the Angry Left back in 2008?] that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge.' Today, however, the average American has had enough of this Liberal garbagespiel, and so in a CBS poll nearly six in ten Americans deny that the 'country's heated rhetoric' had anything to do with the shooting. Liberalism has come to the end of the line. It is a bore.
Yet what kind of person directs our attention to the meaningless madness of a lunatic, and tries to lecture us on the random concreteness of nouns appearing in the chaos of the poor wretch's attempts at thought. The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, mentions Mein Kampf. He mutters something about the gold standard. And my favorite -- he advocated proper grammar, or perhaps he abominated proper grammar. He was not very clear. At least there was something about grammar. Hear! Hear!
Loughner is obviously a schizophrenic. I am no psychiatrist but I would bet he is a paranoid schizophrenic. That is the most dangerous kind of schizophrenic. What he says might matter to his psychiatrist but it has little significance to the outside world. Yet apparently it mattered greatly to Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. On Monday he wrote in the Times: 'Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance; it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right.' And he continued, 'It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents' to violence. Now Krugman has been a columnist for the Times for a long enough time, covering a sufficient variety of political events, for us to deduce that he is a political nitwit. Other Nobel laureates have been nitwits, for instance Lord Russell. There are a lot of political nitwits in this world. Perhaps the Times could give Krugman a cooking column. He would be their Nobel Prize-winning cooking columnist.
Of course, examples of Democrats speaking loosely about violence toward Republicans have now been piling up in blithe contradiction to this nitwit's asseveration. The inimitable James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal cites Senator John Kerry joshing with Bill Maher about how '...I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird [George W. Bush] with one stone.' Taranto adds that in 1988 Kerry had joked about the Secret Service being under orders, if George H.W. Bush were killed, 'to shoot Quayle.' And he quotes then-Representative Paul Kanjorski in October saying (as Jeffrey Lord first reported in The American Spectator), 'That [Rick] Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him [sic] and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him.' Mr. Kanjorski alleged that Mr. Scott's transgression was stealing 'billions of dollars from the United States government.' He was defeated in 2010. Scott was elected. Yet Kanjorski resurrected marvelously. On the op-ed page of the Times he appeared Tuesday counseling on the proper response to the Tucson shooting.
As I say, Liberalism is dead. This hitherto unthinkable effort to blame the unhinged act of a lunatic on the language of the right without respect to the often more inflammatory language of the left is a cry from the grave. Rigor mortis has set in, comrades, and even your president suffers. On the campaign trail in 2008 Barack Obama said, 'If they [Republicans] bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.'

Obama's Bullseye

Obama's Bullseye:
Last night, for his first time in office, Barack Obama sounded like the president of all Americans.
Obama famously burst onto the national scene in 2004 with an address to the Democratic Convention in which he declared, “there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America.” During his own run for the presidency four years later, he would echo this post-partisan theme.
But the first two years of Obama’s presidency have been contentions ones. While he may not have introduced polarization to American politics, he certainly didn’t help matters. Just days after being sworn in, he admonished Congressional Republicans with whom he was negotiating an economic package, boasting: “I won.”
When he encountered political resistance as he set about remaking America, he either directly or through surrogates portrayed political opposition as not just wrong, but illegitimate. Americans expressing their views in town hall meetings became “angry mobs” and “Astroturf.”
As political defeat loomed in last fall’s midterm elections, Obama urged Hispanic Americans to vote for Democrats as a way to “punish our enemies.” Just last month, in announcing a tax deal he had struck with GOP leaders, he blasted Republicans as “hostage takers” and said he was “itching for a fight' with them.
On Saturday, the nation was shaken when news broke of an assassination attempt against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords which killed six and injured a dozen others. Unfortunately, our noxious political atmosphere was on full display as liberals immediately seized on the tragedy and attempted to blame Sarah Palin, tea parties, and the right-wing media for the attack even before anything was known about the assailant.
Subsequent evidence has produced no known links with the alleged gunman, Jared Loughner, who appears to be a mentally disturbed individual without any discernible political ideology or partisan leanings.
“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” one Democrat had anonymously advised the White House via the Politico. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”
In what was billed as a defining moment in his presidency, Obama took the stage at the University of Arizona last night with a clear choice. Was he going to use this occasion to score political points, or was he going to finally live up to the promise of his candidacy and attempt to bring the country together?
Fortunately for the victims of this tragedy, and for America, he chose the latter route.
While the campaign rally feel of the event (complete with cheering and whistling from college students in the audience) seemed jarring at first for a memorial service, Obama struck just the right tone in his remarks. He paid moving tribute to the victims and emphatically stated several times that harsh political rhetoric was not the cause of this attack.
“(A)t a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -- at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do -- it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” Obama said. “Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.”
He continued, “For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack.  None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.”
Obama went on to say that those who lost their lives should inspire Americans to be better. “And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse,” he said, “let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not --but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.”
The phrase “it did not” was not in Obama’s prepared remarks, and it’s to his credit that he felt the need to inject those words to make it abundantly clear that political rhetoric was not a factor in the shooting.
Instead of using the bully pulpit to “deftly” pin the blame for the attack on his political opponents, Obama used it to deftly tell liberals: “Enough! The partisan blame game is unjustified by the facts and does a disservice to the victims.”
Ultimately, he did what a president should do at a moment like this -- rise above the politics of the moment and lead the nation as a whole.
It may no longer be politically correct to say such a thing, but last night Obama fired, and he hit the bullseye.

Defending 'Toxic' Rhetoric

The American Spectator : Defending 'Toxic' Rhetoric

The principal enforcement of political boundaries, however, is dispensed by voters at the polls. This is the inspiration for the left's hysterical campaign against Republican rhetoric: voters rejected Democrats last November on the issues, so they hope by libeling conservatives with murder and demonizing the mode of their message that voters will reject Republicans in 2012.

And there's this:

Conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin has put out a stunning challenge to those left-wing media personalities accusing conservative talk radio stars and Sarah Palin of encouraging murder.

First, he offered $100,000 to Chris Matthews to find any example where Sarah Palin or Levin himself had "promoted the murder of anybody."

....

Levin, of course, is also a former Justice Department official, which gave his second challenge a crisp note: He's waiting for a very specific allegation "because I'm going to sue." In federal court.

Levin's challenge to Matthews and other left-wing media types comes on the heels of increasingly desperate attempts by the left-wing media to pin the Tucson violence by the mentally disturbed Jared Loughner on conservative talk radio stars.

SARAH PALIN SPEAKS OUT

Sarah Palin's "blood libel" speech, and a transcript. SARAH PALIN SPEAKS OUT: Condemns Media’s “Blood Libel” (Video) | The Gateway Pundit

The Exploitive Rhetoric of Tragedy - Jonah Goldberg - Townhall Conservative

The Exploitive Rhetoric of Tragedy - Jonah Goldberg - Townhall Conservative

If the alleged shooter had been inspired by a movie or TV show -- as any number of murderers have been over the years -- would those blaming the tea parties join with social conservatives in blaming Hollywood? Would they celebrate new laws to "shut down" such fare?
Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon, claimed to be in part inspired by "Catcher in the Rye." Should that be banned? Or if not banned, should we "dismiss" from public life anyone who doesn't denounce J.D. Salinger?
When the subject of censorship or the "chilling" of free expression comes up in other contexts, the very idea that books, movies or TV can be blamed for the actions of the criminal or the deranged is met with unbridled scorn. I actually disagree with that. If books can inspire us positively, surely they can inspire us negatively, too. But we understand that we don't blame books for the rare demons who feed on them.

“The Conspiracy to Murder Marriage - Phase II”

Dafydd ap Hugh writes: Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “The Conspiracy to Murder Marriage - Phase II”

But the obvious next phase has already begun in Canada (one of those nations whose rulers now wholeheartedly endorse SSM): The Supreme Court of British Columbia is currently hearing a case that argues Canada's laws against polygamy are now also invalidated. In other words, as warned by supporters of traditional marriage -- and despite vigorous denials by proponents of SSM -- redefining marriage to include same-sex couples immediately opens the door to polygamy as well:

The challengers of Canada's anti-polygamy law say that the nation's 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives people the right to practice "plural marriage...."

Other legal observers suggest that if Canada jettisons its anti-polygamy law, other countries could be affected. If foreign jurisdictions, such as U.S. states, recognize same-sex marriages from Canada, for instance, they could be sued to force recognition of Canada's polygamous families, too.

It took me a while, but a year or so ago I finally hit upon the perfect analogy to SSM, to explain how it damaged and devalued all marriages, including traditional: SSM to traditional marriage is as counterfeit money to real money.

Suppose some criminal floods the United States with counterfeit bills tomorrow (you can include fiat money issued by the Federal Reserve, if you like). Now look at your own pocketful of legitimate currency. Have the physical notes changed? Is Alexander Hamilton now winking or wearing a beret?

Of course not; the money in your wallet is physically unaltered from yesterday. However, the value of all currency, including yours, has been diminished, debased, and devalued, by the introduction of bogus currency... it's not worth as much, because there's too much of it -- and because much of it is just funny money.

It's the same with SSM: When the definition of marriage is expanded to include many other relationships never contemplated by the vast majority of people who are married, then marriage loses its "specialness," its exceptionalism. As more and more relationships between two or more people are called by the same name of "marriage," eventually the institution loses all meaning whatsoever; "we're married" becomes synonymous with "we hang out with each other and receive monetary benefits," nothing more.

But why is the radical Left so anxious to debase marriage? The real goal, I am convinced, is not the "expansion of marriage" to those poor, discriminated-against gays and polyamorous swingers; rather, the real endgame is destruction of the institution of marriage itself. As George Orwell noted in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, perfect socialism cannot allow any force within society to be stronger than the State, including the forces of sex, marriage, and family; all must be ruthlessly stamped out, undermined, discredited, or subverted, so that all familial feelings transfer to the State -- whether that means the nation, as with Fascism, or the world, as with international socialism or Communism. Local sources of power and individual or family strength must disappear.

Does Fox News rot the brain?

FoxNews.com - The Truth About Fox News Viewers

Does watching Fox News rot your brain? According to a report released last month by WorldPublicOpinion.org at the University of Maryland, "Misinformation and the 2010 Election," the more people watch Fox News, the more they are "misinformed."

The allegation rapidly became a favorite topic for leading mainstream news outlets including The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, CBS News, Slate, The Atlantic. Even major newspapers in Canada and the U.K.covered the report. Of course, left-wing websites -- the Talking Point Memo, Media Matters, and the Daily Kos -- reveled in the findings.

....

Still other questions were fraught with problems. For instance, "Since January 2009 have your Federal income taxes gone down, stayed the same, or gone up?" That was not a smart formulation when the researchers intended an answer for overall tax rates rather than for each individual's taxes. And then there are problems with their question about the TARP financial bailout, where the researchers ask about whether most Congressional Republicans supported it. But they can't even add up the total votes in the House or Senate on the bill which shows that Republicans were literally split 50-50, while 75 percent of Democrats supported it. On their own, House Republicans would never have supported the bill.

The WorldPublicOpinion.org survey is a mess. At best, the survey shows that liberals who conducted the survey simply were not smart or careful enough. If any conclusion can be drawn, it is that those who watched Fox News almost every day had not fallen for left-wing myths to the same extent as other Americans.

Pin it on the Tea Partiers

Violence and politics merge - Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith and Alexander Burns - POLITICO.com

One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did.

“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

Spinning Tucson: Krugman's toxic rhetoric

Spinning Tucson: Krugman's toxic rhetoric | The Economist

In a blog item on Saturday, before any significant details about Mr Loughner's motivations had come to light, Paul Krugman wrote:

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we're going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it's long past time for the GOP's leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

This struck me as irresponsibly premature, and one might have thought that, given a little more time and information, Mr Krugman would change his tune, or at least turn down the volume. Nope. In today's column on America's alleged "climate of hate", Mr Krugman reports that he's been "expecting something like this atrocity to happen" since 2008, conjures in his fevered imagination a "rising tide of violence", and spots his hated political foes behind it all:

[I]t's the saturation of our political discourse—and especially our airwaves—with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.


Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right.

What's more, unless the ranting right reins in the kind of talk that leaves Mr Krugman "with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach", "Saturday's atrocity will be just the beginning." Welcome to crazytown, my friends, where it does not seem crazy to disgorge toxic, entirely evidence-free rhetoric about the mortal threat of toxic rhetoric. Does the man honestly think he's helping?

Giffords, ghouls and gimmicks

Don’t think of an elephant: Giffords, ghouls and gimmicks « Hot Air

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Two Sicknesses On Display in Arizona

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Two Sicknesses On Display in Arizona

There also was a second sickness on display, and it was the swiftness and the vigor with which the left-wing blogosphere and some more mainstream Democrats immediately sought to blame Sarah Palin and right-wing "vitriol" in general for the shooting.

Conservatives push back against liberal attacks - POLITICO.com Print View

Conservatives push back against liberal attacks - POLITICO.com Print View

On the day of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting, liberals went on the offensive, suggesting that overheated conservative rhetoric contributed to the Arizona attack.

On Sunday, conservatives pushed back – arguing that attempts to politicize the event were unfair, crass and therefore likely to backfire.

“It should not be, but the media, under the guise of ‘a full exposition’ of the evil in Arizona, is back to subtly and not so subtly pinning the blame for the attempted assassination of the congresswoman and the related shootings on the tea party movement, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, me, you, and everyone right of center,” wrote Erick Erickson, managing editor of RedState.com.

“Let’s be crystal clear: this is the supposedly objective news media doing this, not the openly, partisan left, though it is fueling the media witch hunt. And from what we now know, it is not just media malpractice, but a lie.”

Other conservatives said the criticism reeks of hypocrisy. “Keith Olbermann rants regularly about ‘fascists’ taking over the country, and each day for years has named one or more conservatives ‘the worst person in the world.’ Other liberal talk hosts are scarcely more restrained,” said law professor Brad Smith, a former FEC chairman...

Glenn Reynolds on The Arizona Shooting

Prof. Reynolds calls it "blood libel". Glenn Reynolds: The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel

Those who purport to care about the tenor of political discourse don't help civil debate when they seize on any pretext to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

With only the barest outline of events available, pundits and reporters seemed to agree that the massacre had to be the fault of the tea party movement in general, and of Sarah Palin in particular. Why? Because they had created, in New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's words, a "climate of hate."

The critics were a bit short on particulars as to what that meant. Mrs. Palin has used some martial metaphors—"lock and load"—and talked about "targeting" opponents. But as media writer Howard Kurtz noted in The Daily Beast, such metaphors are common in politics. Palin critic Markos Moulitsas, on his Daily Kos blog, had even included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords's district on a list of congressional districts "bullseyed" for primary challenges. When Democrats use language like this—or even harsher language like Mr. Obama's famous remark, in Philadelphia during the 2008 campaign, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"—it's just evidence of high spirits, apparently. But if Republicans do it, it somehow creates a climate of hate.

There's a climate of hate out there, all right, but it doesn't derive from the innocuous use of political clichés. And former Gov. Palin and the tea party movement are more the targets than the source.

....

To paraphrase Justice Cardozo ("proof of negligence in the air, so to speak, will not do"), there is no such thing as responsibility in the air. Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on "rhetoric" and a "climate of hate" to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

How Many People Die From Lack of Health Insurance?

Ultimately, this is the question that needs to be asked. How Many People Die From Lack of Health Insurance? - Megan McArdle - Business - The Atlantic

The left is predictably fond of the study which got the largest number, 45,000 a year. Unfortunately, its authors are political advocates for a single-payer system, who also helped author the notorious studies on medical bankruptcies. Those studies are very shoddily done, with parameters that somehow always conspire to produce the maximum possible number. In the first study, they set an absurdly low threshhold for what constituted a "medical bankruptcy". In the second, they chose 2006, the year after the 2005 bankruptcy reform act had driven an unprecedented spike in filings. It seems pretty likely that medical bankruptcies were bound to be overrepresented in 2006, since most financial events are easier to see coming than illnesses. But even if you disagree--and the authors offered an incredibly wan explanation of why they did--it's very clear that the people who filed in 2006 were not going to be a representative sample of bankruptcies in a normal year. I can't imagine why you would choose to study 2006 unless you were looking for biased results. I have to conclude that their political beliefs are affecting their work, which means I wouldn't touch that 45,000 number with a bargepole--I wouldn't cite anything they authored even if it offered to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was right about everything.

....

I'm afraid I'm not confident about any number. All of these studies suffer from unobserved variable bias, which is to say, the uninsured are not like the rest of us. (The long term uninsured, I mean; the short term uninsured are not a large problem for society). There are all sorts of reasons that people end up uninsured, but most of them are correlated with much poorer health outcomes, and only some of them end up recorded in our surveys.

To give you an example of what I mean, one of the two studies that went into the most commonly cited number--the roughly 20,000 a year figure from the Institute of Medicine and the Urban Institute--found that the highest mortality was not associated with being uninsured, but being on a government health care program. (the other excluded those patients). This was true even after they'd run all their controls. Given that the bulk of the coverage expansion in both the Senate and the House plans comes from Medicaid expansion, this is a little disturbing.

But how likely is it that Medicaid is killing people? Possible, I suppose, but not really all that likely. Medicaid and Medicare patients, too, are not like the broader population. The authors in fact recognized this fact in their paper, pointing out that these patients have higher rates of disability--but then failed to address the obvious question this raised about their data on the uninsured.

This problem plagues almost all of the studies on mortality and the uninsured.

Don't argue issues, label as hate.

B. Daniel Blatt writing at GayPatriot: Is all opposition to left-wing causes “hateful”?

No, my friends, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is not a partisan organization. From an e-mail, they sent me two days ago, December 6, they explain why they’re coming from:

I won’t sugarcoat it. The election results are a setback to all fair-minded people.. . . .

Because, in spite of the Republican takeover of the House, a more conservative Senate and the rise in hateful rhetoric and action from far-right groups like the Tea Party, Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage, the Task Force will continue to fight for equality for the LGBT community.

A setback to all fair-minded people?!?! Couldn’t they have just said, “not the results we were hoping for”? Defining opposition to state recognition of same-sex marriage and advocacy of small government as “hateful rhetoric”? Come on, now.

Why do some left-wing groups define opposition as hatred?

The Health of Nations

The Health of Nations - Megan McArdle - Personal - The Atlantic
Ms. McArdle notes that King Tut is now thought to have died from malnutrition. The richest man in the kingdom died of something that people in modern Western civilizations have to work to incur.

You always need to factor in things like this when you talk about changes in living standards over time. All the positive changes in society mean that the absolute difference between the income of Bill Gates and the man who valets his car is larger than it has ever been in history. But the actual difference in comfort between the two of them is probably much smaller than the difference between JP Morgan and his stableboy. And both Gates and the valet are almost immeasurably better off than their predecessors.

Self congratulation -- and other deprecation -- in political discourse

Self congratulation -- and other deprecation -- in political discourse

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has been shot. Fortunately, it looks like she's going to recover.


Among the initial reactions has been a rush to blame. Unfortunately, it's a rush to blame, it seems, everyone except the shooter. He was incited by Fox News, or by a graphic used in Sarah Palin's election campaign. To be sure, there's no evidence the shooter even knew how to spell Fox News, or saw the Palin graphic. Nevertheless, one or both of these might just possibly have incited someone to shoot someone else, and so therefore they can be blamed for the fact that a nutcase shot Congresswoman Giffords.


Makes perfect sense to me. (Not!)


Nevertheless, it fits a political theory I find pervasive and extremely annoying. This is the theory that conservatives are too stupid to tell the difference between figures of speech and instructions to commit violent acts. If you put a target on a map, conservatives (who are so stupid they're actually conservative) interpret this as a command to shoot someone, blow up a building, or nuke a city. They are too stupid to see this as in any way metaphorical. (After all, conservatives all think allegory was Bill Clinton's vice president.)


This kind of thinking shows up in other places, too. Conservatives like to think they're the ones smart enough to recognize that Darwin got it wrong, and that only those who are stupid or have base motives can possibly believe in evolution. The same crowd attacks any Harry Potter books or films as soon as they're published, because they lead children into witchcraft. Dungeons and Dragons not only led people into magic and sorcery, it prompted kids to commit suicide and/or murder. And while we're at it, the game of Monopoly incites the likes of Bernie Madoff, and games of Cops and Robbers are why we have the gang problems we do today.


Well, no. Most people have played Monopoly, and realize it doesn't create Bernie Madoffs. (Alas, it doesn't even create millionaires that often.) Most people have played Cops and Robbers, and the people who played robbers didn't go on to commit real robberies. People have experience with these activities, so the fact that they don't know how to critically evaluate statements about them doesn't matter. They compare any claims about Monopoly and Cops and Robbers against their own experience, and arrive at a sound judgment.


But the habit of not thinking critically persists, and has effects in areas where people don't have experience -- where critical thinking is most needed. At the time, most people had no idea what happened in a Dungeons and Dragons game, so a few cherry picked tidbits were enough to raise alarms. Harry Potter's School of Witchcraft has failed, except among a small crowd of True Believers, because so many people have read the books and/or seen the movies.

Politics, including the flurry of charges and counter charges, is a little different. Among the politically active, there is enough polarization that people in one camp tend not to mingle with those in the other. The people most abjectly terrified of Tea Partiers have never attended a Tea Party event, and wouldn't go to one on a bet. The people who deprecate Fox News never watch it and have no idea what fraction of its news stories are true or not. All they know is, someone told them Fox News is garbage, and this assessment is taken as Gospel. Conservative politicians operate from evil motives, and so there's no reason to understand why they propose what they do. All that's needed is to find the right label to apply (SIXHIRB -- Sexist - Intolerant - Xenophobic - Homophobic - Islamophobic - Racist - Bigoted) and be on about one's day. Once you affirm that Conservatives Are Evil, there's no need to evaluate any of their proposals. They must be evil too. End of story.


This deprecation -- indeed, denigration -- of others would normally be abhorrent to any American, raised to believe that rank prejudice of this sort is itself evil. However, this is where self-congratulation comes in. People like to believe the best of themselves. They like to believe they're good, intelligent, kind, wise, and decent (GIKWD). And they like to believe whatever beliefs they hold, and whatever policies they advocate, are grounded in this goodness, intelligence, kindness, wisdom, and decency. And in a sufficiently closed community ("a bubble"), it's easy to go through a day, week, month, or year never encountering anyone who will disabuse them of these notions. We're all GIKWD, and we all agree on the big issues.


From this it's a small step to believing anyone who doesn't agree on some big issue must be wrong. Since everyone in the good, wise, intelligent group all believes one way, the disagreeing party can't be right. He can't even be having an honest difference of opinion. His failure to agree must be due to a lack of GIKWD. Because we have those traits, and he disagrees with us. We congratulate ourselves and attribute to ourselves good traits and motives, at the expense of attributing the opposite to any who differ.


Once you start down that path, it's very easy to reduce opponents to labels (SIXHIRB). Add labels like "stupid" and "mind-numbed robots". Conservatives are stupid, otherwise they'd see the wisdom in every liberal proposal and they wouldn't be conservatives any more. Because they're stupid, when you show them a target on a map, they can't tell the difference between targeting someone for defeat in an election and targeting someone with a rifle. And since they're all mind-numbed robots (otherwise they'd turn off Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and think for themselves), they will interpret a target on a map as instructions from The Party and execute them. (Though I have to wonder -- given the number of people who supported Palin, saw that map, and listen to Fox News, why did this evil and cunning plan only recruit one individual? There should have been a crowd of people with guns, ready to do the Party's dirty work. Someone's definitely screwed up at Illuminati Headquarters.) But let's not let facts or logic get in the way. Conservatives are stupid and easily led. That's why we have to worry about them being set off by anything that might imply, even in the slightest degree, a call to violence.

Liberals, on the other hand, are GIKWD. Because they're wise and intelligent, Senator Obama can quote from The Untouchables ("They bring a knife, we bring a gun. They send one of ours to the hospital, we send one of theirs to the morgue") without thinking they're being told to kill the opposition. And because they're Good and Kind, they wouldn't do that anyway. Their thinking goes, we're GIKWD and we can be trusted with similes, metaphors, and figures of speech. They're SIXHIRB, and anything that looks the least bit provocative, even if you have to translate it through seven languages to find the provocation, will send hordes of conservatives shambling off to wreak havoc.


Well, with all due respect -- and to some, that's not a whole lot -- I reject that.

I understand the impulse to find someone to blame for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. May I offer this suggestion?

Blame the asshole who pulled the trigger and punish him. Don't draw tenuous chains of cause and effect that you'd never accept in any other circumstance.


And above all, don't use this as an excuse to call for violence against conservatives, however noble and flowery the words in which you dress up that call.

Questions to Ask Progressives

Question Insanity: What to Ask Progressives

Dear Americans, these are some questions I have collected in 16 years of living in your country. Please see if you can answer them for me:

• If all cultures are equal, why doesn’t UNESCO organize International Cannibalism Week festivals?
• Why do those demanding “equal pay for equal work” never protest against “equal pay for little or no work”?
• Why has no politician ever run on men’s issues or promised to improve the lives of males?
• If all beliefs are equally valid, how come my belief in the absurdity of this maxim gets rejected by its proponents?
• Ever noticed that for the past thirty years, we’ve been hearing we have less than ten years to save the planet?
• Once a politician labels the truth as hate speech, can anyone trust him to speak the truth afterward?
• If a politician gets elected by the poor on a promise to eliminate poverty, wouldn’t fulfilling his promise destroy his voting base? Wouldn’t he rather benefit from the growing numbers of poor people? Isn’t this an obvious conflict of interests?
• How did the “war on poverty” end? Has there been a peace treaty or a ceasefire? Who is the occupying force and who are the insurgents?
• Why weren’t there demonstrations with anti-feudal slogans under feudal rule? And under Stalin, no anti-communist demonstrations? And under Hitler, no anti-fascist demonstrations? In a free capitalist society, anti-capitalist demonstrations are commonplace. Is capitalism really the worst system?
• If capitalism makes some people rich without making others poor, who will benefit when capitalism is destroyed?
• If the poor in America have things that people in other countries can only dream about, why is there a movement to make America more like those other countries?
• Why, on the rare occasions when Obama’s actions benefit America, does his base get angry? And every time his actions are hurting this nation, his base is happy? Who exactly are these people?
• If cutting out the middleman lowers the price, why are we paying the government to stand between us and the markets?
• If racial profiling is an abomination, what do you make of the last presidential election?

Liberal-Progressive Hate Speech and Death Threats List (Vanity)

Liberal-Progressive Hate Speech and Death Threats List (Vanity)

Michelle Malkin » Horror: Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot at Tuscon event, 4 5 dead; Update: Reports that Giffords still alive, in surgery; President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Palin react

Michelle Malkin » Horror: Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords shot at Tuscon event, 4 5 dead; Update: Reports that Giffords still alive, in surgery; President Obama, Speaker Boehner, Palin react

How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory | World news | The Guardian

How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory | World news | The Guardian
Not provably a WMD cache, but lots of high explosives seem to have gone missing from the site.

Maynard’s Guide to Global Warming

Maynard’s Guide to Global Warming
The problem is, the planet's climate is so complicated, you need a computer model to tell what's going to happen when you change a parameter.

The reasonable question you’ll ask is: How will we know the computer model is correct? Everybody’s building models. They’re all imperfect. How do we test a computer model?

The answer is logical. We test a computer model by feeding it old data, and evaluating its ability to “predict” events that have already happened. For example, we evaluate the data for 2005 to “predict” the climate for 2006. Then evaluate the data from 2006 and get a “prediction” for 2007. The valid model will prove itself by perfectly “predicting” the past. This will be rigorously tested and verified by the academic institutions of the world.

The model that can correctly “predict” the past can be expected to do well in predicting the future.

And the $64 question: How do the models do when tested this way?

Philosophy of science: a philosopher writes

A philosophy professor responds to an attack on the notion of "philosophy of science". Attacks on philosophy by scientists | Whewell's Ghost

I know, I think, why some people seem to think that all that matters is science. I too think science is pretty damned important. But once you stop knowing about things, and start arguing about things you cannot know by science, you are doing philosophy, and so it is a little, dare I say, hypocritical, to argue, philosophically, that philosophy is crap. Not to mention self-contradictory.
Scientists sometimes think that any attempt to be philosophical about science is otiose. Feynman once remarked, although I can’t find the reference, that philosophy of science is about as useful to science as ornithology is to birds. This might very well be true (although in times when the birds are under threat, ornithology can be of very great benefit indeed), but the value of a study is not the things one can sell from it. It is surely true that philosophers like Popper and Hempel and Carnap tried to constrain and prescribe science, and that project failed. But the philosophy of science is about understanding how science is done when it works. Surely that’s not for nothing.
....
Recently, Mark Perakh, a physicist, posted on Panda’s Thumb another attack upon Michael Ruse, the philosopher and historian of science, because Ruse asked this question:
If “God exists” is a religious claim (and it surely is), why then is “God does not exist” not a religious claim? And if Creationism implies God exists and cannot therefore be taught, why then should science which implies God does not exist be taught?
In the context of the US Constitution and legal precedent, this is a sensible question to ask. It doesn’t make much sense outside that sort of context, because in most other educational jurisdictions, what gets taught is decided by educators, not the courts, and, for example, in mine (Australia) religion is regarded as something that should only be taught comparatively or in religious education classes that are voluntary (and even those are hardly widely accepted). So is Ruse leading up to some horrible accommodationist error? No, he merely asks that question. Taking a view he calls “independence” – that science and religious claims are independent of each other – he says
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want science removed from schools. I want an answer to my question, one which comes up because of the dictates of the Constitution. The independence position does not raise this issue, because it argues that science has no implications either way about religious claims. You cannot argue for the independence position because of that, but it is a point in its favor.
Now I think that science, being a human activity that engages many of the same questions traditionally approached through theology, yes, and philosophy, is not entirely independent of religious questions. I have said many times that if a religion makes contrary-to-fact claims, so much the worse for that religion. So I do not agree with Ruse’s position here. But I cannot think that he is merely being stupid or just the sort of entertainment one might get from watching a demented drunk dance, which is the tenor of Perakh’s comment.