Tonight’s weird new details: The alleged shooter walked through the crowd and directly to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. “He ran through the crowd and when he got to [Giffords] he just started shooting,” Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said.
ABC News reports on the mystery “white man in his 50s” who may have delivered the lunatic to the congresswoman’s rally and then disappeared:
“We are not convinced that [the gunman in custody] acted alone, there is some reason to believe he came to this location with another individual, and that individual is involved,” Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said.
Police said a suspect was taken into custody, and Dupnik described the alleged shooter as mentally unstable. Though the sheriff did not name the suspect, he was identified by multiple law enforcement sources as Jared Lee Loughner, 22.
Dupnik declined to provide more information on the second individual who he would only describe as “white” and “in his 50s.” Authorities have photographs of the person of interest and are “actively pursuing him,” the sheriff said.
And then Sheriff Dupnik said this:
“The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately Arizona I think is the capital. We are the Mecca for prejudice for prejudice and bigotry,” he said.
[ABC News]
UPDATE: It was the taxi driver who was called to drive the nut to the Safeway.
{ 187 comments }
They wound up a crazy and pointed him where they wanted it done. Tomorrow the 50 year old guy will be found dead. And that will be the end of it. It's like X-Files.
I fear you're right. And, then all we'll be left with is this "liberal" assassin. Ugh.
They all distanced themselved from McVeigh, we've already seen how it works. They're already defining his brand as just some disgruntled loner, pot-smoker, his favorite video was burning a flag, etc. By Monday they'll have somebody to assert they heard the kid voted for Obama. After that blah blah you know the rest.
I'm having an argument with some so-called "moderates" right now in which they don't want to "jump to conclusions" and are going all out the world backwards to pick out the exceptions of this guy to ignore the rule. Forget that the guy thinks abortion is murder, wants to go back to the gold standard, is not just wary of, but paranoid about, government, or that he has a hard-on for guns, or tried to join the military.
No, the guy read dystopian books, and list Wizard of Oz is a favorite movie, so we musn't jump to conclusions. He's just as much left as he is right. If I could roll my eyes any further, I would.
I expect apologism from conservatards; they don't ever talk responsibility for ANYTHING, even when it's clearly one of their own. I'm tired of so-called moderates who worship the equalization and legitimizing of all sides as if it's some kind of sick, parallel religion.
Hey, just because a duck has a few specks of blue in his feathers don't make him nothin' other than a duck.
You could say the same thing about the 9/11 terrorists and every Palestinian suicide bomber–yeah, they're crazies, but they were deliberately found and groomed by others to do their work. Same thing with this guy.
I am equally pissed at the silly argument. Yes, he was a wingnut. No, he didn't have a stable view of reality. If he did, he wouldn't cruise ultra-right web sites with detailed drawings of the way Pres. Obama hypnotizes us with his speeches.
It's like hate crimes. Just as the SPLC keeps reminding us, language matters. The Repblithugs have embraced teabaggers and their vitriolic rhetoric gleefully, announcing "a major realignment in American politics."
Sorry to get personal here, but every so-called Xian who calls homosexuals abominations to god, etc, and every red neck or adolescent boy who uses language about queers and fags helped beat Matthew Shepard to death. On a lesser note, but one of great importance to my family, they helped put a douchebag's fist through my daughter's face a couple of years ago.
Language matters. If your side is responsible for ginning up the vitriol, then you have the responsibility to denounce it. Show me a Republithug who does that and I'll show you an elected official with a RINO target on his back.
It's time for the conservatards to tone it down. Put as long as it wins votes, I don't think we should hold our collective breaths.
You know something about OKC? I kind of ignored the talk about others being involved etc, until Wade Goodwin did a report on it on NPR. (Yes, trolls, that made it factual to me. Now go fuck yourselves.) There were a lot of funny things, destroyed evidence, etc, in connection with McVeigh. I think, frankly, to cover up the fact the FBI was giving white terrorists a pass, even back then.
Yes, it makes Oliver Stone look downright reasonable.
This is a job for Jack Ruby.
Dupnik is the man:
"This has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in and I think it's time we do [some] soul-searching."
Amen to that, brother. Amen to that.
AZ bloggers are already trotting out "classmates" that assert Dupnik has been "left wing" and "quite liberal" since his school days. They decry his "exploitation" of the shooting. They are actively organizing call in campaigns to the sheriff's office to protest this "outrageous" behavior.
Here's a sample
There is no limit to how far these people will go. They unapologetically offer neither decency nor quarter. They will never stop. You can't talk to them. They are convinced they are at war with our own government. There is no way to appease them, they are intractable.
Yeah, I'm going to trust people who call Obama a socialist to define who is and isn't a liberal.
We're not talking about them changing YOUR mind. We're talking about how they paint things to appeal to the minds they already changed.
For example, this morning's outrages include the predictable comments of one Fred Phelps, Jr. who operates a tax free personal income vehicle called the Westboro Baptist Church. He gives thanks to his god for the Tucson shootings and prays that more will soon follow. And of course, his God Hates Fags army of provocateurs will be at the funerals to wave their signs.
Nearly every human would agree that Phelps is a sick motherfucker and want nothing to do with him. However, I was shocked to learn that on the right, he is referred to as Democrat Fred Phelps, and his church is called a Democrat Hate Group. They say that Fred Phelps is a dangerous icon of the left.
If people will sit still for this much spin, and they do, there is no hope for them. Only the passage of time and the lack of health care will attenuate this madness.
And even if this woman is for real, she says hasn't spoken to the guy in four years; it's not like anyone's ever changed their minds after high school or anything.
I have to post a correction. Those "liberal" references in the linked post were in regard to the shooter, not to Dupnik as I inaccurately attributed them.
Weigel has the source material here: The Twitter Life of Caitie Parker
Apologies.
Color me underwhelmed. I had a non-crazy high school classmate who went from being a a far-left ELF-apologist anarchist to being a South Park Republican over the course of like three months. People change, school-aged people can change a lot, and crazy people tend to change rather quickly with little warning. And it might just be me speaking here, but that causes me to find someone dropped out of touch with this kid five years ago to a less-than-reliable source on the issue. Also note that that last bit was kinda elided from the referenced (but not linked!) story over there.
There are a lot of states that are NOT going to give up the prejudice, hatred and stupidity crown so easily to Arizona.
As I've said elsewhere, You Can't Spell Crazy Without AZ.
Can't spell AK-47 without AK.
Uh, can't spell invisible without NV? Can't spell macaca without CA? Focus, people!
The whole country has gone nuts from my observation: Rip off people, destroy their ability to live somewhat comfortably, then dazzle and scare the living shit out of them with all sorts of nonsense about how government (of the people, for the people, by the people) is the enemy and keep pounding it into their heads 24/7/365.25 and then make sure guns are cheap and easily available to anyone no matter how criminal and nuts they might be. Roll in a little hysteria about brown people into the mix and shake well.
Okahoma will give up the craziest state label when you pry our fat, scooter riding fritos addled 90 IQs off it.
(Okay, so I'm in a hurry. You try making up a quickie that works with that. The old man is home soon and he'll be surfing the net. This being the Sabbath, I hope he'll lay off the porn.)
Here in America's Dinghus, we're starting on our 4-year Rush To Insanity.
What happened to this country?
Over on HuffPo, I posted a supportive reaction to Sheriff Dupnik's remarks. Within nanoseconds, I got a lengthy reply that boiled down to Dupnik is a Democrat and therefore scum. How soon before he shows up on some teabagger's crosshair map — assuming he hasn't already?
He was one of the sheriffs that spoke out against sb1070, I'm sure he did.
Yes he made an appearance on Maddow about sb1070
HuffPo is turning into the new YouTube as far as commenting quality goes
Jesus Christ! These people are on the edge. It seems they are just a nanosecond away from arming themselves and firing on the first democrats they encounter.
After Obama was elected, I was reading Free Republic and found this small business owner. He posted that after the election he went out into the parking lot and observed which vehicles had Obama/Biden bumper stickers. He said he then went in and fired those people from their jobs.
Typical intolerance of the right-wing. They attack. They do not compromise and will accept no reasons.
Perhaps this Guardian article from last month will shed some light on your HuffPo experience: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertyce...
Sounds like an area ripe for Wonkette stories. Can you follow up?
"We are the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry,” [Sheriff Dupdnik] said.
True, but wow… a quadra-conflation of Al Qaida and the Tea Klux Klan by way of Islam to Arizona? Passage via the First and Second Amendments? Guess we should go on a Crusade against hate speech (ahem).
Older white guy, huh? Now we're getting the tea-bagger profile.
I'm not sure of that. He was thin and not riding a scooter. OTOH, the meth addicts around here are seriously right wing.
As much as I'd like to unleash some snark – not to mention the vile I wish to hurl at Sarah et al. – I'm going to offer a more positive thought. Awful, unthinkable events like this give us some decent people to find hope in. Thank you, Sheriff Dupnik for being a touch stone of common sense and insight in these troubling times.
i wonder, will this be a touchstone event for us?
Here's to hoping the good Sheriff Dupnik puts aside his compassionate, common sense nature and puts a fucking bullet in the brain of John Doe #2.
Actually, let's not hope that. Let's hope suspect #2 is caught alive so he doesn't get posthumously turned into a liberal out to make the tea baggers look bad.
Great thought, but that is going to happen anyway, whether he is dead or just arrested. By the time we really know anything about these fucks, ADD America will have already moved on to flipping out about the color or size of Kim Kardashian's panties again.
Yeah, I want these people to be investigated, stand trial, and tell us who inspired them.
Wellstone event, more likely.
too soon!
Meanwhile, the sleazy shitheels at Fox make an emergency cut to commercial in the middle of covering a prayer vigil for Giffords because someone at the vigil mentioned Sarah Palin. http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/fox-news-cut...
I don't care how "liberal" you might think a county's population might be, no Sheriff anywhere is likely to be liberal. Tolerant and professional, yes, but probably generally moderate to conservative in political outlook. For this Sheriff to make such a statement at a time like this takes real courage and a sense of hope that all rational Americans abhor and reject the hate being spewed in Arizona and elsewhere in this country. This man knows who the unindicted co-conspirators are and he's mighty tempted to name them.
If I have it straight, Dupnik said that he was not going to enforce SB1070 (AZ immigration law). So yeah, SarahPAC probably has him in the crosshairs.
Most of the cops I know would be highly pissed if something like that happened on their watch. When their local peace is disturbed to that great an extent, they get touchy regardless of politics.
This guy, though, truly a special case. It's not easy anymore to talk sense at the corner diner, let alone at the center of a national tragedy.
More special because two of the victims, including the Federal judge, were friends of his whom he knew well. You better believe this guy's going to catch anybody remotely involved with this.
Our local sheriff supports decriminalizing marijuana.
I have the phone number of the vice cop attached to my precinct in Harlem on speed dial!
Is that so you can call them and brag about your exploits?
That just makes sense from a resource-allocation perspective.
Former Sheriff and Hunter Thompson buddy Bob Braudis in Aspen, CO was as progressive a sheriff as there ever was. However, you don't have to be a progressive to be a humane and effective law-enforcement officer. There is lots of room between the Schutzstaffel techniques of Joe Arpaio and Somali-style anarchy.
Yes, a cool cop! Reminds of the cop in "Matewan" or the one in that Ronald Reagan serial killer movie. Very rare thing.
Our sheriff is a dedicated Xian who only allows the prisoners to read xian material he approves, and he prefers King James. He also managed to get a bond issue for the new jail in town.
Oh, wait. I meant our former sheriff. He's currently under indictment and may be able to check out the new digs himself, up close and personal. The new sheriff, nominally a member of my church, has revoked the reading policy.
Yeah. They tend to be a conservative group.
Or he's pretty damn tired of getting death threats himself.
Nothing says "Second Amendment" quite like a second suspect.
How soon until Rebublicans complain that the cost of Dem Congresspersons' enhanced security measures will "blow a hole in the deficit?"
Well since this nutjob is being painted as a liberal, any ideas on the 2nd suspect…George Soros? Saul Alinsky? Woodrow Wilson? Amelia Earhart?
If only Obama had reached across the aisle more…
I haven't had a good laugh in days, and this did it. Thank you for that.
Saul Alinsky- interesting how these HTT Know Nothing right wingers use his name as if they knew anything about him. I have friends who knew him and worked with him(yes, I have friends who are community organizers- even young ones) and all the Palins/Bachmanns/Boehners/Cantors(a shandeh for the Jews) together are not worth a day of the work and thought of Saul.
Woodie Guthrie. This land is my land, not your mutherfucking land, this land was made for only me . . .
I'm sure someone will characterize this as "thuggish Chicago-style Alinsky politics" (thuggish Alinsky politics with a thick crust containing a heavy layer of sauce and toppings).
Here's how some twat on FB characterized it:
"But the liberals are already (pathetically) contorting the facts to draw an illogical and dangerous conclusion… that public discourse and debate over divisive issues is the root of all evil. Did you read the bit trying to connect Sarah Palin to the shooting by noting that Palin said Giffords' seat should be "targeted" (politically speaking!) and she (Giffords) should be replaced by a more conservative Congressional representative? FYI: The shooter was a pothead. The liberals should go after the marijuana farmers. There is a more direct connection."
I love her idea of "public discourse and debate."
Public discourse and debate is what Gabrielle Giffords was doing and then a right-wing terrorist shot her and 19 others. The ONLY public discourse and debate the radical right-wingers will allow is their views. If this 'twat' on FB wanted a true debate she wouldn't be defending Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin has nothing to say unless it is to spout her 'opinion' in 140 characters or less. That is not debate. That is propaganda. Sarah Palin wouldn't be able to debate because to debate one needs to form sentences and string them together into a logical coherent argument.
So the purported use of marijuana by the shooter is very relevant but the political graphic with the crosshairs isn't relevant at all? Makes sense b/c everyone gets all crazed with murderous thoughts after getting stoned but fiery rhetoric that calls up the Second Amendment is very relaxing.
Wait, what??
I'm just getting stuck on the whole assumption that conservatives and fringe-"libertarians" are never potheads. Particularly because I was pretty certain "libertarian" typically meant "I'm a right-winger, and probably racist, but I like to smoke up a lot, too."
Oh, well, more for the rest of us, I guess.
For the life of me, I just can't remember all of the times I've gotten stoned and gone on a murderous rampage.
Huh? I wonder if I have any munchies around here?
There is a second terrorist on the loose. Breitbart commenters may be a good place to start looking.
i'm sure someone else has noted this, but the 9 year old that was killed was born on 9/11.
'If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.'
or at least maudlin fiction that would make people like me shudder and reach for the bottle.
Saw this on Deadspin, of all places. Great, great profile of Christina Taylor Green.
http://azstarnet.com/news/local/article_28c8e686-...
Thank you for that link. So very sad. She had such potential.
Of all that was lost in this, a thoughtful, intelligent child was probably the greatest loss. That and that kids won't get to meet the people that represent them except through scripted and thoroughly vetted and secured events (Popemobiles for all the public servants?).
When did we start living in a Philip K. Dick novel?
(yeah, I know Ken used that analogy already, but srsly… We already basically have precrime now with all of the "terror" arrests of pissed off Arab-American kids who were incited by the FBI to make stupid plans…)
If Dupnik comes up for re-election, watch this be used against him.
…which is all the more reason for any state or federal agency actually looking for someone with integrity to open up a position, I hope.
Imagine the all-night crisis meeting going on right now at Fox News headquarters…
I dunno. I'll bet they've had contingency plans for something like this all along. Although, this would be their perfect opportunity to jettison the snowbilly.
Furiously typing memos to inform talent how to refer to crazy lib shooter.
News organizations have obit files for when dignitaries and celebs die. If Fox doesn't have a "Pearl Harbor File" for these sorts of things, with pre-fabricated fabrications at the ready, I would be really surprised. Ailes may be evil, but he is damned good at evil and intelligent. If it didn't exist, it will now.
Crazy love for Sheriff Dupnik. This certainly isn't the first time he's been brave enough to stand up and spit in the face of The Crazy — he didn't pull any punches about how fucked up he thought the new AZ immigration law was, either.
Also, the minute you introduce the notion of an accomplice, the whole "impulse act of a disturbed loner" show goes down the toilet, so now we just wait and see how many folks they end up hauling in for this one and who they are.
Get ready to try and help him save his job. Sen. Kyl, whose middle name ought to be "mecca of prejudice," is leading the charge to have him fired.
Who believes a stone crazy and highly suggestible 22-year-old rejected by the U.S. Army, fer fuck's sake, does something like this all on his lonesome?
I mean, sure, many will be saying exactly that this week, but who really believes it?
Those who have to in order to live with themselves.
I'm glad to know the Army still reject schizophrenics!
Even the Army — especially the Army — doesn't like weakling dipshits who think guns will make men of them.
But congress, however, loves the little bastards.
But congress, however,
lovesis filled with the little bastards.Fixed.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! and FUCK!
They should open up his skull and leave it that way until Rep. Giffords is healed. Torture? Let's call it empathy treatment.
Here's to a speedy recovery.
I am awake at 4am on the West Coast, just too sad to sleep, I think. The lone spot of optimism seems to be this wonderful, gruff 75 year old sheriff who said what we have long been thinking.
Agreed I don't want to be a warblog today.
Amen, Limeylizzie. Sheriff Dupnik is my new hero. He speaks for me.
The macropolitical here is actually much sadder than the micro. Uneducated whites have become one pathetic fucking demographic.
My browser's home page is Yahoo, and when I saw this at 6 AM Sunday, Wonkette was the first place I went. I don't think I can deal with HuffPo's fonts right now, and will instead drink coffee and wrangle my Ebay and Amazon orders. Most of which are, and have been for many months now, from overseas customers rather than US folks.
Can you imagine what it'd be like to be your typical obedient middle-America soccer parent this week, watching Katie Couric and Brian Williams pretend to struggle with the unsolveable riddle "ARE WE BECOMING TOO EXTREME" in between ads for cures for Restless Leg Syndrome?
Shite. I wish I had something funny to say. I really do.
I wish we had some real news people who would address this instead of the schlock media-looking for the next book sale, promotion or speaking engagement.
I, too, can only read about this topic on Wonkette. I tried watching it "straight" on CNN and got so pissed off within about a minute that I was ready to throw the remote. I'll take my news with a side of smart-assed realism, thanks.
I think I'll wait for more and better facts before I form an opinion or beat my breast in outrage. Isn't that the liberal way?
you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
You can be outraged at the act no matter why it was done. And you can form an opinion that guns do kill people-people w/o guns have a lot harder time. If he had a knife (hey, because knives kill too as some teabagger pointed out), he couldn't have killed and wounded 12.
The shooter's dad?
His dad dropping him off because he didn't have his own car…
I think we might be able to get to the bottom of this. Crazy young man, access to guns, wound up by his father. Why? The old man wants the kid out of the house so he can turn the basement into a rec room.
Well played.
Detective DashboardBuddha solves the mystery.
Screw these repubatards with their lies that "this can't be connected" to teabbaggery and Sarah Palin:
1) You don't publish a map with crosshairs on candidates like Congresswoman Giffords exhorting your followers to "remove them," and to re-load and "lock and load" like Sarah Palin did. Imagine if any black candidate had behaved in that way? Just think about that for a moment.
2) Of course the shooter is a nut. So were the 9/11 hijackers and Palestinian suicide bombers. Such people are easy open targets for those who will manipulate and use them for their own ends.
There's a pattern here. Giffods' office was previously vandalized, many congresspeople were threatened during the healthcare vote, and the murdered judge was also repeatedly threatened. No way is this some "random act."
I went to a couple of anti-Palin sites. One is an Alaskan site. Hooboy, the panic-stricken trolls are out in force. And, yes indeedy, it is all Pres. Obama's fault.
Let them spin it in their sick, twisted, fearful, racist, horndog minds all they want. I think the saner part of the country just might finally pull back from that harpy. I would like to think that her every fb rant and twittwat are not going to continue to be slavishly reported by the media as before.
Every one of her rants has the same rage, hate, spitefulness and desperation as her fucking crosshairs poster (which, by the way, she herself referred to as "bulls eyes"; so her flying monkeys might as well drop the whole stupid surveyors' marks meme).
I think she really might be done. I don't think there is any way she can be anything other than a far fringe candidate (Lyndon LaRouche with a vagina) from here on out.
The only conceivable way she could recover would be the most abject of apology and can't we all just get along tours. She can't do it. She cannot and has not ever ever ever ever ever accepted the slightest responsibility for anything, nor has she ever ever ever ever ever admitted the tiniest flaw, misstep, misspeak, mistake of any kind whatsoever.
When called out on anything her response has been to double down and gleefully revel in no one being able to make her do anything.
I hope you're right on this, on the other thread, I mentioned that it seemed that the repukes were on the verge of throwing her off the bus (Nugent saying she was a nice gal, but not presidential material yet.). I think the process might have been a bit more paced and nuanced earlier, but I see an opportunity for those in the repukes that have a strategic mindset to throw her under now rather then when Iowa and Hew Hampshire are in full play. No one likes a loose cannon on deck.
I really hope so. I think the Republicans were going to milk her as a cash cow for as long as they could. But hopefully they will want to distance themselves from her, because otherwise that crosshairs poster and all of her related doubling down verbiage is going to be tied not just to her but to Republicans in general as campaigning starts to heat up. I think you are correct in saying that this was already underway, but in a more subtle and nuanced way.
1a) you don't have a "live fire an M-16 and remove Giffords from office" political fundraising event without expecting consequences. I have no problem with live firing any weapon, having fired a few m-16s in ROTC myself, but seriously, folks, gun rhetoric and politics DO NOT MIX.
Sheriff Dupnik is a smart man. Mecca of prejudice. Indeed
A man who chooses his words carefully, apparently. There can't be too many of those.
I respect the way he cycled back at the end of his press conference and spoke to the msm and other folks who had poo-poohed, in his words, his claim that the vitriol of language had helped do this.
Tea Baggers and Palinites are terrified that they will directly tied to these lunatics. They should be scared. Even if the lunatics never admit to being followers of Palin, normal responsible and reasonable people will re-evaluate their ideology. They will leave the radical and join the mainstream.
OTOH the reactions of law enforcement and the public may inspire even more people to join the idiots.
There are people yapping about the 'shooting in Arizona' as if it didn't have anything to do with changing an election. They're fucking liars. This was a political assassination. It needs to be called what it is, an assassination.
A shooting is something tragic that happens by accident, like when Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face. This assassination was planned and purposeful.
This assassination was domestic terrorism designed to let leaders know that their detractors are armed and dangerous, just like Michele Bachmann wants them to be.
The words terrorism and assassination need to replace attacked and shooting.
I was startled and pleased to hear CNN refer to the assassination of the judge and attempted assassination of the congresswoman, as well as the murder of the child.
Then their coverage went all to hell. They said they were going to discuss the Sheriff's comments but opted instead for constant, repeated, breathless "return to the scene" updates.
Olbermann referred to domestic terrorism.
The official charges were filed this morning. Of course, they're a mile long. But #1 on the list is "attempted assassination of a public official." So no one can deny that's what it was. Apparently, the killing of the judge is not being ruled an assassination because it's pretty clear the shooter didn't even know who he was. They did find stuff in Loughner's home, though, that indicates he targeted Rep. Giffords and planned his attack of her with malice aforethought.
You know Frank Luntz, that toupee-wearing genius who has coined loaded phrases for the Republican lexicon, like "government takeover of healthcare," or "energy exploration"?
We either need to get him to flip, or get our own Language Doctor.
Shooty Sarah, the NRA, and anyone who supports either of them should be tagged as the violent-hearted, dangerous hypocrites they are.
[Full disclosure: I do own guns. And I would happily register them.]
I think that, no matter what his schizo-politics (looking for substantive concerns in the midst of madness is…madness), this event draws attention to the banality of "revolution."
Political groups and public figures have mainstreamed the fantasy that "revolutionary" violence is both justified and inevitable, and this is a time of threat and crisis in which extreme speech or action is the natural reaction to the conditions. Opponents are terrorist sympathizers, unAmerican, and pose a pressing material threat to the public. We are world-historically significant characters thrust onto the stage. YOU might fire the shot heard round the world. It is time to act, though how to act always remains unsaid (it has to, if it is to function as a fantasy. The imaginer gets to enjoy filling in their particular how).
To say that it's mainstreamed doesn't mean that it's accepted or acceptable by most people. Sharron Angle's "second amendment solutions" contributed to her loss in Nevada. A digital media environment, however, makes it difficult to distinguish between "broadcasting" and "narrowcasting." These groups and politicians have used the real apocalyptic stuff to motivate a particular part of their base–not motivate to kill, but in the sense of feeding their fantasy in return for material support. But now messages meant for some (who understand how the fantasy works) can reach all.
It's the strip bar approach to politics–all sex but no touching, all indulgence and no fulfillment. All revolutionaries without a revolution. And by and large, the folks who are part of this understand the rules. But this sort of narrowcasting, where one can engage in revolution fantasies without harm amongst a consenting audience, isn't really feasible any longer. The digital environment allows these narrowcasts to be accessed by everyone, including those that are not in on the fantasy (or as seems to be the case with Loughner, cannot judge between fantasy and reality).
My guess is that this has, at least for a while, thrown cold water on the fantasy of revolution. It doesn't look like 1776. It looks like a suburban grocery store bloodbath and a dead little girl. But the fantasy of revolution, of being a significant actor in political history, won't go away. It will just lay down its arms for the time being.
"Revolutionaries without revolution" is one of the classic definitions of fascism. Just sayin'.
The Right again spins this as a leftist attack, as only leftists would do such a thing: http://www.redstate.com/
By the way, as an exit thought, the tea party movement won in November. Winners don’t go on shooting sprees.
We've also got a troll claiming he was a leftist – using links to fucking Atlas Shrugs, of all places known to not be credible – down in the original thread. All because he owned a copy of The Communist Manifesto, ignoring that he also owned Mein Kampf and Ayn Rand's bullshit.
My pet RW nutjob on FB is saying shooter is a leftist and offering as proof The Communist Manifesto AND Mein Kampf. B/c Hitler was a leftist, too, you see. NOTHING will stop these people.
I defriended an otherwise rational friend who pulled that shit yesterday. I don't care if this fucker was a socialist, communist, or made of barbecued spareribs–it was the right wing's violent rhetoric that got this ball rolling, and it is with the right wing that responsibility lies.
To think otherwise is pure bullshit.
There's a second troll who just had the audacity to make that same claim, along with the "Hitler was a leftist" idiocy. And of course these guys have gone to the original thread, where there's less likely to be regulars down to refute them. They're cowards as well as pieces of shit.
Maybe we need to return to Owls' (wasn't it Owls?) method of "Poopyhead". These people aren't here to change hearts and minds; they're here to be douchebags. Shall we return to mocking them nonsensically?
I'm guessing Atlas Shrugs neglected to note the thing about the Ayn Rand book. Which is weird, because you'd think that would be somehow relevant to their interests.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Republicans aren't exactly known for their intense self-criticism or sense of responsibility and obligation toward others.
Boehner is saying public service "comes with risks." In other words, we can keep Congress working (= "campaign contributions" coming) so long as the casualty rate is acceptable.
Here's what's bothering me today: if the VA Tech shootings didn't get anyone talking about gun control, how will this assassination do it?
Neilist: strangely silent.
As one who's public service has entailed more risk than I find completely comfortable, or just as a human being, may I say:" Orange John, would you please shit in your shoe and eat it?".
Nothing gets or will get the Rightwing to talk about serious gun control. All they say is the usual bull shit and all we see are more murders and in this case, assassination of a federal judge and attempted assassination of a Congresswoman as well as murders.
I read somewhere [god I don't remember where, perhaps here on one of the other Wonkette threads?] that some gun nuts are going around saying that 'just because people drown, doesn't mean we should ban water.'
…..Because water was invented mere centuries ago to kill and injure? I don't know. I fucking give up.
I think the ban-hammer finally came down on our pet gun nut: His posts on the original thread are now attributed to "deleted".
And here's a nice little tidbit on the orange from a Rolling Stone article earlier this week, dealing with a different Democratic Congressman (at least it wasn't Giffords):
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-ta...
Another Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him.
"I didn't think it was funny at all," Driehaus says. "I've got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, 'John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'"
Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn't think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. "But it's not about what he intended — it's about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work."
Oh, Neilist has been participating the discussion as usual. As LetUsBray notes, it would appear that he finally encountered Trogdor the Banninator, against whom all the Kalashnikovs in the world are of no use, so he's now going by the moniker Deleted-something-or-other and has been tossing the usual tidbits of shooty and crazy into the conversation wherever he sees fit. In the face of what actually happened in in Tucson, however, he's lost his power to shock, and most people aren't even slowing down to tell him to fuck off anymore.
DHS says he was connected to a racist organization:
http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/01/09/dhs-...
And what does the Mooselini camp have to say for itself?
A Palin staffer, Rebecca Mansour told a radio talk show host Saturday that doing so is "obscene" and "appalling." In fact, she said that the "target list" was not intended to allude to guns.
"We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," she said.
"It's surveyor's symbols," the interviewer Tammy Bruce suggested. Bruce, a Palin supporter, describes herself as "a gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, Tea Party Independent Conservative. " Her show is promoted as a "chick with a gun and a microphone."
Got it. Forget all the talk about "2nd Amendment solutions". Or that they took the poster down and scrubbed the sight.
Surveyor's symbols, got it everybody?
~
Palin is finished. Done. Any political campaign she spins will have the opposition bringing up this poster. It is horrific that McCain refused to condemn it at the time, too.
Except that after the election Tundrafuck herself gleefully twatted about the 90% success rate on those candidates that had bulls eyes on them.
Fucking morons.
Here's the Twat: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/01/palin-...
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
Surveyors symbols, my ass. This is the political equivalent of "the dog ate my homework."
And once again here is one of those self-styled "iconoclastic" rightwing people who think they can gain cred because they are X when the right is not-X. In this case, Bruce is gay. Great. Just like the Repig blogs that collect images of scantily clad women & encourage viewers to send them in because…well, the Bible says lusting after others is a sin, but they're doing the lusting anyway, so they're not-X again. That doesn't make her any less idiotic.
More on the surveyor symbol excuse, from someone who knows.
P.S. Surveyor's symbol, for teh lazies (you know how you are!).
~
Of course. I mean, why the fuck would you put surveyor's symbols on a map which is targeting certain incumbents?Sarah is fucking BUSTED.
Hah, and this is just a Sanskrit symbol meaning well-being!
If it was surveyor's symbols, then her "retreat/reload" theme kind of falls apart.
If maybe her catchphrase had been something about "surveying the land for November" I'd buy it….but this not so much.
Kind of reminds me of the time Al Gore said let's machine gun the fuck out of global warming.
Or when Glenn Greenwald said we should drop the big one on Guantanamo.
How about when Al Sharpton said we should curb stomp poverty?
Or when David Letterman said he wanted to assrape Willow Palin.
Or when Martin Luther King, Jr. was all like he was going to pimp-smack racism to next Sunday.
Really, you guys are great. I'm laughing, agian.
I have a question that I'd like to run up the flagpole for a moment. There's lots of talk that Loughner had a MySpace page and YouTube page and that the content of those pages reveals something about his "motive" and whether or not he was a right-winger or a left-winger. Separate and apart from the question of whether or not you can adequately psychoanalyze that content to learn anything about his motivation, how do we even know that that internet content has been authentically connected to Loughner? Ever consider the possibility that what showed up there on the internets has been planted? I'm not saying one way or the other whether I think that to be the case, but it seems to me that we take way too much for granted when we see it on the teevee or see it on the Internet.
What's next, paranoid jake? You're going to question the veracity of Wikipedia?
I'm such an epismetologist.
And speaking of paranoia:
jakegittes: Only two things scare me and one of them is nuclear war.
Basil Exposition: What's the other?
jakegittes: Excuse me?
Basil Exposition: What's the other thing that scares you?
jakegittes: Carnies. Circus folk. Nomads, you know. Smell like cabbage. Small hands.
Forget it Jake, it's the Internet.
Please, please, please, not you, too, and not now. We already have one Jared, we don't need another.
Where's Sharron Angle's comment or apology for her promotion of Second Amendment remedies?
Their silence is more telling than their words.
Sarah Palin has been yapping about condolences and her prayers… No apologies for her hateful rhetoric. No apologies for her continuously throwing red meat to her 'constituents'
I wonder if that constitutes "reloading."
Only tiny bright spot in an otherwise dreadful day is that our resident shithead (excuse me, "CUNT", right Lizzy?) who thinks it's cute to mock murdered 9-year olds seems to have been excised. He now shows up as "Deleted" with no avatar.
So at least there's that.
Either the banhammer made a rare appearance, or he's hiding his face in shame. I hope he's off somewhere hanging his head in shame, as should all those like him who subscribe to the theory "even screwball crazy nutjobs should be part of the well-regulated militia."
He made a pathetic public goodbye post in one of the other threads. Good. Saved the public execution for a more worthy troll, and I can't believe he got away with trolling for as long as he did.
If you could link to it, that'd be great.
Here it is on intensedebate: <a href="http://intensedebate.com/people/deleted7277251http://intensedebate.com/people/deleted7277251<br />And on wonkette: <a href="http://wonkette.com/434631/america-acts-shocked-as-nut-murders-6-gravely-injures-12-including-u-s-rephttp://wonkette.com/434631/america-acts-shocked-a… />Not as easy to link to comments anymore…
Yeah, well it appears I've said something untoward. It was but a reference to an earlier epoch of public banning, even Coliseum-esque thumbs up/down on the proposed target. But by naming said target, I have apparently sinned.
Who, Neilist?
Yeah. Who is that? I've wondered why Neilist and his gun knowledge hasn't shown up to dazzle us. About guns, I'm easily dazzled. Clueless as I am, I don't really understand what a magazine is, except I'm sure it isn't like the Ent. Weekly I got in my Saturday mail.
I mentioned elsewhere that I also appreciated Neilist's technical knowledge (and his willingness to use small, non-technical words that us pinko, commie scum could understand).
dupnik 2012.
So while the right-wing tards are trying to paint the deranged shooter as a leftist commie, Sarah Palin must be thanking God that it wasn't a crazy, deranged, leftist commie out looking to draw blood. Assuming of course that she knows what a leftist commie is.
Dupnik declined to provide more information on the second individual who he would only describe as “white” and “in his 50s.”
Does anyone know where Glenn Beck is?
He has never denied giving Loughner a ride to the store yesterday.
All I'm saying is that we know he has killed before.
If someone see, Pop_socket, tell him/her/it/they that I wasn't try to be a smart aleck with my "and your point is" comment. I just meant it in a sarcastic way about the congressman's opponent being a right wing nut job. You know, to say they all are.
Sorry, Pop-socket, if you're reading this. We're all trying to be sensitive today, me included.
NYT says the second "suspect" was a taxi driver:
The sheriff’s office said on Sunday that a search for a possible second suspect person had ended. A man seen in a security video shortly before the suspect shooter went on his spree had been found and interviewed and cleared of any involvement in the shootings.
Investigators said that the man was a taxi driver who drove the suspected gunman to the scene. Upon arriving there, the passenger said he did not have change, and he and the taxi driver went into the supermarket for change and the two then walked out together and separated.
A Taxi Driver? So that's TWO assassination attempts connected to Martin Scorsese.
Did he look like this?
Can we say that the GOP needs to call out all the hate groups and the right wing white supremacists in their midst?
Because Buckley would have.
That would be leadership. Where is that in the GOP now?
Lipstick (3rd time tonight).
Buckley would have called out himself? (He was not in a hate group, but he was a white supremacist; although he did get over it).
Yes, the GOP does need to do this.
But no, Buckley would have done no such thing. Buckley thought the frenzied mobs screaming at women outside family planning clinics were just groovy, and before that, he was just fine with denying African-Americans the right to vote because he knew he wouldn't like the way they voted. I'm not sure where the warm-fuzzy nostalgic view of Wm. F. Buckley comes from, but it's sure not how I remember things.
EDIT: Meant to be replying to sati_demise.
Wasnt there some contention between Buckley and Goldwater about these hate groups? It seems like they only got pandered to recently because of Palin……
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/...
The weapon became legal in 2004
The Brady law made magazines with more than seven rounds illegal for sale to the public (non law enforcement/military). High capacity magazines and the firearms which used them, sold before Brady, remained legal and could be re-sold without limit. So high capacity pistols were continuously available for those with the money and inclination to own them.
Disclosure:
I own a pre-Brady high capacity pistol, bought pre-Brady. It has the title of "house defense gun". I fired it to sight it in some 20 years ago or so. It hasn't been fired since. I clean it every two years because it is so disused that spiders like to molt in the barrel. It's a high capacity, second Amendment remedies, spider-moltin' machine!
Edit: I was wrong about the Brady limit. It was 10 rounds, not 7.
May I suggest that the bill reinstating a ban on high-capacity magazines be titled the Christina Green Act of 2011?
Or, given how the House Republicans have named the healthcare repeal bill, maybe just the "Making it Somewhat More Difficult to Murder More than A Few At A Time (though you can still get guns anywhere) Act of 2011"?
I just keep thinking about the dead nine-year old girl. I can't figure out whether to be angry or sad.
I won't link to it here, but I felt that Olbermann was very eloquent in his "repudiate" speech.
The silence from the right continues to be deafening.
We are SO freakin' doomed.
Want to really see something that will make you gasp? Check out this link. It is a timeline of how the right-wing threats have been escalating.
http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-dem...
Yeah, but Barack Obama once quoted a line from a Kevin Costner movie, so the extremism is pretty much equal on both sides.
That link made my head slowly and sadly spin. The revolution will kill your wife who was buying some bok choy for dinner. The revolution will kill your nine year old daughter who wanted to know how government worked. The revolution will kill your gentle grandfather before he could tell you that funny story about your dad. The revolution will, unfortunately, be televised.
For a second all I saw in the headline were the words "Gunman" and "Taxi Driver."
The only good thing to come out of the Life of John Hinckley: There was once a punk band named "Jodie Foster's Army."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5NgR8j9a4
Sheriff skools Megan!
On Fox!
Sure, but that's different. Or so I'm told.
Exactly. I don't want these people's tragedy to be turned into another BS conspiracy theory, I'd rather a real investigation take place. I'd also rather we go with the rule of law than the cops gunning down suspects.
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