Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords shot in head

[Balta1701]

Let me put this into a totally different context. For the people who believe that Palin or Fox, or whatever right wing group they believe is responsible for this, how will you react when this happens...

 

A terror attack occurs in the United State again, and the inevitable "I'll bet they were Muslim" post happens, are you going to be OK with that? After all, we have a history of terror attacks on American soil, a culture of hatred generated towards the US, and plenty of threats to carry out attacks by militant Muslim groups.

I'd think that any Muslim group which had made statements which easily could be interpreted as endorsing violence should be shunned, embarrassed, and at the very least should publicly apologize. Even if they had nothing to do with the actual event.

[witesoxfan]

You know the exact motive he had just by reading a few news clippings?

 

Fine, I'll retract that. Loughner is a nut case. Are you going to question that?

 

(my guess, if you will, is mainly from watching his videos, hard as they are to watch. It appears as though he generally does not believe that government truly exists, and thus officials should be eliminated. This is obviously not exactly what he wants or means, but I think it is pretty close, and blaming the right or the left is ridiculous)

[southsideirish71]

Question to all.. is this shirt appropriate?

 

http://www.zazzle.com/tea_party_rally_we_c...426866986316482

 

Its just as tasteless as this one.

 

 

Lunatics seem to be a small cross section of society. Not just affiliated with a single party.

Edited January 10, 2011 by southsideirish71

[Balta1701]

[lostfan]

This thread should be closed for idiocy. It's shameful.

I'm thinking about it.

[Balta1701]

President Obama is planning to take a trip to Tucson in the next day or so.

[mr_genius]

Now about the bullseye targets that seem to be causing people to kill that appeared on that website?

 

Looks like the DLC has also used a 'bullseye' map targeting seats

 

http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=2...7&subid=171

 

Edited January 11, 2011 by mr_genius

[Soxbadger]

The real message from all of this is that words have consequences.

 

What politicians and parties say have meaning to people. Not everyone understands that ideologicalization of the parties is just so that rich Democrats and rich Republicans can get richer. Some people actually believe that these politicians care about them, they believe that unless they stand up and do something, that the politicians that they believe in wont be able to fight the "evil" on the other side.

 

So this is the logical end. That when you inflame and incite, you get this.

 

The second message from all of this should be that people need to wait for facts. Everyone is jumping to conclusions about the guy being a Republican or whatever, but there is absolutely no concrete evidence to support this. From what Ive read the guy seems like an anarchist, not a hell bent liberal or conservative. The press needs to get better, because they do nothing but help to incite situations by bringing their own biases to the party. Leave the opinions for op ed, the news should be news.

 

In the end you cant make sense out of madness. This person clearly has no cohesive vision or thought. Whatever his motives, whatever his reasons, it will leave most sane people with an empty feeling inside. Because sane people look for reason behind an action like this. Sane people do not easily accept that some one could kill 6 people just because.

 

But that is reality.

[Middle Buffalo]

This thread should be closed for idiocy. It's shameful.

This post applies to most of the threads in th filibuster. They generally have 3 or 4 posters on each side of the issue going back and forth and never conceding any points to the other side. I can't recall too many times where someone's opinion was swayed even a little.

 

It's like arguing with a Cub fan. No matter what the argument is about, the Cub fan will always say something about attendance.

[Balta1701]

This post applies to most of the threads in th filibuster. They generally have 3 or 4 posters on each side of the issue going back and forth and never conceding any points to the other side. I can't recall too many times where someone's opinion was swayed even a little.

 

It's like arguing with a Cub fan. No matter what the argument is about, the Cub fan will always say something about attendance.

Dude, welcome to politics in general.

[Y2HH]

Dude, welcome to politics in general.

 

What Middle Buffalo fails to understand is that our attendance in the Filibuster is > his.

[NorthSideSox72]

For anyone trying to pin blame for this on any politician or political party, I want you to look at this picture. Because this picture tells you not only who is to blame, but plainly shows you who this guy is. He's a nutjob.

 

[Balta1701]

The Pima County Sheriff spoke out again on ABC News last night.

The Arizona sheriff investigating the Tucson shooting that left U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded had harsh words today for those engaging in political rhetoric, calling conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh "irresponsible" for continuing the vitriol.

 

"The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said today. "[Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against government, angers them against elected officials and that kind of behavior in my opinion is not without consequences."

 

Limbaugh today railed against the media and Dupnik for trying to draw a link between the heated political climate and the shooting rampage, calling the sheriff a "fool." But Dupnik stood by his assertions.

 

"The vitriol affects the [unstable] personality that we are talking about," he said. "You can say, 'Oh no, it doesn't,' but my opinion is that it does."

 

...

Dupnik said he'd like to see the federal government establish some kind of commission to deal with civility in the United States and make recommendations about how to get it back. "I don't have a problem with heated arguments," he said. "As a matter of fact you are kind of getting a little heat out of me now, and it is because I am very angry at what has transpired."

 

"Not because it's Tucson, Arizona, but because of two beautiful people -- one almost dead and one assassinated -- that were personal friends of mine," he said, speaking of Giffords and U.S. District Judge John Roll, "and outstanding individuals and public servants."

[Balta1701]

Here's probably the first of several bills that will come out in response to this attack.

Arizona's state legislature has announced a legislative effort to combat the infamous Westboro Baptist Church's plans to picket the funerals of the shooting victims in Tucson over the weekend.

 

"We're going to try to protect the families from undue harassment," State Rep. Daniel Patterson (D), one of the leaders of a bipartisan group of legislators, told Talking Points Memo Monday.

 

...

The chair of the Pima County GOP, for one, has since said that he thinks such a law is a dangerous infringement on free speech laws.

 

"I don't know what's in the law, but I do think it's indicative of always looking to the law to solve problems," Brian Miller told TPM in a later interview. "We will not sign on or advocate any policy that limits free speech."

 

Miller tells TPM that there are plans to enact a non-legislative, 1st Amendment-preserving blockade to the agitating religious group:

Wonder what the details on that one will be.

[StrangeSox]

Can't say I disagree with Miller there. I don't know how you bar idiots like WBC without creating a bunch of larger free speech issues.

[BigSqwert]

Here's probably the first of several bills that will come out in response to this attack.

Wonder what the details on that one will be.

That's the first bill they want to enact after this tragedy? Not something about letting mentally ill people buy guns and ammo? Hmm.

[Balta1701]

That's the first bill they want to enact after this tragedy? Not something about letting mentally ill people buy guns and ammo? Hmm.

That bill probably will never happen. Arizona is neither the best nor the worst state at participating in national databases regarding mentally ill and weapons purchases.

 

There will be an effort at the national level to re-instate the ban on high-capacity handgun magazines, which plainly would have saved lives in this shooting and which expired when the 2004 Assault Weapons ban expired. However, with the Republicans in charge of the house, its chances are at best dubious.

[Controlled Chaos]

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes: Fox And 'The Other Side' Need To Tone Down Rhetoric

 

Why would he say that? What does what Fox says have to do with any of this? Weird.

Idiocy.

[BigSqwert]

Idiocy.

You may not agree with some of the posts in here but you are adding nothing whatsoever to the discussion with posts like this.

[StrangeSox]

Stewart, Colbert Draw Contrasts in Response to Tuscon Shooting

[BigSqwert]

Seeing that most people didn't watch the Olbermann video that I posted a couple days back, here are some of the snippets I thought made a lot of sense and is part of the crux of my argument in this thread:

 

...If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 Representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics - she must be repudiated by the members of her own party, and if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling, and they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.

 

If Jesse Kelly, whose campaign against Congresswoman Giffords included an event in which he encouraged his supporters to join him firing machine guns, does not repudiate this, and does not admit that even if it was solely indirectly, or solely coincidentally, it contributed to the black cloud of violence that has envellopped our politics, he must be repudiated by Arizona's Republican Party.

 

...And if those of us considered to be "on the left" do not re-dedicate ourselves to our vigilance to eliminate all our own suggestions of violence - how ever inadvertent they might have been then we too deserve the repudiation of the more sober and peaceful of our politicians and our viewers and our networks.

 

Here, once, in a clumsy metaphor, I made such an unintended statement about the candidacy of then-Senator Clinton. It sounded as if it was a call to physical violence. It was wrong, then. It is even more wrong tonight. I apologize for it again, and I urge politicians and commentators and citizens of every political conviction to use my comment as a means to recognize the insidiousness of violent imagery, that if it can go so easily slip into the comments of one as opposed to violence as me, how easily, how pervasively, how disastrously can it slip into the already-violent or deranged mind?

 

 

...For tonight we stand at one of the clichéd crossroads of American history. Even if the alleged terrorist Jared Lee Loughner was merely shooting into a political crowd because he wanted to shoot into a political crowd, even if he somehow was unaware who was in the crowd, we have nevertheless for years been building up to a moment like this.

 

Assume the details are coincidence. The violence is not. The rhetoric has devolved and descended, past the ugly and past the threatening and past the fantastic and into the imminently murderous.

 

 

...At a time of such urgency and impact, we as Americans - conservative or liberal - should pour our hearts and souls into politics. We should not - none of us, not Gabby Giffords and not any Conservative - ever have to pour our blood. And every politician and commentator who hints otherwise, or worse still stays silent now, should have no place in our political system, and should be denied that place, not by violence, but by being shunned and ignored.

 

It is a simple pledge, it is to the point, and it is essential that every American politician and commentator and activist and partisan take it and take it now, I say it first, and freely:

 

Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans.

Edited January 11, 2011 by BigSqwert

[Controlled Chaos]

You may not agree with some of the posts in here but you are adding nothing whatsoever to the discussion with posts like this.

Your post added nothing to the discussion.

[Jenksismyhero]

Seeing that most people didn't watch the Olbermann video that I posted a couple days back, here are some of the snippets I thought made a lot of sense and is part of the crux of my argument in this thread:

 

I don't remember you s***ting on him or any other blowhard who has used violent metaphors to prove their point. You went after a specific person to further your anti-GOP opinions. I think that was the issue people had, not your point that the rhetoric needs to stop.

 

Also, I agree with the Colbert/Stewart stuff posted above. But I think they also play a part in the negative political culture they're talking about.

[BigSqwert]

I don't remember you s***ting on him or any other blowhard who has used violent metaphors to prove their point. You went after a specific person to further your anti-GOP opinions. I think that was the issue people had, not your point that the rhetoric needs to stop.

Because the overwhelming majority of violent rhetoric in the last 2 years has been from the right. And the guy most vilified from your side as "being the same", Olbermann, went ahead and apologized for any comments he had made and recommended that everyone do the same. That was the whole point. Palin and others didn't bother to apologize and saw no reason to.

 

And AGAIN, I am not blaming Palin or anyone on this specific incident but they have to have some self reflection, as Olbermann demonstrated, and say "Hey, that wasn't right what I said/did back then...I'm sorry and won't do it again".

[BigSqwert]

Sullivan with a must read blog entry on the topic.