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MRC-TV: Bozell to Appear on ‘Hannity’, ‘Fox & Friends,’ C-SPAN to Discuss Media Bias Following Rep. Giffords’ Shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell will appear on tonight's "Hannity" as well as tomorrow morning's "Fox & Friends" and C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

All three appearances will focus on the media's biased coverage in the wake of Saturday's assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona).

Tonight's "Media Mash" segment on "Hannity" should air around 9:30 p.m. EST. Bozell's live interview on "Fox & Friends" should commence live around 8:15 a.m. EST tomorrow morning.

Just after the "Fox & Friends" appearance, Bozell will sit down at C-SPAN's Washington Studio for the January 14 edition of "Washington Journal," a call-in interview program. That appearance is scheduled at 8:30 a.m. EST.

For an archive of NewsBusters coverage of bias following the Giffords shooting, click here.


NewsBusters.org – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

MRC-TV: Bozell to Appear on ‘Hannity’, ‘Fox & Friends,’ C-SPAN to Discuss Media Bias Following Rep. Giffords’ Shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

0

NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell will appear on tonight's "Hannity" as well as tomorrow morning's "Fox & Friends" and C-SPAN's Washington Journal.

All three appearances will focus on the media's biased coverage in the wake of Saturday's assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona).

Tonight's "Media Mash" segment on "Hannity" should air around 9:30 p.m. EST. Bozell's live interview on "Fox & Friends" should commence live around 8:15 a.m. EST tomorrow morning.

Just after the "Fox & Friends" appearance, Bozell will sit down at C-SPAN's Washington Studio for the January 14 edition of "Washington Journal," a call-in interview program. That appearance is scheduled at 8:30 a.m. EST.

For an archive of NewsBusters coverage of bias following the Giffords shooting, click here.


NewsBusters.org – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

The Tucson, Arizona Shooting 2011: The Interaction of Mental Health Problems and the Language of the Gun

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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David Brooks and some of the letter writers capture the reaction to this tragic incident well with their sentiment that “the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.” Looking ahead and more calmly, it will be important to think about several dimensions of the tragedy, including first the provision of mental health care post-deinstitutionalization, second the regulation of dangerous weapons, third the nature of political discourse and political resistance, and fourth our intense culture and love of guns in this country. These factors interact, and it is important to understand how, exactly. Mental health problems interact with our culture of guns in such a way as to produce these exceptional killings. In the Southwest, in a city like Tucson, there is what I would call a “language of the gun” that has become the very way in which many individuals express themselves, their identities, their desires, their difficulties, and their emotions, including rage. It is, in my opinion, unlikely that we will be able to properly address the issues of mental health provision or regulate guns more effectively unless and until we come to grips with the lust for guns that permeates so much of our culture.

A few years ago in Tucson, I interviewed a number of young men and boys at the Catalina Mountain School, a juvenile correctional facility and, more than anything, I was deeply struck by their fascination with guns, their attraction to firearms, their lust for the weapons. The interviews revealed rich sensual, moral and political, and economic dimensions of guns and gun carrying among these youths. I came away from the experience convinced that it will be impossible to deal with the problems of handgun possession or to impose effective gun control measures unless we get a handle, first, on the deeply seductive and complex nature of guns. We need to focus on the interactions. Just as different factors may interact in China to produce the recent rash of knife killings in elementary schools, it’s crucial to explore in this country how mental health issues relate to guns.

In Tucson, I began all the interviews with a display of the three pictures of guns that I had taken out of a magazine, the American Handgunner — a 9 millimeter, a .45 semi-automatic, and a Colt .45 revolver—and asked a free associational prompt. A very few of the youths expressed visceral opposition to the guns (some preferred knives), but the vast majority were filled with lust at the very sight. The very image of the handguns inspired a deep sense of awe and desire. They would fixate on the photos and, with expressions of slight laughter or giggling or quiet moaning, would manifest a kind of yearning for the guns. Many of the youths wanted to go shoot the guns, or touch them, or smell them. “They’re cool. I want to play with them. I want to go out and shoot them.” “Guns are nice. They just, I don’t know, I just, I just like guns a lot.” “I would like to have one of these. . . . I always want, I always like, I always like guns. . . . Yeah, I always like to have one.” “I want to go shoot them. I want to see how they handle.” “They look tight. They look nice.” “They’re nice looking guns.” “I kind of like how they look. I just want to go shoot them.” “Those are some tight guns. I like them. I like the way they look.” “I love guns. Hell yeah, I love guns. [I love] everything about a gun.” “Those are some pretty tight guns.” “I think they’re cool. I like them. They’re nice. Someday I want a gun collection.” “(Smiling) It’s just tight right there. . . I like it. . . . It’s just tight like the way it looks. The way you can shoot. Those can shoot like ten rounds, huh? But they get jammed a lot. I had one.” “I’d say they look pretty tight. . . . They look cool.” As a 17-year-old explained, “Everybody likes guns these days, dude. Hell yea. They’re exciting. I mean what the hell. You feel powerful when you have a gun. You get respect.”

It is difficult to express in words the richness of emotions that the pictures evoked in these youths. The fact is, these (images of) guns were deeply seductive objects of desire. They held a surprisingly powerful and passionate grip over many youths. At the same time, carrying a gun had a strong moral dimension to many youths. Most of the youths I interviewed associated guns with a form of aggressive, pre-emptive self protection, and many of them felt self-righteous about the need for self-protection. In other cases, youths invoked notions of “enemies” and conceptions of warfare. Youth gun carrying also had an economic dimension to it. For many youths, handguns had important exchange value. They represented a commodity to be traded or sold for cash or drugs or sexual favors.

All in all, the interviews revealed a rich set of experiences with guns. The vast majority of the Catalina youths, twenty-six or 87 percent of them, had possessed guns at some point in their lives. And the firearms they carried were often high-caliber semi-automatic pistols. The nine millimeter was, in the words of a 17-year-old Tucson youth, “the size of the moment.” “It’s just going to be more powerful,” a 14-year-old student impatiently explains, “and it’s kind of just gonna go pretty much right through you.” Or, as a 17-year-old gang member states, semi-automatics “look nicer,” they’re better “if you want to let off quick rounds,” and “they’ll just put a hole in somebody’s ass.”

I came away from the experience in Tucson thinking that it is absolutely crucial to explore the different appeal and seduction of guns, and their relationships to issues like mental health, wealth distribution, and family ties. I have the same feeling when I read about the accused shooter, Jared Loughner, and his relationship to guns. I’m left thinking that we need to better understand this culture and language of the gun if we are to make any headway in making guns less dangerous and helping to avoid future tragedies like the one in Tucson.

Balkinization

Video: Charity fires director for Facebook comments on Tucson shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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2000 clothed kids don’t outweigh a couple of Facebook posts?


Er, really?  Glen Busch and his wife have clothed more than 2,000 poor children since starting the Chicago chapter of Coats for Kids in 2005.  That seems like a success story, but apparently a couple of Facebook postings asking people to stop leaping to conclusions over the Tucson shootings outweigh the years of good work […]

View the video »

Hot Air » Top Picks

Video: Charity fires director for Facebook comments on Tucson shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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2000 clothed kids don’t outweigh a couple of Facebook posts?


Er, really?  Glen Busch and his wife have clothed more than 2,000 poor children since starting the Chicago chapter of Coats for Kids in 2005.  That seems like a success story, but apparently a couple of Facebook postings asking people to stop leaping to conclusions over the Tucson shootings outweigh the years of good work […]

View the video »

Hot Air » Top Picks

The Arizona Shooting, Anti-Semitism, Radical Islam, and Political Correctness

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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This piece on the Arizona shootings and radical Islam caught my eye.  The media’s look at the Arizona shootings has been long on linking the shooter to talk radio (non-existent), conservatives (nada), and Sarah Palin (nope).  But is the media ignoring the issue of Jared Loughner and anti-semitism?  And does it mimic the way the media looks (or fail to look) at radical Islam?  Worth thinking about.  From the Jerusalem Post:

“Mainline American sources and government officials are avoiding, or treating in the most circumspect manner the issue of anti-Semitism. Police and prosecutors are staying away from the description of this as a hate crime. The New York Times website has a prominent article headlined ‘Federal Charges Cite Assassination Plan,’ which is squeaky clean of reference to ethnicity or religion.

National Public Radio’s web site reported about an FBI official who was asked about possible motives after the shooter was arraigned. The response: ‘It’s a bit too early to speculate.’

This resembles the efforts of ranking politicians to do everything they can to absolve Islam from any responsibility for terror. The distance from ethnic profiling in airports and other sensitive places insisted upon by officials concerned about security in the context of what is politically correct.

All this is understandable in the case of a society that has been multi-ethnic since its founding, and has invested the most recent half-century working to cleanse racism from its culture.

There are costs. The awkward avoiding of realities means that lots of us old folks with European faces have to go through the same screening as dusky young people with Middle Eastern accents. Those who protest efforts to boycott Israeli products or personnel do what they can to avoid accusing their opponents of anti-Semitism – and Mein Kampf is just another item on a reading list.”

Big Peace

Fire Krugman, Olbermann Now For Blood Libel Against Palin, Americans, In AZ Shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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You can’t retract hate. You can’t retract idiocy. You can’t retract bigotry. You can’t retract irresponsible claims masquerading as journalism. It’s time to fire Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, and New York Times’ Editor-in-Chief Bill Keller for printing and broadcasting blood libelous statements intended to directly link Sarah Palin, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the Tea Party movement, and conservatives in general to the Arizona massacre on Saturday.

These phony journalists and commentators should be fired for unethical media practices, for libel, for slander, and for perpetuating the culture of hate and bigotry they falsely claim to be so passionately against.

Not even a day after the tragedy, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote an editorial called, “A Climate of Hate,” and he did so without any facts. He laced his January 9th editorial diatribe with his wish-filled assumption that Jared Loughner’s insane killing spree was linked to Sarah Palin and conservative, tea party, and talk radio rhetoric.

He says:

I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again.

In his column, Krugman attempted to link the massacre to a “culture of hate” which he claimed was cultivated by the right:

It’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.

Really, Krugman? Only from the right, eh? Are there no liberal activists hanging Sarah Palin effigies?

Or burning effigies of President Bush?

Are there no violent protestors outside the RNC Conventions or at the G-20 Summit? Or hate or bigoted speech against conservatives and Fox from the likes of Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, or legislators like U.S. Senator Dick Durbin who calls tea party supporters extremists and who, this week, linked Sarah Palin to the massacre? Have there been no dead fish sent in the mail or casual threats made against political enemies by Rahm Emanuel? Or Black Panthers holding clubs outside polling booths to threaten people attempting to vote? Is this all not hate-speech? Or actual hate in action?

In Krugman’s mind, progressives are justified in using hate-filled rhetoric against conservatives. What is not justifiable or tolerable to Krugman is a news network like Fox that gives both sides of the story; that allows liberal and conservative commentators to voice their opinions. What is not tolerable is a Sarah Palin or the success of commentators like Limbaugh, O’Reilly or Beck. What is not tolerable are every day people standing up for their rights against government intrusion since complete government intrusion is what progressives like Krugman are for.

Consequently, Krugman also calls out Fox commentators in his feeble attempt to link the network to the massacre:

You won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

Krugman wasn’t alone in his desperate act of journalistic stretch. On the night of the shootings, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann also made irresponsible statements – again without any facts. He, too, made wish-filled assumptions:

It is essential tonight not to demand revenge, but to demand justice; to insist not upon payback against those politicians and commentators who have so irresponsibly brought us to this time of domestic terrorism, but to work to change the minds of them and their supporters, or if those minds tonight are too closed, or if those minds tonight are too unmoved, or if those minds tonight are too triumphant, to make sure by peaceful means that those politicians and commentators and supporters have no further place in our system of government.

Domestic terrorism? Where were the facts, Olbermann? To protect the Islamic jihadists, MSM have branded any attempt to discuss the problem of Islamic extremism, “Islamaphobia.” However, in this instance, Olbermann and the MSM were more than happy to rush to a pre-determined judgment to extract a liberal political gain.

In his rant, Olbermann qualifes that his statement is not bent on “political payback.” However, that is precisely what he wants. He quickly invokes Sarah Palin:

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 – she must be repudiated by the members of her own party.

Time and time again, politicians from both parties have used targets and bulleyes on political maps, including the Daily Kos, which included Giffords on its 2008 “target” map for defeat.  The media hypocrisy is stunning and should be career-ending.

Now, only a few days later, after all the hand-wringing, Krugman, Olbermann and other MSM have journalistic egg on their proverbial faces after they tried to pin a murders of a nine year-old girl, a federal judge, and four other innocent souls on Sarah Palin, Fox News, and other conservative voices.

Krugman was wrong. Olbermann was wrong. The New York Times was wrong. Jared Loughner wasn’t a tea party activist. He wasn’t a conservative. His favorite books were, “The Communist Manifesto” and “Mein Kampf.” A plastic skull may have served as a shrine in his backyard. He wrote bizarre online postings wondering, “What do chocolate chip cookies taste like?” He liked a documentary called, “Zeitgeist,” which promotes conspiracy theories on Christianity and 9/11. Acording to a highschool friend, Loughner disliked the news and didn’t listen to political talk radio.

Clearly, the MSM now has no justification to continue to make bogus charges against Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, or conservatives in general. And Krugman and Olbermann and the rest are in a pickle. This is a potential public relations disaster for the left and they are in the middle of it. Fortunately, they have the MSM to cover-up for them.

It would be media suicide for Krugman and Olbermann to admit they were wrong. Consequently, they have only one choice: continue the lie. They will pretend that the facts are what they publish in their newspapers, what they say on TV, and what they write in their blogs. They will continue the hate speech diatribe against Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and the Tea Party as it relates to the Arizona massacre. Truth is not an obstacle.

It is a common liberal tactic in MSM circles: Perpetuate a lie enough and it then becomes truth. As Saul Alinsky said in“Rules for Radicals,”In war, the end justifies any means.” Even the use of a crisis. Moreover, former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel shed light on what a crisis means to the political left: “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” he said.

They aren’t.

This week, a senior Democrat operative apparently told Politico.com that Obama needs to “deftly pin this on the tea partiers just like the Clinton White house deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

Well, it looks like media like Krugman and Olbermann are doing their best to help them out. In the light of this tragedy, it is unfortunate to have to reduce it now to political terms. It would not be the first time a tragedy was misused by both politicians and the media. As some commentators have correctly pointed out, some members of the media didn’t wait even 24 minutes before trying to exploit, degrade, and distort this true American tragedy for their own gain. They should be worse than ashamed.

They should be fired.


Big Journalism

The Shooting in Tucson: Will America Ever Learn? (Estadao, Brazil)

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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What is it about America and guns? It’s a question people in other countries ask every time there is an outbreak of violence at a school, at a bowling alley or in this case, at a supermarket. This editorial from Brazil’s Estadao tries to put two and two together for Brazilian readers, and ponders America’s violent political history.

The Estadao editorial says in part:

There will always be fanatics or psychopaths everywhere willing to eliminate public figures they abhor. Even more so when the politics of hate poison the national debate and lenient laws for acquiring firearms invite brutality – both notorious facts in the United States.

The emergence of Barack Obama on the nation’s scene, although it filled the majority of the population with hope and pride, provoked a rejection of his authority from a segment of society encouraged by the stridently conservative media, and feelings of disgust emerged that barely disguised their racist roots. The new president’s policies, such as state intervention to save an economy in tatters, and the fulfillment of his promise to send to Congress a comprehensive plan to reform the health care system, have been stigmatized as steps toward the implementation of creeping socialism in the U.S. All with the support of “liberals.”

The Tucson killings pulled the rug from under the feet of Republicans, who last week took over control of the House of Representatives and intended to put to a vote, with little practical effect, the repeal of health care reform. The initiative, the first chance for the movement to put the Obama government in the corner, was suspended. Disconcerted, the Republican leadership ran to deplore the slaughter. Sarah Palin, for her part, hastened to deny that her preaching may have encouraged the armed the criminal. For the umpteenth time, Americans are forced to cope with an outbreak of violence in their political struggles.

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.


The Moderate Voice

CBS Blames Sarah Palin For Injecting ‘Politics and Controversy’ Into Tucson Shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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At the top of Wednesday's CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric lamented: "The President tries to comfort a nation in mourning, but even on a rare day of unity, politics and controversy intervene." A clip was then played of Sarah Palin's Facebook video reaction to the Tucson shooting and media finger-pointing: "Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel."

Later, correspondent Chip Reid reported that in his speech at the memorial service for the victims, "one thing we're told he [President Obama] will not do is get into the political battle that's developed over this tragedy." Reid then added: "a battle that became even more heated today when Sarah Palin joined the fray."

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NewsBusters.org – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

President of Giffords’ Alma Mater Plays Politics With Tucson Shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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Unfortunately, those looking for real leadership on the part of Scripps College in the wake of the horrendous shooting of Gabrielle Giffords SC ‘93 will have to look elsewhere than the statements of its president, Lori Bettison-Varga. President Bettison-Varga uses the tragedy of the Tucson shooting to play politics, rather than seek understanding.

President Bettison-Varga does this by trying to connect the perceived rhetoric of some in our country with the actions of a lone psychotic while conveying a false intimacy by referring to Ms. Giffords by her first name, “Gabrielle.” (She went by “Gabby,” as everyone knows.)

Apparently, President Bettison-Varga didn’t take logic, for if she had, she would know that it is a fallacy to assume a rational motive for a non-rational actor.

Let’s go line by line with her piece in Inside Higher Ed, starting with the four paragraph.

Listen to her own words. In her 2009 commencement address at Scripps, Congresswoman Giffords told our students: “The safety of the world depends on your saying ‘no’ to inhumane ideas. Standing up for one’s own integrity makes you no friends. It is costly. Yet defiance of the mob, in the service of that which is right, is one of the highest expressions of courage I know.” Prescient words.

Ms. Giffords is a public servant. She’s likely given dozens, if not hundreds, of speeches in her time in office, including a public recitation of the First Amendment. Lots of speeches means you can pick and choose what you’ll use.

To say these words are “prescient” is to assume that the words “have or show knowledge of events before they take place.  Those words would be “prescient,” if Giffords was killed by a mob, but she wasn’t. Again, let’s repeat: she was killed by a lone actor, by a mad man. (If we want to play these games of calling language prescient, we could say that Giffords language could be considered “prescient” when she bucked the Democratic “mob” — by voting against Nancy Pelosi for the speakership and displaying a kind of political courage all too rare in Washington.)

Let’s continue with the Bettison-Varga piece:

Public service, in all forms, is courageous. Respectful disagreement — the ability to hear another’s viewpoint despite your own, without hate and distortion — has been lost in the current political climate.

And “respectful disagreement” has also been lost at Scripps College where Ms. Giffords was a student and where I have taken classes in my status as a student at Claremont McKenna College, right across the street. (Together, Scripps and Claremont McKenna are a part of the Claremont College consortium.)

As a professor at Scripps, President Bettison-Varga said nothing of the contemptuous manner in which feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali was treated on Scripps’s campus, nor did she say anything as president when Newt Gingrich was asked disrespectful questions by Scripps students. She said nothing when a Scripps dean of students accused the entire Claremont McKenna class of 2010 of being racist and sexist for a flyer that showed a white guy dancing with two black women. Finally, she said nothing when Scripps student government official Rachael Ballard SC ‘11 attacked white and Asian students for having the temerity to attend a Kwanzaa event on campus, even though such language is “hate speech” by the college’s admittedly over broad definition.

Gabrielle Giffords believes in her calling to enact change through the political process in an open, honest, and authentic manner, without harsh criticism or inflammatory rhetoric.

But you see, dear reader, only certain kinds of “change” is acceptable. Scripps College criminalizes some thought it finds unacceptable. It even attacks “stupid drunks” for daring to draw on white boards and was called out by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education repeatedly.

Bettison-Varga continues:

Gabrielle deeply appreciated her liberal arts education: the exposure to different ideas, different ways of thinking. In her words: “What Scripps forced you to grapple with was a peeling back of the human onion in order to discover the supreme value of the soul and how crucial it is to maintain personal integrity and honesty.” She believes in free exchange of ideas, understanding difference, and taking a stand based on rational and critical reasoning. As Martha Kantor said to the Annapolis Group in 2010, “A liberal arts education teaches us [that] empathy is hard-learned, but demagoguery is easy.”

But some demagoguery is OK, apparently, especially when Scripps administrators police what students drunkenly write on their white boards.

Bettison-Varga helpfully lectures us on what we can learn from the tragedy.

What can we take away from this tragedy? We have a responsibility to the victims and their families to learn from this event. A senseless act must be turned into an opportunity for this country to unify, to learn from Gabrielle Giffords about the power of constructive and collaborative dialogue. To embrace human dignity, to resist the temptation to point fingers and blame, but to change the discourse for the betterment of our future. We are, after all, a democracy — a democracy that requires an empathetic and knowledgeable citizenship and respects the right to disagree.

President Bettison-Varga would presume to tell us what is “constructive” and “collaborative” dialogue and presumably to limit that which is not. As someone who has lived under the spectre of speech codes for nearly four years, despite their illegality in California even at private colleges, please don’t let college presidents like Lori Bettison-Varga — or one-time college professors, like President Obama — set the parameters for what is acceptable speech.

We should prefer incivility to silence induced by fear. We should follow the example of John Green, who must burry his 9-year old daughter, who nevertheless understands that it, “in a free society we’re going to be subject to people like [Loughner]; I prefer this to the alternative.”

That’s a hard lesson to take, but it’s one that needs to be taught at Scripps College, in Tucson, and everywhere else.


Big Government

President of Giffords’ Alma Mater Plays Politics With Tucson Shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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Unfortunately, those looking for real leadership on the part of Scripps College in the wake of the horrendous shooting of Gabrielle Giffords SC ‘93 will have to look elsewhere than the statements of its president, Lori Bettison-Varga. President Bettison-Varga uses the tragedy of the Tucson shooting to play politics, rather than seek understanding.

President Bettison-Varga does this by trying to connect the perceived rhetoric of some in our country with the actions of a lone psychotic while conveying a false intimacy by referring to Ms. Giffords by her first name, “Gabrielle.” (She went by “Gabby,” as everyone knows.)

Apparently, President Bettison-Varga didn’t take logic, for if she had, she would know that it is a fallacy to assume a rational motive for a non-rational actor.

Let’s go line by line with her piece in Inside Higher Ed, starting with the four paragraph.

Listen to her own words. In her 2009 commencement address at Scripps, Congresswoman Giffords told our students: “The safety of the world depends on your saying ‘no’ to inhumane ideas. Standing up for one’s own integrity makes you no friends. It is costly. Yet defiance of the mob, in the service of that which is right, is one of the highest expressions of courage I know.” Prescient words.

Ms. Giffords is a public servant. She’s likely given dozens, if not hundreds, of speeches in her time in office, including a public recitation of the First Amendment. Lots of speeches means you can pick and choose what you’ll use.

To say these words are “prescient” is to assume that the words “have or show knowledge of events before they take place.  Those words would be “prescient,” if Giffords was killed by a mob, but she wasn’t. Again, let’s repeat: she was killed by a lone actor, by a mad man. (If we want to play these games of calling language prescient, we could say that Giffords language could be considered “prescient” when she bucked the Democratic “mob” — by voting against Nancy Pelosi for the speakership and displaying a kind of political courage all too rare in Washington.)

Let’s continue with the Bettison-Varga piece:

Public service, in all forms, is courageous. Respectful disagreement — the ability to hear another’s viewpoint despite your own, without hate and distortion — has been lost in the current political climate.

And “respectful disagreement” has also been lost at Scripps College where Ms. Giffords was a student and where I have taken classes in my status as a student at Claremont McKenna College, right across the street. (Together, Scripps and Claremont McKenna are a part of the Claremont College consortium.)

As a professor at Scripps, President Bettison-Varga said nothing of the contemptuous manner in which feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali was treated on Scripps’s campus, nor did she say anything as president when Newt Gingrich was asked disrespectful questions by Scripps students. She said nothing when a Scripps dean of students accused the entire Claremont McKenna class of 2010 of being racist and sexist for a flyer that showed a white guy dancing with two black women. Finally, she said nothing when Scripps student government official Rachael Ballard SC ‘11 attacked white and Asian students for having the temerity to attend a Kwanzaa event on campus, even though such language is “hate speech” by the college’s admittedly over broad definition.

Gabrielle Giffords believes in her calling to enact change through the political process in an open, honest, and authentic manner, without harsh criticism or inflammatory rhetoric.

But you see, dear reader, only certain kinds of “change” is acceptable. Scripps College criminalizes some thought it finds unacceptable. It even attacks “stupid drunks” for daring to draw on white boards and was called out by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education repeatedly.

Bettison-Varga continues:

Gabrielle deeply appreciated her liberal arts education: the exposure to different ideas, different ways of thinking. In her words: “What Scripps forced you to grapple with was a peeling back of the human onion in order to discover the supreme value of the soul and how crucial it is to maintain personal integrity and honesty.” She believes in free exchange of ideas, understanding difference, and taking a stand based on rational and critical reasoning. As Martha Kantor said to the Annapolis Group in 2010, “A liberal arts education teaches us [that] empathy is hard-learned, but demagoguery is easy.”

But some demagoguery is OK, apparently, especially when Scripps administrators police what students drunkenly write on their white boards.

Bettison-Varga helpfully lectures us on what we can learn from the tragedy.

What can we take away from this tragedy? We have a responsibility to the victims and their families to learn from this event. A senseless act must be turned into an opportunity for this country to unify, to learn from Gabrielle Giffords about the power of constructive and collaborative dialogue. To embrace human dignity, to resist the temptation to point fingers and blame, but to change the discourse for the betterment of our future. We are, after all, a democracy — a democracy that requires an empathetic and knowledgeable citizenship and respects the right to disagree.

President Bettison-Varga would presume to tell us what is “constructive” and “collaborative” dialogue and presumably to limit that which is not. As someone who has lived under the spectre of speech codes for nearly four years, despite their illegality in California even at private colleges, please don’t let college presidents like Lori Bettison-Varga — or one-time college professors, like President Obama — set the parameters for what is acceptable speech.

We should prefer incivility to silence induced by fear. We should follow the example of John Green, who must burry his 9-year old daughter, who nevertheless understands that it, “in a free society we’re going to be subject to people like [Loughner]; I prefer this to the alternative.”

That’s a hard lesson to take, but it’s one that needs to be taught at Scripps College, in Tucson, and everywhere else.


Big Government

Poll: Americans Reject Pretty Much Every Media Meme on Tucson Shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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Yet another poll released Thursday by USA Today suggests that the American public has not bought into the media's ridiculous spin on Saturday's Tucson massacre.

According to the poll, conducted by Gallup, a majority of Americans think that attempts to link Saturday's shooting to conservative political rhetoric amount to "An attempt to make conservatives look bad." Only about a third of respondents said it was a "legitimate point."

While self-identified Democrats were predictably more likely to say blaming rhetoric from the right is a legitimate argument, a full third of Democrats agreed that it was just a partisan stunt.

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NewsBusters.org – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

Rasmussen: Most Americans View AZ Shooting as Random Act of Violence, Not Politics

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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From Rasmussen Reports:

Americans have closely followed news stories about the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the killing of six others in Arizona on Saturday, and most don’t feel politics was the cause of it.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 28% of Adults say the shooting in Arizona was the result of political anger in the country. Fifty-eight percent (58%) say instead that it was a random act of violence by an unstable person. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Republicans and 56% of adults not affiliated with either of the major political parties view the shooting as a random act of violence. Even Democrats by a 48% to 37% margin agree, although leading members of their party have attributed the shootings to a climate of anger they say has been generated by opponents of President Obama.

Read more here. On of the hallmarks of civil society in America is our strong tendency to unite in times of tragedy, irrespective of our individual politics. That so many on the left choose division over unity tells us more about them than it does about the American public. Their anger has clearly poisoned something deep inside them. We should keep them in our prayers.


Big Government

Tucson Memorial Service/Pep Rally, President Obama Refutes Far Left & MSM Assertion of Shooting Responsibility … “It was not”

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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Was the shooting caused by toxic political discourse, Obama said, “IT DID NOT” last night …

Presidents Obama’s remarks at last nights memorial service in the wake of the Tucson, AZ shootings were good, hit the mark. During his speech Obama properly addressed the terrible tragedy that left six dead and 14 wounded, including Arizona US Rep Gabby Giffords. President Obama stated in the political portion of his speech that he did not politicize to his credit, “We can do better”.

The speech only works if you mean what you said and walk the walk …

Full text of speech.

President Obama called for a greater civil political discourse in America, if not for ourselves, then for our children and Christina Green, the 9 year old girl who was murdered Saturday at the hands of evil. However, if we are trying to make a world that our children would be proud of, wouldn’t it start by not placing a mountain of debt apon them?

And in Christina…in Christina we see all of our children.  So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic.

So deserving of our love.

And so deserving of our good example.  If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost.  Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.

However, much to to dismay of the far LEFT, the liberal MSM and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, President Barack Obama refuted the inaccurate and purposeful politicization of the LEFT in that the cause of the evil perpetrated by Jared Loughner had nothing to do with politics or civil discourse.

…But at 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.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “when I looked for light, then came darkness.” Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

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.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

Civil political discourse … some one forgot to tell those at the memorial service. During the service there was inappropriate cheering during parts that were far from, well appropriate. There was also booing of AZ Gov. Jan Brewer, that’s appropriate.  The hooting and hollering from the crowd was bizarre.  This was not a pep rally for Barack Obama, it was a memorial service were the dead, a get well for the injured and a thank you for the heroes. At least it was not supposed to be; however, it really did seem like a pep rally, complete with a logan and t-shirts, “Together We Thrive“. How many memorial services are branded with their own slogan?   Michelle Malkin nails the analysis by saying, right speech, too late and strange setting.

 

I will end by saying this for now. Was the speech good, yes. Should President Barack Obama come forth sooner and quell the far LEFT and MSM libelous accusations sooner, yes. Does talk provide leadership, NO. Obviously, the tone and remarks from President Obama and his slap back to the LEFT came from poll numbers that showed that very few thought Jared Loughner’s evil acts were a result of political discourse.  

Leadership is walking the walk, not talking the talk … unless Obama shows leadership in this, all the words mean nothing.

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Scared Monkeys

Giffords opens her eyes for the first time since the shooting

Posted by admin | Posted in The Capitol | Posted on 13-01-2011

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Tuscon, Arizona (CNN) – When President Barack Obama said Wednesday night that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had opened her eyes for the first time since being shot on Saturday, an overflow crowd of nearly 30,000 people at a memorial event erupted into cheers that the congresswoman may have heard in her hospital room.

Obama said he learned of the eye-opening from Giffords’ husband, astronaut Mark Kelly.

“She knows we’re here, and she knows we love her,and she knows that we will be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey,” the president said at a memorial in Tucson to honor the victims of the shooting.

Giffords is still listed in critical condition at the University of Arizona’s University Medical Center. Suspect Jared Loughner allegedly fired at her first, striking her in the head.

As soon as Obama finished his remarks, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, let it be known that she, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, were in the room at the time, along with Kelly and Giffords’ parents.

“It was like witnessing a miracle,” Gillibrand told CNN.

“Debbie and I were telling her how much she was inspiring the nation with her courage, her strength, and we were talking about the things we wanted to do as soon as she was better,” the senator said. “I said, ‘We’ll have another night out for beer and pizza with your husband.’ And Debbie started talking to her about their house in New Hampshire, just talking about all the things we wanted to do, and all of a sudden she started to struggle to open her eyes. “

“So Mark saw that and said, “Open your eyes, Gabby, open your eyes.’ She kept struggling and struggling and Mark just kept encouraging her. And within a
moment she literally opened her eyes.”

“The doctors couldn’t believe it,” Wasserman Schultz said.

“Mark started encouraging her, saying ‘Gabby, give me a thumbs up if you can see, if you can see me, touch my ring, touch my wedding ring.’ She started doing that,” she said. “We just kept talking to her and talking to her about the fun we’ve had with her, and so then she opened her eyes more. She went from opening her eyes really just in slits to opening them nearly fully. It wasn’t very long, and then they closed again. But it was just absolutely – it was the most incredible, aside from my kids, the most incredible experience.”

Giffords kept her eyes open “for a moment,” Gillibrand said – “maybe 30 seconds, maybe 60 seconds.”

“You could see she was focusing and Mark said, ‘Gabby if you can see me, give me the thumbs up,’ and not only did she give the thumbs up, she literally raised her entire hand,” Gillibrand later told CNN.

Doctors sent them out of the room shortly after that, Gillibrand said, because Giffords needed to rest.


CNN Political Ticker

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