Taking the safe out of Safeway, the gentle woman from Arizona who had been targeted for threats and violent vandalism after voting for Health Care Reform last spring, was shot in the head at point blank range as she held a public event to make herself more accessible to her constituents, outside a Safeway Grocery store.
Members of her staff are also reported to have been shot, and members of the public may have been injured as well. Possibly the best coverage so far has been this from the New York Times.
The shooting prompts the question, is this what Sharron Angle, candidate for the U.S. Senate for Nevada in the 2010 election was advocating in her campaign when she used the phrase 'Second Amendment Remedies'? A further question comes to mind, is this the result of the Congresswoman's position opposing Health Care Reform repeal?
Congresswoman Gifford has our positive thoughts and prayers for her recovery, as do other members of our representative government, that they be safe from violence from political thugs who do not understand that they are not all.owed to take this kind of action if they don't get their way.
Looks like he was completely out of it. Check out this article
ReplyDeletehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40980334/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/?GT1=43001
He says he can't trust the current government but what friends he had said his politics were very liberal. At the same time he advocated returning to the gold standard and accused the government of using mind control. The article has some of his facebook postings and he continually repeats himself and rambles like someone gone over the edge. This one really looks more like mental illness at work than anything.
Looks like he was completely out of it. Check out this article
ReplyDeleteThe sheriff's office is describing him as unstable but not insane.
The same sheriff's office was pretty darn articulate about the role of political polarization as an influence. I haven't observed the left / liberals advocating taking up guns to get the changes they want.
Yeah I read that too but my point is I don't think this guy was influenced by politics on either side or maybe by politics on both. His friends said he smoked pot a lot and was liberal but half of what he said was close to some of the further out conservatives (gold standard) and the rest was plain crazy (mind control, new currency, govt intentionally destroying the grammar). Also one friend said he met Griffin at one point and said she was an idiot and un-intelligent and I think that was before the health care bill passed. It would be interesting to see why the army rejected him when he tried to sign up. I am fairly certain one side or the other will bring it up at the trial, which side does will depend on if it was drug use or mental illness.
ReplyDeletetuck, the one woman who claimed his views were liberal doesn't seem to have been in contact with him recently, and didn't strike me as actually knowing the difference between liberal and conservative (or much else). One of the main themes this guy espoused was the importance of the gold standard, which is usually considered a part of the classic right wing mantra, "God guds and gold".
ReplyDeleteNot that all conservatives are for one, or more of those. But many who are fond of identifying themselves with all three ARE.
I would be hard pressed to come up with an explanation for someone from the left attacking this Congresswoman.
How about mental illness? in the Juan Cole thing you posted it said he was kicked out for being violent over federal money being used for the community college. Well school administrators also cited that he disrupted classes with rambling discourses that had nothing to do with the subject matter. One student who sat a couple rows in front of him said he thought he was on hallucinogens a good part of the time and a professor thought he showed signs of schizophrenia which often shows up first in the early 20s. The condition the school attached to him returning was a mental evaluation. This guy was closer to a conspiracy nut than to liberals or conservatives. He also was really into the whole "world is gonna end in 2012 thing." If it is schizophrenia that showed up recently that explains how he could get a gun, there was 3-4 yrs between turning 18 and becoming unstable enough it worried people, plenty of time to buy a gun.
ReplyDeleteLegal insanity is different than being nuts.
ReplyDeleteIts too early to tell, of course, but it may very well be that the man is suffering from mental illness, but is not legally insane.
He will initially be charged under federal statutes, but Arizona law will also come into play. There is simultaneous jurisdiction.
Before you take this into a bash of all things conservative, let's sit back and decide whether its actually the actions of a "crazed conservative", or that of a person who suffers from mental illness, and it masquerades as conservative views because some want to paint it that way.
My esteemed colleague, ToE wrote:
ReplyDelete"Before you take this into a bash of all things conservative, let's sit back and decide whether its actually the actions of a "crazed conservative", or that of a person who suffers from mental illness, and it masquerades as conservative views because some want to paint it that way."
I would refer you to one of the most eloquent pieces I have read so far on this subject: "We cannot say we were not warned" from the Chicago Sun Times
http://www.suntimes.com/opinions/3220146-474/giffords-cannot-tucson-ariz-saturday.html
While this shooting may turn out to be the work of someone legally mentally ill,it appears from the comments of the sheriff that his initial statements indicate he understood right from wrong - which I believe is part of the criteria as I understand it, for someone being legally insane or not. I defer to you to elaborate on that distinction.
However, 1. I am not bashing all things conservative. I am criticizing - pretty strongly - inaccurate statements by the right, both elected members of our government at all levels, and the right wing commenters, for enraging people with inaccurate information. There are a lot of people who get very angry, and it turns out what they're mad about - like pulling the plug on grandma for example, is not true.
2. Unless you are postulating that all of the violence and threats of violence in Arizona and elsewhere driven by false, inaccurate information or deliberate disinformation is exclusively the work of legally insane people, then your wrong, and the criticism IS appropriate.
While a few people - notably one stalker of Nancy Pelosi for example - were legally not sane, certainly Charlie Wilson WAS sane. He had gone to a tea party event, armed with a legal hand gun, to shoot Senator Patty Murray after making death threats to her and to the other WA senator. The only thing that prevented a shooting in that case was that the state police at the last moment took her out a different entrance.
Congressman Grijalva, from Arizona, has had his Arizona office closed down multiple times by law enforcement for the protection of his staff after credible death threats, and the office has been seriously damaged multiple times - including by bullets fired through glass doors and windows.
The violence I am writing about is NOT only this shooting, heinous as it was. It is about the fact that the people who are willing to make these threats are ill-informed, but also have been made to be both afraid and angry by their trust in the statements of the right, both by politicians, and by commenters.
If people checked out the facts, they might still disagree, but there would be far less reason on their part to be shooting, shouting, or threatening people.
Put it this way - you and I have had quite a good time laughing at Orly Taitz, but the fact is that some of her birther followers genuinely believe the U.S. government , executive branch, is being run by a foreign radical - and it scares them. Do you think Orly Taitz is either legally or clinically insane? I doubt it... she's just another wrong far-right figure making false accusations.
Last year, the sergeant at arms of the house and senate noted a 300% increase in credible threats to members of Congress and the Senate.
ReplyDeleteThat is the number leftover apparently AFTER they separate out and handle the merely crazy talk insane people making threats, who aren't actually a danger through carrying them out.
While this 22 year old may or may NOT be seriously crazy, we have used the phrase here 'bat-shit' crazy more than once - for birthers, tenthers, truthers, 2nd Amendment remediers, and some (but not all) tea partiers, militia followers, and others. THOSE are the people advocating taking away freedoms by disenfranchising their fellow Americans. Those are the people who consistently want to make either changes to legal rulings which contradict more than a hundred years of legal decisions, or to drastically alter the existing constitution through draconian amendments. We cannot write off the more extreme right as simply crazy. But that does not indict all conservatives.
Just the scared, angry, and wildly ill-informed. Sadly, there seem to be an awful lot of those, and some of them are armed and dangerous.
Thoughts,
ReplyDeleteWhether DG agrees in reply directly or not, I can say that my conversations with DG have always reflected a view that the vast majority of conservatives are morally upright people.
In fact, I think we both (DG and I) agree the segment of society ready to "use 2nd amendment remedies" is miniscule.
The issue, though, is that the balance of the "motivated" right, i.e. those Tea Party members and their supporters, have sat on their hands about these kinds of acts of violence. Where were the condemnations by the right of the killing of Dr. Tiller? Where was the repudiation of the acts of Eric William Rudolph?
Even worse, and far more of a problem, is that too many of the right-wing leaders are willing to engage in rhetoric which foments hatred of their fellow citizens. Rather than repudiating Rudolph or McVeigh, they continue to use language which incites this "unstable" fringe.
Certainly this man was off his nut, but why is it that it takes this kind of OVERT tragedy to get leaders to consider whether they need to stop calling their fellow citizens traitors or worse?
The thing is do you know if this guy even heard any of the angry rhetoric? His website talked about mind control and the gold standard. The only current issue he mentioned was people not speaking English and from what I read he was not offended by immigration just the fact the immigrants weren't learning English. Lets look back a little over a yr. Major Hassan was know to be Muslim, known to have attended a radical mosque, known to be rude to non-muslim patients, witnesses said he yelled Allah Akbar as he fired, and every news station said well don't be quick to blame this on Islam. Now this guy who we don't know that he knows or likes Sarah Palin, we don't know his recent polital beliefs, we don't know what inspired him other than possibly mental illness and drugs and the same media is pointing fingers at conservatives.
ReplyDeleteTTuck wrote "This guy was closer to a conspiracy nut than to liberals or conservatives. He also was really into the whole "world is gonna end in 2012 thing."
ReplyDeleteSpecifically, this guy seems to be inspired by, if not directly associated with, a man characterized as a right wing fringe celebrity who has been promoting precisely many of these same conpsiracy theories, as part of the right. The EXTREME right, certainly - nothing like our conservative commenters here, Tuck, or Michael, for example. But still the right, and closer in philosophy to many on the far right than moderate right. This would include some of the nuttier tea partiers, miliitia groups, etc.
This would include the Sharron Angle (endorsed by Sarah Palin) 2nd Amendment shoot-em-up if we lose the election to the other side crowd.
David Wynn Miller is a right wing fringe conspiracy freak who apparently came up with the grammar mind control by government idea. He has some weird ideas aobut taxes and money, although I don't know, yet, about gold currency. And he also is a big believer in the end-of-the-world in 2012 nonsense.
The link still needs to be made to show that Loughner visited Miller's website or attended one of his seminars. But he does appear to have found Miller's conspiracy ideas somewhere.
And that puts Loughner closer to Orly Taitz and the birther conspiracy types, or the posse comitatas etc. who are weird and foolish in their politics; but not particularly schizophrenic, or otherwise deranged, so far as we can tell. Some conspiracy groups do have a history of violence.
Here is the wikipedia link to Miller:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wynn_Miller
I haven't been able to locate Mille's actual web site, yet. But I will keep looking. But I think this posits a plausible political tie in to the shooting of Giffords and the other victims.
Ah HAH! Found it!
ReplyDeleteHere is the web site for David Wynn Miller, self-appointed judge and ......postmaster? Oh, and don't forget 'King of Hawaii'. It's hilarious, as bat-shit crazy as anything from Orly Taitz.
http://dwmlc.com/
YES! Loghner appears to mirror David Wynn Miller on the gold issue as well.
ReplyDeletehttp://dwmlc.com/dwm/pages/category.php?category=3
It would be nice to have some confirmation of if/how/when this shooter (alleged) connected with David Wynn Miller.
But certainly that these ideas originated with Miller seems fairly clear, making a link to political motivation from the right.
To be clear, though, I haven't yet seen anywhere that Miller advocates shooting people, and it should further be noted he made the recent statement that he does not condone this.
Here's the youtube videos; sure looks a lot like Loughner's stuff.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqrM_QCeIRk
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine there are actually people who buy into this? Sheeesh!