Arizona Shooting Spree, Congresswoman, judge, among victims...

I think you are correct Watcher.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

@Joepistole

Joe don't alienate Counterzero in the discourse like that. I don't agree with him on everything either as he would readily admit. He's not a Republican wacko and to tell the truth he's not as partisan as you come across as being. Fight the divisiveness and ENGAGE in dialogue, its the only way. I truly believe that its this divisiveness which corrupts the development of ideas and movements and change that benefits the whole. The common good remember? I mean really no one even from the same fraction will agree on everything but there are some issues that we can all agree with and then there is only the issue of how these issues should be implemented. There are times to fight tooth and nail on an issue but I don't believe this is one of them.

Step back for a moment and look at what you are doing when you blame what is obviously an independent violent act on Tea Party members and Republican fringe pundits. I've listened to them too and I cannot recall even 1 time that they advocated actual violence. Not one.

I disagree with the way you have packaged this tragedy and yet you would have to admit I am not a 'corporate Right will cluck-cluck' nor an 'underground rank and file fascist' that Watcher seems to characterize anyone who disagrees with how you have caged & painted this incident...and yet you post that you agree with him

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Will the Tea Party reissue this with only 19 crosshairs?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

@Joepistole

The answer doesn't lie in retreating into ideological rigidity which is what you despise most in your political opponents.

 

For independent reasons I think political discourse needs to be cleaned up, but I don't think one should be held formally accountable for how one's rhetoric is interpreted by the craziest person who might hear it. Under the standard of "is anyone here too crazy for me to say this" much was the words written by the founders could never be spoken in public. Jefferson's quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," would be too heated for the least sane of us, and teachers would need to think twice before discussing the American resistance in the lead up to the Revolutionary War (they did kill and injure government officials there, and set fire to the governor's home in Massachusetts), if not all war generally.

In a sense, it's no different than the argument "violent video games lead to violence" and that therefore video game developers should be held to account for that. It's probably true that a violent video game could lead a crazy person to violence, but we don't censor speech on that basis.

Even if the intent in discussing violence were not to glorify violence, to discuss it at all my be interpreted by the crazy listener as an endorsement. I'd interpret Palin's rhetoric as hyperbole rather than a call to real violence, but JoeP thinks she meant her words literally.

Right now the rule is tailored to prohibiting only those comments that are likely to lead to imminent harm. That means you can only be prohibited from making crazy statements only if it's likely that someone in the crowd will act on them "now." I think that is the right legal rule.

Outside the law, we are all free to punish politicians and others who make intemperate statements, by not voting for them or by ostracizing them. We don't do that. In fact, it seems like we reward them with celebrity and turn them into political stars which we follow.

Whose to blame them. If we kicked them to the curb, they'd go away, but we, the people, encourage them. Shouldn't we be held to the same standard--to be and held accountable for the fact that we are encouraging this behavior in the same way we want to hold speakers accountable for the behavior they encourage in lone, gun-wielding nutbags?

Toning down the political rhetoric begins with us, as individuals. The fault, so to speak, is not in our (political) stars, but in ourselves. On that score, this thread represents a rather clear misstep since its intent was to paint all Tea Party members as responsible for murders committed by a lone nut.

 

You are understating the division and the problem. As previously pointed out, this was entirely foreseeable. Nancy Pelosi had been warning about it for several months.

This is not just one statement or even a series statements by Tea Partiers that have brought us to this state. It is about an overall climate of rage that people like limbaugh, palin, levin, et al have been profiteering on for some time now.

It is when truth no longer matters in political rhetoric; it is when violence is condoned by words and actions that is how we get to our present state. Tell me, did any Republican/Tea Party leader condem the spitting on Democratic representatives last summer? No, not one. Who on the Republican/Tea Party side has critizized Anne Coulter for calling anyone who disagrees with the radical right tratitors? No one.

What has brought us to this point is more than just a few words spoken by right wing politicos. It is an attitude that they are better than the rest. Only they can intrepret the Constitution correctly; only they know the intent of the Constitution and only they have the solutions to every problem and every issue; that is the problem.


This demonization of those who disagree with you has got to stop. It is sad that six people had to be murdered before this issue gets some notice.

 

And what is the Lefts answer to this then? What are they doing on a grass-roots level to bring 'truth' to the discourse? I mean where the hell are they!

Its not GOOD ENOUGH to simply blame the Limbaugh's for filling a void! There was no alternative movement created outside of the obvious two parties, no other voices, no other answers being offered.

So go figure!

You're not bringing any solutions to the table. You're not even offering anything other than the status quo. So how are you or even your ideas supposed to come across as filling that void? All you are suggesting is silencing the opposition. The pussy way out!!!

 

Just because both parties have connections to the business world, it does not make them evil. Business is a good thing if properly used. Business should not be calling all the shots as it was during the george II years.

 

But its not being properly used as we all now know. There were institutions that didn't need a bail out but law suits, there were people who should be in jail.

Stop pretending that every time I refer to corporatism I am speaking of beneficial capitalist institutions, you are either doing it to distract from corporatism or you simply haven't a clue as to what has been happening in this country vis a vis large corporations and government being bought and complicit. Both parties pandering to interests that disenfranchise the american people is COMPLICITY. And its fraudulent and criminal but I guess you believe that leaving the status quo is the best for the common good.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Why speak of 'change' joe? I mean why? You don't mean it, you're only interested in 'business as usual' and sweeping actual real regulations AND the fraud under the rug, which is absolutely unacceptable.

You claim you agree that there has been impotence on the part of the Left, well I say address you're own limp biscuit. In other words you're an example of that impotence. You don't even hold the members of your own party to their own high standards by criticizing them for their own wrong doing which is lame.

 

LOL, you have a short memory Lucy.

I spelled it out to you not that long ago.

- federally fund campaigns
- better inform voters
- ethics reform on congress (no more revolving doors between K Street and congress).

And just where is this "void"? limbaugh has been pushing his smut for decades. limbaugh and others are selling a bill of goods. You really don't understand marketing. limbaugh and company are creating their own markets...just like a savy marketer would.

And show me one instance where I have advocated silencing the opposition? You cannot, because I have not nor would I ever say or do something like that.

Don't confuse demanding a civil discourse with "silencing" opposition. Reasonable people can reasonably disagree. What I object to is the careful and well financed manipulation of the American people. The solution is to the problem is truth - civil and reasoned discourse.

 

It was entirely foreseeable that when Grand Theft Auto came out, that it would spark some nut to commit real-world violence, and it did.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/04/60minutes/main678261.shtml

Do I blame the game? No, I blame the crazy criminal.

Many people have been clamoring over the dangers of bad messages in music, literature and video games for a long time, and we don't listen to those people. They then adjusted their message to say that the bad messages influence those with borderline personalities. The charge is very likely true, but we still don't listen to those people.

But your belief that they as good as pulled the trigger themselves has some issues. First, nothing I have seen has suggested this guy was all that conservative. The only evidence I'd seen suggests he may be a radical leftist. Second, your rage against the right seems at least as overwrought as their rage against the left. If someone shoots Limbaugh, should his family blame you?

And I'm happy to say that I don't like the tone of politics. I went to the Jon Stewart rally. Not liking their tone is a great deal different than holding them responsible for the actions of a lone gunman who may (or MAY NOT) have been influenced by them.

I have to agree with countzero and think that the very quick reaction to blame the Tea Parties for this shooting is based on a hope and a desire that this shooter be linked to them. It's that you actually want his actions to have been based on his political views (if they are right wing). If it is shown that he's a left wing radical, my guess is that you would be less willing to connect the dots. (And, at the same time, some on the right will be thrilled and mentally high-fiving at the opportunity to link him to the left, just as you're doing when you link him to the right.)

Everyone wants to be both righteous and oppressed. It's fun. But this effort to link him to the right wing is premature linkage, and, as every guy knows, everything that is premature is bad. Here, though, even if you can link him to the right, the left was also overwrought during the Bush years (I myself was frequently overwrought during those years), and proving a link doesn't make your political positions any more correct, or theirs less correct.

Because no one on the left is intemperate? Did you read the thoughts of the left on the Glenn Beck rally? I was expecting that rally to be a spectacular political clusterfuck, and I found it to be reasonable and measured...how did the left interpret it?

Thanks Mr. Kunstler!

I agree. We would be better off as a nation is we could stop the demonization. I think that is true whether it be calling left-wing advocates "traitors" or asserting that the Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin are responsible for six murders in Arizona.

I think Kunstler poses a question, the import of which we would both agree:

The problem is that from my perspective, Kunstler and you seem to have joined the "vicious morons" (though I disagree that the word "moron" is apt) just as much as Coulter and Palin have. It's just that it's hard to see one's own bias.

 

No Joe you have the ideas but you have no way of forcing your own party into implementing them. Name one mainstream Democratic leader who stands on a platform of federally funded campaigns?

I understand marketing very well and obviously so do the Republican fringe, its the liberal democrats who after Obama failed to understand marketing. I say that because Obama's campaign was a marketeer's wet dream, they sold a bag of goods all right! When Obama pissed off many of his own constituents who are as equally concerned with the corporatization of the US government as the 'others' there was nothing to fill that fiscal discourse. We saw it during the health care debate, as fringe groups galvanized at town meetings and stomped and raved Democrats simply sat tight and didn't get out there and help make sense of what the bill was trying to do. There was no grass-roots opposition Joe which is where real politics begin and gain ground.

You're are advocating silencing them right now by attempting to link murder with the Tea party movement and various political pundits who through their own vitriol never go so far as to suggest shooting political oppositions. You're doing what they did when they submitted to hyperbole and suggested Obama was a 'socialist' etc etc.

You fell short of demanding a 'civil discourse' when you decided that there was a DIRECT link between the shooter and certain parties without a shred of evidence.

Here's a clue for you, the Democrats as we have seen with Obama is just as good as manipulating the american people with their psuedo-liberalism and campaign lies. Clean up your own house before you come out with guns blazing.

 

Horsepucky

Apparently the circles on the map were used as a simple means of telling you where to click your mouse to pull up info on the person that the tea-partiers were against. The cross hairs were because the circles overlapped, so you had to be precise with your mouse click.

It was most likely done by a computer geek somewhere, there was never any intention, nor suggestion that violence was in order.

Same with a fund-raiser that offers people a chance to shoot an M-16 (which if you have never done it, is pretty cool), again no suggestion of violence towards the other candidate (you know, like shooting at her likeness instead of a normal target).

If any candidate actually advocated violence in any sort torwards their opponent than I'd be right there with you, but so far you have shown nothing to suggest that any Republican or Tea partier running for office ever made an overt suggestion that violence was acceptable.

Arthur​

 

And yet again there is no proof that those running for office or anything they have said has had anything to do with this shooting

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

So stop pretending as if that is the case.

 

LOL, I am sorry lucy but I am not one of those people who run for the guns when they don't get their way.

I have repeatedly told you that if you want real political change in the US there are three things that need to happen. And I have repeatedly laid those things out. If fact it was the first post I made in Sciforums.

My change message has bee consistent. And I think the Democrats offer the best hope of meaningful change. But change in a Democracy is not easy, it takes time. We don't have a dicator who can implement change by clicking his/her fingers. Change is messy and it takes time.

And as I told you before I am not for change just for change sake - beware of jumping out of the fire and into the frying pan.

As for my party, I don't have one. I am an independent. I believe in a strong and vibrant business community. I want a pro economic growth government. What I don't want is a corrupt government that allows business to rip off its citizens by restricting markets (e.g. US healthcare) or by opening up public coffers to raids by special interests (Medicare Prescription Drug Program 2003).

 

The biggest irony is that this thread, begun with juvenile hyperbole designed to provoke nastiness, has devolved into exactly the kind of vitriol Joe claims he abhors and claims he wants removed from the American political dialogue. That he is incapable of seeing this tells you everything you need to know about him and what he finds acceptable in the pursuit of his politics -- obvious politics, too.

To add to this, we're just being insulted. Joe claims to be independent and wants us to approach him as such, and yet this is the person whose other recent thread is titled "Republicans up to their old tricks again!" Yes, that smacks of independence all right. Seriously people. Leave him be. He's not worth it.

 

Fact based discussion is not "juvenile hyperbole". It is only "juvenile hyperbole" for those such as your self who want to defend the actions of the radical right at any and all cost.

There is no excuse for the deplorable state of American political discourse. One has to wonder how long the nation can endure this dangerous nonsense. At what point will those on the left start buying guns and ammunition as many of those on the right have already done.

Why is it that some vocal right wing advocates in this forum refuse to say that they will not forment violence to achieve their political goals? And why is it all of these Tea Partiers including Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle talking about the 2nd Amendment solution if they lost at the ballot box?