Gunman attacks political event in Tucson, 12 wounded.

[Themightytom]

There's an unconfirmed RUMOR.

I emphasize the word RUMOR, since it appears in only one source...

Anyway, the rumor has that Loughner was known to the Pima County Authorities because he recently had been making threats to people via telphone. The rumor further goes on to state that the PC Sheriff's office told the people who were getting the threats to not worry; that he was being managed by the local mental health authorities.

Granted, this is a rumor; but if it's even halfway true, it's even more damning of the whole system.

Shep you really don't have to damn the mental health aspect of the system. Nobody wants to assume liability for an unfounded accusation, nobody wants to pay for assessment or testing, nobody wants to pay for treatment, and the criminal system, and the mental health system come from ideologically incompatible perspectives.

You don't think someone telling Jared "Hey you're too crazy to go to school, so... go ahead and find a mental health counselor on your own, and figure out how to pay for it." wasn't the last straw for a guy who suspected some kind of conspiracy to alter perceptions?

[weemadando]

[Simon_Jester]

Man I need a flow chart just to try and figure out what this maroon is even trying to say. The Space travel one is the worst. Not only is his figures for temp colder then it's possible but he can't grasp the concepts involved in pressurizing a cabin and insulating it. By his logic, since it's 25 F outside my house the inside of the house should be at 25 F.
<snip>
I guess that's his winning debate strategy. Put together his statements in such a convoluted way that no one can refute it because they have no clue what he is trying to say.

Don't waste even a moment more trying to find some logic behind these rantings. I scanned some of the stuff in the links Sheppard posted for less than 2 minutes and even that was enough. On one of his social networking sites, this clown claimed to have studied "grammar" right? Well, he must not have studied very hard because his posts are riddled with sentence fragments, badly-chosen words and other grammatical nightmares. If he's as full of shit about that as he seems to be, it wouldn't surprise me if he's pulling the rest of this nonsense out of his ass.

Seconded.

I have, on one or two occasions, tried to understand what someone whose thoughts are this jumbled is saying. It's pretty much a waste of time, because when you're that fucked up in the head, the relationship between the ideas in your head and the words coming out of your mouth breaks down- and the ideas themselves may not be very clear either. Trying to nail down exactly what they're getting at, or what thought process went into it, is pretty much impossible.

I suspect that goes double for someone whose major malfunction involves a belief that language itself is some kind of tool of control that's being used to oppress people, and who believes himself to be smarter and more enlightened to you. How much obligation is a guy like that going to feel about things like making sense?

Some mental illnesses that lead to delusions may leave the subject lucid enough that you can understand, in a causation sense, why they became convinced that something insane is true. Others don't, and I'm pretty sure Loughlin's case is one of those.

[NDR-113]

I was impressed that a woman, Patricia Maisch, grabbed at the gunman's magazine as he attempted to reload. Although the people who wrestled him to the ground were men, it goes to show you that physical strength is not the only measure of heroism.

[bobalot]

You forgot, Republicans and their Tea-Party fellow travelers are immune to hypocrisy.

I think the best summation was brought up by this poster of reddit.

And more to the point, it still matters. You don't even have to live in the states to feel the sheer vitriol coming out of its politics.

There are no pro-intervention liberals anymore. There are communists hell bent on destroying America

There are no congressmen who are 'soft on defence' anymore. There are traitors.

Gay/Equal rights? How about destroying the American family and/or military?

The sheer hyperbole in US political rhetoric is unbelievable. And most of it is coming from the right. You can point to a stray dailykos article or comment on a blog, but you cannot point to a single democrat national figure who doubts the other side's citizenship. You cannot point to a single democratic national figure who has called for 'second amendment remedies' or any other euphemism for an overruling of democracy with violence.

And it doesn't matter in the fucking slightest whether Loughner had attended those rallies or not. The tea party, Palin, and right wing radio HAVE ginned up violent rhetoric, and anyone who is unhinged and has even a cursory interest in politics will pick up on it.

So please, cut the crap. It doesn't matter if Loughner went to a rally or not. When Limbaugh talks about an imminent internment of US citizens, when Palin talks about death panels and when Beck talks about the collapse of US currency, crazy folk will take it literally.

[MKSheppard]

Granted, this is a rumor; but if it's even halfway true, it's even more damning of the whole system.

Partial confirmation of the rumor HERE

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik would not confirm Loughner is the suspected shooter. He said the person arrested for the shooting is uninjured and uncooperative.

The suspected shooter has made death threats before and been contacted by law-enforcement officers, but the threats weren't against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Dupnik said. The suspect is unstable, Dupnik said, but the sheriff would not say he is "insane."

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I was impressed that a woman, Patricia Maisch, grabbed at the gunman's magazine as he attempted to reload. Although the people who wrestled him to the ground were men, it goes to show you that physical strength is not the only measure of heroism.

One of the guys who wrestled Loughner had been shot in the head.

'Man of action' helped capture Giffords' suspected shooter
Posted: Updated:
Bill and Sallie Badger Bill and Sallie Badger

By Mark Stine - email

Tucson, AZ (KOLD) - Bill Badger, who was at Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords event Saturday morning and nearly lost his life, considers himself lucky.

"There was just a series of shots and I heard the shots and my first reaction was a firecracker, they were extremely loud," Badger explained.

When those shots started, Badger was in the back of the line of about 20 people he says were waiting in line to meet Giffords.

"He'd already shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords and was shooting the people sitting in the chairs, coming right towards where I was standing. Everybody was hitting the sidewalk and I turned to my left and started to drop and I felt the stinging in the back of my head," Badger said.

That sting was a bullet. Injured and bleeding, Badger gathered the strength to fight back.

"The shooting stopped and I raised up and didn't realize it, but he was right beside me. Right in front of me. And I got to my feet and one of the individuals who was there to see her was on the other side of the walkway, you know, right where he was walking and that individual took a folding chair, folded it and hit him on the back of the head and he moved his head forward so much of the blunt of it came right on the shoulders of his back and when they did that his left arm came out and it was my opportunity.

"I grabbed his left arm and started to twist it back and grabbed him on the shoulder with my right hand another individual grabbed his right hand and together we pushed on him and he went right down on the sidewalk."

With blood dripping from his face, he held on to the shooter until deputies arrived.

"I had a hold of his throat and the guy on the other side had his knee right on the back of his neck, and every time he would struggle, I would squeeze his throat and the guy would put pressure on the back of his neck."

Once his hands were free, he was able to tend to his own gunshot wound and take in what had just happened.

"I stood up and looked to my right when all these people were laying, very badly, most of them unconscious or so laying there at my feet. It seemed like everyone had a mate trying to revive the other one."

When paramedics arrived and started transporting patients by helicopter, Bill called his wife.

"Bill called and said 'I'm shot, I'm shot' and I said 'What do you mean?' It was simply surreal," Sallie Badger explained.

She quickly made her way to the St. Mary's Hospital to see her injured husband.

"I didn't see the wound on the back of his head, I saw his entire face covered with blood, pouring down one side of his face," she told us.

After hearing his tale, Sallie said it didn't surprise her at all.

"The only thing that would have surprised me, is that if he would not have done this. Bill is a man of action."

It was, apparently, a flesh wound . . . but still.

[Darth Raptor]

Shep you really don't have to damn the mental health aspect of the system. Nobody wants to assume liability for an unfounded accusation, nobody wants to pay for assessment or testing, nobody wants to pay for treatment, and the criminal system, and the mental health system come from ideologically incompatible perspectives.

This incident looks pretty bad for boys who want to hold on to their toy gun collection. The aim is, I assume, to to make it look slightly less sick and wrong that Loughner was able to effortlessly murder people with a thing he bought at a store.

[Mr Bean]

You missed the best part of the entire exchange there.
The shooter got clobbered with a metal folding chair, all those hours of watching WWF payed off it seems.

[Patrick Degan]

Today, Capt. Oxycotin reacted in about the way you could expect.

Some people really don't know just when to shut the fuck up.

[MKSheppard]

Some more fun factoids:

Link

Jared Loughner's behavior never reported to mental health authorities: official
By Brigid Schulte

Despite mounting concerns about his bizarre and disturbing behavior, local mental health authorities in Pima County, Ariz. said Monday that no one reported any concerns to them about Tucson mass shooting suspect Jared Lee Loughner.

Loughner is accused of shooting 20 people on Saturday, killing six and wounding 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D).

"To the best of our knowledge, he was never and is currently not enrolled in our system," said Neal Cash, president of the Community Partnership of Southern Arizona, the organization that provides mental health services to Tucson and Pima County for the state.

The majority of the people they serve are on Medicare, Cash said, but anyone diagnosed with a serious mental illness would be in their system and eligible for services. Despite severe cutbacks in the state mental health budget as a result of the foreclosure crisis and recession - Cash estimates around $50 million has been cut in the last two fiscal years - he said that no one diagnosed seriously mentally ill has been turned down for services.

Arizona has what is considered one of the most progressive mental health laws in the country. Any person, including any of the students in Loughner's classes who exchanged worried emails about his strange actions or any of his teachers who sought to have him removed or who wanted him to receive treatment, could have petitioned the court to have him evaluated for mental illness.

Unlike other states, which require that someone be an imminent danger to themselves or others before seeking to have them involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation and treatment, in Arizona, one need only be "persistently or acutely" ill.

State law defines that as someone who appears to be mentally ill, but who may not know it."Our crisis line is manned 24/7," Cash said. "Anyone concerned about his behavior could have called at any time. I have no information to indicate that anyone ever did."

[Aaron]

I wonder how many people actually knew about these services. I assume they would have signs and shite up at the school but...

[open_sketchbook]

I was impressed that a woman, Patricia Maisch, grabbed at the gunman's magazine as he attempted to reload. Although the people who wrestled him to the ground were men, it goes to show you that physical strength is not the only measure of heroism.

Yes, it sure is amazing that those wimminfolk can do things. I'm surprised she didn't have a sudden fainting spell and have the retire for the evening.
/Sarcasm

Really, is that a point that even needs to be made on a progressive site like StarDestroyer.net? Reading that comment left me... vaguely disappointed, for some reason.

Anyway, while the shooting itself is interesting, the reaction to it on the right has been very telling. I have no doubt they'll be back to their old language of aggression in a few weeks after everyone has forgotten about the shooting, because the democrats are better than to use this as political capital. Can you imagine how long we'd be hearing about it if some GOP politician had caught a bullet?

Actually, if you'll forgive my Canadian ignorance for a second, have their ever been any high-profile assassinations of Republican political figures? (I mean, other than Lincon) All the instances that come to my mind seem to be democrats.

Today, Capt. Oxycotin reacted in about the way you could expect.

Some people really don't know just when to shut the fuck up.

My god. I listened through this and felt nausiated by the end; his dishonest and stupid ranting was incredible to me. He honestly sounds more like a parody than anything else.

Though, I couldn't help but giggle at his constant chant of SHERIFF at the end of every sentance.

[MKSheppard]

Well, Reagan came very very close to dying. But close only counts in horseshoes and nuclear hand grenades.

[SirNitram]

In the stampede to declare the shooter a lone crazy, somehow untouched by the violent rhetoric across the country, we get a repeat of 'Diagnosing across internet and TV' from the Republican party.

Link

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday that, based on Internet writings attributed to a 22-year-old accused of shooting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), he believes Jared Lee Loughner is a paranoid schizophrenic.

Paul has a medical degree from Duke University. However, he was trained as an ophthalmologist and not a psychiatrist. Paranoid schizophrenia is a mental disorder.

“I looked at some of the writings of this young man, and from a medical point of view there’s a lot to suggest paranoid schizophrenia and a really sick individual,” Paul said on “Fox News Sunday.”

This is not the first time a Senate Republican has offered an off-the-cuff diagnosis in a politically charged climate. In 2005, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) weighed in on the case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman in a vegetative state whose family was battling over whether to end her life. Her feeding tube was removed later that year, and she died.

Frist, a heart and lung transplant surgeon, said that video showed she was not in a persistent vegetative state, as her doctors had ruled.

“I question it based on a review of the video footage, which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office. ... She certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli,” Frist said in a floor speech.

The self-certified eye doc libertarian is now qualified to make psych evals based on internet postings? I doubt it.

[SirNitram]

Sorry for two posts in a row, but this is kinda important:

Link

U.S. Rep. Danny Davis said his office received an e-mail threat on Sunday.

"It was some person who emailed one of my staff persons and said that 'Danny Davis is next,'" Davis said. Davis, a Chicago Democrat, said the Capitol Police and Chicago police have been notified.

Chicago police news affairs could not immediately confirm that a report of a threat had been filed with the department.

A spokeswoman with the Capitol Police did not immediately respond to a call and an e-mail tonight.

Davis said he would typically ignore such a threat, but a shooting Saturday that injured U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, killed six and injured 14, prompted him to be on alert.

"You know some things are cranks, some things are pranks. Some things you simply don't know about, but I think in this climate it pays to be as cautionary as one can be," he said.

Davis said the e-mailer is someone from Chicago who "operates around and in the community" and has been known to "do this before."

Bad news, no mistake. Frankly, these sort of things should be assumed real until proven to be pranks or cranks.

Link

Federal authorities have arrested a man accused of repeatedly making threats to Colorado U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet's staff.

The most recent threats allegedly came on Thursday, two days before a gunman in Arizona killed six people and wounded 14 others, including a congresswoman.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, John Troy Davis called Bennet's Denver office Thursday upset over his social security benefits and during the call said he, "may go to terrorism." He also allegedly said, "To get your attention, I will go down there and set fire to the perimeter," according to the affidavit.

During a call several days earlier, Davis, who lives in the metro area, told another Bennet staffer, "I'm just going to come down there and shoot you all," while complaining about social security benefits, according to the affidavit.

"Davis is well-known to the Senator's office as he has called frequently to complain about such benefits," the affidavit states.

During one call, according to the affidavit, Davis told a staffer, "I'm a schizophrenic and I need help." Bennet's staff had previously set up a hearing regarding Davis's Social Security benefits, but Davis did not attend, according to the affidavit.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained an arrest warrant for Davis on Friday, and a Colorado Bureau of Investigation record shows that he was nabbed that day. According to the CBI, Davis was also arrested in July on a drug charge that was subsequently dismissed.

The threats resulted in security being increased around Bennet's office and Denver home, according to the arrest affidavit.

Some good news. But the threats and violence are still roiling.

[Todeswind]

If we get really lucky they'll classify the tea party as a terrorist cell.

[MKSheppard]

The self-certified eye doc libertarian is now qualified to make psych evals based on internet postings? I doubt it.

Maybe if you had actually been reading the links to Loughner's internet postings, and reading the descriptions of how he was behaving that I've been posting....

...you'd also realize that yes, Loughner is fucked up.

The specific number in the DSM catalog that represents his fucked-up-ness...we can quibble over, however.

[Night_stalker]

Actually, if you'll forgive my Canadian ignorance for a second, have their ever been any high-profile assassinations of Republican political figures? (I mean, other than Lincon) All the instances that come to my mind seem to be democrats.

We had James Garfield, who was a Republican, and was killed in 1881. Then we had William McKinley back in 1901, but those were the few exceptions to the rule. Oddly enough, like you said, most of our assassinated politicians do seem to be Democrats...

[Lonestar]

Someone tried to kill Reagan.

[Isolder74]

Someone tried to kill Reagan.

And the guy was nuttier then a peanut plantation.

Someone tried to shoot Andrew Jackson and got beaten with a cane for his trouble. A woman tried to shoot Gerald Ford.

[SirNitram]

The self-certified eye doc libertarian is now qualified to make psych evals based on internet postings? I doubt it.

Maybe if you had actually been reading the links to Loughner's internet postings, and reading the descriptions of how he was behaving that I've been posting....

...you'd also realize that yes, Loughner is fucked up.

The specific number in the DSM catalog that represents his fucked-up-ness...we can quibble over, however.

I've been reading them. Maybe you could show me on your decoder ring, where in my post I said he was sane and collected. I'm criticizing the GOP, once again, having someone pretend to diagnose something they aren't qualifed for, and over an incomplete medium.

Or maybe you could just rail against me more, but I don't care.

[The Yosemite Bear]

two women tried to shoot Ford, and Ike got kidnapped by a bunch of Prueto Rican sepratists.

[Themightytom]

"To the best of our knowledge, he was never and is currently not enrolled in our system," said Neal Cash, president of the Community Partnership of Southern Arizona, the organization that provides mental health services to Tucson and Pima County for the state.

I should hope not, that'd kind of be a HIPPA violation to tell us if he were

The self-certified eye doc libertarian is now qualified to make psych evals based on internet postings? I doubt it.

That was so not even a psych eval. It was phrased as an opinion. It's not even a particularly insightful one (pardon the pun) so i think we can trust anyone with even a casual familiarity with diagnostic methodology. Given what he's basing it on, it's like saying "Based on his demeanor in the movie, marvin the android seems depressed."

I don't like the guy either man, but even a blind squirrel can find his nuts.

[Talhe]

And Richard Paul Pavlick tried to kill Kennedy in 1960 via suicide bombing.

Really, most of these political assassins don't seem to incredibly sane; that seems to be the grand unifier between them.