House of Reps. member Giffords shot in Arizona today

@snood,

the blame lies solely with the shooter, unless it was a paid hit, or there was some future incentive that could be traced

1 Reply

@djjd62,

and believe me, i'd like nothing more than to see every politician convicted for some crime or other, but douchebaggery is not a crime (thank god, or i'd be doing life)

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@failures art,

Quote:

Perhaps tangential, but I read that the 9 year old was born on 9/11/01. Now, this doesn't mean anything unto itself in terms of the crime. What it did mean to me was a great sadness that the only world this child ever knew (and ever would), was a nation in war(s). I'm incredibly saddened by how we never offered her a better world in her short life.

Yeah, life is a real bitch for American kids, Art.

Was she born deformed because of agent orange or depleted uranium? Was her house broken into at night by armed invaders? Were her dad and brothers taken away to a place where she didn't know where they were or if they were even alive?

Was her town napalmed? Her food sources destroyed or poisoned? Was her house bombed into nothing? Were her parents tortured right before her eyes, her mother raped?

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@failures art,

failures art wrote:

Perhaps tangential, but I read that the 9 year old was born on 9/11/01. Now, this doesn't mean anything unto itself in terms of the crime. What it did mean to me was a great sadness that the only world this child ever knew (and ever would), was a nation in war(s). I'm incredibly saddened by how we never offered her a better world in her short life.

She will also get to be sainted, if only in the media sense, and I'm sad for that too. She sounds wonderful, and I hope she will be left in peace.

As for the shooting. I'm not concerned with the motive except for clarity. People who shoot people in the face are ******* crazy, and I'm not interested in their justification.

One problem is the way we whirl around the word crazy. To me it seems he was bizarrely berserk, coned in on huge raging resentment, but I cringe that people who deal with mental illness get to be feared some more. I am wondering if there is a way to monitor all this stuff better - at the same time I'm iffy on some more monitoring, except for
my own bias, probably obvious, that I don't think the constitution says all of us should shore up our apartments with semi automatics.

Armageddon seems to be a real life game plan.

It shouldn't take a shooting to curb the hysteria on the political stage. We are bitterly divided, and this kind of thing only compounds the paranoia amongst neighbors.

Side story - /cut/ I heard not a damn word about the victims.

A
R
T

1 Reply

@Finn dAbuzz,

So you understand, now, that being a terrorist has nothing to do with Islam, right?

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@DrewDad,

but, but, george said they was the enemy

and OSD confirmed it

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I started to think yesterday about a little essay I might write called "The Violence of Rhetoric." I read an article today from Joan Walsh of Salon titled "The Rhetoric of Violence." I am not going to link it because she and Salon are left leaning and the examples she quotes all seem to come from the right, which doesn't really advance the discussion, in my opinion.
Back in 1967 or 1968, while a student at William and Mary, I took a short course offered by the government department. 200 students listening to this really old guy lecture about "Violence in America." He had speaker after speaker join us with experiences from say 1900 through the civil rights movement. We did not talk about VN.
Anyway, I came away with the conclusion that we in the U.S. have a rather violent history. We are a nation of immigrants and in most cases laborers. My great-great whatevers came over to dig the Erie Canal. Tough people.
And people migrated west and to the southwest, often encountering people who opposed their coming.
I am getting somewhere with this. Trust me, if you are still reading.
Words of "violence" have entered our lexicon and have become common in our speech. "Target", "cross-hairs", even the word "campaign." Just today I heard a local story in which a reporter said that the opponent of something said her organization "...had it's sights set on killing it." I am sure we can come up with other examples.
That's all folks. We are supposed to get some snow/ice tonight. I moved my car off the hill, hoping I can beat it to the punch.

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@Robert Gentel,

What was the name he wrote on the envelope?
As to him opposing her positions I am, I admit, parroting what I have heard on NBC, CBS and NPR.
Joe(I thought three sources might be enough)Nation

1 Reply

What I am finding interesting is all of the people blaming this on Sarah Palin and the tea party.
If I remember correct, after the Ft Hood shootings every news network and pundit was saying not to jump to conclusions, not to blame all of Islam for the actoons of one person.
Now those same people are tripping over themselves to connect this event to the right and are saying that the shooters actions were caused by right wing talk.
It seems to me that people are trying to make this tragic event a purely political event, instead of the actions of one disturbed individual.
That is truly sad.

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Wow, I was wondering who would be the first to post that shitty Gergen piece here. Surprised that it was you.

This dude doesn't typify or exemplify the right-wing, but he's clearly familiar with their rhetoric and recommendations. I think that the sheriff of the town had it exact right when he stated that dangerous rhetoric has consequences, and those who espouse it shouldn't be surprised when crazy folk take them seriously. And when it comes to violent rhetoric in this country, there's no comparison between the political left and the right. None at all.

Cycloptichorn

David Berkowitz was satisfied to be take his counsel from Sam 's Dog, who told him to kill.
Maybe the dog was barking hatefully.

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@firefly,

Wow, thank you, firefly, for posting the JFK traitor piece. I had never heard of it before.

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@firefly,

Has anyone read the JFK traitor poster content? The difference between it and what is being said about Obama today is slight.

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@dyslexia,

I knew as much about the Texas Tower Shooter as I knew about the JFK poster that firefly reproduced for us.

Interestingly, the mother of a friend had a brain tumor that changed her personality and physical well being. She went from a sort of working class, folk intellectual who freelanced for Saturday Evening Post and other magazines to an incontinent woman who broke bones while walking. When the tumor was removed, she lived out the remainder of her life as an involved, intellectual person.

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@Rockhead,

We can not do anything for the victims but we can ignore palin.

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@snood,

snood wrote:

Robert, what would you consider as valid proof of the partial culpability of hateful, inciteful speech in tragedies such as these?

You guys have made no connection at all, much less anything I'd consider proof of culpability. Debating what precise threshold is acceptable evidence is pointless when you are stuck at absolutely nothing.

1 Reply

@mysteryman,

mysteryman wrote:

What I am finding interesting is all of the people blaming this on Sarah Palin and the tea party.
If I remember correct, after the Ft Hood shootings every news network and pundit was saying not to jump to conclusions, not to blame all of Islam for the actoons of one person.
Now those same people are tripping over themselves to connect this event to the right and are saying that the shooters actions were caused by right wing talk.
It seems to me that people are trying to make this tragic event a purely political event, instead of the actions of one disturbed individual.
That is truly sad.

After seeing the news about this shooting, I thought "oh no, here we go again." The reason is I remembered the left blaming Rush for the Oklahoma City bombing, etc. Anytime something like this happens, they will immediately jump to their stereotypical conclusions, but as you rightly pointed out, they did the opposite regarding the Ft. Hood shooting, even though there was immediate evidence of the guy's Islamic terrorist motivations. In this case, there did not seem to be anything at all to base any conclusions. I have spent maybe 15 minutes on the net looking for clues about this guy, and there seems to be nothing, not even any information about whether he or his folks are registered Republicans or Democrats. I did find one reference about him being mad about the military handing out Bibles, which doesn't strike me as a right wing complaint. It appears to me so far that the guy had some very deep seated problems, mostly unrelated to politics, probably just a really bad mental case. He apparently asked the representative at a previous gathering some kind of a weird question about words meaning things, and he did not think he got a good answer so he stayed mad about that, to the point of planning revenge.

From my reading, it does appear the sheriff made some pretty hasty and stupid remarks that had no basis to make, which does not help matters any. I can understand him being mad if the representative was a friend, but how smart is it to start laying blame with no evidence whatsoever?

I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out, because there are surely many investigators working on this. By the way, I just found this thread and its already 33 pages!!

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@Joe Nation,

Where are any of your three sources saying this? I have seen nobody report what you claimed (which was not that there was a name on an envelope but that the shooter demonstrably objected to her positions and party).

What I have seen reported, is that he was angry at her because of an exchange they had in 2007, where he asked her a stupid question and she treated it as such, and nothing about any political differences they may have had:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703667904576071191163461466.html?mod=wsj_share_twitter

Quote:

Mr. Montanaro said his friend "was never really political," but "really tried to be philosophical." Mr. Loughner liked "contemplating the meaning of words and the origin of language," Mr. Montanaro said.

That interest might have triggered Mr. Loughner's first meeting with Ms. Giffords in 2007. Mr. Loughner said he asked the lawmaker, "How do you know words mean anything?" recalled Mr. Montanaro. He said Mr. Loughner was "aggravated" when Ms. Giffords, after pausing for a couple of seconds, "responded to him in Spanish and moved on with the meeting."

Mr. Montanaro recalled his friend developed "a hate for government and just how everything was systematic...He thought government controlled people too much."

"I really can't understand why Jared was so interested in Giffords," Mr. Montanaro said. "I imagine it was simply because she was the most accessible."

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@Joe Nation,

Joe, don't you think the guy was a shooting spree waiting to happen? Why did he already have a public verbal attack on Giffords previously? Pre-Palin.

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@Cycloptichorn,

You have got to be kidding. Those were direct calls to murder and violence against specified people.

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@snood,

snood wrote:

It sounds a little flip I know,

It's just premeditated mass murder - what's NOT to be flip about? You're the most repulsive kook on this site, and that's saying a whole LOT.

1 Reply

House of Reps. member Giffords shot in Arizona today

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