US Rep. Giffords (D-AZ) shot at public event
 

NPR's latest update states that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has been shot at a public event today at a Safeway in Tuscon, AZ.

Giffords reportedly received death threats during the health care reform debate and her office was vandalized. She was also among the Democratic members of congress targeted by Sarah Palin's PAC (Sarah Palin's PAC Puts Gun Sights On Democrats She's Targeting In 2010).

I'm sitting here speechless and shaking. This is very, very scary. Maybe it's hasty to conclude this was a political act, but it's not too far a leap. This isn't the first recent phenomenon of violence against members of Congress and given the way things are going, it may not be the last.

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Hospital spokeswoman now reporting (at 2:37pm) that Giffords is still alive, in critical condition and is in surgery.

This is shocking. I haven't taken in too many details yet. However, at this time I'm hoping for mental illness and/or personal crisis over "political action" as the strongest motive/cause.

Oh, and Sarah Palin is an idiot.

---------- Post added at 02:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:38 PM ----------

If she was indeed shot in the head and she is indeed still alive, this is rather dire.

Important facts to remember, before somebody decides that this is another "assasinated census worker with FED carved in his chest!!!" incident:

1: Rep. Giffords supported AZ's SB1070.

2: Rep Giffords is a proponent and supporter of National Guard deployments on the AZ/Mexico border.

3: Rep. Giffords is a gun-rights supporter who supported AZ's passage of Constitutional "Vermont" Carry (ie carrying of weapons without asking Massa's permission), and supported the Pro Gun arguments during Heller.

4: Rep. Giffords supported extending the Bush Tax Cuts, and has lobbied against numerous tax-hike proposals during her tenure in office.

These fact taken into account, IMO, speak strongly against what I'm sure will be spun as a right-wing assassination.

Media reports I'm seeing (CNN, MSNBC) is calling the suspect a "deranged gunman." Clearly they're playing it safe.

Dunedan, this could easily be a right-wing assassination if the shooter is farther right than she is. You know as well as I do that you don't have to be smart to pull a trigger, and it could be her vote on something else entirely (health care or something else) that branded her as a "liberal" in someone's mind since that was the Most Important Vote Ever in that person's mind.

Or it could be a Trotskyite.

Or she stepped in front of a bullet meant for someone's ex-wife.

My point is that you don't know any more than we do, so stop trying to spin something so early. You don't even know if she's alive or dead, but you're already knee-jerking.

Oh, Jazz, it's never too soon for conspiracy theories.

Dunedan, she's also pro-choice and voted for both the bailout and the stimulus.

...and one of those commie pinko cyclists ;)

Giffords yells at motorists from her bike

I am aware.

I am also aware that certain elements of this particular board are more than willing to run with zero facts and embrace almost any lunatic conclusion that feeds their stereotypes. "Fed" carvings, Palin family baby-mama conspiracies, etc.

I simply wish to avoid that.

If this turns out to be a right-winger, I'll be very surprised, but I am more than willing to admit that "my side" has its' fair share of idiots and nutballs and I will be as dismayed as anyone if that turns out to be the case. I'd just like to see some facts before Certain Persons start blathering about "hate groups" and suchlike again.

If someone shot Sarah Palin at a political event, I'd be more than willing to entertain the possibility it wasn't just some person who could be dismissed as crazy and be left at that. I'd even be willing to entertain the serious possibility that it was someone on the left who was well aware of what he or she was doing and was in possession of all of his or her faculties. I'd want to know if anyone on the left were calling for violence, passively or otherwise, and if there were a connection. If Al Fraken and Jon Stewart were calling for the unspecific targeting of arch conservatives and one of them ended up dead, serious questions would need to be asked.

The issue is that every time something like this happens, someone flies a plane into an IRS building or someone murders an abortion doctor, the perpetrator is dismissed as just a nut and the wider questions, the scarier questions, are ignored. That serves well the people who might be implicit, but it serves no one else, certainly no one who might be involved in the discussion on a forum. You're welcome to live under a rock, but when you start asking other people to live under a rock, the onus is on you to explain why.

Press Conference 4pm...
10 to hospital
1 child dead
5 critical

The congresswoman is alive, critical, out of surgery, and they are optimistic for her recovery

Looks like the guy might be a legitimate -total- Mark David Chapman screwhead. 22yr old Jared Loughner. I've just tracked down what appears to be his YouTube feed with some help from a TFPer, and this guy is a -NUT-. He writes like someone who's experienced a severe closed-head injury and has gone off the rails into nutball economic theories that even Sam Davis would laugh at.

YouTube - Classitup10's Channel


Conflicting reports that Loughner may be an Afg. war vet. If he suffered an undiagnosed or untreated blast or impact injuy, it could produce the weird syntax on the YT vids. Such injuries also produce marked changes in personality and behavior.

More as info comes in.

jeez...this is an unfortunate situation, isn't it? good thing that there's nothing problematic involved here like crosshairs on map or slogans like "Don't Retreat--Instead RELOAD" that would normalize rhetorically the idea that political opposition to poujadisme merits being shot. that would certainly but the far right in an unfortunate publicity situation, wouldn't it?


i think it is past time to confront palin and the ultra right on the matter of the rhetoric that they use to frame political matters. it is time for the ultra-right to back off the emphasis on firearms and the normalizing of (fanatasies or--up to now) gun violence as if this was just another language to be used to reach a demographic. it isn't.

and this without making any judgment at all about the person who did the shooting.

no need for there to be such judgments for the palin-y right's rhetorics of violence to be a problem.

Just in: Various sources are now reporting that a second person is in custody with a third being sought for arrest and/or questioning.

Sure. After all, it's not like the liberals have clean hands either. You don't have to look that many years back to see what groups like the Weathermen, eco-terrorists, etc have done.

This was posted not too long ago.

Open Channel - Video of interview with Rep. Giffords discussing violence

I think Senator Giffords has it right.

Considering her being on the wrong side of at least one liberal issue, immigration reform, I can just as easily see some liberal whackjob or illegal immigrant having it in for her.

I'm willing to wait until there's something more than news sites fighting to be the first to report the latest 'facts' to get more eyeballs on their sites before jumping to conclusions who's behind this.

Jazz, Baraka or RB, any way the topic of this thread can be changed in the forum so it doesn't say "shot and killed"?

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Here's the thing, though... the rhetoric coming out of people that have either been elected to office, were in contention for seats in Congress or have been anointed spokespeople of the conservative movement in America is attracting "deranged lunatics" like the suspect (since that's what everyone seems to be calling him), and stirring them to action—this includes vandalization of Congressional member's offices, threatening letters, guns brandished menacingly at healthcare rallies, etc. Of course these speakers are free to say what they will, as that is their 1st Amendment right, but in that sense I believe they are not without responsibility in a situation like this.

Come on, let's stop the false equivalency game. Palin is not part of some fringe of the republican party. She was the last vice presidential candidate and is one of the top contenders for the republican nomination. Even if this turns out to be just a nutjob with no political connections, it shouldn't take an assassination to realize that using crosshairs and slogans about reloading guns is a bit much and should be universally shunned.

dogzilla---come on, pal. the weather underground was only associated with the democratic party in the red-baiting fever dreams of poujadiste nutcases. you wouldn't be one of them, would you?

it's amazing to me: so many conservatives talk like they're all about "personal responsibility" but let their rhetoric get connected to consequences that are disadvantageous in the news cycle and they go all relativist and from there straight into whatever shuck and jive distracts enough to protect the brand. it's be repellent if it wasn't so predictable and crude.

The congresswoman is alive, critical, out of surgery, and they are optimistic for her recovery[/QUOTE]

This is such sad news. I hope the doctors can save her.

Any news on who did this?

RB,

You seem to miss the fact that personal responsibility is PERSONAL. Meaning Mr. Loughner's actions are his own fault, they were his own decision, and nobody apart from himself and any active co-conspirators are responsible for them. Mrs. Palin is no more responsible for Loughner's insane acts than J. D. Salinger was responsible for Mark Chapman shooting John Lennon.

Words cannot -make- people do things, just like commercials cannot -make- people buy things. Suggest? Sure. But what someone -does- with that suggestion is 100% On Them. It is not McDonalds' fault when someone makes the decision to eat their junk and then gets fat, it was not Salinger's fault that Lennon was shot, and it is not Mrs. Palin's fault that this screwhead did what he did.

His act. His decision. Nobody else's.

Thread title changed

Dunedan, don't you see just the least bit of an issue with the rhetoric used by the right? That it could be interpreted as "encouragement" more than a "suggestion"? Or that one of the likely public reactions to this event is going to be "well, it was only a matter of time..."

His name is, reportedly, Jared Lee Loughner. Every few minutes more information comes out about him. Apparently, he was a Ron Paul supporter, he didn't trust the Federal government, he has fears about currency changes, thinks the government is spying on him, and has a serious problem with illiterate people.

Source

Haven't seen anything about him being a RP supporter, and your source says nothing of the kind. Comments within his YouTube videos suggest that he was a remarkably paranoid semi-goldbug Atheist with what look at best like some pretty serious delusions.

Thanks!

About the only thing that is real is this guy is deranged and to take it beyond that is a reach. He represents the political leanings of only himself. He doesn't represent the right, the white, war vets or any other group. He represents the demented world inside his head. Its political to him, its insanity to the rest of us.

Looks that way from here, too.

A good example of the shooter's mindset (ie total nutjob):


Edited To Add: New info now suggests that as of very recently Mr. Loughner was at a Recruitment Center for MEPS testing. He also appears to have been arrested for drug possession sometime in 2007. Not an Afg. vet. Possible he flunked MEPS (Well surprise SURPRISE!).

dunedan-----the far right has **chosen** to construct a political rhetoric that makes gun-related imagery one of its central features---and has **chosen** to frame inter-political contestation in terms of gun-related violence. there's not any debate about this.

no-one is saying that rhetoric like this makes anyone do things---but it does normalize certain linkages symbolically and that normalization **can** be an element, and in some cases a central element, in particular decisions to act violently. another way: you play with neo-fascist language you produce a climate in which violence like this is not surprising---even if it does not allow one to say that at moment x actor 1 will engage in action a.

similarly, a rhetoric that does not frame political contestation with the imagery of gun-related violence would work against these same decisions---but obviously wouldn't prevent them from happening.

but the rub is (well, one of them so far as we know now)....given the people who were shot/killed, and given what's now available thats attributed to this guy, it's obvious that even if laughton is a wingnut, he's a wingnut who frames his own actions in the language of the tea party. so in that respect, you reap what you sow. you can't control who uses the discourse.

That's ridiculous, rb! They're not coming right out and ordering the assassination of people, therefore they're not responsible in any way. And who cares if they're constantly mentioning guns and defending yourself? That's just the Second Amendment! You can't just ignore parts of the Constitution you don't like. It's right there in the Constitution that you can suggest that people utilize the Second Amendment against people who have political beliefs that conflict with yours.

Besides, this guy should even be mentioned in the same thread as the people on the right mentioning gun violence against people they disagree with because this guy is just a lone nut. You know, like Scott Roeder, the man who killed Dr. Tiller. Or when the Minutemen conducted an unofficial raid and killed those people. Or when that gunman killed those police officers. Or when Jim Adkisson killed those people in the liberal church. Or when Andrew Joseph Stack III flew his plane into the IRS building. Mentioning all of those is just a strawman. Or, um, guilt by association. Or something. They clearly have nothing at all to do with the violent rhetoric on the right, and are lone nuts who can't be connected in any way to anything but being crazy.

crosshairs? what crosshairs?

Rob Warmowski: Following Giffords Shooting, Sarah Palin's Crosshairs Website Quickly Scrubbed From Internet

This is a national tragedy. This is not the time to politicize the actions of a madman to fit an agenda. Until proven further, he is but one deranged madman acting on his own.

Good luck in trying to figure out wtf this guy is supporting......

The way he writes reminds me of this guy: Time Cube

How long after a national tragedy are we allowed to speculate about the attacker's motives?

Speculation is one thing, accusations based on what one thinks he represents is something else entirely.

I'm not specifically talking about this forum. I've seen plenty of political statements being made in other forums today based on what is being called a political statement. Ironic, no?

When in fact it is the workings of a madman.

People are acting like because he's mentally unstable he's somehow automatically entirely divorced from the current political climate. There's no reason to reach such a conclusion. It's not impossible for violent rhetoric to have influenced this misguided and sick man in some meaningful way, and suggesting otherwise is dishonest.

It is politicization to ask that this not be politicized. Everything is political.

---------- Post added at 08:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:54 PM ----------

I find it highly ironic that the Palin-aligned folks are calling for a careful weighing of the facts lest anyone jump to the wrong conclusion. Palin has built an entire career out of manipulating the facts and jumping to the wrong conclusion. The people who introduced the concept of death panels think we should withhold judgment till all the facts are in. How convenient.

If we were to follow the Palin model, we'd blame Palin outright, then maybe, quietly walk back our accusations a few weeks from now.

Regardless of his motives, this is a tragedy. I disagree with Giffords on some things, but no one should be shot for having an opinion some whackjob doesn't like.

The news is saying that quite a few people were killed and injured.

If only this type of rhetoric was from just one Republican:

Michele Bachmann: I Want People "Armed And Dangerous" Over Obama Tax Plan

Sharron Angle Joins Calls for Armed Revolution in America - Newsweek

Texas GOP Candidate Advocates Armed Revolution

Virginia Republican candidate calls for armed revolution

The Conservative Media: Teabagger Congressional candidate advocates armed revolution against the U.S. government

Kinda like how this guy was alleged to be a Ron Paul supporter, despite the fact that no source, ANYwhere, has provided any evidence of any kind, or even the suggestion of such? I doubt a Paul fan would list "the Communist Manifesto" and "Mein Kampfh" among his favorite books.

Except it wasn't "the Minutemen," it was two (possibly three) people who'd been THROWN OUT of the Minutemen some time prior, remember?

Except that Mr. Stack's writings indicated a much closer identification with the radical Left than with any portion of the Right (the exception being his hatred for taxation and the IRS), remember?

"Obvious" perhaps to those who classify anyone to the right of Che Guevara as a Tea Partier. To the rest of the world, his only remote connection to Tea Party rhetoric is his gold fixation. His reflexive atheism, burning of the US Flag, etc...all much, much more Left-ish than Right-ish. I've yet to encounter a Tea Party type who would "favorite" a video showing the US flag being burned, or would write some thing like "No! I will not trust in god!"

I haven't heard anything about that either, but if you count those two books among your favourite, then I suppose you could be all over the map politically.

And? My point was that the folks whose political careers thrive because of their abilities to draw false yet politically appealing conclusions are now suddenly taken aback when others draw potentially false yet politically appealing conclusions.

the problem for the right politically is that this highlights their rhetoric. it reframes it. THAT is the issue. conservative on the far right don't like being reframed. they want to control that aspect so they can say what and who they are, using some multi-kulti logic that they oppose to force their bizarre-o worldview onto others as if it were coherent, rational. but it's neither. it's just another form of neo-fascism. the palin-y tea party-y worldview is just another form of neo-fascism. when they control the frame, it's something else. every time they lose control of framing, the neo-fascism becomes clear. thats a problem if you are a neo-fascist and havent the integrity to embrace what you are.