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Subject: US Congresswoman shot by madman.
heraldabc 1/8/2011 5:45:15 PM

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/08/132764367/congresswoman-shot-in-arizona quoted ===================================================== Arizona Rep. Giffords Shot; Condition Unclear by NPR Staff January 8, 2011 Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a gunman at a public event in Tucson on Saturday. There are conflicting reports about whether she was killed. The Pima County, Ariz., sheriff's office told member station KJZZ the 40-year-old Democrat was killed. A hospital spokeswoman said Giffords was in critical condition and undergoing surgery. At least eight other people, including members of her staff, were injured. There also were conflicting reports on the number of deaths at the scene, but President Obama, in a statement, said "we know that some have passed away" and that Giffords was "gravely wounded." Giffords, who was re-elected to a third term in November, was hosting a "Congress on Your Corner" event at a Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media. The suspect fired indiscriminately from about four feet away, Michaels said. A congressional official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the gunman was using an automatic weapon. The suspect ran off and was tackled by a bystander. He was taken into custody. Witnesses described him as in his late teens or early 20s. Federal, state and local law enforcement authorities in Arizona are investigating the shooting. The congresswoman was transported to University Medical Center in Tucson. Giffords was first elected to represent Arizona's 8th District in 2006. The "Congress on Your Corner" events, which she holds regularly, allow constituents to present their concerns directly to her. Giffords' Tucson office was one of three damaged last March by vandals who targeted Democrats in advance of the U.S. House vote on the controversial health care legislation. A glass panel at her office was shattered, and at the time her staff said that it appeared the window had been damaged by a pellet gun. About Gabrielle Giffords Personal * Born: Jun 8, 1970, in Tucson * Family: Married to Mark Kelly, a Navy pilot and astronaut with NASA; two children * Home: Tucson, Arizona * Religion: Jewish Career * U.S. House Representative, elected 2006 * State Senator, Arizona 2002-05 * State Representative, Arizona 2000-02 * CEO El Campo Tire 1997-00 * Price Waterhouse Coopers 1996-97 Education * Scripps College, BA 1993 * Cornell Univ, MS 1996 * Fulbright Scholar in Mexico, 1996 House Speaker John Boehner condemned the attack. "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve," he said in a statement. "Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society." Her fellow Arizona congressman, Republican Jeff Flake, reached Saturday on his way to the hospital recalled that he had last spoken with Giffords on the House floor during this week's swearing-in ceremony. "We have a fairly small delegation and we've met often," he said of Giffords, who in November beat back a tough challenge from a Tea Party-endorsed opponent. "She got re-elected because she's tenacious," Flake said. "There was a very strong headwind against all Democrats and people did not expect her to come back to Congress. "But she was tireless," he said. "Others may have held back after things happen — like the damage to her office. She was fearless." Flake said emotions have been running high in Arizona over issues, including immigration. "That's obviously an issue that is a very passionate one for a lot of people," he said. In a statement released by his office, House Speaker John Boehner said he was "horrified by the senseless attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and members of her staff. An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve....this is a sad day for our country." NPR's Liz Halloran contributed to this report. ===================================================================== Comment, What is known, is that she was shot in the head and is alive. Others (eight?) were also injured, including a child, who was killed in the same incident. Details are confused. The gunman was captured. As soon as I can find out anything, I will add to it. Addendum, a Federal judge (GOP Bush appointee) was also killed at this event, http://www.talkleft.com/story/2011/1/8/133013/1904 [quoted Dem AZ Congresswoman Giffords and Others Shot Outside Safeway By Big Tent Democrat, Section Other Politics Posted on Sat Jan 08, 2011 at 12:30:13 PM EST Tags: Gabriella Giffords (all tags) Share This: Digg! StumbleUpon del.icio.us reddit reddit Update 2:04 pm: Press Conference: University Hospital spokesman: Ten patients were brought in to the hospital, one, a 9 year old child, died. 5 are in critical conditi

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CJH 1/8/2011 9:49:41 PM

"The madman Jerrod Loughner was directly inspired by you emotional and irrational idiots.

Think on that. "

For those of you who weren't around in November 1963, herald presents a perfect picture reproduction of the 60s left looking under their beds for right wing, white, gun toting ,Southern, extremist, assassination conspirators who, they assured the world, were behind President Kennedy's demise.

Of course later maverick journalist Jack Anderson was equally sure Jimmy Hoffa and the mob had JFK murdered in order to get Bobby Kennedy out of the way.

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CJH 1/8/2011 10:10:13 PM

Also, subject of on the behavior of a left wing that never changes and never grows -

How long do you think it will take for claims to be made that the internet is the real cause of this tragedy and that the government has to assert editorial control over the Web in order to stop chat room sedition types from manipulating fragile minded people into committing acts of violence?

Of course this is a game that only the left will be allowed to play since arguments can also be made that shrill partisan talk from Obama, such as calling Republicans enemies, created the atmosphere which contibuted to the shooter's mental derangement.

I have always found accusations, such as those in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombings, that the left's vocal political opponents are guilty of creating such a violence provoking atmosphere when I think of Al Gore's extreme enviromentalist language and Ted Kasinski or the media's repetitions the video showing the Rodney King beating and the LA riots in which some 64 people were killed.

Is not blood of Kasinski's victims on the hands of Al Gore? Is not the blood of those who died in the LA riots on the hands of TV producers?

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heraldabc Read again. 1/8/2011 10:25:17 PM

It is just a symptom of how far we have drifted in that we have allowed this horror to happen. This madman should never have been germinated in the political environment we have now. There is a LOT of blame to go around, but lest those of the extreme left, or the extreme right seek to blame each other and score political points in this incident, know this: you bastards, who are exactly alike in your totalitarian idiocies and delusions, created the cesspool of political hate that ignited this lunatic and provoked him.

The madman Jerrod Loughner was directly inspired by you emotional and irrational idiots.

Think on that.

Color coded, italicized, quoted in full context, and bolded for clarity for those who did not read what I wrote.

Sheesh.

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VelocityVector 1/8/2011 10:52:05 PM

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VelocityVector 1/8/2011 10:52:26 PM

Madmen tend to find source for cause. Numerology, actresses, cosmic events, religous scriptures, The Beatles, Reagan etc. A set of the criminally-insane will always obtain firearms, illegally. Some events just occur in human society, even under actual totalitarian regimes. US citizens enjoy the right to espouse practically any damn view they want. When patterns suggest schizophrenia present, however, a local community needs to act decisively as if a local dog was inflicted with rabies. That we missed here, and will in the future, is rather to be expected, no matter how sad and unfortunate results. 0.02

v^2

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heraldabc 1/8/2011 10:54:09 PM

That is exactly what I mean by political idiots. (a leftist.)

Wing-nut scramble.

Wing Nut Scramble (Live Blogging a Shooter Tragedy)

January 8, 2011

You don?t have to have a doctorate in psychology to figure out that the latest spree shooter had serious mental illness problems. What?s odd to me is the sudden scramble?typical in these situations?by ideologues ready to label his mental illness as a symptom of political ideology. No where is this more rampant than the number of right wingers that are taking one mention of one book?The Communist Manifesto?as an indication that suspected shooter Jared Loughner was a leftie. That?s pretty interesting given that WAPO is reporting that he?s a veteran. Loughner tried to enlist in the military but was rejected. (See update below.) They?re screaming ?leftie? while simultaneously scrubbing their sites of items like the Palin Tweet and the Palin Map of Congressional Critterz? Districts?including that of shooting victim Congress Woman Gifford?with rifle sight images over the top. Is this kind of after-the-fact scrubbing a mea culpa of sorts? They?re sure acting like they own it.

Giffords has been a target of violent threats for some time now. The threats have come from the right wing and the majority have occurred since the HCR vote last summer. Folks that say that this shooter?s acts?no matter how linked to his personal mental hell?can?t be put into the context of encouraging and enabling violence haven?t been paying attention. Violent imagery and rhetoric is a loaded gun. It?s the same denial that comes from anti-abortion supporters and their disconnect from the shooting of Dr. Gun. You encourage it. You own a role in it. It?s not the root cause of mental illness, but it establishes violence as a potentially heroic act. Most psychotic people are crazy but not stupid. They can feel the heroic myth. Many seek a way to go down with it.

But it?s worth noting that Giffords — who in 2006 became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, at 36 — has, for more than a year, been the target of violence-tinged rhetoric from political opponents and of threats that appear to have come from right-wing activists.

Asked by the New York Post whether his daughter had any enemies, http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/ariz_congresswoman_shot_in_head_YFTvsurRHy5OWGSRKnuK8J">Giffords?s father replied: ?The whole tea party.?

In August 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/10/gabrielle-giffords-town-h_n_255656.html?show_comment_id=28716929">an attendee at a Giffords town-hall meeting dropped a handgun, leading Giffords? staff to call the police. ?We have never felt the need before to notify law enforcement when we hold these events,? her spokesman said at the time.

After Giffords voted in favor of the

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heraldabc 1/8/2011 11:12:04 PM

v^2

Charles Manson Lesson, v^2. He claimed Beatles inspiration, was a racist religious cultist (like Koresh and that fool, Jim Jones) but was ultimately intent on a political act-a race war aimed at genocide as his motive.

Hinckley, with his actress Jodie Foster infatuation, shot Reagan to get her attention. That was a political act.

Jim Jones and David Kiresh killed a congressman and Federal law officers. Those were political acts.

Ever hear of Mark David Chapman?

Article.

Mark David Chapman: The Man Who Killed John Lennon

excerpt:

A Troubled Youth

Mark David Chapman was born May 10, 1955, near Fort Worth, Tex., the first child of David and Diane Chapman. His father was a staff sergeant in the Air Force, his mother a nurse.

Shortly after Mark's birth, his father was discharged and enrolled at Purdue University, where he used the GI Bill to get a degree in engineering. He moved to Decatur, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, and took a job in the credit department of American Oil Co. When Mark was seven, his sister Susan was born.

His childhood, as he described it to psychiatrists, was unhappy. He was the kind of boy other kids picked on. He was not a good athlete. Other boys called him "Pussy."

He fell back on imaginary friends. He told Jack Jones, his biographer: "I used to fantasize that I was a king, and I had all these Little People around me and that they lived in the walls. And that I was their hero and was in the paper every day and I was on TV every day, their TV, and that I was important. They all kind of worshipped me, you know. It was like I could do no wrong."

When he wanted to entertain his subjects, he would give concerts for them, playing records. His favorite, and theirs, was the Beatles.

He wasn't always in a good mood: "And sometimes when I'd get mad I'd blow some of them up. I'd have this push-button thing, part of the [sofa], and I'd like get mad and blow out part of the wall and a lot of them would die. But the people would still forgive me for that, and, you know, everything got back to normal. That's a fantasy I had for many years."

Adults considered him a normal boy. His IQ was 121, well above average. He had the interests of other boys his age rockets, UFOs and, of course, the Beatles, whose records he played endlessly. He looked forward to the annual showing of "The Wizard of Oz" on TV.

But inwardly, he told psychiatrists, he lived in dread of his father, who he said beat his mother. He told Gaines, "I'd wake up hearing my mother screaming my name, and it just scared the fire out of me, and I'd run in there and make him go away. Sometimes I think I actually pushed him away." He fantasized about getting a gun and blowing his father away.

He told psychologist Lee Salk his father never gave him the love or emotional support he needed: "I don't think I ever hugged my father. He never told me he loved me. And he never said he was sorry one of those guys."

http://i.cdn.turner.com/trutv/trutv.com/graphics/photos/terrorists_spies/assassins/chapman/3a.jpg" alt="Mark Chapman as a young man" />

Mark Chapman as a young man

This wasn't the impression others had. They noted David Chapman was a Boy Scout leader. He taught guitar at the YMCA and taught his son to play. "I'd say it was a very happy family," YMCA director Adams told reporters. "And Mark was a happy, well-adjusted boy."

Even Diane Chapman stood up for her husband, though she admitted he sometimes hit her. She told Gaines that a neighbor commented about the time David spent playing in the yard with Mark. "The fact is that Dave kept a darn good roof over our heads for all those years, and I would say he was a better parent to Mark t

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Nanheyangrouchuan 1/8/2011 11:39:12 PM

Can't wait to find out this guy's church affiliation. And haven't heard anything from Her Tea-ness Sarah Pailin.

Is this the Weather Underground II? All over health care?

Arizona LEO's are publicly speaking out against the polarization that is going on there.

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heraldabc 1/9/2011 12:42:59 AM

Can't wait to find out this guy's church affiliation. And haven't heard anything from Her Tea-ness Sarah Pailin.

Is this the Weather Underground II? All over health care?

Arizona LEO's are publicly speaking out against the polarization that is going on there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_congresswoman_shot

article.

TUCSON, Ariz. ? A gunman nearly unloaded a semiautomatic weapon at a busy supermarket Saturday during a public gathering for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, wounding the Democrat and killing Arizona's chief federal judge and five others in an attempted assassination that left Americans questioning whether divisive politics had pushed the suspect over the edge.

The shooting targeted Giffords and left the three-term congresswoman in critical condition after a bullet passed through her head. A shaken President Barack Obama called the attack "a tragedy for our entire country."

Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly won re-election in November against a tea party candidate who sought to throw her from office over her support of the health care law. Anger over her position became violent at times, with her Tucson office vandalized after the House passed the overhaul last March and someone showing up at a recent gathering with a weapon.

Police say the shooter was in custody, and was identified by people familiar with the investigation as Jared Loughner, 22. U.S. officials who provided his name to the AP spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release it publicly.

His motivation was not immediately known, but Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik described him as mentally unstable and possibly acting with an accomplice. He said Giffords was among 13 people wounded in the melee that killed six people, including a 9-year-old girl, an aide for the Democratic lawmaker and U.S. District Judge John Roll, who had just stopped by to see his friend Giffords after attending Mass. Dupnik said the rampage ended only after two people tackled the gunman.

The sheriff blamed the vitriolic political rhetoric that has consumed the country, much of it occurring in Arizona.

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous," he said. "And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Giffords expressed similar concern, even before the shooting. In an interview after her office was vandalized, she referred to the animosity against her by conservatives, including Sarah Palin's decision to list Giffords' seat as one of the top "targets" in the midterm elections.

"For example, we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action," Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC.

In the hours after the shooting, Palin issued a statement in which she expressed her "sincere condolences" to the family of Giffords and the other victims.

During his campaign effort to unseat Giffords in November, Republican challenger Jesse Kelly held fundraisers where he urged supporters to help remove Giffords from office by joining him to shoot a fully loaded M-16 rifle. Kelly is a former Marine who served in Iraq and was pictured on his website in military gear holding his automatic weapon and promoting the event.

"I don't see the connection," between the fundraisers featuring weapons and Saturday's shooting, said John Ellinwood, Kelly's spokesman. "I don't know this person, we cannot find any records that he was associated with the campaign in any way. I just don't see the connection.

"Arizona is a state where people are firearms owners — this was just a deranged individual."

Law enforcement officials said members of Congress reported 42 cases of threats or violence in the first three months of 2010, nearly three times the 15 cases reported during the same period a year earlier. Nearly all dealt with the health care bill, and Giffords was among the targets.

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VelocityVector 1/9/2011 12:51:52 AM

In terms of one Arizona-related political issue there ought to be zero polarization. Illegal immigration. Else we are not a sovereign nation. Burn the Mexican cockroaches from these walls with flamethrowers if need be. But no matter what they and their ill-gotten gains must go or else do not be surprised when my tax monies avoid the dragnet. I will not pay for the failures of some other nation. If more shootings occur as a result of this struggle, and I am too smart to participate directly, then so be it. I will step over the bodies, as I have literally when visiting so-called developing nations. If Loughner shot these people on illegal immigration grounds, I will aid in his defense at no cost. And the next ones, too.

v^2

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