Ironically, UU Church would have welcomed and helped Adkinsson. Not true of many other so called Christian churches.

My prayers are with UUs in Knoxville.

Haters who make “jokes” do not seem to realize that they are creating a climate in which this type of thing is okay. I heard many people from Operation Rescue on the radio back in the days of attacks on Planned Parenthood who said of course they would never kill anyone but……

hiya firedogs!!!!!

Noone should joke about killing other people. You never know who is going to take it too seriously.

And the list of politically and “morally”-based violent attacks by the right against the left continues to grow. That list of violent attacks against the right by the left? Hmm, I know I left it around here somewhere …

But remember – it’s scary angry (sometimes black) libruls we have to be worried about!

I bet they’re gonna say crazy people have a right to guns too, right?

Even among the right wing gun “enthusiasts” intoxicated by thoughts of violence against us, this is rare. Most of them are well meaning and realize that wanton murder is profoundly wrong.

I’m not as generous toward the talk radio propagandists who try to stir them to action.

I am an angry brownish liberal and I attack with a blog and the truth.

Reynolds is such a fool… he used to be taken down on a regular basis by the more liberal members of the Rocky Top Brigade (a million blog-years ago) and occasionally by South Knox Bubba himself, but not so much any more since SKB folded his tent several years ago after being “outed” by a vindictive reader. Now that task falls to the fine folks over at Sadly, No!…who do it with flair and panache.

Reynolds can blithely say anything, including the fact that right-wingers have original thoughts and attribute an attack on the UUs to “christian hating” (sort of like Eric Rudolph, hunh?). I guess being a tenured professor can cause severe blockage of the brain and/or thinking processes.

The ole’(tenured) Perfesser is proof positive.

The hatred that radio hate speech spreaders like Limbaugh and Savage fuel day in and day out is what is causing this kind of thing. All you have to do is listen to callers on Washington Journal to hear the propaganda they spread repeated over and over. Stressed out, unstable people like this man, are susceptible to blaming their situation on this non-reality that is spewed at them, and taking it to the extreme.

And of course the conservative proponents of the philosophy of “personal responsibility” are claiming that the Adkisson is the only person responsible for Adkisson’s actions.

Thirty years of using “liberal” as an epithet, as a label for unAmerican and evil, has helped dehumanize liberals to the point where madmen like Adkisson feel justified in committing murder.

But conservative mainstream media will deny any responsibility, even as our media is choked with “violence pornography” on a nightly basis…

What I’ve managed to catch thus far on the idjit box is an emphasis on the killer’s fustration at not being able to find a job plus loss of foodstamps……and a downplay of his hatred of liberals/gays. Yeh, by all means, let’s not take a close look at the hatred being ginned up on a daily basis by conventional media like cnn. Dog knows what’s being said on the reich wing blogs/radio. :-(

Ding! Exactly.

I get an extremely right wing magazine every month, the hatred of anything liberal can be found on any page, I save them rather than dump them in the recycle bin, so if anyone would like me to send them on to you I will be more than happy to. I have been somewhat concerned about the overall tone of this magazine, and have actually sent one of the issues to the local FBI, it was a particulararly incendiary issue

McCain feeds this with his “gay couples are inferior to straight couples” meme (from yesterday’s interview with Stephanopoulos).

OT – It seems Robert Novak has been hospitalized because of a brain tumor. It’s a Human Events Online link. This could be why he had no idea he hit anybody last week.

but isn’t it liberals that started food stamps and job programs?

At least this fine, upstanding, indicted, but not convicted felon will be able to cast his vote for John McCain in November.

huh? Won’t he be in jail?

Reminds me of a Boston born Puerto Rican I know whose family was on welfare for a few years until they got on their feet and he was able to attend college, Now he is against all welfare, food stamps, etc. for anyone under any circumstances. Talk about being ungrateful and not knowing where you’ve come from.

Hokey smokes, did you break the glass and open this blog on standby? I mean, at least allow the case to develop to some extent.

Hate speech is in principle protected by the Bill of Rights. As is violence depicted on television.

The conclusion drawn here is too much a leap.

I’m sure a slave state like Tennessee has an absentee program for indicted, but not convicted, white felons.

He’ll either be free awaiting trial, or free after a slap on the wrist.

As dreadful a person as Novak clearly is, I hope that he is NOT suffering from a brain tumor or cancer. Nobody should experience such a thing.

However were he suffering from a brain tumor, it actually WOULD go a long way towards explaining how he could hit a pedestrian and not be aware of it. My friend who eventually died of brain cancer was arrested for “drunk driving” after sideswiping a line of parked vehicles under similar circumstances.

No medical condition can explain Novak’s conduct in the Valerie Plame affair, however. One more reason to wish him good health, in addition to basic civility and compassion, is because his brain contains information that could serve Justice in that case…

Yeah, ain’t it funny (NOT) how the wingers are happy to use the available “socialized” benefits but b!tch about them 24/7? Prime example: bush 3.0 and his SS bennies.

Well, given the FBI’s approach to investigating/apprehending Zacarias Moussaoui prior to 9/11, don’t hold your breath.

Is there something we could do for this church right now? I don’t know what,but certainly we could put our collective heads together and come up with something constructive.

This just breaks my heart.

Yes, that’s always the argument – wait til all the facts are in! ‘Course, nothing stops the Right from speculating based on allegations and fever dreams, and turning those into facts through repetition in the mainstream media.

There are enough facts (particularly the letter that the police found describing Adkisson’s motivation) that it is not inappropriate to discuss the ramifications. But if you want to wait the court case is concluded, nothing is stopping you.

damn ! and I had money on “voluntarily enters rehab” in the pool

it is the same kind of church where rev deb is a preacher. We should ask her.

“I will be suspending my journalistic work for an indefinite but, God willing, not too lengthy period.”

say about the last 35 years

Charles Pierce had a little bit the other day at Altercation about how Reynolds is fortunate that Phil Fulmer is coaching football at Tennessee as that means the “Campus Fathead Award” is retired for the duration. Otherwise…

Is shooting eight people with a shotgun a constitutionally protected action and reading his reasons for doing so constitutes a leap.

off topic- I got to touch the ocean for the first time ever on Saturday. I have pix of the weekend in New York up on my blog. Click my name.

Human response: I hope it’s benign and that all is well for him.

Cynical response: Why did he go to Boston to be hospitalized? Why was he released from a DC Hospital without a brain scan (concussion?). Why is Rush reporting on it? What’s the “appropriate treatment” — that is to say, what does he have?

And on the subject: I just want to remind everyone of the killing of the Amish children a few years back. Remember how we all admired them for their response to the tragedy.

Now we liberals are experiencing a similar tragedy. These people are part of our “family” and I just want us to have a different response than the reich-wing. Maybe blogging about it IS the difference. Maybe not calling for the death of conservatives IS the difference. I’m just turning this over in my mind.

9/11 offered Us a moment of solidarity and sympathy with the rest of the world and we know how Bush squandered it. Is there anything to learn?

No one’s saying that the culpability is a legal one. The culpability is moral. When you incessantly indulge rhetoric of the kind we get from the right on a regular basis, this is what happens. From Tim McVeigh to Eric Rudolph to Chad Castagana, there has been an endless parade of these folks whipped into acts of terrorism by the irresponsible rhetoric of people like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. I don’t advocate legal sanctions but commercial ones.

This is amazing thought. And you’re absolutely right. Part of our solidarity is our steadfast refusal to learn from the past and then to apply the learning (”our” being the liberal community). And is there anything in the Judeo/Christian/Muslim tradition that suggests that when one of us is harmed, all of us are harmed? Yeah, I thought so.

Fascist Germany derived much of its power from a culture of hate. It blamed certain groups for the wrongs in society and proceeded to harness the resultant anger to commit great crimes much as Republicans, the Bush Administration, and the Right Wing have done. The shooter in Tennessee was not one bad apple but a symptom of the disease. The glib comments by right wing hatemongers to murder politicians and activist judges don’t sound so glib but more like incitement. It is curious that in an Administration obsessed with largely fictional terrorist threats from abroad these domestic ones are so completely overlooked and laughed off.

Jesus was a liberal.

Yes, they are definitely part of the problem — for anyone who does not take THAT seriously, I point to the cases where Clear Channel DJs promoted hatred against bicyclists. People took them up on that. http://portland.indymedia.org/…..4203.shtml
Hate speech should NOT go without a response.

Hope you had fun, Cassie and got some good food.

Incitement to violence is not protected speech. It never has been. Or at least not until recently when the Constitution was put through the shredder.

Key word there was “was” don’t tell Dobson, robertson, Hagee et al

Right on, Snarky!

Say, have you taken a look at the conversation between Tom Hayden and Naomi Klein?

Author, Activist and Former California State Senator Tom Hayden talks in depth with the author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, about the state of the fourth branch of government: journalists. Both Hayden and Klein became serious journalists in college, and it was during that time that both experienced their defining moment. When Tom Hayden interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr at the 1960 DNC in Los Angeles, he asked questions while imagining the headline, “Tom Hayden Interviews MLK,” but by the time he wrote the article he knew there were more important things in the world than personal glory. Naomi Klein rebelled from her liberal, feminist mother until Mark Lepine gunned down fourteen women in what became known as the Montreal Massacre. It was then she realized people were dying for the beliefs her mother fought for, and that realization awakened the activist within her. After both events, Hayden and Klein dedicated their lives to telling the truth about the world, and doing everything in their power to not use subjects like “they,” but use “we” instead. It is that distinction that defines their journalism to this day.

How’s your summer been?
Are you beginning to think about school again?

Bob in HI

Don’t forget the bombings/shootings at abortion clinics a few years ago.

One man’s joke is anothers marching orders

haha, I did struggle with that verb tense. I won’t tell.

“”Propaganda tries to force a doctrine on the whole people… Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea.” Adolf Hitler wrote these words in his book Mein Kampf (1926), in which he first advocated the use of propaganda to spread the ideals of National Socialism — among them racism, antisemitism, and anti-Bolshevism.

Following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels. The Ministry’s aim was to ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through art, music, theater, films, books, radio, educational materials, and the press.

There were several audiences for Nazi propaganda. Germans were reminded of the struggle against foreign enemies and Jewish subversion. During periods preceding legislation or executive measures against Jews, propaganda campaigns created an atmosphere tolerant of violence against Jews, particularly in 1935 (before the Nuremberg Race Laws of September) and in 1938 (prior to the barrage of antisemitic economic legislation following Kristallnacht). Propaganda also encouraged passivity and acceptance of the impending measures against Jews, as these appeared to depict the Nazi government as stepping in and “restoring order.”

If that doesn’t describe “Bushco”, then I don’t know what does. Just connect the dots….Prescott Bush…and carry history forward…oh yeah, and don’t think for a moment that Bushco wouldn’t “sacrifice” Israel in a flash either. The politicization of DOJ is part of it.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/artic…..d=10005274

christy’s upstairs with the Tomnibus bill, btw.

Terrorist attack.

Period, end of story.

bushco definitely does not have a problem with any of Hitler’s moves. they find much to be admired there. it’s all about the control of the masses, nothing about American freedom and values.

Mike – don’t remind me — our area gave the world Randall Terry.

Since when is promoting tyranny free speech?

You can’t promote the destruction of the very entity which gives you free speech. I have no idea where (of all people) Phil Donahue got this idea that promoting tyranny is legal free speech.

Islamic democracy: One man, one vote, one time.

Vote once for islamic tyranny, forever.

This is not how it works.

Is yelling “fire” in a movie theatre protected free speech if it is a joke?

The McVeigh wing of the GOP is getting into action a few months earlier than I had expected.

Can’t wait until Glenn Beck carries forth with his Hutu-powered promise to promote the use of torches and pitchforks to destroy the government, now that his kind aren’t in charge.

-G

Understood. Thanks for the clarification.

Hey y’all, here’s a website where you might forward any questions regarding helping the people of that particular church, find updates, or if you have questions about UUs in general.

http://www.uua.org/news/newssu…..7154.shtml

And y’all, I feel like I have to say this because of the redneck image many people have about us – please don’t automatically lump all Tennesseans, southerners, or anyone else for that matter, into the same category. I admit, I sometimes feel like I’m on a blue island in a sea of red, but there are good people here, of all political and religious affiliations.

And many of those good people, some UUs, some not, are already on their way to Knoxville, or at the very least, sending prayers and energy and blessings to not just the members of the church and their families, but to the family of the shooter.

We are all part of the web.

After police did a press conference on the shooter’s motives, FoxNews had it’s lineup of people giving the usual lip service to the horrendous crime but that this wasn’t a hate crime (even though the shooter targeted gays in his letter as well as the librul movement). Guest brought up the standard line of “this guy is just wacko–you have to be wacko to do something like this.”

Also the the updated AP article I read in this morning’s Chicago Tribune (online) ended the story by referencing 2 shootings at churches in the past several years though neither of those had anything to do with the views of the congregation, lumping the TUUVC shooting with those.

Adkisson will be portrayed by the MSM as just another “nutcase.”

Just a minor nit. The denomination is Unitarian Universalist, not Universalist Unitarian.

UU for short (among us UUs anyway).

This is the reason Planned Parenthood clinics are built with bullet proof wall like banks.

Unitarian Universalists as a denomination are not “Christian” although some congregations lean more Christian than others. “Unitarian” means that UUs believe in a single god (not necessarily a specific god) so for the most part do not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Unitarian Universalism is a big tent, lots of people “recovering” from other faiths. And UUs also support gay rights and many congregations are designated “Welcoming” congregations if they have done specific things to encourage GLBT participation in church life. The UUs have many ordained female clergy, as well. Just FYI.

Yup. I am a UU.

And in many ways it is inaccurate to say, “UUs believe…” because they welcome diverse beliefs and intentionally do not speak with one voice.

of course, this kind of violent tragedy can’t possibly happen in one of the, um, “good states”, right? your prejudice is duely noted.

I’ve grown weary of the Zell Miller dictum: Ya gotta understand Southerners

The hell I do.

Guess it changes the whole meaning of ‘Fly Over Country’- coz you would be crazy to do otherwise..right?

I bet the Malkinites are rejoicing over this.

They can dispatch more of these “lone nuts” with their hate speech. Expect it.

i see, it’s southerners, not just us Tennessean’s. thanks for clearing that right up for me.

I notice he also had just been cut off food stamps and couldn’t get a job. Nothin’ to lose, about to start starving, decided to take it out on people he hated. He was primed, aimed, cocked and then given a good hard kick. No wonder he went off.