Congresswoman shot in AZ (Update: in stable condition)

That's your perspective. Many people who wouldn't warrant the term "bigot" oppose gay marriage for religious, philosophical, and sociological reasons. These same people would oppose sodomy laws and any other type of legislation that would de-citizen homosexuals.

Simply labeling people who disagree with you as 'bigots" is nothing more than a way to cop out of the discussion.

 

Oh, it absolutely is: it's the proper reply to someone dragging gays and Islamic centers into this topic - as if Sarah Palin alone isn't enough of a deviation. It's a request for someone else to cop out of the discussion.

 

More good news on Gabrielle Giffords! The doctors are positive she will survive, and she can now breathe on her own!

 

I hope she makes a fantastic recovery but she got shot through the brain... Let's wait and see and calm down.

 

Someone just sent me a link to the shooter's posts on a conspiracy message board from this summer, and yeah it definitely seems to be him. I couldn't help but read some of them, to try and understand, but they're completely crazy like his youtube messages, it just left me with a headache and feeling like I wasted my time.

But here's what I got from them:

Most people there said they couldn't understand him, some people told him that he was a schizophrenic and should get help before he hurt himself and others. He talked about dreaming he became a wolf with a big mouth and red vision that saw people covered in sheep skins, talked a lot about currency and language being infinite, talked about how the Geneva Convention means the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wrong, talked about how religion is a conspiracy because there's no authors or something, thought Stephen Hawking was a retard, he'd be talking about space and then suddenly question the size of a toilet, talked a lot of about his weird logic, all over the place.

But among all that crap I noticed he talked a lot about how he thought NASA was a conspiracy, that they faked humans leaving in a space shuttle or putting rovers on Mars. Could this be a reason why he targeted Congresswoman Giffords, because her husband and brother-in-law are astronauts?

Here are the links, in case you're interested:
http://abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread649091/pg1
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/erad3.html

 

JediSmuggler, you're getting very close to baiting a moderator. Don't do that

So he thinks the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were wrong.... darn conservatives.


You could try to link the reasoning behind Giffords, but it seems more logical that what made Giffords a target was simply that she was his congressperson, and so the person in Congress (and other high level gov't) that he was going to have the most contact with. He wasn't going to drive to another district to focus on a Congressperson there, he focused on his. His grudge with Giffords seems to be a result of that contact, and her not answering one of his bizarre philosophy questions. I think to look for deeper things than that is trying to grasp at straws a bit.

 

I would imagine that a lawyer who takes on a case like this is more interested in fame than in winning. The closest she could possibly come to a win would be to get him life in prison instead of the death penalty, and sometimes it's hard to say which is the stronger punishment.

 

I believe the lawyer is just someone who is against the death penalty, and favors life imprisonment for those she defends.

 

That would make sense too.

 

Sarah Palin has finally weighed in with her own video message about the event and the extent to which the anger of current political discourse contributed to the violence. She's already taking heat for using the term "blood libel."

My favorite comment on Politico about this:

The way to marginalize Palin would be to stop obsessing on her every word. It's hard. She is an easy target, and some critics seem too lazy to find a better one. But her critics thus become her enablers. The first thing President Obama should avoid in Tucson is any reference, however oblique, to Palin.

This seems completely true. The more Palin becomes a focal point of any public discourse about anything, the more central she becomes to whatever it is everyone believes is the National Debate. Talking about Palin makes her stronger. Criticizing Palin only makes her stronger. Making fun of Palin only makes her stronger. Dismissing her as a political lightweight only makes her stronger.

Only not talking or writing about her at all makes her weaker. I have just made her a tiny bit stronger.

 

Palin's Facebook page has a statement up. It's actually not a bad read, in itself.

EDIT:

//looks up the meaning of "blood libel"

Oh.

Yeah, she probably shouldn't have said that. That's, like, one step down from comparing herself to a Holocaust victim. It's entirely possible that she didn't know what it meant -- I mean, I didn't -- but yeah.

 

In other news, Fox News chief Roger Ailes apparently just told his pundits to "tone it down."

Good to see.

 

Like Kayne West?



Ghost, I noted earlier he thought space travel was a big hoax. The guy was deeply troubled. But trying to make sense of his reasoning is impossible because none exists.

 

Like 9/11, only much less so, this is one of those big national events that invite self reflection and give people an opportunity to project onto the tragedy whatever they believe about the American experience, the death penalty, gun control, care of the mentally ill, the toxicity of the right wing media, and so on.

Here's another one: the unemployment level of 16-24 year olds, now at a generational low. Economic opportunity in the United States for young men has never been worse in our lifetimes than it is right now. Employment among 16-24 years olds declined throughout the Bush years and then of course nose dived in the Great Recession.

I started another thread that went nowhere about the connection between mental illness and the Great Recession. Financial duress and lack of economic opportunity exacerbates depression and hopelessness and may compound the effects of other mental health problems.

Not to Godwin the thread, but we can make a comparison to the throngs of unemployed youth in Weimar Germany that fed into the early growth of the Nazi party. Keeping youth gainfully employed is a matter of national security.

 

Give credit where credit is due: It takes a lot of work to be that infantile in a post.

 

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/jared-loughners-friend-says-suspect-did-not-watch-tv-disliked-the-news_b48040

An ABC interview with a high school friend of Loughner's says that Loughner wasn't on the left or the right, didn't like the news, and didn't listen to political radio. He characterises it as Loughner being angry with the world. He does mention Zeitgeist as a factor.

 

That was one of the best speeches Obama has given yet, Let's be the America that Christina imagined us to be.

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized ? at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do ? it?s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, 'when I looked for light, then came darkness.' Bad things happen, and we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.


[...]

But what we can?t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. That we cannot do. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let's use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.

[...]

So sudden loss causes us to look backward ? but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we?ve shown enough kindness, generosity, compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we may question whether we are doing right by our children, our community, whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality; we are reminded that in our fleeting time on earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame -? but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.

[...]

They believe and I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here ? they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that's entirely up to us. And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

That?s what I believe, in part because that?s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. Imagine, imagine here for a moment, a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just beginning to glimpse that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation?s future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism, vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us ? we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children?s expectations.

This was already mentioned, Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called ?Faces of Hope.? On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child?s life. 'I hope you help those in need,' read one. 'I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles.'

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here, on this Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and we commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.

Da

 

"But what we can?t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. That we cannot do. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let's use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together."
Very good words from Obama here.

 

I'm confused what does the Mosque have to do with the shooting?

 

Another key quote from Obama's speech:

 

Politico's front page story was also the contrast between Obama's uplifting call for a more cooperative political atmosphere in the wake of a senseless tragedy and Sarah's narcissistic, defensive, self-aggrandizing video stunt.

It's a wakeup call for Republicans. Obama being compared to Sarah Palin in every newspaper and political site in the country. Sarah Palin is becoming the face and voice of the right, and she comes out looking petty. On top as the voice of the right, to be sure. It wasn't John McCain's stance being contrasted to Obama. But still petty and bombastic and shrill.

 

Giffords' eye-opening moment described.

 

Quite a moving story. It's almost impossible to conceive what happens to the human mind when the brain experiences that kind of trauma. Scientific American has a sobering assessment of Giffords's injuries and references the famous case of Phineas Gage, another person who survived an object taking a straightline path through the length of the left hemisphere of the brain.