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Arizona congresswoman among 18 shot at Tuscon grocery

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"We saw a white, Catholic, Republican federal judge murdered on his way to greet a Democratic woman, member of Congress, who was his friend and was Jewish. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year-old Mexican-American college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon.
And then it was all eulogized and explained by our African-American president. And, in a tragic event, that's a remarkable statement about the country. - historian Allen Ginsberg
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YouTube - Shields and Brooks on Obama's Tucson Speech, Calls for Political Civility


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Rita said:
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"We saw a white, Catholic, Republican federal judge murdered on his way to greet a Democratic woman, member of Congress, who was his friend and was Jewish. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year-old Mexican-American college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon.
And then it was all eulogized and explained by our African-American president. And, in a tragic event, that's a remarkable statement about the country. - historian Allen Ginsberg
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YouTube - Shields and Brooks on Obama's Tucson Speech, Calls for Political Civility


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what a thoughtful, mature discussion! Wish we could run it 24/7 in a continuous loop in public places...thanks for posting Rita. This news cast is my favorite.

at dinner tonight my sister asked, "how could anyone listen to President Obama's speech and not understand what a decent man he is...and how could elected members of Congress continue to speak so harshly of him?" Good questions.

I wish everyone would listen more to thoughtful discussions such as Brooks and Shields and read David Brooks' NYTimes columns...he gives me hope that civility and maturity will eventually prevail in our country.
 
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Glenda Wood said:
what a thoughtful, mature discussion! Wish we could run it 24/7 in a continuous loop in public places...thanks for posting Rita. This news cast is my favorite.

at dinner tonight my sister asked, "how could anyone listen to President Obama's speech and not understand what a decent man he is...and how could elected members of Congress continue to speak so harshly of him?" Good questions.

I wish everyone would listen more to thoughtful discussions such as Brooks and Shields and read David Brooks' NYTimes columns...he gives me hope that civility and maturity will eventually prevail in our country.
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I'm more interested in understanding how a guy like Loughner managed to avoid being picked out and dealt with. The data on his interaction with people over the last few years indicates there was ample evidence he was imbalanced and numerous opportunities to intercede and ultimately avoid what happened. It seems pretty much everyone given the chance chose to turn the other cheek. How do we avoid such things in the future? This could have been avoided, IMHO.
 
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that is another subject and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I believe most thoughtful people would like to see how this could have been avoided.

In fact, the health care reform law does much to bring parity to mental health issues in insurance and may well help avoid a similar situation -- and if the assault weapons law had not expired, this apparenty mentally unbalanced person would not have been able to have enough bullets to kill and injure all these people in seconds.

I do not subscribe to the belief that if we ban those weapons whose sole purpose is to kill lots of people in seconds, we will be infringing on anyone's 2nd amendment rights. But, then, I don't subscribe to the idea that "government is the bogey man out to do us in" either.

To have guns for hunting and for sport and even for personal protection is a right we all have in this country and, I believe appropriate--but the idea that assault weapons are available to anyone who wants one, is insane.

One must be licensed to cut someone's hair; to give a massage; to prescribe medicine, to sell real estate; and to appraise property...and if one has a security clearance, one must endure a long, involved background check...but, to buy a gun and ammunition that will kill six people and wound 14 more in the space of a few minutes, apparently is just a 'pro-forma' process.!

Something is definitely wrong with that picture.

And, I hope that all members of Congress will get behind the president and work together to be serious about working on solutions to the real serious problems we face -- our children deserve a better example than what they have been seeing lately.
 
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a thoughtful article that points out the need to be honest in our discourse:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/opinion/16rich.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB
As the president said in Tucson, we lack not just civil discourse, but honest discourse. Much of last week?s televised bloviation was dishonest, dedicated to the pious, feel-good sentiment that both sides are equally culpable for the rage of the past two years. To construct this false equivalency, every left-leaning Web site and Democratic politician?s record was dutifully culled for incendiary invective. If that?s the standard, then both sides are equally at fault ? rhetoric can indeed be as violent on the left as on the right.

But that sidesteps the issue. This isn?t about angry blog posts or verbal fisticuffs. Since Obama?s ascension, we?ve seen repeated incidents of political violence. Just a short list would include the 2009 killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by a neo-Nazi Obama-hater; last year?s murder-suicide kamikaze attack on an I.R.S. office in Austin, Tex.; and the California police shootout with an assailant plotting to attack an obscure liberal foundation obsessively vilified by Beck.

Obama said, correctly, on Wednesday that ?a simple lack of civility? didn?t cause the Tucson tragedy. It didn?t cause these other incidents either. What did inform the earlier violence ? including the vandalism at Giffords?s office ? was an antigovernment radicalism as rabid on the right now as it was on the left in the late 1960s. That Loughner was likely insane, with no coherent ideological agenda, does not mean that a climate of antigovernment hysteria has no effect on him or other crazed loners out there. Nor does Loughner?s insanity mitigate the surge in unhinged political zealots acting out over the last two years. That?s why so many ? on both the finger-pointing left and the hyper-defensive right ? automatically assumed he must be another of them.

Have politicians stoked the pre-Loughner violence by advocating that citizens pursue ?Second Amendment remedies? or be ?armed and dangerous?? We don?t know. What?s more disturbing is what Republican and conservative leaders have not said. Their continuing silence during two years of simmering violence has been chilling.

A few unexpected voices have expressed alarm. After an antigovernment gunman struck at Washington?s Holocaust museum in June 2009, Shepard Smith of Fox News noted the rising vitriol in his e-mail traffic and warned on air that more ?amped up? Americans could be ?getting the gun out.? The former Bush administration speechwriter David Frum took on the ?reckless right? that August, citing the incident at the Giffords Safeway event. But when a Department of Homeland Security report warned of far-right extremism and attacks by ?lone wolves? that same summer, Gingrich called it a smear and John Boehner demanded an apology.

Last week a conservative presidential candidate, Tim Pawlenty, timidly said it wouldn?t be his ?style? to use Palin?s target map, but was savaged so viciously by his own camp that he immediately retreated. A senior Republican senator told Politico that he saw the Tucson bloodbath as a ?cautionary tale? for his party, yet refused to be named.

What are they and their peers so afraid of? No doubt that someone might reload ? the same fears that prompted Gabrielle Giffords to speak up, calmly but firmly, last March. Unless and until they can match her courage and speak out too, it?s hard to see what will change.
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Recently, I feel as though I live in a parallel universe: I can not accept that relatives, friends and colleagues of mine who subscribe to the Republican Party and identify themselves as conservative...I can not believe that they really believe much of what is labeled Republican and conservative by the far right and talk show pundits...but what I can't understand is why they do not work to change the dialogue...after all, the violence knows no political party--the bullets and the harsh words fall on the left, the right, and all in between.
 
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Glenda Wood said:
that is another subject and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. I believe most thoughtful people would like to see how this could have been avoided.

In fact, the health care reform law does much to bring parity to mental health issues in insurance and may well help avoid a similar situation -- and if the assault weapons law had not expired, this apparenty mentally unbalanced person would not have been able to have enough bullets to kill and injure all these people in seconds.

I do not subscribe to the belief that if we ban those weapons whose sole purpose is to kill lots of people in seconds, we will be infringing on anyone's 2nd amendment rights. But, then, I don't subscribe to the idea that "government is the bogey man out to do us in" either.

To have guns for hunting and for sport and even for personal protection is a right we all have in this country and, I believe appropriate--but the idea that assault weapons are available to anyone who wants one, is insane.

One must be licensed to cut someone's hair; to give a massage; to prescribe medicine, to sell real estate; and to appraise property...and if one has a security clearance, one must endure a long, involved background check...but, to buy a gun and ammunition that will kill six people and wound 14 more in the space of a few minutes, apparently is just a 'pro-forma' process.!

Something is definitely wrong with that picture.

And, I hope that all members of Congress will get behind the president and work together to be serious about working on solutions to the real serious problems we face -- our children deserve a better example than what they have been seeing lately.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how the health care law would have played into this. I don't know if he had insurance, might be interesting to dig that info up.

I was wondering more about all the events that led up to his rampage. Had Jared's parents, or the educators at Pima Community College, or the local police been more proactive he may have gotten the help he needed. That type of involvement, not smaller gun clips, is a real solution.
 
30ashopper said:
I'm not sure how the health care law would have played into this. I don't know if he had insurance, might be interesting to dig that info up.

I was wondering more about all the events that led up to his rampage. Had Jared's parents, or the educators at Pima Community College, or the local police been more proactive he may have gotten the help he needed. That type of involvement, not smaller gun clips, is a real solution.
Click to expand...

Here's a book suggestion for you:
Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness by Pete Earley.

Even if he had insurance; even if parents had done an outstanding job of intervention (they are limited because he is an adult); even if all had tried very hard, there still might not have been a good intervention with the system set up the way it is..that certainly doesn't mean everyone should not have tried, but it also doesn't mean that we should not improve the system of both the health care system and the gun law system IMO.
 
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