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"?

-----------------------------
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.

Kinda like the kettle not wanting the pot to call it black?

For the record, I'm not making any assumptions about the shooter's motives. I do think that it is telling that Palin et al have pulled their crosshair themed advertisments. Perhaps they realize in retrospect that that type of imagery is in reality more closely associated with fucking lunatics than it is with actual patriots.

---------- Post added at 10:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:22 PM ----------

Exactly. It's all fun and games to pretend you're willing to fight back against the tyranny of your elected representatives when they vote for shit you don't like. But when someone actually does it, the it's all "Haruumphh, well! We didn't mean it like that! You're clearly twisting our overly militant, superficially patriotic, thinly veiled calls for violent action around to make it sound like we were calling for violent action. We were just trying to sound serious and tough! We were just trying to co-opt respect for our country's founders and use it to advance our completely contradictory political goals."

It's odd that they aren't happier that the representative got shot. If their rhetoric is any indication, this type of thing would seem to fit right in with how they want things to happen.

That's not how it works, Dunedan. The Minutemen are organizationally like the Tea Party. There's no true organization with one leadership and definite single membership. If you went out with a lawn chair and binoculars, you were a Minuteman. MAD was one Minuteman organization in the same way (organizationally speaking) that the Tea Party Patriots, Tea Party Express, the 9/12 Project, and the Tea Party Coalition are all the Tea Party. Don't try to rewrite history.
Andrew Joseph Stack III was a small government anti-tax libertarian. What liberal by any reasonable definition would be against any taxation? Anyway, he was clearly a ticked-off populist, which puts him well inside the category I was describing.

I notice you didn't try to explain away Scott Roederm, Richard Poplawski, or Jim D. Adkisson.

It is hard to believe that some liberal politicians will still hold rallys with little or no security. It is almost naive to act as if the political hate talk will not result in some fringe elements eventually putting them in the crosshairs. Perhaps now they will realize that some may be inspired by today's news along with more hate talk to reload looking for a Second Amendment solution

Ive seen some some posters online from Sarah Palin with gun sites over different cities, and a list of "targets" including this woman who was shot.

I dont know if its real or satire? If its real Palin must be finished?

Not that makes much difference to the dead.

It was real. It was on Sarah Palin's Official PAC | SarahPAC - Sarah Palin's Official PAC (which went offline shortly after this news broke yesterday), and included 20 congressional seats that the Tea Party wanted to "take back" based on their votes on things like healthcare reform and taxation

Actually, I wrote 'liberal', not 'democrat'. The Weathermen were aligned with the liberal left.

I find all this outrage about a state map with targets in some spots rather interesting, especially since I have read far worse from some leaders on the left. You can't get more explicit that 'kill whitey'.

Maybe I just need to drink more liberal kool-aid.

Oh! Oh! I know! Since the "Palin Map" showed -states- with crosshairs, but a Democratic attack ad actually put crosshairs on a guy's head!? (Target: J.D. Hayworth (Rep.))
http://coaching.typepad.com/.a/6a00d...9785f26970b-pi
http://www.espressopundit.com/2010/0...targeting.html

Except that -is- how it works, and no, the Minutemen are not organizationally like the Tea Party. The Minutemen have/had a roster of members, a formalized leadership, etc. They were/are a distinct and organized group. So were Citizen's Border Patrol, etc. The two people known to have been responsible for that attack were thrown out of the Minutemen, formally and "for cause," because of their insistence on violence. They were the "INLA," if you like, to the Minuteman's OIRA; an extremely radicalized splinter movement that the original group which ejected them wanted nothing to do with. Stop trying to rewrite history.

No, he was not. We have had this discussion before, and you are wrong now as you were wrong then. Remember that whole "Zero Aggresson Principle," and how it's the defining characteristic of libertarianism?

Anarcho-Socialists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, various sorts of Georgist, any of these ring a bell?

Wait! I thought you said he was a libertarian? How can he possibly have been both? Do you even know what a populist -is-, and what positions they've taken in the past? I'll give you a starting point from my own native home, one Huey P. Long.

Because I see no need to expend energy defending the indefensible nor explaining the inexplicable. They were right-wing nutballs, case closed.

Well... I guess the reaction here is probably similar to how it is across America. Perhaps I am partly guilty of it as well... but I could not really believe the gun sight target adverts I had seen could be real (and they are as moronic and as dangerous whichever political movement uses this kind of symbolism)

But while people on in the Centre and Right argue about who is to blame for winding up the fevered mind of the killer and claim media bias and so on, people seem to notice not so much that a 9 year old kid and others are dead, others dying or wounded.

_

You mean, generally, libertarian socialists? They're not against taxation, per se, but would rather taxes be made equitable via a single tax on the value of land. Though most socialists are supportive of progressive taxation.

Can you explain to me why or how a libertarian cannot take a populist position?

---------- Post added at 11:26 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:09 AM ----------

This is also deserving of outrage. We should be outraged about violence as a part of political discourse regardless of the political stripe. Violence neuters politics and turns it into sensationalism, often feeding off of militaristic nationalism if not jingoism.

I don't find the outrage interesting; I find it necessary, considering America is the kind of country that requires it before change can happen. America is not a country that responds to much below the threshold of anger.

How did this guy get so many shots off? It has been preached on this board over and over that in states that have very lax gun control laws (say Arizona) if someone were to start shooting there would be 20 other people grabbing their concealed weapons and shooting back before the damage was done. Why didn't this happen? Also how much less damage would have been done if he didn't have the formerly illegal extended clip?

i'm kinda amazed at the damage he was able to do. police are apparently looking for a 2nd suspect though.

the damage would of probably been less if he didn't have the extended magazine. however, when they were 'illegal' you could still get them very easily so i think it's a moot point.

Typically rallies, protests, etc. are off-limits for concealed carry. Most people abide by the law.

Wow this story hits close to home, literally. Like an hour from my place.

Plan9- Ok you win, shit does go down in/near grocery stores....


This was my exact thought too. He got around 20 people. Shot the congresswoman through the head (I'm amazed she survived so far with a 9mm to the head). It was in an open place (people could scatter easily). He must have been an amazing shot for a 22 year old.

YouTube - giffords2's Channel

Check out her two subscriptions...

Why would she of been subscribed to her shooters channel and he wasn't subscribed to hers?

Very weird although I don't know when or why she subscribed.

Maybe it was after the fact, husband or kid or staff or something uses same account and wanted to look up the stuff but didn't think of the odd ramifications.

It's clear to me reading through this thread that many of you don't give two shits about this congresswoman or anyone else who dies or was injured. This tragedy is an opportunity for continuation of this ridiculous political effort at getting Fox news, or Rush Limbaugh, or whatever other non like-minded media off the air. Keith Olberman within a half hour of the event wasn't man enough to point to any specifics but blamed “right wing radio personalities” for this. Sad that he knows his audience is that impressionable. Sad that's what he (and you) really care about. What is it?......”marginalizing the other”.

It's an opportunity for liberals to control the language of your opposition. Please explain to me how using perfectly acceptable metaphors like “crosshairs”, “aiming for”, “in my sights” are off limits now (for the “other) because some random individual might be influenced to kill, but making movies about killing people you disagree with is considered art. There was nothing malicious about Palin's use of the crosshairs and you all know that. I know you haven't all been sleeping for the last decade either. You have seen/watched/been part of this political discourse your incorrectly attributing to this event, but I think you all know that as well. It's very calculated, and frankly disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

I feel like you're all hoping this woman passes away so her funeral can be turned into a “we will win” affair ala Paul Wellstone , chasing republicans away who actually really care about her and her family.

ok, matthew, that is quite possibly the funniest thing i've read in some time.
i don't quite know what to say.
i thought something would come to me but it's hard for the laughing.


btw i've seen a number of conservative talking heads working that exact talking point today. so really it's only people who subscribe to a politics the rhetoric of which banalizes violence as a way of dealing with political disagreement who really care about the humanity involved here.

it's be nauseating were i able to take it seriously. but i can't. this because it's nothing more or less than damage control from the neo-fascist set. what makes it funny is how maladroit it is.

you have a strange sense of humor, but at least I know your capable of laughing.

I agree with this column below. It doesn't matter why he did it. The context in which it occurred is messed up. Political discourse in America is not what it should be and, as the article suggests, "America's political frequencies are full of violent static".

It doesn't matter why he did it...

You must be referring to the people working suspiciously hard to steer the conversation away from factors which may have lead to this tragedy. It's a shame that denial can be so powerful when an ideology is tested against reality.

I agree with the article too, charlie.

It is telling that the political forces which usually are the first to indefensibly politicize (see 9/11, taxes, death panels, gay marriage, the use of "holiday" instead of christmas, etc) are now suddenly calling for restraint. I'm sure if there were a way to politicize this in a way that would motivate certain voting blocs, they'd be all for it.

I don't care why the shooter did it. However, I also don't think it makes sense to view this assassination attempt outside the context of the society in which it occurred. One would expect certain elements on the right to celebrate this type of thing, given their gung-ho rhetoric about 2nd amendment solutions and tyranny and all that. The second amendment exists to ensure that patriots can protect themselves against government tyranny. This congresswoman participated in government tyranny. It all fits. It isn't out of the ordinary to expect shooters like this to come from the right, because extreme actions like this fit within the framework that certain elements on the right have created for themselves.

The fact that this type of thing doesn't happen more is only proof that this type of "patriot, blah blah, tyranny, blah blah" is usually nothing more than the self-soothing rantings of folks who feel impotent because they think society is leaving them behind.

I find this little tidbit particularly disturbing and unfortunate: Tea Party Group Blames 'Leftist' for Giffords Shooting - Garance Franke-Ruta - Politics - The Atlantic

Finger-pointing abounds everywhere, and politics don't go away.

Phillips talks about the "hard left" as though there is some means by which they have a voice that reaches the masses. Unfortunately, liberals in the U.S. sometimes find themselves being shouted down or ridiculed for being communists. I imagine the actual communists are rather marginalized. There is no Limbaugh or Beck equivalent among communists in America.

The biggest threat to the Tea Party movement is a good economy.

He should also decide if this shooter was among those on the hard left or if he was a liberal. Painting him a liberal is a tough sell. It's not often that champions of human rights, social justice, and tolerance go off the deep end like that. Anarchists? Revolutionaries? Perhaps.

I'd say that anyone that feels marginalized and powerless regardless of political affiliation is what I get from that article. I also doesn't matter that it is America, Philippines, Israel, Beirut, Ethiopia, Senegal, Spain, etc. We seem shocked that it has happened in America, just like when we find corrupt politicians. It's not supposed to happen in America!

If you feel marginalized there is a chance that the seeds of action may take root and one may actually stop thinking or talking about it and actually act.

I think our country is better off for this fact. Our species is better off.

This never happens.

Openly Rooting for Revolution, The Left Calls For American Civil Unrest & Riots (Frances Fox Piven, Lib Talkers, Journalists, Van Jones, Rev Wright, English Protest Leader, etc)

"Openly rooting"?? Hardly. After watching that clip, what I saw was people describing a situation that is bubbling. There was no call to arms.

As above, I don't really care to point fingers. The rhetoric in the US is in a place it doesn't need to be. Those who are utilizing this language of violence need to take a little time and do some soul searching about the effect their language is having on the nation. It's not healthy.

This video is just another example (a poor one to be clear) of, "it's not just us that's doing it! See! They're doing it too." This is just as much part of the problem.

It doesn't help.

America needs to grow up.

Holy fake equivalency, batman. So a bunch of people, none with the same standing Palin and others have within the Republican party, say that a revolution might happen given increases in inequality, or that in the past civil unrest has led to progressive legislation, and that is the same as saying people should use their second amendment rights to stop congress? With some exceptions, those people weren't saying that people should rise up.

Then this is your lucky day. You and your cronies described Bush as a "war criminal" and a "nazi." The movie "Death of a President" was about George W. Bush specifically. In 2008, Barack Obama said, "If they (meaning Republicans) bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."



See above.

"Dogzilla, are you now, or have you ever been, a poujadiste nutcase?"


Have you noticed that in this case, the liberals believe a PERSON (apparently Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh) killed people? Most times it's the fault of a sinister-looking firearm.



Oh, you mean like when Obama blames people who make over $250k for unemployment.

Wait, you mean the shooter broke the law? Pass another law, quick!

It wouldn't be the first time. Stokeley Carmichael, Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright anyone?

And don't forget Al Gore's call for extreme measures because of government inaction on the global warming scam ... which spurs the Discovery Channel gunman to take "action".

http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo...crosshairs.jpg

here is Palin's crosshair picture. when i first heard about this i envisioned the reps faces with crosshairs over it. being that its just a picture of the states with the rep's name below, i can't take seriously anyone who would lay blame on Palin for this.

I think she's taking heat for this just because people are looking for people to blame other than the lone nut who shot the az rep and others.

None of these people are liberals. And as far as I know, none of them shot anyone. Did they?

James Lee wasn't a liberal either.

---------- Post added at 09:47 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:44 AM ----------

This is a quaint reductionist position you've taken. If only it were that simple.

James Lee was an Al Gore follower... the point is that he acted on his beliefs. Son of Sam said a dog told him to kill people. Regardless, both of these people were simply nuts. The AZ shooter's profile looks pretty run of the mill INSANE. Can we stick to facts, or is that straying too far from the agenda?

Okay, here's a fact: Al Gore didn't put any cross-hairs on the Discovery Channel.

Also, if we were so hung up on facts, we'd also outline that Gore's call to action was about striving for clean energy rather than removing people from office using the imagery of cross-hairs.

And what about the novelist Daniel Quinn? Was he calling for removing people too?

Personally, probably not. However, they done at least as much as you accuse Sarah Palin of doing to incite people to violence.
Maybe not, but Al Gore certainly is. So if you're trying to blame Sarah Palin for the actions of one wacko then Al Gore gets the blame for one as well.

Take a step or two back, please.

They aren't liberals. The original comment suggested that there were liberal nutjobs taking people out. I don't see these people as either.

This hurts my brain. It's a false equivalence that sets up a kind of pseudo–tu quoque. I haven't had any coffee yet. Cut me some slack.

Will people with the desire to play the fake equivalency card at least take the time to watch the "evidence" they present?

Death of a President was about what would happen if the president was assassinated, and the movie itself portrays a pretty bleak future after the shooting. It is as much a call for assassination as "the day after" was a call for nuclear war.

Now, of course there will the occasional nutjob on every political party.

But please, show me the liberal alternatives who hold similar positions that have said something similar to the following:

""I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. " Bachmann

"I hope that's not where we're going, but, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, My goodness, what can we do to turn this country around?" Angle

"If ballots don't work, bullets will" Joyce Kaufman, radio host and chief of staff for rep Allen West.

Fine. Then tell me what faction of left of center they fall in. They weren't any type of right of center group, and they certainly have done their share to crank up the political rhetoric and incite people.

I think they're left of liberal, and at least one or two of them had an anarchist bent.

But I don't want to go down this path because it won't be very fruitful. It's as though shouting "Al Gore!" "Black Panthers!" or "Jeremiah Wright!" will lead us to believe it was okay for Palin to have had cross-hairs on a map and a list of people to remove from office. Whether it was a metaphor or not doesn't matter. It wasn't cool that she used such a militant theme for her political purposes.

She and her people removed the map promptly after the shooting, and for good reason. It's not like Gore promptly pulled An Inconvenient Truth from the shelves because of an out of hand call to arms embedded in the film. It was clearly the case that the shooter took it out of context for his own purpose. That along with the work of novelist Daniel Quinn. The Discovery Channel shooter was an anarcho-environmentalist who railed against the Discovery Channel because of overpopulation. There is only a tenuous connection of this to Gore's work.

Palin's map is more direct. Giffords' name was on a list. There was a cross-hair over her position on a map.

These two aren't the same thing.

Regardless, there is nothing you can say about liberal or leftist figures inciting, influencing, or inspiring crackpot shooters—whether directly or not—that will convince me it is okay for Palin et al to have contextualized their political goals as they did.

Violence should not be a part of politics, whether as a theme or an actual call to arms. When it comes to violence, it is an indication that you either a) do not take the peaceful process of politics seriously or b) the peaceful process of politics has failed.

If the political environment comes to either "a" or "b," then it's time to re-evaluate things.

Palin, and the members and organizations of the Tea Party movement that make use of militaristic imagery or suggestion, need to re-evaluate things.

it's hilarious watching conservatives refuse to accept any responsibility at all for the language that they are told to think through.

i hope you folks and your authorized talking heads keep right on squirming, and do it in a high profile way, because you erode your own position by doing it. false equivalences, arbitrary red-baiting, idiotic pseudo-historical assertions....you do your own cause a lot of damage, kinda in the way those backwater assholes from the westboro baptist church will do if they go through with this particularly ill-advised publicity stunt:

Westboro Baptist Church To Picket Funerals Of Arizona Shooting Victims

so have at it.

You know... there's a whole chain of department stores with "targets" on them. Sounds mighty suspicious :expressionless:

meanwhile... August 10, 2010 - Al Gore speaking during a conference call with global warming activists:

I don't know... with such an inflammatory statement, how many ways can "call you to action" be interpreted by someone as far in the deep end as James Lee? Perhaps as "crosshairs"?

And yes, THANK YOU!!!... prompted by more of this contrived mob-logic you're promoting, we should also be charging Daniel Quinn (with murder), the author of "My Ishmael" which was featured in Lee's demands on the Discovery Channel. But wait!.... so are you now in agreement with the absurdity of associating acts of lone insane people to entire socio-political movements?

Where does this end? ... the rush to paint the actions of a lone nut-job as something political?

We know why it starts. It looks contrived because it is.

... I'm on my cell phone, could someone please post a Holy Grail Burn the Witch! clip from YouTube?

BTW-Lee (absolutely) was a radical liberal environmentalist... who also happened to be a PSYCHOPATH! It doesn't that mean all radical liberal environmentalists are psychopaths and would act out in the same way as James Lee. But it doesn't seem to play well with the strategy of inventing and assigning non-existant violent tendendies to political foes.

You guys can go back and forth with this til the cows come home and neither side is going to budge.

The truth of the matter is that it doesn't matter if Al and Sarah called this guy up personally and asked him to shoot these people, then drove him to the Safeway.
He pointed the gun.
He pulled the trigger.
He alone bears the responsibility for his actions.

Oh, look, more fake equivalency.

But talking about fake equivalency, I do wonder if people would be so quick to just label him a "lone nut job" if his name was Mohamed. Or if the people calling for "second amendment solutions" and that "if ballots don't work, bullets will" were Imams instead of some of the biggest names in the republican party.

Nice to see that this tragedy has started us on the road to a more civilized discourse. :rolleyes:





You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

ottopilot, you clearly don't understand the difference and I don't feel the need to point it out to you.

However, I do feel the need to ask you to stop twisting my words. If you need a clarification on something, just ask.

Or maybe you're just being ironic. I'm not sure what's worse. More lately I've become weary of irony. I think it's a hangover from postmodernism.

Can you do us both a favour and just say what you mean?

Radical liberals don't tend to use guns; they use placards, blogs, word processors, and publishing companies.

You seem to forget that one of the tenets of liberalism is a non-revolutionary, non-violent approach to change. Once you've suspended your support for human rights and tolerance, you've suspended your support for liberalism.

Maybe Lee was a liberal at one time, but he appears to have walked away from that.

---------- Post added at 01:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:12 PM ----------

I will not be ashamed of my disdain for violence, whether overt or implied. I will not be ashamed for voicing my opinions regarding this matter.

What would you rather me do? This thread isn't a vigil for Giffords. If you want one, make one.

If you believe any posts are out of line, you're welcome to report them.

If you have nothing better to say than your sweeping, summarized, moralistic accusation, then you're welcome to press the back button.

Wow! Speaking of hilariously irresponsible pseudo-historical language! There's no false-equivilancy to this load. A+ work there! :thumbsup:

well gee, otto, maybe the fbi should just talk to you rather than bothering to investigate this guy's immersion in neo-fascist politics. you're the expert after all, the one who knows everything about it, presumably from the position of a nativist informant of some kind.


Jared Lee Loughner note reveals aim to assassinate Gabrielle Giffords | World news | guardian.co.uk


think of the money the government could save if they just called.

Asserting a similarity between Bush and Hitler a la Godwin is not even in the same hemisphere as a death threat. It's not. It may be hyperbole, in fact it is, but it's not a call for violence or death. Claiming as such demonstrates in no uncertain terms the willingness to commit massive false equivalence in order to escape responsibility.

Barack Obama did indeed say that Democrats should be politically bringing a gun to a knife fight, but he's not speaking to a party obsessed with revolution and guns, he's speaking to a political party hungry for more assertive political strategy, and is speaking directly to that. Were his words unwise? Perhaps, but compare them to this:
Combine this statement with the map of targets, which she herself called target on her own twitter, and the language is entirely clear.

I couldn't agree more.

Wether language is overt or covert it is all designed to incite passions in the people.
There is a saying " There is always one idiot in the crowd". 99 people may just get passionate, there is always that 1 person will pull the trigger. Liberal or conservative all are guilty of incitement. All bear the responsibility as do all people that vote for the politicians.

No, liberals and conservatives are not all guilty of incitement. I know it sounds measured and mature to stand back and blame both sides, as if that's the first step to move past all of this, but it's not. This isn't something balanced across the entire spectrum.

The mainstream, corporate media plays the game of false balance similarly by claiming there are extremists and calls to violence on both sides, but the last time the American left (or center-left, as it were) engaged in anti-government violence was 40 years ago. There hasn't been left wing or center left violence in years, even from our most extremist organizations. This is not to say there's no anger on the center or left, there are, but... let me put it this way: who are the biggest 5-10 people on the right and left in the United States? Now, which of chose 10-20 people have used revolutionary, violent, or language otherwise relevant to the topic at hand? Notice how they're all on one side? Notice how it's BillO, Beck, Palin, Hannity, Boehner, Rush, Savage, McConnell and such, not Pelosi, Reed, Obama, Maddow, Olbermann, and their ilk? This is reality. There's no equal responsibility for the climate of fear and violence.

There's no evidence this guy was right wing or associated with the tea party or any right leaning organization like you are implying. Everything that's come out from things he's wrote and people who have been associated with him point to him borrowing parts of his political views from the right, the left, libertarianism, and a whole lot of crazy.

At this point to say he was following the rhetoric from these talking heads is just not based in reality.

Really? So all those calls for violent demonstrations at G20 type events are all conservatives?

There's evidence in that he's anti-government. There are, in the United States right now, only a handful of (tiny) liberal anti-government groups and not a single one of them is pro gun rights. Not one. There hasn't been anti-government violence from the left in over 40 years. Not one instance.

The entire Republican party, on the other hand, has been anti-government for decades and is tightly associated with armament and armed resistance. I can't count on all my fingers and toes the instances of anti-government violence which can fairly connected with the right in the past 10 years let alone in the past 20+. You're not allowed to simply ignore this because it hurts your case. You have to factor it in or face being branded dishonest.



As an added note, journalist Tim Heffernan has spoken to surveyors in the past 24 hours and has managed to find crosshairs in surveying. The symbol commonly represents an aven, or vertical shaft. I've only done amateur landscaping drafting, myself, but based on what information I can find this does seem to be the case. I'd like a conservative apologist around here to explain in a plausible way why these marks on Palin's map represent avians and not crosshairs. I'll be waiting with bated breath.

---------- Post added at 02:24 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:21 PM ----------

Confusing anti-globalization with anti-government goes beyond the pale of plausible ignorance, Cynth. You're a bright fellow, you know better.

Regarding the question of left violence... where were the guns? Where were the preparations for active and offensive (as opposed to defensive) violence? There are literally hundreds of independent videos of the police instigating... where are the videos of the protesters, some of which liberal, centrist and libertarian, instigating? Your attempted comparison falls very much flat.

I found it interesting note that one of the people that apprehended him was a gun owner who was armed at the time. He decided not to draw his firearm though because the suspect was out of ammo, although said he would of if he had reloaded. Apparently the suspect had at least 2 more high capacity mags for his glock and a pocket knife.

actually, there is evidence that he was into a version of far right loon mythology--you know, ayn rand, ron paul....combined with a more eclectic reading list.

i've not been making anything like a causal connection between this guy's individual decisions/actions and neo-fascist language as if the latter was working in his brain like a parasite and made him do stuff as a way of expressing its own characteristics. what i'm saying is that this happened within a poisonous political context and the responsibility for that poison comes clearly from the populist right----in the shorter run from the fabrication of the tea party as a movement that in the end has been co-opted by american crossroads and other deep pockets organizations in order to pressure the republican party to head further to the right. this at a moment of total political collapse for conservative politics in any sane sense of the term.

the populist right generated a context in which this is not surprising in general. something like this happening is not surprising.
that's not to make a cause-effect argument---but it is to say that there's a problem with the context that the right has created for it's own self-interest, its own purposes.

there are other questions that arise from this which are more central for the specific action:

why is it so easy to buy a fucking glock?
what possible reason is there to have glocks be available so easily in arizona?
what possible reason is there to have abandoned background checks in arizona?

the other that i've been reading about has to do with the cutting away of mental health services by conservatives because they seem so vaporous and unmanly i suppose.
maybe like most conservative policies, cutting funding for mental health treatment turns out to be a really bad idea.

but it's still funny to watch and read all the conservatives who are whining about what victims they are because of this. and acting all indignant about the Tragedy of It All. and trying to find a way to blame their usual imaginary enemies for it again.

I'm not suggesting a direct causal link, either. I don't know that there are any of those in the thread.

According to the FBI, threats of violence against members of Congress are up 300% over the last two years.

The same time as the unprecedented rise in the vitriolic rhetoric....the call to "refresh the tree of liberty" with violence....the socialist takeover led by those anti-Americans, Obama/Pelosi, that must be stopped....the govt health care bill will kill your grandma and your babies if they get their way....they have plans to take away your guns.....

Coincidence?

---------- Post added at 06:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:19 PM ----------

roach, apparently he passed the FBI background check to purchase the firearm. i dont know if there was another state based one on top of that?

also, i understand your concern over the gun rights in america and don't really want to go there, however what are you suggesting be done about this rhetoric from the political pundits?

the thought of regulating the first amendment any further than direct threats makes me shudder. it just seems like such a slippery slope and very dependent on which party is in power at the time in regards to which speech gets 'shut down' or prosecuted. thoughts?