On inflamed rhetoric, media hypocrisy and unhinged gunmen

These are facts and are indisputable:

Fact: Far-left bloggers like Markos Moulitsas blame Sarah Palin's "targeting" map for the 2010 midterm elections for making Jared Loughner pull a gun and shoot 19 people, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Rep. Giffords was one of the Congressional seats targeted for takeover on Palin's map.

Fact: Markos Moulitsas' own Daily Kos blog used a similar targeting metaphor to target Giffords in 2008, presumably for not being reliably liberal enough.

Fact: In 2009, when Major Nidal Hasan gunned down fellow service members at Ft. Hood while screaming "Alahu Akhbar", we were lectured by the media for days not to jump to conclusions about Hasan's motivations.

Fact: Before Jared Loughner's spent shell casings had time to cool, the media jumped all over the Giffords shooting as inflamed Tea Party rhetoric coming home to roost, implying Loughner was connected to the Tea Party movement.

Fact: What little information there is about Loughner's political inclinations indicate he leaned left. (@caitieparker on Twitter attended high school with Loughner and played in a band with him.)

Given these facts, how can one not conclude that there is a systematic and deliberate effort by Democrats and their collaborators in the media to use this horrific incident to smear their political opposition? If these facts don't convince you, maybe this Politico piece will:

“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.”

The Democrats and their allies on the far left are intellectually dishonest, morally bankrupt and undeserving of any claim to leadership of this country. Meanwhile, their media lapdogs betray their bias beyond a shadow of any doubt.

I'm done with the whole lot of them.

Update: Another fact...Loughner set his sights on Giffords in 2007, long before Palin's map came about. But don't expect any such inconvenient facts to stop the narrative.

Daily Kos: Bringing teh krazy

Here's a Daily Kos diary making the Right-wing Extremist™ rounds...

Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama recklessly put himself, the crew, and the Navy Seals at unnecessary risk.

The pirates' modus operandi is that they hold the crew, ship, and cargo harmlessly until a lot of money is paid to them. Phillips "heroic" actions put his crew and himself at risk. If he'd done nothing except acquiesce to the pirates' demands, there would have been no risk, just possible discomfort until the extortion money was paid. Instead he put himself and the Seals at grave risk.

To be fair, though, the comments on the post roundly denounce the diarist and support Capt. Phillips' decision. But even there you can see the "blame America first" mentality that's so pervasive on the American left:

The Somalis loathe Americans. There are good reasons for that hatred, but those reasons have zero to do with Captain Phillips.

What good reasons? That we tried to alleviate suffering there and in return our troops were attacked and we fought back? Fuck you, Kossacks.