Knee-Jerks

Knee Jerks, clockwise: Michael Bloomberg, Clarence Dupnik and Mike NiFong. These guys have a tendency not to think before they accuse--usually for political motives.

The unfortunate, evil and tragic recent shootings in Tucson, Arizona that killed six, including a nine year old girl and a federal judge and wounded fourteen, including Rep. Gabby Giffords shocked the nation. Americans of all sorts mourned a senseless tragedy that by all objective accounts had nothing to do with politics. Within hours of the incident however, reports and stories began streaming from the mainstream media outlets and uniformed politicians and pundits that some political rhetoric, mostly from conservatives like Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and probably yours truly was what inspired Jared Loughner, who by all objective accounts was, if anything, politically left of center (atheist, drug abuser, 9/11 Truther, devotee of the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf), to attack moderate Democrat Giffords. It became clear at that time that there was a small contingent of shady political operatives who weren’t shocked by the shooting. They were ready.

After the Minnesota I-35W bridge collapse in 2007 and before the bodies could be dredged from the river below, liberals sprang to try to harangue the local and state (Republican) government for not spending enough on infrastructure, when studies later found the collapse due to an original design flaw in the bridge, no one retracted their salvo. Probably because massive infrastructure projects happen to be the major focus of legislative earmarks. After the economic crash in fall of 2008, somehow a 700 billion-ish dollar TARP bail out package and 1,000 page and trillion dollar stimulus package were developed faster than legislators could physically read the bill (which, I might add, was bigger than the Bible—the Bible, people), rife with pet projects for left of center legislators.

Perhaps this premature blame-gaming is due to the emotionally driven rationale that imbues most of the unconstrained political philosophy, and not calculated political dirt-baggery which drives this knee jerk, wrong headed response to crises. Perhaps. After all, Barack Obama had nothing to gain by stoking racial tension in the aftermath of the arrest of (Black) Henry “Skip” Gates for disorderly conduct by the (Black and White) Cambridge police officers by saying that even though he didn’t hadn’t “seen all the facts…it’s fair to say that…the Cambridge police officers acted stupidly”, going on to insinuate that race probably played a role in the arrest. Later evidence proved that Skip was out of his mind and should have been arrested. Nothing to gain, right?

Finger pointing is one thing. Finger pointing when you don’t have any facts yet, just to score political points is another entirely. Let’s not forget now-disbarred Democrat District Attorney in Durham County North Carolina, Mike NiFong who was, as most elected prosecutors are, trying to pad his resume for higher office. He’s the one who ruined the careers and reputations of the Duke Lacrosse team by prematurely declaring them guilty of raping a lying stripper. This incited the campus community against the team and stirred up racial tension. Once the facts were out, it was too late to repair the reputations of the players.

After the attempted Times Square bombing in New York City, the ultimate political opportunist (I’m a Democrat—no, a Republican—no, an independent… wait, what am I again?) Mike Bloomberg was equally quick to claim that the wanna-be bomber must have been a Tea Partier who was upset about Obamacare. Bloomberg quickly ran with the right-wing extremist thing—Mike stated that the culprit was likely a “home-grown, maybe a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill…” Except that it turned out that the bomber was a Muslim terrorist. Maybe Mike was half right and he was a mentally deranged Muslim terrorist.

But, what about when liberal after liberal, particularly Paul Krugman and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik jumped at the opportunity to blame talk radio, which they don’t listen to, and Sarah Palin’s campaign map, which they had likely never actually seen, for inciting Loughner to violence? “Hate speech” and violent rhetoric were to blame, apparently, and not the evidently paranoid schizophrenic, who built a human skull shrine in his back yard, smoked dope and other hallucinogens, was enamored by ‘conscious dreaming’ and had numerous run-ins with local law enforcement, even on the day of his rampage. Except that by the time these facts were largely available, liberals had two days of the weekend news cycle in the aftermath of the shootings to spread their lies and set the narrative. Magically, Democrat legislators were ready on Monday with a new gun-control law, a renewed push for a free-speech squelching Fairness Doctrine, and Peter King’s misguided sponsoring of a law prohibiting weapons within a 1,000 foot perimeter of elected officials.

Time and again when crisis or tragedy strikes, there is always a liberal legislator who happens to have, tucked away in a dusty drawer in their Rayburn Building office a thousand or so paged bill, drawn up nearly a decade prior. It was Rahm Emmanuel who once said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and liberals, sadly, usually waste no time in attempting to take advantage of them. This is another tragedy born out of the one we already faced—that the names and deeds of those involved are lost in petty attempts to score political points.

Far and away these mass murdering nuts tend to have liberal-leftist political views, if any at all. However, conservatives never imply that liberal politics or liberal politicians have anything to do with lunatic violence. The only reason I even mention Loughner’s politics is to disprove the litany of leftist dilettantes trying to opportunistically ascribe guilt to conservatives. Just as with the Holocaust Museum shooter, who actually stated he was inspired by Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, conservatives usually do not ascribe blame to anyone but the evil people involved. Why? Because, one, they have nothing to do with the tragedies, and two, because we are honorable people. Not knee-jerks.

The president tonight is set to speak to the nation about the events in Tucson. I recommend that he sticks to the facts, calls for Americans to come together in the face of tragedy, appeals to the victims and their families, and denounces the true motive of this crime. If the president drags politics into his speech as so many of his colleagues have, his presidency is over. He will immediately dash his re-election hopes in 2012, and rightfully so. It is time to stop playing politics with tragedies and to focus on what really matters: the victims, their families and their communities.

David Teesdale, didn’t even want to have to write about the political opportunism running amok in the wake of tragedies these days.  Too bad people of sound minds these days have to spend their time combating dangerous foolishness of this sort.