I kid you not:
American Power has lots of details. The Other McCain points out that the Newsweek cover story doesn’t even mention the film that inspired the shooter, Zeitgeist, in a 2,000 word article.
H/T to the new PJ Tatler.
Update and bump: The Other McCain has honored this post with the Full Metal Jacket Reach-Around. Thanks, Robert!
That’s the question Sandy Rios is asking:
Federal Judge John Roll was killed in Tucson trying to save another man’s life. As soon as madman Jared Lee Loughner finished his attempt to murder Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, he turned his gun on the people to his left, then the people to his right. Recently released video shows his first target to the right was Ron Barber, Gifford’s district director, who was standing next to Justice John Roll.
Barber was shot in the arm. Judge Roll then pushed him down and, shielding Barber with his own body, steered him to shelter under a nearby table. While under the table, Loughner aimed for Roll’s exposed back and pulled the trigger. The video continues as Judge Roll looks up over his right shoulder, lies back down and dies at the scene.
Why don’t we know that? We know that an intern to Gifford, Daniel Hernandez, held Congresswoman Gifford’s head in his lap, putting pressure on the wound to save her life. We know that retired Army National Guard Colonel Bill Badger, though injured, tackled Loughner. We know Joe Zamudio, a young bystander carrying a gun, ran to the scene initially to stop the shooter by his own deadly force, but aided Badger instead in the restraint. While both held Loughner, Patricia Maisch removed another loaded magazine from Loughner’s pocket.
We know the stories of these people well as recounted by the press and by President Obama at the memorial service. We are collectively proud of them and each deserve recognition and praise. But what about Judge Roll?
It’s a very good question. Rios herself provides a probable answer, too:
Could it be the heroes of this story have been chosen and that Judge Roll doesn’t fit the template? Appointed by President George H.W. Bush, could it be that Judge Roll’s act of courage was seen to diminish or interfere with the aggrandizement of a Democratic Congresswoman from her tragic shooting? Could it be that in an attempt to trade on her tragic circumstances, the report of a heroic Republican Judge would be inconvenient?
Read the whole thing, and decide for yourself.
Now, from reading that headline, someone educated only by the Dinosaur Media might assume that it was one of those eeeeeeeevil Tea Party types threatening a reasonable Democrat.
Toward the end of the town hall meeting Saturday morning, one of the shooting victims, J. Eric Fuller, took exception to comments by two of the speakers: Ariz. state Rep. Terri Proud, a Dist. 26 Republican, and Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries.
According to sheriff’s deputies at the scene, Fuller took a photo of Humphries and said, “You’re Dead.”
Deputies immediately escorted Fuller from the room.
Now, tell me again, which side is making the threats?
Update: A bit more about Mr. Fuller.
AZ Shooting Victim James Eric Fuller was quite opinionated in his interview with Democracy Now, but it seems his barking moonbat bona fides go back several decades at least. He apparently has some kind of fascination with hypnosis as revealed by his page on Hypnothoughts.com, “the fastest growing hypnosis community in the world.”
Mr. Fuller has posted a profile of himself that is itself intriguing, providing a few answers and raising even more questions about who this man really is.
In answer to the questions on his profile, Fuller responds:
[snip]
I use extraordinary persuasive charisma to interest blase, apathetic, oblivious and at times hostile voters to listen to the voice of justice and consanguinity. My experiences encountering public figures and many affluent travelers in person has led me to believe that we all are to blame for George W. Bush.
I think that settles which side of the political divide Mr. Fuller is on.
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Tribunal,”* we’re introduced to the Cardassian system of what they call “justice.” I was powerfully reminded of this episode (which is one of my favorites) during the last week.
In the Cardassian system, the accused is automatically guilty, and the only reason for the trial is to allow the criminal to make an impassioned confession, in order to teach the populace the folly of going against the wishes of those in power. The sentence is also pre-determined, and is usually death.
Now, consider the immediate–and erroneous–attacks against Sarah Palin, the Tea Parties, and others that don’t follow lefty orthodoxy in the wake of the Tucson shooting. Even before we knew the name of the shooter, people such as Paul Krugman were already trying to blame Mrs. Palin. And when she attempts to defend herself, she’s then castigated for doing so… after all, the elite has already determined her guilt, why would she attempt to argue that she’s innocent? All she was supposed to do–at least according to the Cardassians in the Dinosaur Media–was confess and confirm to the little people the wisdom of the elite.
Fortunately for us, and for Chief O’Brien (the accused in the DS9 episode), facts are stubborn things, and the more we learn about what happened, the more the elite story is breaking down. And the more it’s breaking down, the more the Cardassian Media Trial Machine is working to smear the accused.
Unfortunately, it’s really not likely that the Cardassians in the Dinosaur Media will learn the lesson that presuming guilt is bad, because, let’s be honest, they’re not going to admit that they were ever wrong. So the Cardassian-style Trial by Media will continue. Be prepared.
And with this, I am hoping and praying that I can stop writing about the Tucson shooter, at least for a while. But I just had to get that off my chest.
* If you’d like to see the episode, a couple of people have broken it into segments and posted it on YouTube.
“I challenge Chris Matthews, I’ll put $100,000 on the table, to find any example where Sarah Palin has promoted the murder of anybody,” said Levin — specifically excluding terrorists and the Taliban.
Levin went on: “A hundred thousand on the table if Chris Matthews can find anywhere Mark Levin has urged the murder of people who have different political viewpoints. That’s the murder of politicians …where I said go out there and kill X,Y,Z…go out there and kill A,B,C. I challenge him right now. Sarah Palin. Me. Go ahead.”
Levin, of course, is also a former Justice Department official, which gave his second challenge a crisp note: He’s waiting for a very specific allegation “because I’m going to sue.” In federal court.
Whatcha wanna bet Levin never has to pay out?
And now, a short study in cognitive dissonance, from ABCNews.com’s The Note.
The final paragraph begins:
BOTTOM LINE: Sarah Palin, once again, has found a way to become part of the story.
However, earlier in the same article, the authors admit:
[Palin's] words, of course, amount to a rebuttal of those who have called her out for using violent images to “target” Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and other Democratic lawmakers during the 2010 election.
Note… “those who have called her out.”
You see, Palin didn’t “[find] a way to become part of the story,” she was made a part of the story by those who wanted to smear and attack her. All she did was respond to the attacks.
In other words, this article is self-refuting… the earlier paragraph giving the lie to the last. Almost as though neither of the authors had bothered to read what they had written.
That’s the Dinosaur Media for ya… all those fact checkers and editors and People Who Know More Than Us Bloggers. (For the humor deprived… this paragraph is mostly satire. If you cannot determine which parts, consult your nearest conservative.)
ABC’s Good Morning America had a friend of the shooter’s on this morning, and he had this to say about the shooter’s politics:
He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn’t listen to political radio. He didn’t take sides. He wasn’t on the left. He wasn’t on the right.
So much for blame Palin, blame Bush, blame the Tea Party, blame the right!
Of course, when has the left ever let facts get in the way of their narrative?
You can view the interview here.
It’s always like this in media memeland where the news travels faster than thought and the usual perpetrators of the lie spew their usual lies. The “narrative” is set out in templates as rigid as rebar laced through concrete: Nothing to hear here, move along. Nothing to see here, move along. Nothing new to be here, move along…. Oh, by the way, see those people over there? Yes, the ones who had nothing to do with it. They did it. What? You don’t believe me. Come over here and let me shout it in your ear over and over until you can’t hear yourself think. Repeat after me: “Even though they had nothing to do with it, they did it.” Got that? Good. Now go and vote likewise.
The reduction of tragedy to political commentary in this age is a banality. To point to it is only to extend it. To use insanity to count coup on political opponents is not insanity, it is evil.
Okay, I am going to break a long-standing rule of mine and post an article about a poll. Yes, I am a long-time skeptic of polls, and this post shouldn’t be taken as a change in that policy. I am posting it only because it allows me a nice springboard to a little pontification.
The poll in question was run by CBS News shortly after the Tucson shooting, and finds that all the lefty talking heads full of nothing but talking points aren’t convincing people that Rep. Giffords was targeted because she was a Democrat:
Overall, 57 percent of respondents said the harsh political tone had nothing to do with the shooting, compared to 32 percent who felt it did. Republicans were more likely to feel the two were unrelated – 69 percent said rhetoric was not to blame; 19 percent said it played a part. Democrats were more split on the issue – 49 percent saw no connection; 42 percent said there was.
Independents more closely reflected the overall breakdown – 56 percent said rhetoric had nothing to do with the attack; 33 percent felt it did.
I couldn’t find the data on how many Republicans were polled compared to how many Democrats, but it still seems the weekend “right-wingers are to blame” blitz mostly convinced the choir, and it’s not at all clear that it was even necessary to convince those folks.
However, this leads me to my main point. Many people who work in, around, or follow politics tend to think that everything has to have a political angle. But most regular Americans don’t spend much time thinking about politics except for Labor Day to early November every other year… some even stretch it out to every four years, skipping the midterms.
While the average Dinosaur Media reporter might look at the cheese aisle in the grocery store and make their selection based on what company gives the most to causes they hold near and dear to their heart, most Americans just buy either the brand they think is the best, or the brand that’s on sale. Politics don’t enter into their thought processes.
Same thing with other activities… they go to a baseball game because they wanted to see the game, not to make a statement about their politics. They pick their church for reasons other than the pastor’s political stance–which, by the way, it should be impossible to tell from his sermons.
Therefore, to most Americans, when a nutburger goes on a shooting spree, politics don’t spring to mind as a motive. What most non-political-wonks think is, “wow, a nut went on a shooting spree,” and then they start thinking of the victims and the victims’ families, not how best to wring political advantage from it.
I also think that the longer the lefties try to paint the shooter as some rabid conservative driven mad by a map with symbols that resemble crosshairs on it, the more damage they are going to do themselves, because every attempt paints them as more out of touch with what regular Americans think.
Arizona’s largest newspaper, the Republic, has weighed in, and they apparently don’t like what they see out of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. The concluding paragraph:
Dupnik needs to recall that he is elected to be a lawman. With each additional comment, the Democratic sheriff of Pima County is revealing his agenda as partisan, and, as such, every bit as recklessly antagonistic as the talk-show hosts and politicians he chooses to decry.
Read the whole thing, really.