Democratic Congresswoman Shot in Arizona

josh wrote:

I would think the shooting of any democratically elected official would be of concern to social democrats everywhere.

"Democratically elected official"! Omigod, U.S. democracy is now in danger! Whereas when they just murder African Americans and poor and workers and LGBTQ folks and children, and when they conduct judicial executions, that kind of "concern to social democrats everywhere" is of a different nature and degree?

I suppose the real tragedy of the McVeigh incident was that he attacked a federal building!?

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She was clearly the target, as it was her event and she was shot in the head from behind.

Really. What makes you think John Roll wasn't the target? Did you read what I reprinted above? And what's wrong with waiting for some evidence?

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She's not Hitler.  I don't like many of her views either, but her shooting is a news story.  Should we not talk about news events?

Sure, let's discuss what CNN considers as news, and do so from a "social democratic" viewpoint. How many people were killed in Afghanistan since yesterday, josh? Do you know?

"What makes you think John Roll wasn't the target? Did you read what I reprinted above? And what's wrong with waiting for some evidence?"

From the accounts Giffords, whose event it was as indicated by a large sign with her name on it, was the first one shot. There are reports that Roll, who lived nearby, may have just been there as a bystander.

Ok we get it Unionist; you don't like her support for some of the US international policies and you have no sympathy for her... fine. Thanks for that peek into your soul.

Oh and I care by the way.

As for this shooting it's too early to say but I'm thinking this is going to have a backlash on the tea party and its supporters. They've posted allot of irresponsible stuff on the internet and they can't take it back. People are mad; we'll see how this is going to play out. I'm interested in how the Republicans might use this to tamp the tea party down and lessen the tea parties control over their party. There are republicans at work whom I know for a fact don't like what the tea party is doing to their party (much to my amusement).  

One thing is for sure with all the back peddling the tea party and the repubs are going to have to be doing they are going to be in great physical shape

I have empathy for all victims of violence. I find the superior attention paid to Giffords - and the rationalizations for that in this thread (that it's "news", or that it's some kind of supposed "attack on democracy")  to be offensive, disgusting, and incomprehensible on the part of progressive people.

Right now it's the human face of this shooting that concerns me. I can't stand to discuss any related politics right now.

Honestly, I'm not sure I believe Palin's rhetoric can be blamed for the actions of the shooter.

However, it's not like the Republicans have ever been fair in their rhetoric, so I'm not going to loose too much sleep if they wear this shooting politically.

It would be nice if the shooting led to some tightening of the loose gun laws in the USA.

we get it -you are a much better progressive than the rest of us.  Congrats, feel free to lecture people on how they should feel and attacking everyone who posted in this thread who feel differently than you based on your superiour status.  Which is exactly what you did by using the language you did.  But of course you will feel you are free to do it because you are 1) a better progressive and 2) do it veiled.

One big issue is the new House of Congress and America and the world  has to take head on is the increased call for violence by the American right, e..g.  Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. There are roots in the American revolution and the American culture of guns and violence, but matters have taken to a new level recently, e.g. in the last year or two  with the Tea Party, health care, immigratio, the economy etc... One commentator on the CBC national talked of attending a political rally near Washington D.C. for which people were urged to bring weapons. Hundreds of khaki clad males carrying AK-57s or whatever the favoured weapon is of the right is, (anybody guess how many right wingers are armed,compared to left wingers?) openly flaunted their weapons and cheered the call to overthrow oppressive government, like that socialist government headed by an African America. That sort of sight he said is not unusual in America today and there are outburst of political violence .

  The new Congress just had its first sitting,  swore in a new House leader and went home to their constituencies to do pretty well what  one of their popular colleagues was doing,meeting constittuents,  when someone attempted to kill her. And that popular Congresswoman coleague of theris had been targeted for defeat by the right and for violence by the right..Will the right wing, in its its legislative forums and in other forums,  repudiate violence?  Will they be called on to repudiate violence? Will the violence increase? T

Oh sweetie.   I will the very second you stop doing it to others whether veiled or directly.

Sheriff condemns atmosphere of hate in Arizona and around the country:

"The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the Capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

More of what he said:

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

‎"It's not unusual for all public officials to get threats constantly, myself included. And that's the sad thing of what's going on in America. Pretty soon, we're not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office."

Lou questioned whether Palins rhetoric is connected.

Absolutely it is.

The poster repeated above has stylised crosshairs on the targets. Sure, they just mean in elections, and its stylized crosshairs. But look over her website, at least for last year, and you will find real people in gun scope sights. Not identified, and with reference to them being politicaly targeted.

At the same time, you have many people in demonstrations for carrying weapons in public, concealed and concealed. Posters at the same demonstrations with talk of targeting the evil Obama and Congresspeople.

You have lots of loose public talk about removing scourges, etc.

You have David Frum and other conervative commentators calling out this stuff as despicable and dangerous, and the de facto leaders need to put a stop to it. To my knowledge no Tea Party or allied type said boo.

You are right, Unionist. Sarah Palin did not put out a fatwah on Giffords. No proof she was targetted.

I actually dont remember all the details that I've recounted as clearly as I would like. They were horrific as I watched them unfold. And I havent been watching events in the States as closely as when I was observing all this stuff. But when ObamaCare came out, I did come for a bit into the reaction discussion here, and recounted all these gory details going on at that time... and said that its only a matter of time before some people get killed.

Gifford was definitely one of Palin's targets. And Palin is the guru of these nuts. She knows they are out there. When one of them kills, her washing her hands of it and saying how much she regrets it, is predictable. And calling it bad faith is a gross understatement. Gifford's particular politics is irrelevant in the context of being one of Palin and fiends' targets.

You mean [url=http://news.antiwar.com/2011/01/07/us-drone-strike-kills-at-least-six-in... these murders in Pakistan since the New Year[/url]?

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The massive civilian toll of the strikes has sparked growing anti-US sentiments across Pakistan, and officials have gone out of their way to keep the full extent of the death toll out of the international media. Such attacks have escalated dramatically since President Obama took office, and the rate has progressively increased since that time.

Those don't count, because:

1. Pakistan is not a democracy, like the U.S.

2. It was the Obama government that committed the murders.

3. There is no evidence that any of the victims were elected officials.

How am I doing?

Without getting in to a debate over the rest of this thread, I observed to my family how there was probably only one person shot who was not a gun advocate and she was 9 years old.

I am not without sympathy for anyone who has been hurt today but the little girl caught in the middle who did not understand the madness of a society that lets people tote around guns like they are cell phones has the bulk of my sympathy.

I would like to hear from some of those people there today at some point in the future when they have done some healing about what they think about the gun lobby and the unlimited right to bear arms but I am afraid I am not optimistic and the little girl is dead. I can't start or finish anywhere else.

Odd picture of the shooting emerging...

People who knew him described him as philosophical, a person who read a lot of books. On his YouTube page, Loughner listed among his favorite books "The Communist Manifesto," "Siddhartha," "The Old Man And The Sea," "Gulliver's Travels," "Mein Kampf," "The Republic" and "Meno."

One former high school friend Tweeted about knowing the accused gunman:

"He was a pot head and into rock, like Hendrix, The Doors, Anti-Flag," she wrote. "I haven't seen him in person since 2007 in a sign language class. As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal and oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy. He had a lot of friends until he got alcohol poisoning in 2006 and dropped out of school. Mainly a loner, very philosophical."

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-jared-lee-loughner-profile,0,34681...

   I would hope it would change something but I think it's a dim chance.    My cynical side says, "Lots of 'soul searching' huff and puff for a bit in the MSM, platitudes,  this little girl will be morphed and changed into some sort of rhetorical symbol for use as political hay  and then it goes into the memory hole and business as usual, while the hard partisan bloggies argue forever on whose 'side' he belongs too and how it's proof that your side is violent, traitorous and destroying America.

Unionist - admittedly the right wing nut job talk right now is just speculation. But I really think you're missing the bigger picture, even if this congress woman did support the war in Afghanistan. Tea Party hysteria is breeding, dare I say it, a quasi-fascist political climate. If it turns out this shooter, who would probably be better described a terrorist, was influenced by Tea Party politics, that is not something we should overlook simply because this congress woman supported the war in Afghanistan. It would mean that the Tea Party had consciously contributed to breeding a mass hysteria so overpowering that any political opponent, even one whose agenda is clearly not that far off from the Tea Party's, was a potential target of assisination. 

As far as mentioning political violence in Pakistan, it's largely irrelevant to what we're discussing here. The existence of political violence in Pakistan does not make political violence in the United States any less meaningful.

Overall, quite truthfully, I didn't understand just what your point was.

Comrade Matthew wrote:

If it turns out this shooter, who would probably be better described a terrorist, was influenced by Tea Party politics, that is not something we should overlook simply because this congress woman supported the war in Afghanistan.

If it turns out the shooter was a Muslim, what conclusions will you draw then? Or a Mossad agent? Or just a very unhappy young person?

The attempt to tie this to the "Tea Party", without any evidence, is scary in my humble opinion. It's a mob mentality of preconceived notions.

Let me ask you some questions:

Which political forces created the climate for the assassination of JFK? Who was Lee Oswald influenced by? Richard Nixon's Republicans?

How about RFK? Who was Sirhan working for?

Or Martin Luther King Jr?

Or John Lennon?

Or Timothy McVeigh - was that the Tea Party? yes? no?

Surely after all these years, there ought to be an answer to some of these questions.

My answer: It's a brutal and anti-human society, which murders its own people via lethal injection and impoverishment and unbridled capitalism and racism and homophobia and sending them as cannon fodder abroad - and murders the innocent people of other countries every single day.

So, why should I care enough about one random (yup, you heard me) act of violence to start drawing phony self-serving political conclusions about how the Tea Party is evil, Sara Palin is evil, and Obama, well, poor Obama.

It's all nonsense.

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The existence of political violence in Pakistan does not make political violence in the United States any less meaningful.

Yes it does. No one in this thread thought the mass murder of people in Pakistan was as important to spend time commenting on as this random act of violence today. What is more, some people in this thread thought that we should be particularly concerned about the assassination of "democratically elected" officials - as opposed to the other kind, I guess - and he was suggesting that Giffords was "democratically elected"!

So there's a serious issue here, one requiring a mirror. Why do we care more about this event than far more horrible ones - [b]facilitated and approved by people like Giffords[/b] - happening every day? How do we separate these things in our minds? Why does the "congresswoman" make the headlines, even on babble, but the 9-year-old child and the Pakistani villagers do not??

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Overall, quite truthfully, I didn't understand just what your point was.

How about now?

The alleged shooter has been identified as Jared Lee

Loughner:

<http://tinyurl.com/2emt2ec>

In 2008, Daily Kos targeted Giffords with a bulls eye:

<http://tinyurl.com/2uzg4h8>

See this blog post for use of the bulls eye and targeting rhetoric by Democrats:

<http://tinyurl.com/yeduszv>

A few days before the shooting, someone posted a rather vile attack against Representative Giffords on Daily Kos, which has since been removed, but you can find a web cache of the page here:

<http://tinyurl.com/39bo7av>

(The alleged shooter may have been the poster.)

Daily Kos states that the alleged shooter "was/is a left winger" based on tweets from people who knew him:

<http://tinyurl.com/3yodmww>

See also this screen shot photo of what purports to be his Facebook page:

<http://tinyurl.com/38e49ru>

Link to what people believe is Loughner's YouTube Page:

<http://tinyurl.com/2g4pxsk>

Bottom Line: This is a horrific tragedy carried out by an individual who based on the videos posted to his youtube channel appears to be clearly deranged.

As to the attempts to politicize this tragedy?!?

Politicizing A Horrific Tragedy

<http://tinyurl.com/33zbpfk>

Thats copied from another board Im on and not something Ive personally put together

Bec.De.Corbin wrote:

Unionist wrote:

How am I doing?

 

Ok if you're intention is to divert the thread towards your on agenda and pushing this thread to 100 so it gets locked.

 

I just wanted everyone to know that your socks are smelly and need laundering. There, now you know my real agenda - embarrassing you. I had to wait patiently for years for you to join this board so that my master plan could be put into effect.

There, we're closer to 100 posts now. But don't worry, someone can open a "Sara tried to kill the congresswoman - part 2".

6079_Smith_W wrote:

@ Unionist

I don't know if anyone else here is trying to make a direct link between the accused and the Tea Party. I'm not.

Gee, we must be reading different threads. Palin, Tea Party, hit lists... I guess I imagined it all.

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I am just saying that attacks and murders with political overtones...

Ah, there you go again. What political overtones are those?

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And I'm sorry,  but the idea that we have to catalogue every other act of injustice in the world before we are allowed to comment on this attack is ridiculous. If something else is on your mind, start a thread about it, but with respect to the legitimacy of this subject, it is completely irrelevant.

Listen. I never said that. I said: "Why do we care about this?" - compared to the other stuff that we don't even care enough to read about, let alone catalogue? And why are we focusing on the "congresswoman"?

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And again, I don't care what her politics were. Even for politicians whom I oppose, I don't think their values make them legitimate targets for assassination.

Gee, thanks for setting me straight. I'll stop calling for their assassination now.

Look, you obviously don't get my point when I lay it out in lengthy form, so perhaps sarcasm will succeed?

Oh thank god we can blame it on the nazis.

Or was he a self hating jew?

Unionist,

I agree with many of the points you brought up. But I think it is important to note that certain powerful interests in the US are actively involved in a campaign of extreme right wing manipulation and indoctrination. The Tea Party movement is merely a means of dressing up all those wonderful features of US society you mentioned, and selling them to the masses. The Tea Party protests and speeches, etc, are an illusion given so that supporters feel as if they're part of a genuine social movement. But of course the obvious reality is that behind the scenes the elite are pulling all the strings. The only change that will come about from the Tea Party will be a greater consolidation of "a brutal and anti-human society, which murders its own people via lethal injection and impoverishment and unbridled capitalism and racism and homophobia..."

Even if we accept your above description of US society as the broad social context in which all political events take place, I think you would still have to admit that certain time frames can be set apart from others. I think that the current political climate in the US is one of them, with the economic turmoil, anti-immigrant hysteria, two wars, etc. etc.

As for Pakistan, having a discussion about one thing does not imply there is nothing else worthy of discussion. Some one chose to start a thread on the assination today, and others joined in. I'm sure all of us here are equally interested in talking about a broad range of issues, but sometimes physical reality overrides our desires. I'm aware there is violence in Pakistan. Were you aware that there is poverty in Winnipeg? Why aren't you talking about that Unionist?