Thoughts and Prayers for the public servant who showed up, stopped the gunman and took bullets so others did not have to! Let's hope he fully recovers so people can go back to complaining about how lazy he is, how much his health care costs and the nerve that he would expect a pension when he retires! Now would also be a good time to discuss reasonable gun control and make Michele Bachmann resign from public office.
I also wondered why there would be so much hate in this country, and realized that you can point a finger right at right wing talk radio. As this recent study points out:
Then of course there is immensely crazy Michelle Bachmann, perpetual crowing about the "muslim brotherhood" taking over the US. Bachmann's hate rhetoric has put Hillary Clinton's top aide in enough danger that she has needed extra security. While some republicans have stepped up and condemned her(Mitt Romney wont touch it), let's not forget about the republicans recent Muslim Mccarthy Hearings! Also please stop yourself before you try and disavow Bachmann from the mainstream of the republican party, she (along with Paul Ryan (R-Wall St.), are in the top 5 House Fundraisers. Seems the crazier you get the more money you make on the right!
This study analyzes how social networks that form around the hosts of commercial talk radio shows can propagate messages targeting vulnerable groups. Working with recorded broadcasts from five shows gathered over a six-week period, involving 102 scheduled guests and covering 88 topics, researchers determined hosts’ and guests’ ideological alignment on the topics discussed most frequently—including immigration and terrorism—through a content analysis of on-air statements and website content. The findings reveal that the hosts promoted an insular discourse that focused on, for example, anti-immigration, anti-Islam*, and pro-Tea Party positions and that this discourse found repetition and amplification through social media.
Until these issues are addressed, we will continue to have these problems.
By the way I also wanted to share a Facebook post from the NY Times Nicholas Kristoff shared this:
I'm hoping that today's Sikh temple shooting, on top of the Colorado cinema shooting, will elevate the issue of guns onto the national agenda. As somebody noted on my Twitter account, 1 person hid explosives in his shoe, and now we all remove shoes at the airport. But 30,000 Americans die annually from guns, and there are no efforts to reduce the toll. Time for change?
I am in pretty good company!
* Yes I understand Sikh's are not Muslim but that distinction does not appear to matter to the hard core right!
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