After Wednesday’s political pep rally in Arizona, with throngs of enthusiastic fans doing the wave to the strains of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” as their tin god strode up to take the stage, everybody was falling over themselves to praise the Lord their God’s wondrous, all-healing oration as if he had delivered it directly from his home on Mount Olympus. I’ll admit he could’ve done worse…and has. But memorializing the dead after a national tragedy has certainly been done a whole lot better. And I don’t really have to tell you by whom, either.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d planned to speak to you tonight to report on the state of the Union, but the events of earlier today have led me to change those plans. Today is a day for mourning and remembering. Nancy and I are pained to the core by the tragedy of the shuttle Challenger. We know we share this pain with all of the people of our country. This is truly a national loss.

Nineteen years ago, almost to the day, we lost three astronauts in a terrible accident on the ground. But we’ve never lost an astronaut in flight. We’ve never had a tragedy like this.

For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we’re thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, “Give me a challenge, and I’ll meet it with joy.” They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths. They wished to serve, and they did. They served all of us.

And perhaps we’ve forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle. But they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly. We mourn seven heroes: Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe.

We mourn their loss as a nation together.

We’ve grown used to wonders in this century. It’s hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun. We’re still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

We’ve grown used to wonders in this century. It’s hard to dazzle us. But for twenty-five years the United States space program has been doing just that. We’ve grown used to the idea of space, and, perhaps we forget that we’ve only just begun. We’re still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers.

And I want to say something to the schoolchildren of America who were watching the live coverage of the shuttle’s take-off. I know it’s hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It’s all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons. The future doesn’t belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave. The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.

I’ve always had great faith in and respect for our space program. And what happened today does nothing to diminish it. We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute.

We’ll continue our quest in space. There will be more shuttle flights and more shuttle crews and, yes, more volunteers, more civilians, more teachers in space. Nothing ends here; our hopes and our journeys continue.

I want to add that I wish I could talk to every man and woman who works for NASA, or who worked on this mission and tell them: “Your dedication and professionalism have moved and impressed us for decades. And we know of your anguish. We share it.”

There’s a coincidence today. On this day three hundred and ninety years ago, the great explorer Sir Francis Drake died aboard ship off the coast of Panama. In his lifetime the great frontiers were the oceans, and a historian later said, “He lived by the sea, died on it, and was buried in it.” Well, today, we can say of the Challenger crew: Their dedication was, like Drake’s, complete.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

Thank you.

Delivered with class, style, honesty, simplicity, and grace — quietly, soberly, without fanfare, from an empty room. No free T-shirts, no obnoxious hooting and cheering from a stadium full of braying jackasses and haters. As Levin said on his show last night, nobody ever had to declare Reagan “Presidential,” or anxiously speculate on whether he would appear to be. He just…WAS. Even those who so virulently hated him and openly wished him dead (ah, for the halcyon days of “civil” political discourse, which never actually existed and never will) never thought to seriously question that, and especially not at the time of this wonderful, note-perfect speech. Video at the link, and it’s well worth watching.

We’ve come a long way, baby. In the wrong direction.

I’m a Capricorn now? I’m gonna need a few cocktails to process this. Which is a very Aquarius sort of thing to say.

And thereby descends from farce to… I can’t even think of a word strong enough to describe how low they’ve sunk.

And then we have to sue the bastards to put a stop to it.

Okay, one more post, then you can go back to reading Ace’s good stuff. Did you ever think you’d hear something like this from (GASP) Ann Coulter?

It’s not that both sides did something wrong; neither side did anything wrong. The drama queens need to settle down.

Heh. Something else for the Left to shriek about: Coulter as the soothing voice of reason, calming the roiled seas of acrimonious debate. Worry not though, folks, it’s only a momentary lapse:

The winner of the most cretinous statement of 2011 — and the list is now closed, so please hold your submissions — is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, who on Monday night recalled Palin’s statement, “We’re not retreating, we’re reloading,” and said, I quote, “THAT’S not a metaphor.”

Really, Chris? If that’s not a metaphor, who did she shoot?

By blaming a mass killing on figures of speech, liberals sound as crazy as Loughner with his complaints about people’s grammar. Maybe in lieu of dropping all metaphors, liberals should demand we ban metonyms so that tragedies like this will never happen again.

As for Loughner being influenced by tea partiers, Fox News and talk radio — oops, another dead-end. According to all available evidence, Loughner is a liberal.

Every friend of Loughner who has characterized his politics has described him as liberal. Not one called him a conservative.

One friend says Loughner never listened to talk radio or watched the TV news. Throw in “never read books” and you have the dictionary definition of a liberal. Being completely uninformed is precisely how most liberals stay liberal.

Thank goodness she’s back to her normal firebrand self.

The Palin outrage du jour. Yawn.

Because everything Sarah Palin says or does is “controversial,” of course this is controversial too; she used the term “blood libel,” which, it is now alleged, cannot be used, ever, except in reference to the Jewish population which was first slurred by the original “blood libel.” (No word yet from Keith Olbermann on why she can’t say “blood libel” but he can say “Holocaust,” referring to attempts to block the Ground Zero Mosque; but I’m sure he’ll come up with one.)

Geraghty is already refuting this typical, brain-dead ankle-biting by saying the use of the term in other contexts is “more common than you think,” which is wrong in my case, because I already did think it was very common. But his Nexus/Lexus search is more authoritative than my hunches.

This is in fact blood libel, and this is now, officially, the Stupidest Shit I’ve Ever Heard In My Whole Fucking Life.

A big, fat amen to that. Go look and see who the very first disingenuous-screaming-hysteric target (yeah, I said it, fuck you) on Geraghty’s list is. Three guesses who.

I’ll wait.

Know what the most hilarious thing about all this is — aside from super-genius grammarian and all-round lunatic freak Loughner’s repeated malapropism, “conscience” dreaming, when he evidently meant CONSCIOUS dreaming, that is? How nakedly the chickenshit, cowardly poltroons of the Left are revealing what really terrifies them: Sarah fucking Palin.

For all their big-talk puffery about how much they’d just looooove to see her run for president, their smug dismissals of her as a dolt, how ineffectual and clownish she is, they are publicly pissing themselves over literally every word out of her mouth — quaking and weeping in girlish fright at her every utterance. They seem to think that her thoughts, ideas, and speech are so powerful that weaker, more impressionable minds — y’know, like yours and mine — are helpless to resist acting on the violent impulses she’s planting in our psyches.

Here’s another firm rebuttal from notorious right-wing Nazi instrument of mass death Alan Dershowitz, via Dan Foster:

The term “blood libel” has taken on a broad metaphorical meaning in public discourse. Although its historical origins were in theologically based false accusations against the Jews and the Jewish People,its current usage is far broader. I myself have used it to describe false accusations against the State of Israel by the Goldstone Report. There is nothing improper and certainly nothing anti-Semitic in Sarah Palin using the term to characterize what she reasonably believes are false accusations that her words or images may have caused a mentally disturbed individual to kill and maim.

It’s okay, libs; hush your crying, now, little ones. We know you’re afraid. It’s okay to be afraid. Naturally, you want to lash out, any way you can. It’s only human, we understand. Here’s a nice bottle; now, let’s change your dipeys and put you back to bed. We understand.

Believe me, we understand.

THAT didn’t take long update! Some folks were going out of their way the last couple of days to laud the two or three seemingly reasonable liberals who held back from jumping on the “Palin did it” bandwagon; not to insult those folks or break my arm patting myself on the back for knowing better, but I declined to join ‘em. I knew it was only a matter of time.

Had Palin scoured a thesaurus, she could not have come up with a more inflammatory phrase.

As someone who has argued that linking her rhetoric to the hateful violence of Jared Loughner is unfair, I can imagine that the former governor was angry about how liberal detractors dragged her into this story. But after days of silence, she had a chance to speak to the country in a calmer, more inclusive way. She could have said that all of us, including her, needed to avoid excessively harsh or military-style language, without retreating one inch from her strongly held beliefs.

In other words, according to Howlin’ Howie, she should have just gone ahead and admitted that the scurrilous, baseless, nakedly political charges against her were, in essence, correct. Dammit, she could’ve owned up; she could’ve, and should’ve, just admitted that we were right, even though there isn’t, and will never be, the slightest shred of evidence attesting to it. Instead, she chose to defend herself against our blood libel.

The MONSTER.

Head spins update! After this, I ain’t posting anything else today; just go read Ace. The man’s ripping it up over there.

Do you see that next argument taking shape? Taking shape? Having taken shape, I should say, past perfect. Krugman and all the rest of them, having called this as a deranged right-winger (and been proven wrong) simply make their argument more all-encompassing. They’re no longer arguing that right-wing invective can have an unbalancing effect on right-wingers who hear it.

Their new argument is that right-wing invective can have an unbalancing effect on non-right-wingers — left-wingers, even — who don’t hear it.

That’s how insidious this all is. That’s how dangerous this all is. Right wing chatter can now drive left-wingers who don’t even hear it to kill people.

Don’t miss this one, either. I think I’ll go take a nap or do some laundry or something.

AIN’T IT FUNNY…how liberals are always so quick to denounce the idea that things like violent or otherwise degrading films, TV shows, video games, and rap music have any cultural influence at all*, and the very idea that they might is so preposterous that to even give it a moment’s consideration is to mark yourself as an unserious person…

BUT an obscure map posted on a pro-Palin website (a near-carbon copy of one used years ago by the DLC), Tea Party protests against big government, and commentary by Limbaugh, Beck, and others created a call to violence that Loughner — who had hated Giffords since at least ’07, well before the Tea Party movement existed, and when nobody outside of Alaska even knew who Palin was — was incapable of resisting?

AIN’T IT FUNNY…that jumping to conclusions regarding the literally thousands of Muslim terrorist attacks against the infidel is unthinkable, because it might lead to a climate of hate and repression…

BUT…jumping to conclusions that fit The Narrative that those awful Teabaggers are loathsome, violent racists — and that this particular lunatic was influenced by people he shows no sign of having the slightest interest in — and smearing people who demonstrably were not even remotely involved is responsible, reasonable discourse.

AIN’T IT FUNNY…that liberal-media hacks routinely wax apoplectic over things like this:

I wonder how Republicans and their media posse would like it if Democrats started referring to ‘genocidal’ deregulation or the ‘murderous’ repeal of health-care reform. Or if Republican economic policies were likened to the infamous neutron bomb – they kill the workers but leave their jobs intact.

Unfair? No doubt. But no more so than portraying as ‘job-killing’ every regulation, every tax and every dollar of government spending.

BUT…never have anything at all to say — beyond cheering on their heroes as “passionate” or “feisty,” of course — about something as vile as this:

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) warned Americans that “Republicans want you to die quickly” during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night.

AIN’T IT FUNNY…that one of those most directly affected by the murderer — the father of poor little Christina Green — would seem to have more reason than most to call for the kind of restrictions on personal liberty and freedom of speech that liberal-fascists are so despicably using this tragedy to demand…

BUT…this is what he says instead, demonstrating a grace, courage, strength of character, and solid perspective forever alien to the ghouls of the Left:

“In a free society,” he said, “we’re going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.”

AIN’T IT FUNNY…that liberals never miss an opportunity — and, as we’ve lately seen, aren’t above manufacturing one when it doesn’t exist — to piously declaim that America is a uniquely sick, violent, and bloodthirsty nation…

BUT…the reality, a far cry from the diseased perception of the “reality”-based community, is this:

I would like to draw your attention to the sound of a dog not barking: Following the slaughter in Tucson, consider what did not happen: no further violence, no retaliation against Loughner’s family or friends. Indeed, the only sentiments I have heard expressed about Loughner’s family have been those of concern and sympathy. The killer was not torn to pieces at the scene. He will receive a trial, with gold-plated legal representation, and, almost certainly, first-rate psychiatric care.

This in a nation suffering under a climate of simmering, barely controlled violence? Where are the riots?

It is a situation of a different magnitude, but I am reminded of what did not happen in the wake of 9/11. I am reminded of what did not happen in the wake of the Ft. Hood shooting and what did not happen after Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad’s attack on the Army recruiting center in Little Rock.

May I point out: This is not normal, if by normal you mean consistent with the experiences of the greater part of mankind over history. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated — not eons ago, but in 1984, and not in some savage corner of the world, but in civilized, pacifistic India — thousands of Sikhs were lynched in retaliation, a pogrom of unbelievable horror. The French have seen more political violence this month while debating rent control than we will see after an assassination attempt. Consider Theodore Dalrymple’s take on Algeria and Tunisia, and their recent unrest, and what  it bodes for the future of Europe.

I expect I’ll find plenty more to add to this post throughout the day.

*Looks like I spoke too soon; there really is no speech at all the Left is unwilling to censor when they’re in the iron grip of one of their more perfervid momentary dementias, I guess.

Update 1: AIN’T IT FUNNY…that “eliminationist rhetoric” must be stopped, even if it means curtailing speech rights guaranteed by the Constitution…

BUT…you’ll never, ever hear so much as a whisper of condemnation from liberal-fascists for deranged, revolting calls to violence and murder like this one:

Or this one:

Climate of hate!

John had annoyed Presley by making his anti-war feelings known the moment he stepped into the massive lounge and spotted the table lamps — model ­wagons engraved with the message: ‘All the way with LBJ.’ Lennon hated President Lyndon B Johnson for raising the stakes in the Vietnam War.

Presley allied himself with the FBI director Edgar Hoover and ­encouraged him to have Lennon thrown out of the U.S.

‘He should’ve been kicked out long ago,’ Elvis told Tom (Jones) that night. ‘I had a run-in with him myself,’ Tom said. He made some smart remark at a TV studios in England, where we were appearing on the show Thank Your Lucky Stars. I wanted to take him outside and see what sort of hiding his intellect would stand.’

For the first time that night, Elvis smiled. Tom was talking his kind of language.

This kind of charged, incendiary rhetoric — expressing a wish to whip a weedy, arrogant Lefty’s ass for being a putz and a jerk — is dangerous, and simply unacceptable. There are far too many weedy, arrogant Leftards out there who act like putzes and jerks, and whose outlook would be vastly improved by a righteous ass-whipping — so obviously you can’t have people going around quietly brooding over the salutary results that would ensue from such horrible, politically-motivated violence. And everyone knows how Reich-wing Elvis was. Clearly, then, Mark David Chapman was influenced by all this and driven to act, even though there’s no evidence of it whatsoever.

(Via Maetenloch)

I am definitely rethinking my reluctance to hang Loughner, justly or unjustly, around their filthy necks, I can tell you that much.

The Missed Warning Signs
A 2009 study warned that the rise of right-wing extremism could spur violent attacks. But the report was attacked by Republicans, including now-Speaker John Boehner.

Two years before the Tucson massacre, the Department of Homeland Security warned in a report that right-wing extremism was on the rise and could prompt “lone wolves” to launch attacks. But the agency backed away from the report amid intense criticism from Republicans, including future House Speaker John Boehner.

The report, which warned that the crippled economy and the election of the first black president were “unique drivers for right-wing radicalization and recruitment,” described the rise of “lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology [as] the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States,” according to a copy reviewed by The Center for Public Integrity.

Which, as Ace noted, is a left-wing group funded by George Soros, among others, and about as nonpartisan as I am. So, y’know, no axe to grind there or anything; just straight-up, honest analysis, every bit as credible as Newsweek itself, yessireebob.

It just gets worse from there, if you can believe it. They hit all the Left bases with this one. Misleading? Check. Dishonest? Check. Utilizing smears and extreme rhetoric to decry smears and extreme rhetoric (from one side only)? Check. No facts whatsoever cited to make the case for something they just know HAS to be true because…well, it just HAS to? Check.

It’s a Lying Left home run. Circle the bases, douchebags, and tip your cap to the cheering throng, consisting of the small fraction of the nation that isn’t sickened and infuriated by your odious propaganda.

Y’know, it’s almost as if they want to incite a real war in this country, it really is. They’re certainly doing everything they can to stoke our outrage with these baseless smears, that’s for sure. Guess we’ll just have to keep right on whipping their scrawny, pussified asses at the polling places, and go right on ignoring their failed newsragazines and “papers of record” as they circle the bowl on the way to being deservedly flushed out of existence for good.

Go right ahead, idiots. Keep on acting as if you still controlled the flow of information; keep on dishing out that rancid, sour swill for your nearly-vanished audience to lap up like kittens at a bowl of milk — and let the good and decent souls in this country, those few who don’t already know what you are, get a good, long look at the ugliness beneath the mask.

Ace spells it out:

Ponder: Democrats continue insisting it’s unforgivably inciting to call a socialist a socialist, but also insist that it’s okay to continue calling their opponents murderers.

That’s about the size of it, yeah. Telling the simple truth about them has always been as unacceptable to them as daring to oppose them is.

Update! This pretty much says it all: “When a ‘debate’ is really just one side making stuff up and the other side objecting.” That’s pretty much the usual course of events when dealing with Leftists, actually. As Carney says later, “The two sides here are smear, and defense against a smear.” And again, that’s the usual way of things — as in, there are two sides to the debate over any of Obama’s policies: the side that supports whatever he wants to do in any particular case, and racists. The Left can’t argue the merits on most any given issue; their arguments almost always range from either a variation of “you’re evil/stupid/Hitler” or some other ad hominem all the way down to “shut up.”

This is admittedly a more disgusting and noxious instance than most, but it’s by no means any sort of departure from the norm. It’s one reason I think Jay Nordlinger is wrong when he says they’ve won:

Jeff Danziger has drawn another odious cartoon, the kind he has long specialized in: Out of a steaming teapot arises an assassin. Get it? The Tea Party. Cool! That’s the way the likes of Danziger want it to be, and practically need it to be. That’s the way they wish it were — no matter what the reality.

I am speaking of the following attitude: A right-winger, instead of a Communist, should have shot Kennedy. A right-winger, instead of a Palestinian immigrant, should have shot Bobby. A right-winger — a Tea Partier! — instead of a young, untreated schizo, should have shot Giffords and those others. I believe that is the attitude on display in that cartoon, and elsewhere.

To say it once more, the Left has kind of won: because we are having a discussion about the Arizona shooting and Republicanism, the Arizona shooting and Sarah Palin, which is not much different from having a discussion about the Arizona shooting and, oh, I don’t know: the price of eggs in Dakar.

Chances are, the Arizona massacre will hurt the Republican party and the Tea Party, stopping or slowing their momentum. Because the Left, “respectable” and not, has, I believe, succeeded in associating the massacre in the public mind with the “Right.” A “veteran Democratic operative” told Politico that President Obama and his team “need to deftly pin this on the Tea Partiers.” Oh, I’m not sure they have to be so deft about it. The Danziger-Krugman way will probably work just fine.

Well, as worthless as I think polls usually are, that’s not what they’re telling us currently: most people (even a plurality of Democrat Socialists, for God’s sake) aren’t swallowing this slime. Most of us who are paying attention are familiar enough by now with the Left’s spluttering, frothing, fact-free style of argument to recognize it when we see it. And I’d wager that those who aren’t are getting themselves a real education right now. It’s knowledge they can really use, too, and most likely will.

What the Left has done, far from dragging us onto their turf, as Nordlinger says, is to reveal just what kind of turf they’re standing on: they’re shouting epithets and their usual unsupported (and unsupportable) accusations from the squishy, smelly side of a latrine. A mountain of examples of their own hatred and malevolence now stands revealed all over the place, in even easier reach than usual of people who might not ordinarily go out of their way to look for it. I’m with Hayward: the Left is riding across quicksand on a horse that is dying beneath them.

I don’t think the Left appreciates how weird and off-putting they look to moderate voters, as they crawl through the graveyard in search of bones to beat Republicans with. Talk shows have become the impromptu second season of The Walking Dead, with leftist ghouls offering their latest pet theories of why the Tucson dead should be buried on some Republican’s front lawn. Desperate attempts to somehow tie people like Sarah Palin into the shooting have degenerated into vague rambling about how there’s no clear-cut connection, but Palin should apologize for something or other anyway. 

At best, the horde of liberals scurrying around and chittering about the wonderful political opportunities presented by the murders in Tucson sound like repulsive opportunists. At worst, they’re beginning to sound like fascists.  Neither image looks good to anyone outside their hardcore base.

After decades of being scolded, lectured, denounced, insulted, and dismissed out of hand by these cretins — perhaps especially after an electoral crackup this latest lunacy shows they’ve been unable to mentally cope with — does Nordlinger really think most Americans are going to suddenly sit back and think: hey, maybe these Left fanatics are actually right — maybe I DO have blood on my hands? Maybe I AM a racist? Maybe I AM an exploitative monster motivated only by greed and a depraved desire to see the less-fortunate suffer? Maybe I SHOULD be ashamed of myself, and my country?

No. Flat-out, no. Once again, I’m with John:

Strong to overwhelming majorities favor reduced spending, smaller and more accountable government, border security, gun rights, and the repeal of ObamaCare. It’s ridiculous to expect them to hand control of their destiny over to a 22-year-old paranoid with a gun. They’re still in shock and mourning over the Tucson atrocity, but soon they’ll begin responding to that suggestion by telling liberals to go to hell.

In fact, a lot of us already have. I for one have no intention of rethinking my commitment to fighting back (SHRIIEEEK!) against these disgusting swine just because they lacked the decency to resist another opportunity to dance on a pile of corpses in an attempt to stifle any disagreement with them. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m damned good and sure I’m not the only one.

As I said yesterday, the days of their being able to get away with outrageous nonsense like this are well and truly over. Nordlinger missed the boat on this one. The Left saw the Tuscon atrocity as an opportunity for political gain, if they could only stoop low enough, to seize it. In so doing, they presented us with an opportunity of our own: another chance to expose them for what they really are. They can’t afford such exposure; success for them was always possible only to the extent that they could keep the truth concealed.

They’re the ones digging around deep in the muck for ignoble purposes; no matter how they try to sling it about, they’re the ones who’ll end up soiled by it. It’s no more than the just reward for their appalling ghoulishness.

Paraphrased. But that’s about the size of it. Looks like years’ worth of RINO groveling has spoiled them rotten.

Sorry, fellas, but that dog don’t hunt no more.

Update! More paraphrasing: “To summarize George Packer in the New Yorker: “It’s irresponsible to demonize and delegitimize your opponents, like those evil right-wingers do.”

Andrew McCarthy boils it down; it must not be forgotten. Ever.

There is no point debating any of this. Two years ago, we were still being told dissent was the highest form of patriotism; now it’s the root cause of murderous rampage. Modern leftists are tacticians. They’ve convinced themselves of the rightness of their cause, obviating the need to be consistent or faithful to facts in any single episode. For them, it’s all about how the episode can be spun to help the cause. That’s worth understanding, but not debating.

Second, can we forget that Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn’s atrocities transformed them into icons of the modern Left — respected “educators” still passionate about “social justice”? Barack Obama didn’t say, “I’ll have nothing to do with unrepentant terrorists who dedicate books to deranged assassins.” He chose to hold his political coming-out party in their living room and cultivated relationships with them, just as he cultivated a relationship with other hate-mongering radicals.

It is as stupid to claim that rhetoric causes violence as it is to claim that normal people can be entrapped into terrorism. What vitriolic thing would someone need to say to you, whether the vitriol could be cast as right-wing or left-wing, that would get you to pick up a gun and start spraying bullets at people with whom you disagreed, however vigorously, about some political or social issue? It wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen.

If wanton violence has a cause other than mental illness, it is a culture that lionizes the savages. That culture is not the culture of the Tea Partiers so despised by the Left.

Need I say it?

Take a look at yo’self.

Ironically, even as politicians have been scrutinized for overheated rhetoric, it’s the political class that reflected the country’s mood best in the aftermath of this weekend’s senseless shootings. From President Obama’s pitch-perfect speech to the nation, to House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi working together to reassure members and staff, there was little hint of the blame game that fueled much of the media’s coverage.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that overheated political vitriol played virtually no role in Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree. His political thinking is hardly coherent, and his obsession with Giffords predated the tea party and Sarah Palin’s emergence in national politics. One of his few close friends told Mother Jonesthat he became fixated on the congresswoman when he asked her a question at a 2007 town hall about “the government having no meaning” and felt she didn’t answer. His killing spree wasn’t motivated by disagreement with her positions on health care or immigration.

Based on the available evidence, Loughner sounds like someone with untreated mental illness, whose grasp of reality grew ever more tenuous with time. He fits the profile of someone whose horrific shooting spree didn’t have to be triggered by any provocative political rhetoric in the news.

Which, of course, means it’s OBVIOUS that conservatives are to blame. If you don’t believe it, just ask the unnamed idiot JWF flays (SHRIIEEEK!) here.

Oh, and I wouldn’t be too sanguine about Ogabe’s desire or ability to maintain his sense of balance and propriety for much longer. The Great Uniter will have his chance to, umm, act stupidly tomorrow, and I have no doubt he’ll take it.

Media tactic of using the madman Loughner against conservatives by tying him to them, based on nothing at all, to shift to “there’s probably no explanation for his actions” in 3…2…1…

On July 7, 2010, Loughner posted his assertion that the war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan “is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949”…

In a thread on unemployment, Loughner quotes with seeming approval, portions of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserting “the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity” and “the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.”

From reading through page after page of Jared Lee Loughner’s rantings, I see no evidence that he has changed from the left winger that he was in 2007. Indeed, less than six months ago, he was calling the Iraq and Afghan Wars “war crimes” under the Geneva Convention.

Hm. As I’ve said, I’m not particularly interested in hanging this lunatic around anybody’s neck. But it’s becoming more and more clear that to the extent he’s interpretable as anything at all, he’s way more Left than Right. And as has been demonstrated all over the intarwebs the last few days, they’ve gone way further than we ever have in creating the “climate of hate” they moan about when they think there’s advantage to be gained by it. Soooo…by their own (il)logic, America-hating antiwar types and Tranzi progressives would seem to have blood on their hands here, no?

You’d think that after tripping over their own tiny dicks a thousand times already in the exact same fashion, sooner or later, they’d learn. And yet.

(Via Mojo and Glenn)

Marc Thiessen lays ‘em out — in the WaPo, of all places.

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 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.

That’s the end of it. Be sure to read it all. For my money, now that they’ve opened this can of worms, I would much rather they go right on with their revolting little piss-party. The astoundingly repugnant exhibition we’ve all been treated to the last few days stands a half-decent chance of finishing the insane Left off as a force to be reckoned with in national politics for good. Better we all get another good, hard look at precisely who and what they are than that they be allowed to slink back into their holes, pretend to a standard of decency they’ve amply demonstrated they don’t possess, and live to fight another day (SHRIIEEEEK!).

They’ve dug themselves a very deep hole here, one they may never be able to crawl out of; far be it from me to demand they stop digging. I’d much rather keep throwing dirt on ‘em from above, myself. Let those freak flags fly, Leftards!

I’ve been remiss in not linking Glenn’s WSJ piece from yesterday too; if you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. As usual with him, it’s a good one.

Looks like the monster Palin has killed again!

A veteran congressional aide who worked most recently as a lobbyist and was married to a senior White House legislative affairs official was found dead in her car Monday behind the couple’s Capitol Hill home following a low-speed car crash and subsequent fire.

Ashley Turton, whose husband, Dan, is the White House’s deputy director of legislative affairs for the U.S. House, died in the early-morning incident in the garage behind 800 A Street SE, friends, her employer and congressional leadership aides said. City fire and police units responded to the vicinity of the home at about 5 a.m. Monday, according to fire department spokesman Pete Piringer.

HOW COULD THE FOUNDERS HAVE POSSIBLY FORESEEN the advance of so many technologies that led to this incident, and the climate of hate in which it occurred? It’s time that we at long last rescind all provisions of the First Amendment, I think. For our own good, of course.

(Via Insty)

And now we know why he preferred to politicize the atrocity rather than do his job:

The sheriff has been editorializing and politicizing the event since he took the podium to report on the incident. His blaming of radio personalities and bloggers is a pre-emptive strike because Mr. Dupnik knows this tragedy lays at his feet and his office. Six people died on his watch and he could have prevented it.  He needs to step up and start apologizing to the families of the victims instead of spinning this event to serve his own political agenda.

Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff’s Office was informed, his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County. Amy Loughner is a Natural Resource specialist for the Pima County Parks and Recreation. My sympathies and my heart goes out to her and the rest of Mr. Loughner’s family. This tragedy must be tearing them up inside wondering if they had done the right things in trying to manage Jared’s obvious mental instability.

Every victim of his threats previously must also be wondering if this tragedy could have been prevented if they had been more aggressive in pursuing charges against Mr. Loughner. Perhaps with a felony conviction he would never have been able to lawfully by the Glock 9mm Model 19 that he used to strike down the lives of six people and decimate 14 more.

This was not an act of politics. This was an act of a mentally disturbed young man hell bent on getting his 15 minutes of infamy. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department was aware of his violent nature and they failed to act appropriately. This tragedy leads right back to Sherriff Dupnik and all the spin in the world is not going to change that fact.

I wouldn’t have believed Dupnik’s wholly unsubstantiated attack against his fellow citizens for the act of a madman could have gotten any more disgusting. But it just did.

If anyone else besides Loughner could truly be said to have blood on his hands, it just might be Dupnik. This man is a complete disgrace, a blot on his office, and unworthy of the public trust. He should be removed immediately, by whatever means the state of Arizona has in place to deal with such eventualities.

Update! This idiot just will not let it go.

When you’re talking to a person who is unstable to begin with and they are motivated in some cases by the rhetoric that they hear and they see.

And you have not one shred of evidence that that’s the case, you slimewad. Not ONE. You just KNOW it’s so, because, well, you just KNOW. You’re a liberal, and it just HAS to be. It just HAS to be. Otherwise, your entire worldview stands exposed as a big, smelly handful of fact-free bullshit. It doesn’t fit the facts as we know them, but it fits The Narrative, and hey, that’s good enough for a mindless drone like you.

I’ll say it again: he is a disgrace to the badge he has no business wearing. I’d hate to think for even a moment that he’s in any way representative of other cops out there — even one of them.

Two comments from Althouse’s joint:

Anyone else find it creepy that new standard what me may and may not say is: How will it affect the behavior of an abviously crazy person who may or may not hear it?

That’s not the standard they hope to impose. The standard really is: no speech disagreeing with liberals, which is, by our definition, hate speech. All part of liberal broad-mindedness and “tolerance,” see.

Next, our good bud Chef Mojo was kind enough to send a link to his response, which I can’t possibly improve on:

Penn Jillette, a man known for his ability to call bullshit, tweeted earlier today:

Fuck Civility. Hyperbole, passion, and metaphor are beautiful parts of rhetoric. Marketplace of ideas can not be toned down for the insane.

Best thing I’ve read in 3 days on the matter of “civility.”

The left abandoned “civility” decades ago, and have been ratcheting it up ever since. At some point, the high road runs out, and that’s where I am.

Fuck civility! This is a fight, and I intend to fight it. Fuck you, language police! If I want to target a political campaign in a war of ideas, then I will fire at will and blow my enemy out of the water. I will run them through with lances and slice them with swords. I will kick ass, take names and sever heads until I walk over their bodies to reach for the flag of political victory. I will use every bit of warlike and combative language I damn well please, and I will call bullshit nose to nose with you when I see it. I will be so fucking insensitive and hurtful to your feelings that you’ll curl up like the whiny little bitches you are.

Seriously. You libs can shove it right back up your asses where it came from. I’m not giving an inch, because I’ve had to fight through a decade of your political abuse to get this far. I’m gonna keep right on going, and if that means going straight though you, that’s what I’ll do. Hell, I’ll go through you so fast, I’ll skullfuck ya for free.

I will drive through you like the Khan’s hordes, guiding my horse with my legs and shooting arrow after arrow into bullseye after bullseye. I will leave like Crazy Horse left Custer; spiked with arrows and unmanned.

I’m gonna grab my AK, load a bunch of clips, slap one in, lock ‘n’ load and take you and your scum sonsabitches down. You will lose. You will cry. Your women will know you’re weak and your men will be fucking sheep for solace.

Did I mention the skullfucking?

All metaphorically, of course, and within the arena of politics.

Fuck all y’all on the left. You started this. We’ll finish it.

Damned skippy. But hey, Chef, you forgot the bit about ripping off their heads and shitting down their necks, buddy. Otherwise, it’s dead on (SHRIIEEEK!).

No, really:

“All of this stuff about delegitimizing the president of the United States, that is uncalled for. And all of the stuff taking place in the chamber the other day when the Constitution was being read, all of that stuff is uncalled for. The hanging over the banisters that some members did last year egging on the demonstrators out there, that stuff is uncalled for. We ought to conduct ourselves in public office in the way we teach our children to conduct themselves when they go out into the public. I don’t believe that any one of these members have been teaching their children inside their homes to act the way many of them have acted,” Rep. Clyburn (D-SC) told the Ed Schultz radio program.

Delegitimizing the president of the United States? What, you mean like liberal idiots did with all that “Bush was selected, not elected” nonsense after Al Gore tried and failed to use an army of lawyers to steal the 2000 election for him? Declaring that “the Constitution being read” is “out of line” at any time or in any place in America is so ludicrous and absurd I’ll just let it stand without comment, as an example of how liberal idiots really feel about this nation’s founding document. Likewise the fact that this dishonest twit scurried to one of liberal hate-radio’s worst offenders to bemoan “incivility” and let us all know what sorts of political speech he considers “out of line,” again displaying his plain contempt for the Constitution.

The kicker here is this: teaching their children inside their homes to act the way many of them have acted. Gee, would that include fabricating a scurrilous charge out of whole cloth and perpetuating the lie long afterward, you miserable worm?

They plumb new depths of self-beclownment every time they open their fat yaps.

Liberal opportunity update! Did I say they plumb new depths etc? Why, yes. Yes, I did.

These are seriously sick, twisted people.

If you can stomach even more update! Via Maguire: you’ll never guess which party this violent, hate-mongering lunatic is a member of:

“That Scott down there that’s running for governor of Florida,” Mr. Kanjorski said. “Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him.

Liberal Rules For Polite Discourse #678: Any use of metaphor or euphemism by conservatives: dangerous hate speech; must be rigorously policed, controlled, and/or banned. Direct expression by a liberal of a desire to see opposition literally executed for the crime of running for office: no harm, no foul, carry on, keep up the good work, hail fellow well met, nice job, how very clever of you.

And the hits keep right on coming update Vol. II: Patterico has another long litany of liberal hate speech. There’s just so much of it out there, it’s getting to be kind of tedious keeping up with it. But keep up we must. We absolutely can NOT let the sleazy, greasy Left make this sick attempt at what is now aptly beginning to be called a blood libel without firm, uncompromising response. You ain’t getting away with this kind of deceit anymore, cockwads. Those days are OVER.

How bad is the NYT’s self-serving hypocrisy? This bad:

But until investigations are complete, no one can begin to imagine what could possibly have motivated this latest appalling rampage.

There may never be an explanation. And, certainly, there can never be a justification.

Guess what they’re talking about here. Go on, guess.

Ed says it’s “not just hypocritical, it’s exceptionally despicable.” Even that isn’t strong enough; there really are no words adequate to cover these absolutely abominable people and their slimy machinations.

The hits just keep on coming update! The gall of these people really is just incredible.

In Politico, Brady, an uneducated union thug, will “introduce a bill that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress.”

Here’s the very first pic you see on this boob’s website (WARNING: VIOLENT POLITICAL IMAGERY FOLLOWS):

You can’t make this stuff up, folks. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Lefty Lunatic Land:

Tomorrow they were gonna vote to repeal this health care bill; it’s not gonna go anywhere in the Senate, but it still it’s…it’s one of the reasons this guy was angry.

Actually, Bob, there is ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER — not one shred, not one scintilla, not one iota — for that cynical, opportunistic assertion. Nor is there even the slightest evidence so far, and none at all has been cited by any Lefty leech anywhere, for the proposition that Loughner was in any way motivated, influenced, or even aware of the existence of Limbaugh, Palin, Beck, or any other conservative whose voice Leftist douchebags wish to see silenced.

This is going to blow up in their faces, and fast. They keep forgetting that they can’t count on cover from the Antique Media like in the good old days of their dominance; people can find out in a hurry that’s there’s no truth whatever to their threadbare accusations. And since their scattershot indictments encompass the majority of Americans, all these pathetic slimewads are doing is further stoking the anger against and disgust with them; the backlash, when it comes, will be wondrous to see.

Better back off the hate-speech while you can, Leftards; it’s gonna wind up splashing back all over you.

What they are, what they do, and the one thing they’re truly good at:

“Something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence,” pontificates Krugman. Oh, and the Left bears no responsibility for that? They’re the ones who drop titanic mandates and mountains of regulation on American citizens. Their President has given us 20 months of crushing unemployment. They stole over $800 billion from us for “stimulus” pork and slush funds, and Krugman has gone on record saying he thinks they need two or three trillion dollars more.

The Democrats cranked up class-warfare rhetoric to a fever pitch during the lame-duck session of Congress, denouncing anyone who resists higher tax rates as greedy and unpatriotic. They bent over backwards to get miserable crooks like Charlie Rangel out of trouble with the lightest slap upon the wrist, flaunting their corruption in the face of a population boiling with impotent rage. When the president of Mexico denounced America on the floor of Congress last year, the Democrats rose to give him a thunderous standing ovation. But all this “climate of hatred” is coming from the guys on conservative talk radio?

So none of that rhetoric contributes to the “climate of hate?” How about Florida Democrat Alan Grayson condemning his opponent as a “religious fanatic” and calling him “Taliban Dan Webster?” What about when Democrat James Clyburn of South Carolina falsely accused Tea Party members of hurling racial epithets at him? Do you suppose the heavily deployed Democrat meme of insinuating voters were stupid for acting against them in the midterm elections might have generated some anger?

Shall we step into the minor leagues, and talk about New Hampshire state house candidate Keith Halloran, who responded to the plane crash that killed Alaska Senator Ted Stevens by wishing Sarah Palin was on board? Another New Hampshire Democrat, Timothy Horrigan, was forced to quit the state legislature for saying “A dead Palin would be more dangerous than a live one” and “if she was dead, she couldn’t commit any more gaffes.” If that’s not good enough, we could take a step back into the fetid swamps of Bush hatred, when liberals actually made movies about assassinating him.

Yeah, but all that’s diff’runt, see; they’re the good people, and Palin, Bush, Cheney, et al, are all evil, and deserve whatever they get. Let’s not forget this charming little call for a lynching, either:

Shall we shut us down some hate speech then, liberals? Shall we “tone down the rhetoric” so as to defuse the climate of hate you’ve created? Shall we restrict the right of free speech so as not to “incite” lunatics who need very little in the way of that anyway to go off half-cocked (SHRIIEEEEK!) and commit mayhem? Shall we dumb down the discourse so that the least common denominator out there won’t be offended or upset, removing every ounce of passion from the debate until what we’re left with is the kind of mindless pap you’re most comfortable with, so that you won’t get your pretty pink panties in a wad every time even the meekest word of disapprobation for your idiotic, destructive policy preferences is uttered?

Very well then; you first, you vile, hateful, lying douchebags. Until you’re ready to show that you really are concerned about some “climate of hate” by policing your own, go take a flying fuck at the moon, every last man Jack of you. As you sow, etc. And I’ll say it right up front: no, I don’t hate you, your deceitful Antique Media propagandists, or your fork-tongued, double-dealing politicians. You aren’t worth the candle, as George Smiley once said. But I certainly do despise you and hold you in contempt, with every cell in my body. Yes, there’s a difference, although it may be too nuanced for your feeble little minds to perceive.

Update! Malkin says: “They want to play tu quoque in the middle of a national tragedy? They asked for it. They got it.” Did they ever. A HUGE collection of liberal hatemongering, death wishes, calls for violence, and outright twisted dementia — and you know it’s still by no means all of it.

These sick douchebags have some nerve whining about ANYTHING anyone EVER says about them, from now til the end of time.

Another entirely predictable thing:

I wasn’t going to write anything about the incident because—unlike, say, the frequent and ongoing atrocities inspired by the very intent of Islamism or Communism—it didn’t seem to be a murder caused by any sort of coherent idea. Bad ideas have to be answered by the best ones we’ve got, or they continue to claim the minds of believers and the lives of the just. Madness and evil, on the other hand, are simply things that happen in this broken world. The only proper response is the one in King Lear: “Howl, howl, howl, howl!”

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.

…But never mind that, because the Left’s sudden talk about incendiary political rhetoric in the wake of the Arizona shooting isn’t really about political rhetoric at all. It’s about the real-world failure of leftist policies everywhere—the bankrupting of nations and states by greedy unions and unfundable social programs, the destruction of inner cities by identity politics, and the appeasement of Muslim extremists in the face of worldwide jihad, not to mention the frequently fatal effects of delirious environmentalism. Europe is in debt and on fire. American citizens are in political revolt. Even the most left-wing president ever is making desperate overtures to his right.

But all that might be tolerable to leftists if they weren’t starting to lose control of the one weapon in which they have the most faith: the narrative. The narrative is what leftists believe in instead of the truth. If they can blame George W. Bush for the economic crisis, if they can make Sarah Palin out to be an idiot, if they can call the Tea Party racist until you think it must be true, they might yet retain power in spite of the international disgrace of their ideas. And though they still mostly dominate the narrative on the three broadcast networks, most cable stations, most newspapers, and much of Hollywood, nonetheless Fox News, talk radio, the Internet, and the Wall Street Journal have begun to respond in ways they can’t ignore.

That’s the hateful rhetoric they’re talking about: conservatives interrupting the stream of leftist invective in order to dismantle their arguments with the facts.

Indeed it is. Leftist lunatic, heal thyself, before you come sliming around to demand that patriotic Americans exercising their right to dissent and peaceably petition the government for redress of grievances “tone down the rhetoric.” You might start by not calling us all racists, Nazis, and revanchist thugs even as your union goons and America-hating counterdemonstrators are biting fingers off of our grandfathers at our rallies.

Breath: not holding it.

It always seems to go exactly the same way, doesn’t it?

The friends’ comments paint a picture bolstered by other former classmates and Loughner’s own Internet postings: that of a social outcast with nihilistic, almost indecipherable beliefs steeped in mistrust and paranoia.

Around the same time, Loughner’s behavior also began to worry officials at Pima Community College, where Loughner began attending classes in 2005, the school said in a release.

Between February and September, Loughner “had five contacts with PCC police for classroom and library disruptions,” the statement said. He was suspended in September 2010 after college police discovered a YouTube video in which Loughner claimed the college was illegal according to the U.S. Constitution. He withdrew voluntarily the following month, and was told he could return only if, among other things, a mental health professional agreed he did not present a danger, the school said.

The Loughner they met when he was a freshman at Mountain View High School may have been socially awkward, but he was generally happy and fun to be around. The crew smoked marijuana every day, and when they weren’t going to concerts or watching movies they talked about the meaning of life and dabbled in conspiracy theories.

For a time, Loughner drank heavily, to the point of poisoning himself, the friends said. Once, during school lunch break as a junior, he downed so much tequila that he came back to class, within five minutes passed out cold, had to be rushed to the hospital and “almost died,” one friend said.

Mistrust of government was Loughner’s defining conviction, the friends said. He believed the U.S. government was behind 9/11, and worried that governments were maneuvering to create a unified monetary system (“a New World Order currency” one friend said) so that social elites and bureaucrats could control the rest of the world.

“He appeared to be to me an emotional cripple or an emotional child,” Coorough said. “He lacked compassion, he lacked understanding and he lacked an ability to connect.”

A plethora of warning signs and screaming red flags — every last one of them ignored, glossed over, or excused. I heard an interview on the radio yesterday with the idiot Sheriff Dupnik yesterday wherein he stated that this kid’s parents were warned when he was in high school that he desperately needed professional help, and instead of seeing that he got it or taking the warning the least bit seriously, they just enrolled him in another school. He was so out of control even his teachers were afraid of him:

“I always felt, you know, somewhat paranoid,” McGahee said. “When I turned my back to write on the board, I would always turn back quickly–to see if he had a gun.”

McGahee said he had to make several complaints before administrators finally removed Loughner.

Lynda Sorenson, 52, another student in the class, said that Loughner was disruptive and unruly from the first day.

“There was never a time when he was in class that he was not disruptive, and he scared me. He frightened the daylights out of me,” Sorenson said in a telephone interview. “I kept saying to people, ‘I’m afraid he’s going to come into the class with a gun.’”

As with the Fort Hood shooter, the Columbine kids, and way too many others, it was easier to kick the can down the road and hope for the best, until suddenly everyone is asking how something like this could possibly have happened. Avoidance of the real issues is human nature, I suppose, and there’s probably not a lot to be done about it that won’t do unacceptably severe damage to everyone’s liberty and self-determination, without really accomplishing anything useful. But the whole cycle is entirely predictable, and it will most assuredly happen again.

Since the last post ran so long, I’m not going to do what I usually do and update it over and over again, but instead put any related stuff here, without too much commentary of my own attached. Update one, via Glenn: “Who are these people to be lecturing the rest of us about political civility?”

Plenty more coming, I’m sure. Sad as that is.

Update two: Let’s not jump to conclusions, people — unless they serve the Left’s purposes.

“The important thing is for everyone not to jump to conclusions,” said retired Gen. Wesley Clark on CNN the night of the shootings.

“We cannot jump to conclusions,” said CNN’s Jane Velez-Mitchell that same evening. “We have to make sure that we do not jump to any conclusions whatsoever.”

“I’m on Pentagon chat room,” said former CIA operative Robert Baer on CNN, also the night of the shooting.  “Right now, there’s messages going back and forth, saying do not jump to the conclusion this had anything to do with Islam.”

The next day, President Obama underscored the rapidly-forming conventional wisdom when he told the country, “I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.”  In the days that followed, CNN jouralists and guests repeatedly echoed the president’s remarks.

What a difference a Palin makes, eh? We at least have a very clear indication of who the Left considers its real enemies.

Update three: You guys need to tone down the rhetoric. Us Leftards, not so much.

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.”

Without a doubt, one of the most despicable statements you’ll read all day. And all too typical, too. Again: never let a crisis go to waste.

Tell me, how exactly does one “tone down the rhetoric” when describing someone as scummy and amoral as this anonymous “Democratic operative”?

Update four: Dishonest DKos creeps send embarrassing post down the usual memory hole.

Update five: Another partial list of Leftist violence — an old one, much in need of updating. And here’s a listing of my own posts on the subject. A rather lengthy one, actually. As stated above: who the hell do these people think they are to lecture us on either extreme rhetoric or actual violence? “Tone down the rhetoric?” Get bent, Leftards.

Update six: Could these ghouls possibly go any lower than this? Not that we shouldn’t have expected it; never let a crisis go to waste, a most verminous mantra if ever there was one, is in full effect now. And of course the whitewashing of the fact that this kook was, as I said below, way more Left than Right has already begun as well. It’s as if the software in their heads has a glitch written into it, rendering them without conscience and incapable of shame.

What do you think: does this sort of monstrous dishonesty, partisanship, and opportunism in the wake of tragedy make further polarization and harsher enmity less likely? Or more? Think the people they’re attacking — a majority of Americans, actually, considering that so few of us consider ourselves to be liberal or socialist in this center-right country — are going to feel more embattled and put upon after seeing this revolting Lefty circus play out all around us? Or less? Will scolding lectures — delivered by plainly Leftist media figures and self-serving political hacks and directed only at their competition, while ignoring veritable oceans of frothing hatred from their own side — lead to more of the civility and tolerance they demand? Or less?

I suspect most of us are going to react exactly as I have: with deepened disgust; heightened awareness of exactly where the battle lines (SHRIIIEEEEK!) are drawn; hardened disinclination to ever believe a word out of their lying mouths; and renewed determination to resist them at every turn.

In the blink of an eye, they’ve made this all about their loathsome selves rather than about the actual victims; it will prove to be so to their detriment. So be it.

Update seven: Patterico pulls no punches:

UPDATE: Let me be triply clear in case you somehow missed the point: the post does not actually blame Kos for encouraging the shooting. The post blames Kos for being a smear-artist douchebag for blaming Palin for the shooting.

It’s not a subtle distinction…

UPDATE x2: Paul Krugman joins the army of scumbags who blame this on Palin while ignoring the identical behavior from Kos.

Typical douchebaggery.

It is every bit of that. As he says at the top of the post, we all knew it was coming; it always does. Lefty douchebags are as predictable as the sunrise. Part and parcel of being a nonconformist free-thinker mindless drone, y’know.