I'm just relieved the FBI didn't entrap this young man like they did poor Mohammed.

God bless the two guys who took him down.

poor Mohammed

Can you give the hate a break for just a day, out of respect for the lives that were taken here? Probably not.

We all need to calm down and tone down our retoric.

What I'd like to know is, where are the shooters representing the liberals? And another thing: when will NBC get rid of that smarmy bobblehead, Chuck Todd?

The story of the nine year old victim is particularily heartbreaking. Recently elected to her grade school student council, the only girl on her baseball team, and an avid dancer. And ironically, born 9-11-2001.

It's not hate, Jack. It's love of country and the brave men and women who protect it. Just because we disagree is no reason to assume I'm hateful.

Our protectors (service men/women, the FBI, and local law enforcement) are often villified on this blog, and elsewhere. Many commenters complained about the manner in which the Christmas Tree bomber was surveilled by the FBI, while some even suggested he was entrapped.

In both Portland and Tucscon, you have immature young adults with a world view that is either delusional or mentally disturbed (or both). The FBI caught the first one, but missed the second one despite his very public pronouncements of delusion or mental instability.

What I'd like to know is, where are the shooters representing the liberals? And another thing: when will NBC get rid of that smarmy bobblehead, Chuck Todd?

Sad.

Just saw a clip of Bill Clinton speaking a few months ago at the 15 year commemoration of the Oklahoma City Bombing. I'll quote an important point he made cautioning against angry, anti-government rhetoric:

"What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold - but that the words we use really do matter...they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike."

It's not hate, Jack. It's love of country

No, it was cheap snarkyiness and in supremely bad taste. And ironically, the kind of "I'll use this opportunity to take cheap shots at people who disagree with me" rhetoric that's of no use to anyone. Why not own it, instead of trying to wave a flag over it and proclaim it as "patriotic" passion?

I think, hate aside, people should be aware that this killing very possibly occurred because Giffords was a Jew, and pro-Israel, at that. Remember, some of the unhinged among us love to fasten their death fetishes on to Christians and Jews.

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/01/gabrielle-giffords-was-shot-because-she.html

Makes me wonder which is the best course to pursue. A Christian/Jewish identity? (I heard recently there exists a group that calls themselves Christian Jews.
Hmmm). Or outright dissociation from religion altogether, in protest against the seemingly unavoidable, relentlessly recurring violence that seems to be associated with it?

Increasingly, personally, the only way I feel I can cope with apparent inexorable descent to an increasingly violence-filled world, is to develop a spiritual identity.

Such an irony.

AMEN EcoHuman. Mr. Tee's Flagwaving over his bad taste is indicative of the entire problem. "Love of Country" indeed.

I totally disagree that flagwaving is indicative of the whole problem.

The whole problem exists in a polarized
media and populace. What's with the MSM immediately blaming the tea-party and Sara Palin's rhetoric for this psychotic anti-semitic kid blowing away a Jewish politician?

Why isn't the media focusing on the real problem(s)? KBOO's Yiddish hour today didn't even MENTION Gifford's Jewish identity. NO media I have read today has ANY discussion about the problem of known nutjobs easy ability to obtain guns. And that the lack of basic gun control is the crux of the problem, and it has the capacity to bring the country to its knees.

gaye harris - where have you read/heard that the gunman directed his shots because of anti-semitism? I have seen no such speculation, let alone confirmed storyline. Between the gunman's likely mental instability, as seen in his Internet postings, and the political positions the congresswoman has taken, I think we find far more likely reasons for the shootings.

Much frustration and conflicted feelings I can understand, turning at each other during this time brings me more sadness. Should things get worse, how we treat each other will be more important than ever.

To all today, take care.

Wow, the divide even extends to this thread. When is it hate? sad? flag waving? I guess if I don't really know I must be one of "them".

A reminder for the FBI/entrapment ilk - out of love for his son, Mohammed's father turned him in, saying, " I would rather see him in jail than dead on the streets".

Words matter!
Think ! before you speak.

It's a sad time for all Americans, the overwhelming majority of whom, political differences notwithstanding, are people of good will. I hope we can, at least, agree on that.

I am sickened by this act and, frankly, by much of the vitriol that has followed.

umpire,

this is one place where the anti-semitic linkage is described. Who's to say where the truth lies.

http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2011/01/gabrielle-giffords-was-shot-because-she.html

Re: "The story of the nine year old victim is particularily heartbreaking."

Gibby,
"Among the six killed and 13 injured reportedly in Tucson, Ariz. was 9-year-old third-grader Christina-Taylor Green. Green had two personal connections to Major League Baseball; she was a daughter of Los Angeles Dodgers scout John Green and a granddaughter of former Philadelphia Phillies manager Dallas Green."

""It's pretty hard,' Dallas Green said. 'We're all hurting pretty bad.'"
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Dallas-Green-s-granddaughter-dies-in-Arizona-sho?urn=mlb-305133

Several stories have emerged. The aide who tackled the shooter was, it seems, a young woman who herself had been shot.

No suppressed zeros here.

And there's this:

'Rolling Stone Politics: Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, [Steve] 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."

'Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize"...'

It is clearly time to consider criminal prosecution of Palin and other extremists who incited this incident. Just asking these folks to settle down will not work. Leftists and their allies have been prosecuted for far less in the past.

You'd think we could figure out a way to keep guns out of the hands of nutjobs by now. This guy gave plenty of public notice that he was a nutjob. You need to get a license to drive a car, why not a license to own a gun?

It's love of country and the brave men and women who protect it.

You are a sick man.

Gardiner, thanks for providing the name. Her story really hit me the hardest. I guess because Christina reportedly went there to learn more about how government works.

Dave says
It is clearly time to consider criminal prosecution of Palin and other extremists who incited this incident. Just asking these folks to settle down will not work. Leftists and their allies have been prosecuted for far less in the past.

Reverse McCarthyism isn't the answer.

I am with Dave , words not only matter , but have legal consequences.
Hate Crime
and it's incitement must be brought to a court of law. It is not McCarthyism to bring Rush and Hannity and Palin into a court and ask them to explain to Judge and Jury why they incite acts of violence against our elected leaders.

What, exactly, makes a crime a "hate crime"?

Does it matter if I'm mugged?

This is just PC BS.

And if you believe that the shooter was somehow "incited to violence" by Conservatives, you haven't been paying attention.

Seen around

Just change bombing to shooting and you're all set:

http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.9.12.102423.271.html

Gibby,

"In an interview with Fox News, Mrs. Green explained how, in a call from her friend’s husband, she learned that her daughter had been injured and was at the University Medical Center in Tucson.

'I grabbed my son and called my husband — he wasn’t at home — and we all just rushed over there,' Mrs. Green said.

'We waited for a while, and then the surgeon and people from the I.C.U. unit came in and police officers and other people, and they told us the bad news,’ she said. 'She had a bullet hole to the chest, and they tried to save her, but she just couldn’t make it. It was really, really bad.'

Mrs. Green said that she hoped that Christina’s death would bring not only justice in the jailing of her attacker but also a national awareness of the cost of a venomous political dialogue.

'I think there’s been a lot of hatred going,' she said, 'and it needs to stop.'”
(NYTimes)

The hatetalk media figures MAKE the HATE and they suggest/stress violence as a 'remedy' for it ... when that anxiety-hatefeeling is all up in ya'.

That is The Problem. (Yes, hate broadcast is actionable -- indictable, chargeable, prosecutable, convictable, and punishable.) Open access to guns is subsidiary, a descendant 'problem' only inasmuch as broadcast 'violence coaching' encourages guns as a recourse, a solution. ... 'solution' for the uncertainty ('insecurity') of passion-crimes violences (usually concerning passion-involved 'acquaintances'), which broadcasters are hell-bent to portray as an epidemic plague, of random senseless crazed violent loners confronting strangers, maybe YOU! Breaking in your house! Sneaking aboard airplanes! It's a terrifying EPIDEMIC!

Take away the hate-coaching broadcasts and people still have guns but they can't think of any particular special reason to use them. (Which is pretty much the way it was and the way people were before the hate-coaching broadcasts began, or began being 'celebrated' ... with multi-million dollar deals for unconscienced media-mouths who would willingly talk the anti-American hate schtick -- the complicit "willingly" is the prosecutable part.)

But please, people, be aware in your own conscious mind to take account of the source of information units you use in your thinking. Massmedia has a self-interest agenda, (NOT a truth-reporting 'public good' agenda), if that's your source. Religion Sellers have a self-interest agenda, (NOT a solace and amity agenda), if that's your source. Internet-ers is a mixed bag, some with bias agenda, some with investigation integrity agenda while holding suspended judgment, presumed innocence.

What is often seen, (as in many comments here), is massmedia 'reports' (and reporters) of crimes that are crimes done by, perpetrated by, 'agents inside' the massmedia. In other words, sometimes the 'crime reports' are written by the actual criminals themselves, i.e., the 'reporters'.

One example, the 'invention' of Public Relations: Edward Bernays pays ten women to block Manhattan sidewalks, at a certain place and time, walking slow, smoking cigarettes, (the client's product Bernays is marketing). Meanwhile, Bernays pays a photographer and a reporter to be at a certain sidewalk at a certain time. Result: Front page photo, 'Scandal: Women Smoke Cigarettes.'

Not what you'd call a 'crime' exactly, except that (true story) some of the women did get arrested, booked, and then detained for prior 'morals' charges outstanding against them.

Second example: The sheriff ('John Law') doses a prisoner's food with brain-rotting toxins, (maybe iodine? cadmium?), and then the prisoner shouts crazy-sounding statements; then Mr. Law tells the reporter that the prisoner acts/sounds insane in the cellblock, and so it is reported ... and the media are not allowed to visit or interview the prisoner 'suspect.'

I am certain I can make you be a 'suicide bomber', blow you to bits with dynamite glued to your body and make it look like (according to 'reports') you did it yourself, of your own volition.

The steps are (standard operating procedure): 1)abduct you, 2)isolate in sensory-deprivation solitary confinement, 3) torture you with excruciating pain and mental disorientation, 4) feed you brain-poisoning pills, 5) repeat for 100 days or as long as it takes until you start babbling spittle, 6) steel-cinch dynamite sticks around you with remote-control detonater, 7) show you photos of your family held captive, threatened, even dead (see step 3), 8) one day suddenly bundle you up blindfolded, whisk you out in the sunlight in the back of a car, drive to the marketplace, snap off the blindfold swing open the door and shout "run! run! your family is in that stall over there, the blue one, waiting for you, now's your chance - run! run! you're free." Forty steps later ker-blooey. "Another suicide bomber killed people at the marketplace today, coalition press accounts 'reported' ...."

Meanwhile, no one has heard any news about you since you were abducted, 2 years ago, they've given up hope. For all they know you may have been in some religious retreat getting some of that 'rebel religion' indoctrination, which would explain why you went all suicide-bomber in the marketplace one day.

The logical rational reason to suspect the FBI entrapped the immature college kid to be downtown Portland's sensational terrifying 'suspect' is BECAUSE they could. And, John Law (FBI et al.) SAYS they do it, (entrapment), and have done it, ('sacrificed' innocents). And the m.o. (entrapment, indoctrination, brain-washing, instigation), is a consistent m.o. of John Law (planting evidence, for example), and so it STANDS to REASON for considering, that the plausibility may be a probability. (Rejecting the very idea without considering it to be at all possible, that is the 'unreasonable' position.)

Same, too, in Tucson. The immature and somewhat direction-less kid might have been drugged and detailed into what he did. Really, the brain-washed scenario is more reasonable than trying to figure out how he came up with this idea on his own.

Okay, brief background digression: At the beginning around 1950, the CIA stated openly that one 'mission' (for the 'resources') is to develop effective drugs and techniques of mind control to make captured 'enemy agents' tell all the secrets they know; and/or, in a related 'branch' of mind control, to make anyone do whatever they were told to do, (the 'Manchurian candidate' scenario). The mission was code-named MK ULTRA, and resources are still going into it today trying to accomplish the goal. The roots of such interest (in 'mind control') goes back to the 'successful' demonstrations of hypnosis in the 1800s; and before then, back to the practice and prevalence of 'superstition.' And all along the way we are seeing, it is the study of, ingredients of human nature comprising human consciousness. Search for and study it (brain functions) if you are interested further, yourself.

Now, a couple of things about MK ULTRA. Experiments and trials were performed and conducted, mainly of a military bent, and there are individuals who were (and are) involved in it, both as 'mind controllers' and as 'control victims', and some of the eye-witness first-hand participants do 'report' what happens. You can read such reports; they are mind-boggling; it's difficult (or tricky) to know what to believe and what to disbelieve. But eye-witness 1st-person accounts carry a lot of credibility which is hard to dispute or ignore -- especially when some account makes sense out of known events that otherwise don't make any sense or are insensible. So, first point, MK ULTRA: there are people who did it and who say they did it and who tell what they did.

Second, the techniques (or technology) available (to 'control minds') have 'improved' immensely since 1950. Mainly I am pointing at massmedia and 'advertising' to suggest that you buy my idea. (Maybe read about NLP, neuro-linguistic programming. Or maybe not, if it is easier to deny you don't know.) Anyway, believe it or not, in broadcasting there is deliberate definite applications of 'mind control.' And hate-talk -- emotion arousal -- is one application.

So, there is a 'they' (CIA-derived) who are (involved with) doing mind-control things, AND, the methods of doing it are increasingly amazingly subtle and exotic. The field is open to study.

It seemed to me all of that (little amount of) 'background' digression is necessary in order to prepare just the sketchiest perspective from which to comprehend this:
JB Campbell: Manchurian Shooters, posted by J. Bruce Campbell, Veterans Today,
January 8, 2011

Due to the atrocity in Tucson, the following experience is offered. It is extremely disturbing and none of our friends would even comment on it at the time. Our MK victim, Mike Gadbaw, was programmed to kill Senator Harry Reid, and my wife prevented this from occurring, perhaps to the chagrin of some. It also happened in Arizona and is described in part two, which I’ll post later, along with the video of the victim’s carefully induced grand mal seizure during his six-week “experiment” at the University of Minnesota, under the tender care of Louis Jolyon West. The piece was written by me, in the as-told-to style. The third guy referred to by Mike was Brian Quig, who was himself murdered in Phoenix a few months after this was written. Some of Mike’s memories never actually happened, as will be made clear in part two…

"My name is Mike Gadbaw. I’m a US Navy vet and apparently I’ve been groomed as some sort of “sleeper” for a number of years, for what purpose I do not know. ..."

Importantly, what it says is spooky sh!t is real and it's going on, that the writer has had a part in it when it went on before (Oswald, Sirhan, Bremer, Fromm, McVeigh!), that by now, 2011, it has developed to an awesome and awful extent and effect, and that what the TV 'reports' to us is unlikely to be -- in no way, shape, or form -- actually what happened. And what I say is please, be aware in your own conscious mind and take account of the source of information units you use in your thinking.

"'Rolling Stone Politics: Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, [Steve] 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."

'Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize"...'"

I live on the west side in Cincinnati now. You've got to be careful - we kill people here.

And by "we" I mean "not me, but the wackos that live around here".