Clearly, he was urged on by liberal advocacy of violence, such as this call to murder Republicans by then-candidate Obama:
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”
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It’s been interesting to watch the media go bonkers over the last day regarding the mass murder in Arizona yesterday. It is abundantly clear that the killer, Jared Loughner, was a grade-A nutjob, very likely schizophrenic. What little coherent political leanings he seemed to have appear to be at least vaguely left-leaning, such as listing the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf among his favorite books (but also Ayn Rand’s “We The Living”). There is not the slightest shred of evidence that this goofball even noticed the likes of Glen Beck and Sarah Palin… but the news channels and online forums are loaded to the gills with people who believe that this guy was motivated by some supposed threats against the Left made by Tea Partiers, Beck, Palin and company. Of course, many of these people also assumed that the Times Square bomber was a Tea Partier.
One very popular image over the last day is this one posted by Palin before the midterm elections that supposedly shows Dem candidates in “rifle sights:”

Notice those “crosshair” signs on the map? Small problem… those aren’t sniper rifle crosshaiors, those are “benchmark” symbols. And where are “benchmark” symbols used? Why… on maps, as it turns out.

And then there’s this map from the Democrat party… that not only does pretty much the same thing (but with “bullseyes” instead of benchmarks), but also uses entertainingly violent language… “targeting strategy,” “enemy lines,” “ripe targets.”

American politics is often described as a “blood sport,” and similar terms. Political opponants as “the enemy.” And every now and then, some psycho goes bugnuts and kills someone. Thing is, there need not have been a political reason for the killing, as seems to be the case here; but that won’t stop the conscienceless hacks from using that killing in order to tar their political opponants… as we’ve been seeing over the last day. I fully expect to see some interesting new laws being pushed in the next few weeks… gun control laws and speech restrictions (such as the Orwellianly-named “fairness doctrine”) specifically.