Is Arizona the nation's capital for hate, anger, rhetoric and vitriol?

Ford SportTrac Forum

Help Support Ford SportTrac Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
And several more examples:

Liberal Violence: Five Names You Should Know



By John Hawkins

3/16/2010





Unfortunately, there are dangerous kooks, trigger-happy wackos, and lone gunmen out there. Bad people exist. Crazy people exist -- and every so often, one of them snaps and there's a resulting body count. To most people, this is just a tragic fact of life.



However, to liberals in the media who are forever baffled by events that the average person has grasped since he was a child, these killers tend to break down into three groups. If they're devout Muslims and are connected to terrorists, then they must have killed for some reason OTHER than their religion. If they're conservative murderers, then they must have killed because of Glenn Beck, talk radio, the Tea Party movement, or whoever the hot conservative villain of the moment is and they're obviously part of a wider trend. On the other hand, if they're liberal, well then, at best the killer in question must be some random wacko who should immediately be forgotten. At worst, liberals try to paint leftward leaning killers as conservatives. They did this with Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell, who was a registered Democrat and the Holocaust museum shooter, James Von Brunn, who was an "anti-Christian, 9/11 'truther' who hated the Bushes and 'the neo-cons'".



This is actually quite ironic given that openly violent groups have been tolerated, if not embraced by the Left. ELF, ALF, the Black Panthers, G8 rioters, the black bloc at anti-war rallies, and even the Weathermen are looked upon favorably by liberals.



Still, it's not enough to simply point out that liberals wink at leftist groups that engage in violence. When the next nutjob kills someone -- and regrettably, there will always be a next time -- conservatives need examples to point towards when the MSM tries to once again convince the public that only right-wing wackos do that sort of thing. Here are a few worthy examples to throw back at them when they try it.



1) The Earth Liberation Front: Usually, when you point a finger of blame at domestic terrorist groups like ELF and ALF, liberals fall all over themselves to say that, "Nobody has proved that they've killed anyone yet." Well, as long as they're just engaged in arson and bombings, I guess they're just peachy!



John Lewis, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, said animal and environmental rights extremists have claimed credit for more than 1,200 criminal incidents since 1990. The FBI has 150 pending investigations associated with animal rights or eco-terrorist activities, and ATF officials say they have opened 58 investigations in the past six years related to violence attributed to the ELF and ALF.



...The ELF has been linked to fires set at sport utility vehicle dealerships and construction sites in various states, while the ALF has been blamed for arson and bombings against animal research labs and the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry.



Well, certainly no one could support the actions of a group like this, right? Maybe you can ask the people at the Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network about that.



2) James Chester Blanning: Do you remember James Chester Blanning? You probably don't because his bombs didn't go off. But, just to prove a point, I'm going to post an entire story about Blanning from the SFGate so that no one can claim I left anything out:



Gift-wrapped bombs rattle tony ski enclave



Aspen, Colo. A onetime resident of this city who had been bitter over its transformation into a playground for the rich left four gift-wrapped bombs downtown in a bank-robbery attempt, turning New Year's Eve celebrations into a mass evacuation, police said Thursday.



The dangerous bombs were made of gasoline and cell phone parts and came with notes warning of "mass death." The 72-year-old man suspected of placing them in two banks and in an alleyway on Wednesday shot and killed himself a short time later, police said.



Now, here's a detail that would have been everywhere in the press had the politics been reversed. Here's Blanton's note:



Do not f*** with us or there will be mass death like we have all been part of over in that f***ing quicksand trap that rove and chaney's monkey bush put us into where so many of our soul mates and brothers died very horrible deaths.



Funny how they didn't think the Rove and "chaney's monkey bush" comments were worthy of publication, isn't it?



3) The Weathermen: There's no need to go into depth about the Weathermen because you heard it all during the 2008 presidential campaign. But here's what is worth noting about the Weathermen: They claimed to be involved with 25 bombings, they intended to kill members of the military, and in 2001 Bill Ayers said, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."



What is the moral equivalent of allowing a man like Bill Ayers to teach college students and become such a big wheel in politics that he is able to befriend the President of the United States? There simply is no comparison on the right. It would be like Eric Rudolph being let out of a jail, given a teaching position at Liberty University, and running fundraisers for Mitt Romney. Conservative readers are undoubtedly grimacing in disgust at the very idea. Liberals haven't batted an eye at doing something just as morally abhorrent.



4) Carol Anne Burger: Burger wasn't just any old leftie -- she was a writer for the Huffington Post who stabbed her roommate 222 times with a screwdriver before she killed herself. Burger's last story for the HuffPO before she went down the memory hole? "Christian School Teacher Takes Female Students to Palin Rally." Yes, those Christians and Palin fans -- they're the ones you have to watch out for.



5) The Animal Liberation Front: If the world were a high school class, the crazies at ALF would be voted most likely to deliberately wipe out the human race with a bioweapon to make the world safe for snail darters:



In 1993 the Departments of Justice and Agriculture issued a report to Congress on the "effects of terrorism on enterprises which use animals," naming ALF as the most significant "radical fringe" animal rights group in the United States. The report stated that between 1979 and 1993, more than 300 incidents of break-ins, vandalism, arson and thefts had been committed in the name of animal rights nationwide. After some ALF members set a fire causing $3.5 million in damages at a veterinary lab in California in 1987, the FBI officially added ALF to its list of domestic terrorist organizations. According to the FBI, between 1995 and 2005 ALF committed some 700 criminal acts.



If some wacko goes to a Tea Party and shoots up a McDonalds, every conservative in America is to blame, but we're not supposed to draw any conclusions about modern liberalism from left-wing domestic terrorist organizations? Give me a break.



<A HREF="http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/03/16/liberal_violence_five_names_you_should_know">http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/03/16/liberal_violence_five_names_you_should_know</A>
 
Okay, so this guy was a liberal?



He has called those having had abortions terrorists and is arguably anti-semetic/ Those aren't liberal qualities, IMHO.



I'm all for making a point, by connecting some dots, but at least make sure the dots actually connect...



TJR
 
I see now they are trying to blame Sarah Palin because she "Targeted" certain congressional districts that her Tea Party wanted to replace the Democrats in. So, because she used a gun-sight crosshairs to depict these locations on a map, some people are claiming she insighted this nut to go out and start shooting???



Did anyone cry political assasination attempt when President Ronald Reagan got shot after a few months in office? The nut (Hinkely) was trying to impress the actress Jodie Foster...So should we blame her because she is a Liberal and may have spoke out against Reagan. or because she had a role in the violent movie Taxi Driver?



These nut cases can be set off by a Road Runner cartoon. They have no concept of reality which is borne out by their completely irrational actions.



...Rich
 
Last edited by a moderator:
RichardL,



Whether they are trying to blame Palin or not, the question of whether or not that imagery was good, or not, is still valid.



I remember the Reagan assassination attempt. Hollywood came under fire because of that, and the tie-in to the movie Taxi Driver (great movie). The point is the same, the example the same. Outside influences (our culture) arguably contributed to pushing a nutjob over the edge. Let's try to do better, and reduce the possibility that we are feeding these nutjobs.



Calling voters to the polls by drawing up districts and overlaying them with gun crosshairs is in poor taste, IMHO, period. It has no place in a civilized society (again, IMHO).



TJR
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The symbols on Palin's map weren't gun cross-hairs. It's called a Surveyor's Symbol. In their tasteless, disgusting haste to link this tragedy to Right-wing violence without any substantiating facts whatsoever, the Leftist media, dumb@$$ Hollywood celebs, and my own idiot Senator Dick Durbin simply showed their complete ignorance and ideology by attempting to link Palin's map to this sad event.



An argument could be made that those are cross hairs. But Palin's office says they were surveyor's marks. Can that argument be sustained? <A HREF="http://egsc.usgs.gov/isb/pubs/booklets/symbols/topomapsymbols.pdf">I want you to click on this link</A>. This is from the U.S. Geological Survey. The title of the document is "Topographic Map Symbols." Now ... start scrolling down the page. About halfway through on the right column you will see "CONTROL DATA AND MONUMENTS." Now remember .. these are symbols for maps - maps like Sarah Palin's map. The first entry under the title bar is labled "Principal point," and there you have it. Just to the right. Just about the exact same symbol that appears on the Palin map. It's a map symbol ... just what you might expect to find on a .... MAP!



[Broken External Image]:



Cross-hairs are placed on people. Map symbols are placed on maps.



<A HREF="http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2011/01/sarah-palins-map.html">SARAH PALIN'S MAP</A>
 
Last edited by a moderator:
TrainTrac



Talk about haste. The symbols used were controversial before this tragedy. Even Giffords herself claimed they were in poor taste way back when they first came out. The link to the symbols as gun sights came out long before this tragedy...nothing new, just a reattribution if anything.



TJR
 
Shoot me but. I blame all of us. For going to sleep and letting our elected officials get out of control. I dont care what your party is. IMO, majority of America went to sleep. Look at those that voted compared to those that could have and didnt.



Local to fedral have had free reign without the checks and balances. Only when someone paid attention to a big blunder. Did the right thing get done. IMO I believe there are common citizens that are smarter and can do a better job. The problem they have no $$$ or werent born with a silver spoon or big family name.



Rant over.
 
Eddie's right. I can't tell you how many of my colleagues in college considered their political views as "apathetic." This, even during Bush's term, when everyone seemed to have an opinion.
 
Hopefully justice is swift. This a-hole doesn't deserve to live another day. Does Arizona have the death penalty?
 
TJR said:
Talk about haste. The symbols used were controversial before this tragedy. Even Giffords herself claimed they were in poor taste way back when they first came out. The link to the symbols as gun sights came out long before this tragedy...nothing new, just a reattribution if anything.

We're not supposed to jump to conclusions only when a suspected terrorist or other such murderer might be a Muslim. The President says so. If it's a white guy, then he most likely belongs to the Tea Party or militia, so that's okay to mention before there is any evidence.
 
Bill V...if that's the best comeback you have, I guess I struck a nerve.

Don't be such an idiot. What you saw there wasn't a comeback, it was simply a reaction to what was absolutely the most ludicrous statement made on this site in years.



Sure, it's easy to make bullshit claims like "politically motivated violence almost always comes from the Left", when you and TrainTrac falsely claim that every incident of politically-motivated violence in history is from "the Left". The pro-life movement is not "Left". Anti-semitism is not "Left". (As TJR correctly pointed out, these are positions that were taken by the Arizona shooter, who you said was "Liberal". If you consider this whackjob to be "liberal", it only shows just how insanely far off the "Right" side of the spectrum of political sanity you've slid.) Islamic fundamentalism is not "Left".



If I wanted to play devil's advocate, I could easily take a stance that is equally as ludicrously to the extreme end of the political spectrum, but to "the Left", and show how, from such a vantage point, every one of your examples, and every act of political violence in all of history, has been done by "the Right", simply because they all happen to be to the right of such a vantage point. But doing so would be just as meaningless as your nonsense comments.



You want a comeback to your comments? Then first, you need to make a comment reasonable enough to deserve a comeback. So far, you haven't come close.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
TrainTrac, I agree that the reaction to Palin's use of the crosshairs graphic has been overboard and, to a certain degree, unmerited.



That said--only a fool would believe that they weren't intended to be crosshairs. It's akin to someone hearing something they don't agree with, raising their middle finger, rubbing it on their cheek, and then claiming that they weren't "flipping the bird", but scratching an itch. It's passive-aggressive BS, and the whole world knows it's BS.



I'd fully respect your stance if you were trying to defend the use of the crosshairs, the way that RichardL did. He made some interesting points. The same goes for the portion of the Boortz article you linked which shows certain Democrat groups and sites using targets or other such graphics for similar effect. But for you, or Boortz, to claim that that's not how they were intended by Palin? You're both insulting the intelligence of everyone who read that, and you're insulting your own intelligence even more.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
TJR,

My point is that we cannot protect ourselves from these nuts who have no rational though process. Why can't 99.999999% of Americans enjoy a Road Runner cartoon or even a movie like Taxi Driver because some nut might see it and think it means he should start shooting or blowing up things. There is no rational for their actions and it does not have to be cross-hairs or gun-sights to set them off.



You are very big on freedom of speach, so are you saying that we should ban any word or depiction of guns, cross-hairs, etc that might stir up some voilent reaction in a few nut cases?? Hell, just the reporting of the Arizona shooting in the press and TV news media depicts more violence than the mear targets or cross-hairs on a map. Just wait, there will be some nut who saw this shooting reported on the news and decide he wants to finish what Laughner did not. Look at all the school shootings that have gone on since Columbine.



...Rich



 
Ok, so if the surveyor's symbol is in poor taste because it may resemble the cross hairs of a scope, what can we make of this...?



Mobster wisdom tells us never to bring a knife to a gun fight. But what does political wisdom say about bringing a gun to a knife fight?



Thats exactly what Barack Obama said he would do to counter Republican attacks 'If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night.



Washington Post, June 4, 2008 - Link below



Wow, Palin was way off base - she should have used missile imagery if she wanted to one up the President. Oh, but I guess a picture is worth a thousand words, so she was <b>more</b> wrong.
 
...we cannot protect ourselves from these nuts who have no rational though process. Why can't 99.999999% of Americans enjoy a Road Runner cartoon or even a movie like Taxi Driver because some nut might see it and think it means he should start shooting or blowing up things. There is no rational for their actions and it does not have to be cross-hairs or gun-sights to set them off.



+1
 
RichardL,



No where above did I suggest any restrictions on free speech or to impede Hollywood in developing the films they wish.



I am simply encouraging introspection and continued diligence towards truly civil discourse.



TJR
 
I'll stand by what I said. Look up examples. Too many to list them all. Feel free to disagree.



Students rioting back in the 60's? The people in the SDS are now leading the Democratic party.

Students rioting in Europe recently? Right, because they want more from the government.

The annual G-20 protesters? A mix of Leftys, Greenies, and anarchists.

The last time a U.S. President was assassinated it was by a Communist.



The next time a Tea Party rally erupts into a rock and bottle throwing melee, let me know.



[Broken External Image]:



In a way I guess it is the Conservatives' fault though. The Leftys were used to having their way with the media and much of the population for almost 100 years. Now between the internet and talk radio, Conservatives have found that there are a lot more people like them and more than the Leftys and Democrats are comfortable with. The Leftys are so convinced that their way is the correct way that the only reason someone would disagree is because they are stupid, racist, or owned by the oil companies. But now the Right has become vocal enough and organized enough to call the Left out on issues, so the Liberals have to lash out like children because they can't rationally argue the issues.



"It used to be that the shepherds led the sheep. But that's all over now." -- Mario Cuomo, 1994



For example, after the Republicans won in a landslide last November I had a black and very Liberal former college professor of mine (who should know better) tell me on Facebook to dig up the Confederate money I have buried in my yard and that black folks would be hiding from the Tea Party lynch mobs. She actually believes this and is very irritated that the GOP will get in the way of Obama getting even. I'm all for treating everyone the same. She doesn't want equality. She wants to "get even".



Mostly it's that America has woken up and no longer wants to buy what the Liberals are selling. First they mess with our toilets :toilet:, then they take away our good light bulbs, now gas is getting expensive again because the govt won't let us drill for our own oil. People have noticed that wars get protested only when there is a Republican President. Same wars going on in the same places, Gitmo is still open, but suddenly all the protests go away after the O-man got elected. People just aren't fooled any more.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
In other news, the AZ sheriff kinda let it slip that law enforcement didn't do anything about other incidents involving this guy before because his mother works for the county.
 
TJR,

I never said you wished to restrict freedom of speach, quite the contrary...I thought you have always been a staunch advocate of the Constitution, and I just assumed you would be a strong advocate of freedom of speach. Your previous posts would tend to indicate that the mear symbols of cross-hairs or sourveyor's symbols represent a targeting or individuals for assasination? If I misinterpreted your post, I appologize.



...Richard
 
RichardL,



I support the Constitution and Freedom of Speech (FoS). FoS is one of our most powerful rights, and as you know, with great power comes great responsibility.



Using cross-hairs on a political targeting campaign, and using rallying calls like: "Don't retreat...reload", IMHO, are on the reckless side and somewhat irresponsible.



I support people's rights to such speech, but it doesn't mean I sanction or agree with all examples of such free speech. It's akin to the fact that I support a woman's right to choose, but I wish fewer women didn't choose to exercise that right by having abortions.



TJR
 

Latest posts

Top