House of Reps. member Giffords shot in Arizona today

On the subject of Giffords, cyclops, I am glad she will hopefully pull through it. Guns are not the issue, its how they are used. In a similar way, religion such as Islam is not the principle issue, it is how it is used. The same principle could be applied to the kooky church in Kansas. It is the kooky people misusing a religion to further their agenda.

I hope you have rethought your posting of the map with the survey markers, as I think you should know better than that.

Demagoguery does not unify the country. Nor does Obama talking about some of us here in this country as his enemies, that does not improve things. You would have never heard George W. Bush say things like that.

"This wasn't a little grazing wound to the brain. This was a devastating wound that traveled the entire length of the brain on the left side," said Dr. Peter Rhee, trauma medical director at UMC.

Those weren't 'survey markers' on that map. It doesn't even make any sense to claim that they were. It doesn't fit the map at all or the words attached to it. Palin's team themselves later referred to them as targets.

It's completely and totally farcical. Don't stoop to this level - just admit that it was a stupid thing for Palin to do and move one.

Quote:

Demagoguery does not unify the country. Nor does Obama talking about some of us here in this country as his enemies, that does not improve things. You would have never heard George W. Bush say things like that.

You're not allowed to call someone your 'political enemy?'

Re: Bush, he said plenty of dumb things, I'm sure we don't want to have that conversation. At the very least, when he said 'you either side with us or the terrorists,' we was talking in large part to Americans who were against his war in Iraq. I think that goes a little farther than referring to the other side as political enemies.
Cycloptichorn

peter jeffrey cobb wrote:

Ill tell you what invite Sarah to read my topics. If she leaves a post............ Then I would consider it honor..... To attemp to understand her point of view

Omg Omg I just saw the number of readers in my topics go up by 1........ You think............ could it be.............. Dang its probaly one of my dilusions again

I do not think the Democrats came out ahead on this one, and I hope they realize that "blood libel" is nonproductive, as Palin has pointed out.

Sometimes, I go target shooting with friends;
sometimes take a young lady to a gunnery range
then on to dinner and a movie.

Sarah Palin's missed opportunity
By Ezra Klein

I'll stand with Jon Chait and, oddly enough, Sarah Palin on this one: Palin is right to feel aggrieved. As Chait says, many have blamed her for a killing rampage that she had nothing to do with. A lot of Palin's rhetoric is over the top, and her gun metaphors ("RELOAD!") and her target sights looked unsettling in light of subsequent events. But the subsequent events were not her fault.

Moreover, I just don't care if Palin thought "blood libel" was a vivid way of saying "nasty smear" instead of a description of the once-common anti-Semitic trope that Jews murder Christian children because their blood is needed to bake matzoh. I'm Jewish, so I know the term well. But I imagine the history of it is more obscure to those who didn't attend Hebrew school.

What is remarkable to me, however, is Palin's ability to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Palin didn't ask to be part of this story. But she did choose how to respond to it. Imagine if Palin had come out and said, "My initial response was to defend the fact that I had never condoned such violence, and never would. But the fact is, if I in any way contributed to an unhealthy political climate, I have to be more careful and deliberate in my public language rather than merely sharpen my defenses." That would've been leadership: It would have made her critics look small, and it would've made her look big. Those who doubted whether Palin could rise to an occasion that called for more than sharp partisanship would've been silenced.

Of course, Palin didn't say that. Al Sharpton did (or at least he said something very close). Palin accused her opponents of propagating a "blood libel." Rather than admitting that we all sometimes go too far, and that we must constantly work to see the humanity in others and tamp down on the dangerous certainty we have in ourselves, she mocked the idea that political rhetoric was ever "less heated" and noted that there was a time when politicians settled disputes through duels.

So that's Palin's substantive response: Politics has never been reliably civil, and at least she's not shot anybody. Both things are true. But you won't find "stop bothering me, this tragedy isn't my fault" in the chapter headings of any books on leadership. Palin could've taken this opportunity to look very big, and instead she now looks very small. And that's not the fault of her detractors or her map. It's her fault, and her fault alone.

Plus he was stopped for running a red light. One wishes that the police officer who stopped him had the gift of sight, but it sounds like other than being able to foresee the future there was no reason to detain him.