Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in critical condition, 6 others killed in Arizona

[Landslide Lyndon]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry with this idiot:

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[Landslide Lyndon]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/ariz_congresswoman_shot_in_head_YFTvsurRHy5OWGSRKnuK8J#ixzz1ATfPK9fq

Her father Spencer Giffords, 75, was rushing to the hospital when asked if his 40-year-old daughter had any enemies. "Yeah," he told The New York Post. "The whole tea party."

[Landslide Lyndon]

From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

A reader writes:

I am standing in the aisle at Costco when I found out my Congresswomen, Gabrielle Giffords, has been shot dead up on the north side.
While I’m scrambling with my phone, two couples in front of me are talking about it and suddenly I hear one of the women say, “Well, that’s to be expected when you’re so liberal.”
And the other woman says, “Ohh, so we get to appoint a Republican?”

I did not trust myself to speak. I’m a Soldier. Please remind me what country I am fighting for? At least seven people are dead. She happens to be the only member of Congress married to an active duty military — he’s a Navy officer serving as an astronaut.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Look at px foaming at the mouth, trying to find anything he possibly can to make this about Republicans/Tea Parties.

Uhh...
I haven't commented anything yet. I just report, you decide.

[Landslide Lyndon]

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/murder-in-arizona-live-blogging.html


3.49 pm Various Palin sites are frantically removing various incendiary materials - which is both gratifying, but also, it seems to me, an acknowledgment of previous rhetorical excess. TakeBackThe20.com is in meltdown, images like these are being removed ASAP, and Palin's Facebook page simply cannot cope with the number of commenters blasting her.

[Landslide Lyndon]

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/01/murder-in-arizona-live-blogging.html


3.49 pm Various Palin sites are frantically removing various incendiary materials - which is both gratifying, but also, it seems to me, an acknowledgment of previous rhetorical excess. TakeBackThe20.com is in meltdown, images like these are being removed ASAP, and Palin's Facebook page simply cannot cope with the number of commenters blasting her.

Yeah, you're just "reporting."  

People have been making an issue that Palin's "targeted districts" for 2010 called for this type of action. And I bet a bunch of you tools, as disingenuous as it may be since you obviously know better, would agree.ed

The Pima county sheriff also attacked right-wingers for their hateful rhetoric against Giffords.
Is he a Dem tool too?

[Landslide Lyndon]

No, just being irresponsible at this point. Again, not sure how many right wingers classify Marx as one of their favorite authors...

Who knows? Maybe they thought they were reading Groucho's autobiography.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Seriously, if there is a doctor in here I'd love him to explain how could the bullet go through Giffords's head and she to survive.
Wouldn't she be at least seriously incapacitated after such an incident?

[Landslide Lyndon]

A photo of the shooter.

[Landslide Lyndon]

The shooter, esspecially his smile, reminds me a certain poster.

Nah, tmth is a sweetie.

[Landslide Lyndon]

http://judgepedia.org/index.php/John_Roll

...

Judge Roll in 2009, faced death threats after presiding over a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed by illegal immigrants against an Arizona rancher. After Judge Roll ruled the case would be certified, threats came from talk-radio shows which fueled controversy and spurred audiences into making threats against the judge.

The threats materialized after one show, Judge Roll's name logged more than 200 phone calls as some callers threatened the judge and his family.

This resulted in the judge and his wife were under a protection detail for one month as Judge Roll was given twenty four hours a day, seven days a week security by the US Marshals Service. An US Attorney's investigation ruled that four men were identified as threat makers, but no charges were filed.

In a July 9, 2009 interview with the Arizona Republic, Judge Roll described the time under high security as "unnerving and invasive. . . . By its nature it has to be," Roll said. Roll also said, "It (the security) was handled very professionally by the Marshals Service."

At the end of the month, Roll said four key men had been identified as threat makers.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Yeah, that kind of wound suggests the bullet only went through parts of the cortex, and as long as the surgeons could control the bleeding, chances for survival are good.  The fact that she was responding to commands also suggests that her hearing and at least good portions of the motor cortex still function.  How much of her cognitive skills and decision-making capacities may be diminished depends on which tissues were damaged and remains to be seen. 

Are you a doctor?
Not to sound callous but it sounds like she will be out of politics for a long time.

[Landslide Lyndon]

A gun-nut that was anti-government, supported the gold standard and accused a pro-choice woman of being a "terrorist".

Yep, sounds like a leftie to me.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Yep, sounds like a leftie to me.

Communist Manifesto listed as a favorite book. Definitely a Tea Partier.

I explained that a few pages ago.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Has this country really become that partisan?

I think you guys need to take a step back and think.

LOL!

[Landslide Lyndon]

What else can you say that a certain segment of the left needs ... deperately needs ... a pretext of this sort to use state force to silence the Tea Party, even when the situtation does not at all serve the purpose.

In the left's defense, who has demanded that the Tea Party be silenced by "state force"? I haven't heard anyone even cone close to that.

The Austrian kid mentioned something about using some law, or something, to silence Palin if her blogs were discovered on the shooter's computer.

The "Austrian Kid" is part of the American Left?

[Landslide Lyndon]

"In that third year of the Kennedy Presidency a kind of fever lay over Dallas County. Mad things happened. Huge billboards screamed “Impeach Earl Warren.” Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas. Fanatical young matrons swayed in public to the chant, “Stevenson’s going to die–his heart will stop, stop, stop and he will burn, burn burn!” Radical Right polemics were distributed in public schools; Kennedy’s name was booed in classrooms; junior executives were required to attend radical seminars. Dallas had become the mecca for medicine-show evangelists of the National Indignation Convention, the Christian Crusaders, the Minutemen, the John Birch and Patrick Henry societies . . .

In Dallas a retired major general flew the American flag upside down in front of his house, and when, on Labor Day of 1963, the Stars and Stripes were hoisted right side up outside his own home by County Treasurer Warren G. Harding–named by Democratic parents for a Republican President in an era when all Texas children were taught to respect the Presidency, regardless of party–Harding was accosted by a physician’s son, who remarked bitterly, “That’s the Democrat flag. Why not just run up the hammer and sickle while you’re at it?"

- William Manchester, Death of a President.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I'd like to here from avikshniki (or his girlfriend) on the latest medical developments.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/09/arizona.shooting/index.html

Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is able to communicate with doctors by following simple commands, a doctor said Sunday.
"We are very encouraged by that," said Dr. Michael Lemole, Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center in Tuscon, Arizona. "I am cautiously optimistic."
Giffords remained in critical condition after a gunman shot her in the head and then opened fire on a crowd at a political meet-and-greet Saturday outside an Arizona supermarket.

...

Giffords was under sedation, said Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the UMC trauma center, on Sunday. Doctors will turn off the sedation periodically and allow her brain to begin functioning and "see what her progress is," Rhee added.

Swelling of the brain is the biggest threat Giffords faces, said Lemole. The bullet traveled through the left hemisphere of her brain from back to front, he said, and "not through some of those critical trajectories" that would have made recovery more difficult. The most traumatic gunshot injuries are when a bullet crosses from one hemisphere to another, he said.
Doctors removed part of Giffords' skull during surgery in order to keep the brain from pressing against it if it swells, Lemole said.

"This so far has been a very good situation," Rhee said. "Hopefully it will stay that way."
While the simple commands she can follow may be taken for granted, Lemole said, they actually indicate a high level of brain functioning.

[Landslide Lyndon]

If the political ramifications of this assassination attempt is too much for some members' sensibilities, then how about that for a change in our conversation?

Can somebody explain to me how is it possible in a civilized society for a guy that was just suspended from his college for mental health problems, to purchase a semi-automatic weapon with such ease?
How can a no-brainer like keeping guns out of the hands of the insane is considered an "unprecedented attack on liberty"?
 

[Landslide Lyndon]

It's not just about the Tea Party. If you (Antonio and Lewis) can't detect how disgustingly biased in favor of Obama the European press is. Just think about the reporting surrounding the 2008 or 2010 elections...

Normal news sources say stuff like..."Republicans won the House because Obama wasn't able to deliver on his promises fast enough (and only because of Republican opposition of course).

You can't honestly claim the reporting here isn't designed to create an Obama fan chorus.

When the Republicans spend all these years ridiculing and demonizing everything that has to do with France and Europe in general, you can't seriously expect them to be treated neutrally.

And during the Bush years the US was seen here as more of a threat against world peace than any other nation or organization in the world.  

[Landslide Lyndon]

Ah, so you admit the bias?

The Republicans are a political party, and therefore by definition not meant to present things neutrally. The press is allowed to fire back, though, in your opinion?

And you're probably right about Europe's feelings towards Bush (which I might add are crazy...but that's not the debate), but is public opinion an excuse for biased reporting?

In addition, how many people came to these views BECAUSE of the way the press presented things?

People didn't like Bush from the beginning, even though his isolationist rhetoric was well received after the Bosnian war and the bombing of Serbia. We have very different political systems here and when somebody wins the Presidency even though he lost the popular vote, it was seen as unfair and Bush himself as a cheater.

Then came the Iraq War which was almost unanimously seen as pure American aggression. There was no need for the press to present unfavorably Bush. If anything, public opinion influenced the mass media and made them more anti-American and anti-Republican.     

[Landslide Lyndon]

Yeah, I know. It's that damn Jew socialist from New York, so feel free to dismiss him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10krugman.html?_r=1

When you heard the terrible news from Arizona, were you completely surprised? Or were you, at some level, expecting something like this atrocity to happen?
Put me in the latter category. I’ve had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach ever since the final stages of the 2008campaign. I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton’s election in 1992 — an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again. The Department of Homeland Security reached the same conclusion: in April 2009 an internal report warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with a growing potential for violence.

Conservatives denounced that report. But there has, in fact, been a rising tide of threats and vandalism aimed at elected officials, including both Judge John Roll, who was killed Saturday, and Representative Gabrielle Giffords. One of these days, someone was bound to take it to the next level. And now someone has.
It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.
And there’s not much question what has changed. As Clarence Dupnik, the sheriff responsible for dealing with the Arizona shootings, put it, it’s “the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.” The vast majority of those who listen to that toxic rhetoric stop short of actual violence, but some, inevitably, cross that line.

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.
The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary. And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge contrast in the media. Listen to Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann, and you’ll hear a lot of caustic remarks and mockery aimed at Republicans. But you won’t hear jokes about shooting government officials or beheading a journalist at The Washington Post. Listen to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

Of course, the likes of Mr. Beck and Mr. O’Reilly are responding to popular demand. Citizens of other democracies may marvel at the American psyche, at the way efforts by mildly liberal presidents to expand health coverage are met with cries of tyranny and talk of armed resistance. Still, that’s what happens whenever a Democrat occupies the White House, and there’s a market for anyone willing to stoke that anger.

But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people.
Unfortunately, that hasn’t been happening: the purveyors of hate have been treated with respect, even deference, by the G.O.P. establishment. As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, has put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”

So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?

If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning.

[Landslide Lyndon]

[Landslide Lyndon]

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/370861/january-12-2011/the-word---life--liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-angriness