Gunman attacks political event in Tucson, 12 wounded.

[wautd]

With such a long time of extreme-right wing rethoric and propaganda, I'm surprised it took this long for a nutter to crack. In a better world that cunt Palin would be trown into prison for accomplish murder.

[SirNitram]

Link to a twitter for someone who went to school with the nut.

Short version: Left wing liberal who met Giffords once and didn't like her. Pothead, loner, etc.

"left wing liberal"? Really? you base this on a twitter feed from someone who had not seen him since several years? Yeah, I don't believe that.

Especially as his favorite books are the usual mix of right-wing + lolbertarian nonsense.

Several of the videos on his account are pretty out there. At first glance he looks to be one of the fringe wing-nut conspiracy types, worried about "the revolution" taking over the country. There's also ranting about the gold standard, mind control, and other such lunacy.

Yea. I suspect heavy Glenn Beck intake, seasoned with local radio nutjobs.

[Aaron]

Not sure if this has been posted yet:



Supposedly from Palin's Twitter today that was scrubbed. (credit to Lonestar via Facebook).

[Master of Ossus]

Especially as his favorite books are the usual mix of right-wing + lolbertarian nonsense.

Several of the videos on his account are pretty out there. At first glance he looks to be one of the fringe wing-nut conspiracy types, worried about "the revolution" taking over the country. There's also ranting about the gold standard, mind control, and other such lunacy.

Assuming that that is his account, and assuming that the one video of his that I watched is representative, he's simply insane. His "argument," insofar as I was able to reconstruct it, is that words are meaningless because they have assigned meanings and can be re-assigned. He's actually schizophrenic about the Constitution, since at one point he rails against it as a form of "mind control" because it's written in a prescribed grammar. I obviously don't understand what he's getting at, and from that video I'm not sure it's possible to reconstruct his thought process.

[FSTargetDrone]

Not sure if this has been posted yet:



Supposedly from Palin's Twitter today that was scrubbed. (credit to Lonestar via Facebook).

I don't know why they even bother cleaning up this sort of stuff anymore. On the web, there is no delete.

[Serafina]

Not sure if this has been posted yet:



Supposedly from Palin's Twitter today that was scrubbed. (credit to Lonestar via Facebook).

I don't know why they even bother cleaning up this sort of stuff anymore. On the web, there is no delete.

You can claim that it was faked if you clean it up - and given the intelligence of their followers, they are likely to swallow that.

[Darth Raptor]

Without knowing the thug's political views (which by all accounts seem to be all over the place), we should probably refrain from making too many conclusions that may prove to be premature. With that said, there is totally a serious problem with the increasingly militant tone of political discourse in this country. The idea that you can or should resort to violence when things aren't going your way (but your own life is not in danger) needs to be repudiated now and it needs to be repudiated hard. Hopefully we can emerge from this with the realization that politics and guns are a bad combination.

I dunno, maybe if smelly, basement dwelling boys weren't allowed to have guns, people wouldn't have to die because some random punk's ball to brain ratio was out of whack.

[Patrick Degan]

Lone Wolf terrorism. That is the only classification for this, no matter how the wingnuts howl otherwise.

As said, she's been threatened and shot at before and there's been more right wing violence and threats of right wing violence. How many "lone wolves" do there need to be to qualify as a pack?

Calling incidents like this "lone wolf terrorism" is often right wing propaganda designed to deflect responsibility from the higher ups, the people who encourage violence.

No, that is how it is classified in DHS analysis of terrorist threats. But it does allow a mechanism for those who put out the dogwhistle calls for "action" to disavow responsibility, as you say.

[Patrick Degan]

What will be interesting to see is how Boehner and the other Republicans in the House react to the attempted assassination of a member of Congress. This is, after all, a direct attack on representative government and civil society. Surely they can't allow this to go unchallenged.

Or will they...?

[Thirdfain]

The shooter is a random nutjob; from his youtube channel it's pretty clear he has no clear political convictions outside of a general hatred of The Man. He lists everything from Meine Kampf to The Communist Manifesto in his selection of favorite books. If he's some sort of murder-robot programmed by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and protected by the new conservative Congress, there's certainly no evidence of it.

[Rye]

The shooter is a random nutjob; from his youtube channel it's pretty clear he has no clear political convictions outside of a general hatred of The Man. He lists everything from Meine Kampf to The Communist Manifesto in his selection of favorite books. If he's some sort of murder-robot programmed by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and protected by the new conservative Congress, there's certainly no evidence of it.

Indeed, going from his youtube shit I watched earlier, his talking points seem to be that he can control minds and the federal government can't stop him, plus random shit about gold hoarding. He seems to be a libertarian lunatic, but the left/right tribal thing doesn't seem to play much of a part in it. He just seems bugfuck insane.

[Broomstick]

The brain injury is, of course, serious. A lot depends on which part of the brain the bullet went through, and how much was destroyed. Head injuries are weird, getting shot in the head can result in everything from death to severe disability to personality change or even minimal to no observable effect. We probably won't know for some time just what long term effects she may suffer.

It is getting fucking serious when a Congresswoman and a Federal judge are shot down along with a dozen bystanders. Bravo that the crowd subdued the shooter and apparently they have the perpetrator in custody - keep him alive so we can interrogate him. Even if he is a "lone nut job" you have to wonder how much the current media and the political nutjobs have influenced him. I'm trying to suppress assumptions. I'd rather wait a few days and find out the real motivations (be that political or just plain insanity of some sort).

[Akhlut]

What will be interesting to see is how Boehner and the other Republicans in the House react to the attempted assassination of a member of Congress. This is, after all, a direct attack on representative government and civil society. Surely they can't allow this to go unchallenged.

Or will they...?

"An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society." - Boehner

As much as I think John Boehner is a complete ass, I also sincerely doubt he's the sort of complete monster who would be pleased with an assassination attempt against a fellow member of Congress.


Also, from what little I've seen, Lougher has no coherent political ideology, if he's the same one as from the YouTube channel; motherfucker thinks that the Constitution is a mind-control document because of its grammar. This guy is fucking David Berkowitz crazy.

[weemadando]

And as I said before, even if it is just a "lone wolf", the fact that the tea bagger scum are busy whitewashing their websites, social networks and generally sanitising themselves of any reference to such actions shows that they clearly worried that they are at least somewhat culpable for this guy's crime.

[Thirdfain]

And as I said before, even if it is just a "lone wolf", the fact that the tea bagger scum are busy whitewashing their websites, social networks and generally sanitising themselves of any reference to such actions shows that they clearly worried that they are at least somewhat culpable for this guy's crime.

... Or that some of their material, such as the Palin "Target" broadsheet with all the seats she wanted to retake marked with crosshairs, might be taken wildly out of context by folks such as some of the posters in this thread who seem ready to leap on anything which vilifies the right wing regardless of any actual facts on the matter.

We have no idea what this guy's motivations were; only that what little evidence is visible right now certainly doesn't point to a "right wing" nutjob. Or is the Communist Manifesto a popular book in Tea Party circles?

-edited for punctuation-

[Anguirus]

^ That actually is more self-consciousness than I expected.

I have to admit that my first thoughts ran to right-winger because, you know, the right-wing propaganda machine has in fact been trying to make me afraid of their guns and craziness (see the stuff earlier in the thread). Also, she's a Democratic politician in Arizona. But I bit my tongue, and it does indeed seem like this guy was just wacked.

As soon as I read that she was a Blue Dog, it occurred to me that a left-wing wacko could also find sufficient motivation to go after her. But it doesn't look like it's that simple either.

I'm glad that she's alive and that her prognosis is good, and am very upset by the deaths. I hope this is an isolated incident, and that we never experience turmoil like in the late '60s again.

[Bernkastel]

This is quite sad. At least Giffords survived the attack, which is really the only good news on this. The fact that this has happened at all and yet not be that shocking as news saddens me.

[Broomstick]

I'm glad that she's alive and that her prognosis is good, and am very upset by the deaths. I hope this is an isolated incident, and that we never experience turmoil like in the late '60s again.

^ This.

I'm just old enough to remember the last time assassination was a political tool in the US. I don't want to go back there. It's very ugly.

[Darth Raptor]

I'll say again, you can't discern much from that list of books beyond "whee look at me I'm literary".

[Aaron]

I'll say again, you can't discern much from that list of books beyond "whee look at me I'm literary".

Yeah, anything on his motivation would be shaky at this point. He's probably left a note or something that will come out and perhaps shed light on things.

[Rye]

Not sure if this has been posted yet:



Supposedly from Palin's Twitter today that was scrubbed. (credit to Lonestar via Facebook).

I don't know why they even bother cleaning up this sort of stuff anymore. On the web, there is no delete.

Wasn't today, it was back in March. http://twitter.com/sarahpalinusa/status/10935548053

[Akhlut]

I'll say again, you can't discern much from that list of books beyond "whee look at me I'm literary".

Yeah, anything on his motivation would be shaky at this point. He's probably left a note or something that will come out and perhaps shed light on things.

Well, he was captured alive, so he might still be able to tell us why he did it. Not like he has much of an alibi.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The shooter is a random nutjob; from his youtube channel it's pretty clear he has no clear political convictions outside of a general hatred of The Man. He lists everything from Meine Kampf to The Communist Manifesto in his selection of favorite books. If he's some sort of murder-robot programmed by Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and protected by the new conservative Congress, there's certainly no evidence of it.

Yeah, he seems to be generally anti-government. He went on about political leaders being elected because of their "currency" and said things about how people ought to distribute their own "new currency." He also referred to Giffords' district as being "mostly illiterate." So . . . yeah, he probably had something against Giffords and decided to try to assassinate her in creating his new political "currency."

[Aaron]

Good point. For some reason I thought he was dead.

Wasn't today, it was back in March. http://twitter.com/sarahpalinusa/status/10935548053

Whoops. As I was.

[Lonestar]

Whoops. As I was.

She tried to scrub it today, she didn't post it today,