Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2: Chewing over the News
537 Responses
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It's is probably worth waiting for the facts to come out before making judgements about the political implications.
The guy got chucked out of school in Oct, bought the gun in Nov. He seemed to have a very high opinion of his intellectual abilitities - a view not shared by others.
He had had pervious contact with Giffords in 2007.
His focus on her may not have been poltical at all.
There are people on the left and right trying to argue that they guy is right wing or left wing. A bit of a sick game.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
But more worrying is the simplistic wittering he brings to the public platforms we still for some reason grace him with. Like this gem:
The Ministry of Truth would be proud.
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
The Ministry of Truth would be proud.
As they would with this bit of utterly bizarre reinvention:
"We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," said Rebecca Mansour, who works for Palin's political action committee, in a interview with conservative radio host Tammy Bruce.
"It's a surveyor's symbol," Bruce suggested. Mansour agreed, adding that the graphic was contracted out to a professional and approved without much thought. "We never imagined, it never occurred to us that anybody would consider it violent," she said. It was simply "crosshairs that you would see on a map."
There is "nothing irresponsible about our graphic," Mansour added.
Words fail....
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It seems like the shooter is a left wing pothead who includes the Communist Manifesto as one of his favourite books. Doesn't seem like the profile of a person who would be motivated by anything Beck or Palin might have said. Mental problems seem to be the issue here.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2011/01/jared_loughner_alleged_shooter.php
Anyone want to climb down from their kneejerk reaction blaming Palin et al for the actions of a nutter?
And of course there is the language that Obama has used.
"Mobster wisdom tells us never to bring a knife to a gun fight. But what does political wisdom say about bringing a gun to a knife fight?"
Where were the howls of outrage and indignation from the PAS crowd at that inflamatory language?
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/06/14/obama-if-they-bring-a-knife-to-the-fight-we-bring-a-gun/
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Simon Grigg, in reply to
Anyone want to climb down from their kneejerk reaction blaming Palin et al for the actions of a nutter?
Hey James, wanna read what was actually said in the thread before you stagger in here with a 'kneejerk reaction'? I guess not.
You do love those straw men....
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The more we learn about Gifford’s shooter, it seems that there is no connection to anything Palin might have said or any "right wing climate of hate" or whatever other BS some on the left have trotted out. The guy is more like a Hinckley or a Kaczynski than anything else.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703667904576071191163461466.html?
Perhaps some on the left were following the Rahm Emmanual "never let a crisis go to waste" school of thinking and saw this as an opportunity to smear some on the right, or perhaps the "Palin's to blame" narrative fitted the mental model of their world. Either way, pretty sick. Perhaps now that Bush is out of the way, the more nasty elements of the left need a new target for their venom.
And of course the magnitude of the hypocrisy involved in the left complaining about the hateful language of the right is breath taking. The amount of hate that emanated from the left toward Bush was appalling. For example, how many times did figures on the left talk about the desirability of the death of Bush? A film was even made about Bush’s assassination. Where were the left and the MSM complaining about the climate of hate when that was going on?
For a quick round up of the screeds and screeds of left wing hate over recent years:
And to finish, VDH sums up quite well the reaction of some on the left to this tragedy.
“If crazed gunmen are sadly a periodic characteristic of American culture, so are political vultures who scavenge political capital as they pick through the horrific violence.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256697/political-vultures-victor-davis-hanson
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Simon, how many "left wing potheads" do you think are devoted followers of Palin and Beck et al? Not exactly the profile of your average Tea Partier.
From the information available to date it seems pretty clear the guy is a Kazynski/Hinckley type mentally unwell individual.
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Joe Wylie, in reply to
. . . political vultures who scavenge political capital as they pick through the horrific violence.
You get that a lot on the web, particularly in boy-talk circles. Decrying the behaviour of those you don't like, while doing precisely what you complain about. From the aggrieved yelping you'd think Palin had been shot and Dubya winged.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
Hey James, wanna read what was actually said in the thread before you stagger in here with a 'kneejerk reaction'? I guess not.
You do love those straw men....
Real people and their actual comments aren't nearly as flammable.
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It does in fact turn out that Loughner had held a grudge against Giffords
for a number of years. A grudge more to do with his sense of personal aggrievement than any political issue.A grudge going back to 2007.
Plus his very high opinion of himself:
Loughner sometimes approached strangers and would say "weird" things, Tierney recalls. "He would do it because he thought people were below him and he knew they wouldn't know what he was talking about."
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Russell Brown, in reply to
It seems like the shooter is a left wing pothead who includes the Communist Manifesto as one of his favourite books. Doesn’t seem like the profile of a person who would be motivated by anything Beck or Palin might have said.
Oh really? His recent online ranting about a “new currency” (Rand Paul and the Amero, anyone?) “backed by gold” (Glenn Beck) sounds right up with the the wingnut Zeitgeist.
In particular, it sounds quite a lot like the paranoid view of government ceaselessly peddled by Beck through his championing of Cleon Skousen, who implacably believed Eisenhower was a Soviet agent.
Even if they turn out to have had no direct impact on him, over the last few years these people have mainstreamed and legitimised the same paranoid beliefs that Loughner displayed.
And then there’s the memo obtained by Fox News – so it must be true – revealing that police are pursuing potential connections between Loughner as the American Renaissance group, which is “anti government, anti immigration, anti ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti Semitic.”
OTOH, Loughner’s rhetoric is also very like that of the far-right loon David Wynn Miller and the Sovereign Citizen Movement.
At any rate, he really doesn’t sound like your average lefty pothead.
PS: Any state that lets someone as crazy as Loughner – who by this time had been suspended from school pending a psych evaluation, and rejected by the army – waltz into a store, sign a piece of paper saying they’re not “seriously” crazy, and buy and leave with a gun and two high-capacaity 30-round clips … has some pretty fucked-up gun laws.
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anth,
How about something a little more uplifting: Egypt's Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as "human shields"
Admittedly this was in response to a suicide bombing, and sources less related to the Eqyptian government describe it has being partly an anti-government rally.
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Yeah lets all get wound up about a few chickens coming home to roost in the US. After all how many Aghan and Iraqi politicians do you thing have been smashed into a fine pink cloud after Gifford did her worst on Capitol Hill?
First off; casting Gifford as some sort of liberal is a sick joke, she is that worst of all US politicians a blue dog democrat who takes the votes from the underclass and uses them to favour the corporatists. She is rated at 187th (out of 193) in terms of progressiveness and support for the disadvantaged based on her voting record over at ProgressivePunch
As for the health vote well I dunno about others but I was always taught that legislation which forced citizens to buy something from a private corporation (rather than a socialised co-op where citizens had input and profits weren't hived off for the good of a few) is the sort of thing fascist governments such as Hitler's and Mussolini's did.
One of the great misconceptions people outside the US have about Obama and healthcare is that he somehow broke down the health insurance oligarchy last year.He did the exact opposite and reinforced the power of insurers as soon as he agreed that a single payer scheme was off the table. Must have been the hundred million plus that Wall St gave him eh?
Anyway back to Gifford she got shot that happens in the US where too many people carry guns. There is no hidden or greater meaning. Playing to the "great! lets scare the citizens" media hoohah doesn't progress anything except more sales of more guns - so why buy into it?
I am far more interested in issues back here in NZ.
Like when did it become law that in a simple firearm case, but one that carries a penalty well over the limit for a jury trial, citizens could be denied access to trial by a jury of their peers? Was it in the recent shake up, and if so how can that be, shouldn't people be tried under the law as it was when the alleged crime was committed? Or was it always this way under the rules designed to keep juries out of trials of 'complex fraud cases'? If it was the latter what is going on? Have we been lied to by politicians about the details of their legislation and the actual impact it will have, yet again?
I don't believe there are any circumstances where it is ok to deny an accused access to a jury, because in very short order jury trials will become impossible to access, if that situation continues.
If the courts system is really that clogged, build more courts and stop pissing about.
This little silly season bombshell, initially released with all details supressed, should shock every New Zealander, yet here we are worrying about some hypocrite on the other side of the planet catching a bit of karma.
It seems to me that the manifest injustices that have been dished out to Tuhoe ever since whitefellas first arrived here, are going to continue in the 21st century.
"Who cares they're only angry Maoris. Lock em up", seems to be the order of the day.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
As for the health vote well I dunno about others but I was always taught that legislation which forced citizens to buy something from a private corporation (rather than a socialised co-op where citizens had input and profits weren’t hived off for the good of a few) is the sort of thing fascist governments such as Hitler’s and Mussolini’s did.
Or to take a less deranged example, the sort of thing they do in the Netherlands.
The US healthcare reforms are flawed, but invoking Hitler to describe them is precisely the sort of lunatic rhetoric we've been talking about. Congratulations.
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Man, Loughner may have been genuinely mentally ill, but he was hoovering up the wingnut rhetoric. Now it’s obsessing on the Constitution:
College officials did not respond to questions about McGahee’s account on Sunday. After about three weeks of class, McGahee said, there was a final confrontation: Loughner arrived and pointed to a copy of the U.S. Constitution on the wall.
” ‘You’re violating my First Amendment right of free speech,’ ” McGahee recalled him saying."That’s when I went to go get the dean.” A college official came, and Loughner was removed permanently from the class.
He was not suspended from the school for another few weeks, until college officials discovered Sept. 29 that he had posted a video on YouTube calling the college “unconstitutional.” After that, Loughner agreed to withdraw.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
The more I hear, the more he sounds diametrically opposed to Bremner's assertion that he was an LWNJ as opposed to an RWNJ. The gold standard and constitutional absolutism are very definitely not left-wing talking points.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Even if they turn out to have had no direct impact on him, over the last few years these people have mainstreamed and legitimised the same paranoid beliefs that Loughner displayed.
I'm also enjoying the usual suspects, who were chickenhawk Rambos to a man a few short months ago during the election season, now claiming that nothing they do or say has the slightest influence on anyone.
If that's true, then I've got to say Fox News and the Tea Party have been running an enormously profitable Ponzi scheme that makes Bernard Madoff look like a noob. There's also a not-so-small army of campaign parasites, professional fundraisers and K Street lobbyists who should be facing fraud charges.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Man, Loughner may have been genuinely mentally ill, but he was hoovering up the wingnut rhetoric.
And, again, I'm going to ask for the psychiatric diagnosis to be left to people who are qualified and in a position to make it. Seriously, I'm finding the nut-shaming (that's slut-shaming for the mentally ill) rhetoric is getting suffocating. IIRC, Sacha has already posted a link to this rather nice take-down of the "crazy talk" but it is worth reading twice.
Money quote:
A 2009 analysis of nearly 20,000 individuals concluded that increased risk of violence was associated with drug and alcohol problems, regardless of whether the person had schizophrenia. Two similar analyses on bipolar patients showed, along similar lines, that the risk of violent crime is fractionally increased by the illness, while it goes up substantially among those who are dependent on intoxicating substances. In other words, it's likely that some of the people in your local bar are at greater risk of committing murder than your average person with mental illness.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
In other words, it’s likely that some of the people in your local bar are at greater risk of committing murder than your average person with mental illness.
Depending on the bar, some of them may well have committed murder.
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Maybe he doesn't fit into the left-right spectrum. He was an atheist, didn't object to flag burning and into 9/11 conspiracies.
I’m going to ask for the psychiatric diagnosis to be left to people who are qualified and in a position to make it.
Evidence is coming out about his state of mind and his motivations. It may not be the full picture yet but when people are trying to draw conclusions about politics it's probably the best place to start.
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Sorry to derail the discussion. I came across this: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html
It's made me uneasy, and wonder how racist I am.
And regarding the ongoing discussion above: there seems to be a disagreement about whether or not the shooting relates to ongoing arguments about the position of groups allied to the right of US politics. I haven't seen anything yet that convinces me the shooting was related to the rhetoric of some members of the Tea Party or other groups. That evidence may yet emerge.
On the other hand, there seems to be an argument that - even if this shooting is not related to the extreme rhetoric coming from some places in the US - that rhetoric needs to be questioned. I've understood people to be arguing for months/years that this rhetoric will produce something awful (akin to the Oklahoma bombings). To me, that seems like a valid concern.
Whether or not this incident is a result of that rhetoric doesn't invalidate the argument that politicians and others in positions of influence can stir people up. Even in my lifetime, I've seen many examples of this causing horrible incidents in what's arguably the greatest country in the world (though I'm not sure that this ranking is significant: I've seen articulate Americans fearful that their country will become just like France or the United Kingdom - just as men fearful of feminism used to worry about becoming more like women.)
I get nervous about any extreme rhetoric - especially in a powerful country like the USA. One of the things it seems to produce - almost invariably and immediately - is equally extreme rhetoric from the opposite "tribe".
It seems to me that there are people on the right and the left of politics - not just in the US - who would like to have a discussion about extreme rhetoric, whether or not this shooting is relevant to that rhetoric. My hope is that they don't have that discussion in the form of more extreme rhetoric.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
It may not be the full picture yet but when people are trying to draw conclusions about politics it's probably the best place to start.
I think it would actually be a very good place to start for people not to label someone a paranoid schizophrenic (which is actually a tricky diagnosis to make when you're a mental health professional in the room) on the basis of fuck all squared.
That's a general comment not a personal slam, Neil, and to be honest I'm as bad as anyone at reflextive nut-shaming and should know better. A LOT better. Work in progress...
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has some pretty fucked-up gun laws.
Oh come now. You really *are* politicising the debate. Mad gunmen don't kill people...
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Meanwhile, Fox News boss prez Roger Ailes delivers a masterclass in bull-Shatner false equivalence:
One money quote among many:
That’s what should happen. You know, they’re using this thing...apparently there was a map from one of Palin’s things that had her (Congresswoman Giffords) targeted district. So, we looked at the internet and the first thing we found in 2007, the Democrat Party had a targeted map with targets on it for the Palin district. These maps have been used for for years that I know of. I have two pictures of myself with a bull's-eye on my head. This is just bullshit. This goes on... both sides are wrong, but they both do it.
I told all of our guys, shut up, tone it down, make your argument intellectually. You don’t have to do it with bombast. I hope the other side does that.
Listen, I have a picture of Sarah Palin hanging from the end of a rope. They made a doll up like her and hung her.
I'm very tempted to disregard my own advice, and speculate whether Ailes is a sociopath or just suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder maintained by a delusional architeture straight out of Inception.
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Jacqui Dunn, in reply to
Egypt’s Muslims attend Coptic Christmas mass, serving as “human shields”
Wonderful!
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