my take on that when it happened was that it was INAPPROPRIATE. No, of course Sarah Palin didn't literally mean she wanted to "target" people with rifles and intended for others to do that. but, then it happens, and...? How do you explain that?

I really hope the Congresswoman sees her way through this... and I really hope it was just some stupid random violence, instead of being politically motivated.

I really hope the Congresswoman sees her way through this... and I really hope it was just some stupid random violence, instead of being politically motivated.

There's no way this was random. The Congresswoman was holding a publicly advertised event and she was by all accounts the first one hit.

 

What the exact motivation was I'm not going to guess right now, but there is essentially zero chance that the Congresswoman just happened to be having an event at a grocery store where a person decided to show up and shoot up the place.

A federal judge was shot in the same incident in which Rep. Gabby Giffords was shot on Saturday morning, a federal law enforcement official told TPM.

 

The U.S. Marshals Service is on the scene of the shooting, the federal official told TPM. The Marshals Service employees responded to the scene after the shooting, the official said.

Link

Federal judge John Roll has died.

If you missed the press conference, the local sheriff's office said the shooter is a 22-year-old male, in custody, with a limited criminal background. He used a "pistol with an extended magazine," the sheriff said, and there's no evidence yet of the shooter having an accomplice at the scene.

Read somewhere one of the dead is a 9 year old girl

CNN is taking feed from an Arizona station with the call letters KGUN. Seriously?

 

Federal judge John Roll has died.

The Judge killed today had received death threats in a 2009 Arizona immigration case. He was originally nominated in 1991 by George H.W. Bush, and had served s the chief judge in the Arizona Federal Court since 2006.

CNN is reporting that Rep. Giffords is out of surgery and the doctor is reportedly "Optimistic" about her survival.

The full identity of the shooter has been released, and people have found his myspace and Youtube pages. He's a community college student. If you're interested you can find the Youtube videos linked here. Screengrabs:

 

another crazy motherf***er.

The full identity of the shooter has been released, and people have found his myspace and Youtube pages. He's a community college student. If you're interested you can find the Youtube videos linked here. Screengrabs:

 

 

He's bat-s*** insane.

He's bat-s*** insane.

Just like Joe Stack. Like waaaaay out there.

This guy is obviously mentally ill.

I guess this is the world we live in now...here's some discussion from a twitter feed that seems to belong to some people who were former friends of the shooter.

 

More from the Tucson Weekly.

Link

His exact motivation was not immediately clear. Federal law enforcement officials were poring over captured versions of a MySpace page that belonged to Jared Loughner and over Youtube video published to the Internet weeks ago under an account "Classitup10" and linked to him. The MySpace page, which was removed within minutes of the gunman being identified by U.S. officials, included a mysterious "Goodbye friends" message published hours before the shooting and exhorted his friends to "Please don't be mad at me."

this is what happens when you encourage an atmosphere of radical, irrational fear and hatred and use ridiculous rhetoric like Sarah Palin does. Unbelievable. It was just a matter of time I guess.

this is what happens when you encourage an atmosphere of radical, irrational fear and hatred and use ridiculous rhetoric like Sarah Palin does. Unbelievable. It was just a matter of time I guess.

Seriously sir, I would not go that far.

This guy is obviously mentally ill.

 

That's putting it lightly:

 

Seriously sir, I would not go that far.

i'm not saying she encouraged it, i'm not saying he did it because of political motivations, and it's not just Sarah Palin, but the fearmongering that goes on and the calls to action using gun imagery, etc eventually creates an environment in which these things will happen.

this is what happens when you encourage an atmosphere of radical, irrational fear and hatred and use ridiculous rhetoric like Sarah Palin does. Unbelievable. It was just a matter of time I guess.

 

Doesn't really seem to be a factor in this case. Blaming this on Sarah Palin is fairly absurd.

Doesn't really seem to be a factor in this case. Blaming this on Sarah Palin is fairly absurd.

we have no idea at this juncture what is and is not a factor.

 

EDIT: and you're right - it's certainly premature to blame this on Palin and probably absurd, you're right. But what other politician creates maps with crosshairs on it targeting congresspeople you want "taken out"?

Edited January 8, 201115 yr by Reddy

i'm not saying she encouraged it, i'm not saying he did it because of political motivations, and it's not just Sarah Palin, but the fearmongering that goes on and the calls to action using gun imagery, etc eventually creates an environment in which these things will happen.

I'd say it differently. I'd say that if a political figure going to use gun imagery in a campaign against a person, and then at some point that person gets shot...some people will try to blame her regardless of whether or not she's at fault (and those people should be criticized)...while others will just think she looks like a complete jackass.

 

At this point, I'm not going to go any farther than thinking she looks like a complete jackass...Like a person making a totally inappropriate joke about someone who really got hurt. I think you have to be really careful about how you try to assign blame for words in these cases, because it's so hard to really interpret the thoughts of a person who would do something like this.