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Congresswoman shot.

Not sure if this has been posted on here or not, but I agree whole-heartedly with this statement.

The words of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik should resonate for us all:

"The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous. The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in. It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. That's the sad thing about what's going on in America: Pretty soon we're not going to be able to find reasonable decent people willing to subject themselves to serve in public office.''



Read more: https://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/201...#ixzz1Ag68ps3h

Sheriff Dupnik is an *** with political motivations perpetrating vitriolic rhetoric as he pretends to denounce it. He is an embarrassment to law enforcement.
 
I don't know the man personally so I couldn't comment on his motivations, but his words still ring true. Until the Hannity's, Coulter's, Colmes', and Olbermann's learn to shut the hell up and try to bring this country together rather then ripping it apart the problem will continue to grow.

It is ironic, but you and I both know, there really is no difference between the two sides..other than political leanings. Methods, actions, fringe groups, etc. are all the same across the board.

Quoted For Truth.
 
At least Olbermann has since apologized for his rhetoric. That doesn't mean he won't do it again, though.
 
I don't know the man personally so I couldn't comment on his motivations, but his words still ring true. Until the Hannity's, Coulter's, Colmes', and Olbermann's learn to shut the hell up and try to bring this country together rather then ripping it apart the problem will continue to grow.

This country would be a lot "nicer" if Sheriff Dupnik would shut his damn pie hole and do his damn job. It is completely unprofessional for law enforcement to be blaming radio peronalities for murder on national TV. Dupnik knew about this Loughner psycho and he should have dealt with him a long time ago when he first started making death threats.
 
This country would be a lot "nicer" if Sheriff Dupnik would shut his damn pie hole and do his damn job. It is completely unprofessional for law enforcement to be blaming radio peronalities for murder on national TV. Dupnik knew about this Loughner psycho and he should have dealt with him a long time ago when he first started making death threats.

Once again, not knowing the man I couldn't say how much he knew or did not know about Loughner. I attempted to look it up, but all I could find were allegations that Dupnik knew that Loughner had past involvements with law enforcement. Even though Loughner had been making death threats, you would be surprised at how hard it is to get someone institutionalized. Sometimes the best that law enforcement can do is involuntarily commit someone to a local hospital until that hospital staff approves of their release into the community (which is usually a week, sometimes more, sometimes less), and that takes a type of "probable cause".

As for "unprofessional", I'm not going to fault the man for speaking his mind on what he feels is part of the problem. I didn't take from his quote that he was blaming radio personalities for the murders specifically, but that they, in a way, are part of the problem of the political mood in this country. Do you feel that the various radio personalities that I mentioned above are helping the situation?

Also, not sure if you live in the Tucson area or not, you may be informed on the Sheriff's political platform then I am. I, like most of the country, learned of him through this tragic event. However, I found truth in the aforementioned quote. Whether it comes from a caring civil servant or a transparently pandering politician, that doesn't mean it isn't true.
 
Once again, not knowing the man I couldn't say how much he knew or did not know about Loughner. I attempted to look it up, but all I could find were allegations that Dupnik knew that Loughner had past involvements with law enforcement. Even though Loughner had been making death threats, you would be surprised at how hard it is to get someone institutionalized. Sometimes the best that law enforcement can do is involuntarily commit someone to a local hospital until that hospital staff approves of their release into the community (which is usually a week, sometimes more, sometimes less), and that takes a type of "probable cause".



As for "unprofessional", I'm not going to fault the man for speaking his mind on what he feels is part of the problem. I didn't take from his quote that he was blaming radio personalities for the murders specifically, but that they, in a way, are part of the problem of the political mood in this country. Do you feel that the various radio personalities that I mentioned above are helping the situation?

Also, not sure if you live in the Tucson area or not, you may be informed on the Sheriff's political platform then I am. I, like most of the country, learned of him through this tragic event. However, I found truth in the aforementioned quote. Whether it comes from a caring civil servant or a transparently pandering politician, that doesn't mean it isn't true.


He is a sworn law official who before he knew the entire facts of the case jumped to conclusions and blamed the incident on a "group" of citizens that had nothing to do with it. That is about a gross misconduct of office as it gets.
 
I don't know the man personally so I couldn't comment on his motivations, but his words still ring true. Until the Hannity's, Coulter's, Colmes', and Olbermann's learn to shut the hell up and try to bring this country together rather then ripping it apart the problem will continue to grow.



Quoted For Truth.

All those mention above are citizens that have the right to say what they want under the constitution. Be careful it might be you next.
 
All those mention above are citizens that have the right to say what they want under the constitution. Be careful it might be you next.

So then that would apply to Dupnik and his criticism of this group too, correct? Gross misconduct, to me, is not someone speaking their mind. Gross misconduct implies that they went so far beyond the scope of "normal conduct" that there was some type of theft or violence involved. All he did was say some real ****, which people are not used to in the political spectrum.
 
And I understand that on one hand I am defending Dupnik for his comments while criticizing liberal and conservative media on the other. But the Dupnik quote above doesn't come close to comparing to the hatred that gets spewed forth from various liberal and conservative media outlets daily.
 
So then that would apply to Dupnik and his criticism of this group too, correct? Gross misconduct, to me, is not someone speaking their mind. Gross misconduct implies that they went so far beyond the scope of "normal conduct" that there was some type of theft or violence involved. All he did was say some real ****, which people are not used to in the political spectrum.

Don't cops love ambiguous rules like "disorderly" conduct that allow them to take the place of a judge right on the spot?
 
So then that would apply to Dupnik and his criticism of this group too, correct? Gross misconduct, to me, is not someone speaking their mind. Gross misconduct implies that they went so far beyond the scope of "normal conduct" that there was some type of theft or violence involved. All he did was say some real ****, which people are not used to in the political spectrum.

Are you serious? You don't see the distinction between Limbaugh and Dupnik? Suppose your neighbors 16 year old daughter falsely accuses you of raping her. As they are arresting you, in front of whatever hot reporter KSL news sends to cover the story, Sheriff Dupnik rolls up and goes on a political rant about how he is not surprised given the level of internet porn that people like you watch and surf on the internet all day. Not to mention you listen to that crazy music you kids listen to today, raping your neighbor is a natural extension.

I mean He is just saying some real **** right?

Come dude, stop and think instead of reacting emotionally. You hate this political crap yet you are falling for the trap.
 
I saw an interview with Dupnik and they point blank asked him if there were any evidence linking the "alleged" shooter to the right wing and he finally admitted there wasn't. That however did not stop him from jumping the gun (just like a few poster on here) and trying to pin this on Palin, Rush, etc. Personally I think anybody using this tragedy for political posturing is a moron. And Dupnik definitely falls into that category.
 
I saw an interview with Dupnik and they point blank asked him if there were any evidence linking the "alleged" shooter to the right wing and he finally admitted there wasn't. That however did not stop him from jumping the gun (just like a few poster on here) and trying to pin this on Palin, Rush, etc. Personally I think anybody using this tragedy for political posturing is a moron. And Dupnik definitely falls into that category.

And people are scared of Limbaugh? Limbaugh is an entertainer and political commentator. Fat, arrogant, and a blow hard. The regular media, the "real" media; seekers of truth, attempted to link WITHOUT evidence a group of a citizens (or citizen in the case of Palin) to a crime that now they obviously did not have anything to do with.

Many willing accomplices in this thread.
 
I'm from the state involved and I speak with at least one person presently residing in the state every day. To say that the area is unusually polarized is true. It just is. And the politics there have been aggressively ugly.

I understand that it is not the case that he's what we think of as a prototypical tea partier but I think the other side is pushing too far in saying that there is no possible way there's an influence or an undercurrent involved. I mentioned earlier that there's some recognizable strands, particularly in relation to his beliefs regarding hard backed currency, conspiracy theories, and exotic interpretations of specific sections of the Constitution. In an effort to demonize those who said there was a link I've seen literally no discussion from the right side, here or anywhere else, about these parallels.

Here's the thing: political violence is not a random occurrence except in the rarest of instances. Loughner was not trying impress Jodie Foster. He had specific beliefs and went after Giffords, at least in part because she's a government representative. The track record on him having paranoid ramblings about government control of his grammar and, by extension (according to him), his very thoughts is irrefutable. (I'm coming around to the idea this was probably influenced by Derrida, but that's another discussion).

That the threat of political violence against government officials, particularly those on the left, has escalated dramatically during a period of time where one side's rhetoric has tended towards the idea that a Democratic-Party controlled government is, in and of itself, illegitimate and the enemy of the people is unlikely to be a coincidence. When Steve King empathizes with a guy who runs his plane into an IRS building, the message is that the government is your enemy. When Eric Cantor emonizes Democrats for even mentioning they're subject to unprecedented levels of death threats, the implicit message is that those threats are acceptable. Those expectations that some level of political violence was inevitable have been building for at least 10 months since it was revealed that Democratic congresspersons were subject to very high threat levels.

Some want this to be a teachable moment. That so many were unsurprised something like this happened says almost as much about the climate as if he had actually been purely motivated by right-wing politics. This is an instance where overheated speech creates expectations and those expectations inform how we process events. The other side is trying their damnedest to say "not only do we learn nothing, but we refuse to acknowledge we need to learn anything." That removes what little bit of optimism I had about how this would shake out in the medium to long term.

Mental illness doesn't express itself in a vacuum. Context does matter, and we have strands and pieces that indicate Loughner was at least cognizant of particular messages portrayed by one side of the aisle. That he was more nut than political agent doesn't absolve one side entirely. But that's the way it looks like things are going to shake out in our consensus-based group think.
 
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