Gifford was among those in Arizona whose offices were targeted with vandalism and threats during the health care debate in 2009.
(via @nytjim)Giffords was also one of the lawmakers Sarah Palin “set her sights on” in the Palin PAC infographic below (takebackthe20.com). The congresswoman and others are targeted with simulated gun sights on a map of the United States.
Despite putting a “target” on Giffords and asking her fellow nutjobs to find a “solution” to the congresswoman, Palin had this to say about the tragedy:
My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona.
On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.
Michael Moore asked this via Twitter:
If a Detroit Muslim put a map on the web w/crosshairs on 20 pols, then 1 of them got shot, where would he b sitting right now? Just asking.
Update Jan 9, 2010:
According to ABC News Palin denies “she meant the graphic over the districts to look like a gun sight.”
Rebecca Mansour, a spokesperson for SarahPac said, “We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights.”
Ok, we knew this all along, didn’t we?
“Jared Loughner, Alleged Shooter in Gabrielle Giffords Attack, Described by Classmate as “Left-Wing Pothead.
Parker “tweets” that she and Loughner were in the band together and were friends until 2007 when he became “reclusive” after getting alcohol poisoning and dropping out of college.
She describes him as “quite liberal” and as a “political radical.”
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/01/jared_loughner_alleged_shooter.php
Ah Yea==WOW, mom, WOW!! You have just upended my whole world view. Who knew that one demented shooters world views could be summed up by a fellow band mate so exhaustively. I guess it really is ok for Tea Partiers to put GUN-SIGHTS onto people they run against and to ask for solutions from the people because only damaged by alcohol/rejected by the military/quite liberal political radicals will ever shoot anyone as a result.
Our democracy is safe again.
Sleep tight, next to your gun, your wifey has her own.
#100
The “leadership” of the party’s if not the Congress as a whole should start censoring their nutbag members
Of course they shouldn’t. Calling someone out as a nutbag is a world apart from censoring them. Condemn the nutbags. Show them to be crazy. Convince people why their ideas are silly or dangerous but do not censor them or you denigrate the very concept of free speech.
#125
Point One: Its hate speech to hold Palin accountable for what she clearly meant.
Bullshit. Palin had absolutely no intent to encourage people to do harm to others. You might as well argue that that dart players are guilty of inciting violence by yelling “bullseye!”.
Point Two: She didn’t hold the gun, so she is innocent and anyone saying her words actually mean what she said should have a target placed next to their home address.
Another bullshit point. She is innocent because she did not intentionally incite people to do harm to others. If you are going to argue that Palin is guilty of inciting others to do harm, then clearly you also think that Scorsese should be guilty of doing the same to Hinckley right? Grow up.
I’m no fan of Palin but just because you do not like her or her statements does not mean it follows that any sort of legal action should be taken against her anymore than the numerous other mentally unstable shooters that were supposedly inspired by other people’s writings.
#138
. Who knew that one demented shooters world views could be summed up by a fellow band mate so exhaustively.
As opposed to his world views being exhaustively summed up by a random blog poster who never met the person?
Bobbo,
The Republican Party isn’t going anywhere.
We live in an America increasingly dominated by fear. We fear people of different religions, people of different accents. We fear losing our jobs or our corporate provided medical insurance. We fear science and the way that it threatens the superstitions that our lives are based around. We fear education because it has ideas that we disagree with. We fear freedom of choice. We fear being wrong about anything, so we stick to our failed choices. We fear nonexistent threats from the past, we fear the uncertainty of the future.
And fear leads to conservatism, which only strengthens the Republican party and leads to the most fearful party of all: the Tea Party. They long for the less fearful days of the past, and ignore the horrors of the era: the legalized racism, the persecutions for political beliefs, the ever present possibility of total nuclear annihilation, the carnage of their wars, the pollution, the environmental wreckage…
The same party that longs for the past forgets the 90% highest tax rate that gave them many of their comforts, the fact that elderly have medical insurance at all today being due to the Medicare they despise, that the military needs to be paid for somehow, that roads, bridges, police and fire departments cost money, etc.
So the Republican Party will continue to strengthen, and the country will continue to be pushed back socially and economically, all because the American middle class has become nothing but a bunch of resentful cowards not willing to think different, take some risks and stand up for themselves against out corporate masters.
My goodness Awake, that was quite harsh. So we see many of the issues the same yet have differed on how it will affect the fortunes of the Puke Party. Will it grow, or will it decline/change its camouflage? I’m not wedded. There does seem an abysmal ignorance afoot in the land: anti science, anti world, anti nuanced. But with nearly a one third split between Dems, Pukes, and Independents the perfidy of the Puke Tea Baggers cannot be shrouded in double speak for long. Their influence will have to decline as their true natures are found out. THEN will the REPUBLICANS regain a hold on valid conservative principles or remain captive to the Super Rich? Already, the Tea Baggers cost the Pukes the Senate. Did the very same locus of interests gain them the House? Was the vote “for” anything or only “anti” the establishment. Ehh, we’ll see.
And now it starts.
“Don’t let a good crisis go to waste”. Rahm Emanuel
“One of the fiercest gun-control advocates in Congress, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), pounced on the shooting massacre in Tucson Sunday, promising to introduce legislation as soon as Monday targeting the high-capacity ammunition the gunman used.”
http://politico.com/news/stories/0111/47338.html
What the shooter a Liberal Operative?
77 Alfred E Newman,
Great! Now they can read your post from here:
http://dvorak.org/blog/2009/09/11/federal-abortion-funding-the-next-big-debate/#comments
Number 30:
“If you think this a small thing…I’m ready to die…do it…You though Islam alone had martyrs…do it…and learn who we really are…”
Please, PLEASE let this nutjob get arrested… He needs help.
is it possible we have finally found a replacement for the blame bush crowd? praise the lord.
This gay is a kind of clown, but I think he nail it about Sarah Palins role in the whole issue in the last part of this rant:
http://youtube.com/user/TheAmazingAtheist
Every news story on this that drudge points to is buried under 1000’s of right wing posts. It’s like zombie apocalypse: “want god, guns, brains, god, guns, brains…” Over and over it’s monotonous. Is there some sort of right wing blogger botnet krakken that is unleashed by drudge or rove or someone? Just give the zombies their own alternate internet already.
People who use the term teabagger are those who want to sodomize America. You filthy deviants need to just log on to the US Treasury website and donate your earnings to your hearts content and get your grubby paws away from my hard earned wages.
Now that the shooter has been shown to be a former supporter of the congresswoman and leans left, why don’t you violent thug leftist take responsibility for your unhinged rhetoric?
btw, the congresswoman subscribed to the alleged shooters website.
http://youtube.com/user/giffords2
the lefties are coming unhinged aren’t they?
blaming the right because a pothead communist shot his own congresswoman because she wasn’t liberal enough?
wow you folks are really stretching now
I predict more shootings of politicians. Party affliation of the politician is irrelevant in the minds of the anti-government nut jobs.
And I predict the government responding by outlawing private ownership of guns. Just wait and watch congress this next week…
Paul, I’ve seen this too…the foxnews.com stories have multi-thousands of comments. It’s because they’re confused and disorganized with it being the weekend and all.
But later today, after Rush’s show, then Beck, Hannity, and O’Really, they will know what they’re supposed to believe and think.
Just watch.
Who says pot is the exclusive providence of left-wingers? What an idiotic generalization that makes no sense and is based in fantasy.
Sarah Palin’s organization has been busy scrubbing her facebook page… but, true to form, they left this charming one up…
“It’s ok. Christina Taylor Green was probably going to end up a left wing bleeding heart liberal anyway. Hey, as ‘they’ say, what would you do if you had the chance to kill Hitler as a kid? Exactly.”
http://obamalondon.blogspot.com/2011/01/inexplicable-edits-on-sarah-palins.html
#154 — this was covered on reddit. The poster apologized profusely (apparently), and said the message was intended to be satirical. That it was not scrubbed is possibly due to stress burnout by Palin’s minions.
>its totally the same thing to put a bullseye on a STATE that Bush took by 1% verses people by name who voted for healthcare.
I guess you didn’t follow the link to see what the Democratic politicians did. They specifically said targeted Republican: Thaddeus McCotter, and others, as popups when you ran over the bullseye. This was from the campaign committee who were supposed to be covered by the ban on negative ads in the campaign finance reform bill.
jman… Talk about a stretch… Your comment was PURE rubber!
Its hilarious that the left just needs an excuse to get to the same storyline they were selling all along. The Tea Party just had to be racist, so they manufactured a stunt to draw out the racism they knew existed, to help sell the health care plan. Nothing happened but they sold the story to the media anyways, with Rep Lewis lying about it. Breitbart exposed the lies.
Mike — “Its hilarious that 6 people are killed and 12 people injured by easy access to guns by the mentally impaired and so many want to talk about gun policy in the USA.” /// Yes, HI – Larrious.
Well Done stooge.
If there is nothing wrong with Palin’s gun based rhetoric and crosshair imagery then she’ll use it again in 2012. Right?
Our Media, as usual, is imbecilic. A Congress Person is killed and the media don’t want to turn this into “a political discussion.”
EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL – even the killing/assault of politicians.
Just like Global Warming: you don’t like one supposed response to the “issue” so you try to deny the validity/existence of the issue itself.
Its called DENIAL. The sinking of the Titanic fairly called into question the safety of all boats. Didn’t matter the Titanic sank because of the myriad of issues that applied. Same here. Everything is connected and each connection/tangent should be discussed as warranted by the immediacy/import of the issue.
Stooges will divert the discussion away from their various and sundry pet issues.
Free Speech – everything discussed all the time.
155 Paul,
“#154 — this was covered on reddit. The poster apologized profusely (apparently), and said the message was intended to be satirical. That it was not scrubbed is possibly due to stress burnout by Palin’s minions.”
But, it remained after they had scrubbed posts AFTER that one was left…
#149 stevn
A cached version of Giffords’ profile shows that she didn’t follow Loughner as of December 26, indicating that the subscription may have been done by a staffer after the shooting to keep an eye on any developments with the account.
================
Regardless of the political or non-political motivations of the shooter, this even has really brought to light the level of explicit and implicit violence that has been spewed by ‘respectable’ citizens and politicians. And it is working… as a liberal I am afraid to express my opinions in Texas, simply because there are so many political activist nuts that fanatically oppose my views. We are being silenced by implied violence. Many in this forum may consider that a victory. Sad. The right wing has become a sad parody of itself, where the freedom that they call for is based on restricting the freedoms of those that they disagree with. Don’t like the way the country moved in 2008? Threaten to take it back by armed means if necessary. Don’t like opposing views? Silence them with implied threats of violence. And just as children in the playground caught being bullies, they then stand there all innocent say “Wasn’t me”, or “He started it”, when in reality we all know who the bully really is.
The right has effectively decided that Death Panels exist, because they say so. No further evidence available or required. In fact, contrary evidence abounds
This weekend the left decided that the political rifle rhetoric has gone too far, based on a whole bunch of evidence, some not so relevant.
What’s the difference?
The right screams “You did it too!”
The left screams: “Stop already!”
The left, being wimps and arbiters of political correctness will end their use of gun metaphors. The right will double-down on theirs.
So after 162 comments what have we learned?
1. Well the shooter had nothing to do with Palins map, and instead was the act of a nut case.
2. The shooter was not a tea party person, has not been shown to ever be involved with the tea party, or for that matter share any of their views.
3. The shooter was a believer in the communist manifesto, and was by most definitions left winger. He use to support the congresswoman, but got mad that she wasn’t liberal enough.
4. The neolibs on this board will not apologize for jumping to conclusions, and being totally 100% wrong.
5. The shooter was a monster. He should be put up against a wall and shot, and even that would be too good for him.
#154 So what would you do if you had the option to time travel and kill Hitler while he was still a child? Let him live to cause the deaths of tens of millions or murder an innocent child?
As for Dallas, Dallas is always ready to play lench mob and do away with all rights for anyone that disagrees with Dallas. No need for due process or a trial by your peers. If you don’t agree with Dallas then Dallas thinks you ought to be taken out and hanged/reduced to slave/political prisoner status.
This is so similar to the behavior of the nut case that committed the most recent atrocity that it is sickening. Dallas seems to be willing to support many of the things Dallas says Dallas hates as long as it happens to someone who doesn’t agree with Dallas.
If you aren’t an egalitarian you are part of the problem and Dallas is no egalitarian.
The guy was NOT a left winger. NO ONE can read and say The Communist Manifesto is a favorite book. Anyone who has ever had to read it will understand why. Those ignorant many that haven’t, would make the claim.
The list of books liked by this guy appear to be a required reading list for some English class. Yet, I am unaware of any class requiring The Communist Manifesto at less than a graduate level. It just isn’t that good a book or important.
…
Schizophrenics are very open to suggestion. If the right wing rhetoric is responsible for pushing him over the edge is unknown. BUT, it does remain a strong possibility.