March 21-26, 2010
Congress passed the Affordable Health Care for America Act on Sunday, March 21, 2010. That night, the Pima/Swan office of Congresswoman Giffords was vandalized. On Thursday, 3/25, Sarah Palin posted her now infamous "Take Back the 20" map featuring cross hairs targeting 20 members of Congress who supported the bill. The map made me sick, and convinced that this was the sort of thing that would get people killed, I posted Retreating, Reloading, and Aiming. That Friday, 3/26, conservative and former Palin supporter Elizabeth Hasselbeck addressed Palin's map on The View.Later that same day, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords spoke to MSNBC about the vandalism, the increasingly violent rhetoric, and Palin's cross hairs. The video below offers the full five minute interview, not the one cut to the brief remark about the map. The video says A LOT.
posted by x4mr at 12:15 AM
8 Comments:
Sarah Palin has a released a video. She's had four days to prepare and obviously people put time into writing it. What does it do? It accuses those who have criticized her of "blood libel."
It is a well known fact that Giffords is Jewish.
Unbelievable.
If this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out.
Sharron Angle 2010
I condemn all acts of violence.
Sharron Angle 2011
Excuse me while I go throw up.
Imagine a world where Sarah Palin just simply apologized for her use of gun rhetoric and images in the last election.
Oh, yeah, that's right. Sarah Palin does not live in a world where she could be wrong, accountable, or responsible for anything. Yet, she thinks she could be the leader of the free world.
Sarah Palin is all about money and right now she thinks she is defending her meal ticket. Since resigning as Alaska's governor she has made over 20 million dollars doing what she does. She's certainly not going to stop now. She is going to use the whole event, the massacre here in Tucson, as another opportunity to generate publicity for herself, speaking engagements, TV interviews, and so on.
I hope that her "popularity" has peaked and that she is on the downward slope of the curve. And I hope that it is a precipitous decline straight down to the bottom.
Tucson Tea Party co-founder, Trent Humphries, explains how the Tea Party is also a victim of the Arizona shootings.
Gabe was my friend, and I am only now starting to accept what happened on Saturday. I'm really going to miss him.
I think it is pretty screwed up that this has turned into political finger pointing though. Somehow I expected better from people, although I don't know why. The son of a bitch that did this was simply delusional, and there is nothing I have seen to suggest any sort of connection to a larger political movement. I mean seriously, half-assed ramblings about literacy rates and currency? Are we really having this discussion?
Face it folks, sometimes the world is just as senseless and fucked up as it looks.
Dustin,
I am really sorry that you are among those who lost a personal friend in Saturday's massacre. From what I have read about Gabe Zimmerman, he must have been an exceptionally good person who truly wanted to make a positive difference in his community. And God knows that this community needed him and probably about 100,000 more just like him. His untimely death is a tragic and devastating loss.
I do not think there could be any argument that could contradict that the shooter is a person with serious mental health issues. But, sadly, it is very often an act of senseless violence against innocent people by a deranged individual that motivates us to examine the surrounding circumstances in our search for the cause. And, oftentimes, things are revealed that may not have a direct causal link with the act of violence, but are so egregious that they must be addressed.
We know that there have been threats against both Gabrielle Giffords and Raul Grijalva that occurred several months prior to the midterm elections. Grijalva has stated in at least one interview that the threats against him have been constant since he attempted to bring national recognition to SB 1070 by supporting the boycott of Arizona. These do not get reported, and what we read in the daily news or see on TV just scratches the surface of what is really going on. Sheriff Dupnik has more information than the average citizen, and that is why he said what he did about the vitriol and the hate.
If we could just stop for a moment and think as though we are the sane and reasonable people, we should never have allowed Sarah Palin to get away with publishing a map of the US with gun sights positioned on congressional districts with a list of names of those being targeted. We should not have tolerated her inflammatory rhetoric advising her supporters to “reload.”
Each of those names on that map represents a real person, a person with a family, friends, constituents, and a life in a democratic and free society. These were people who grew up in our communities, went to school, worked, got married, had families, and at some point made a decision to offer their services to the people of their districts. Every name on that list was a democratically elected representative of the people.
For all we know, Jared Laughner may never have seen Sarah Palin’s horrific map. It makes no difference at this point because an assassination was attempted and innocent people were murdered and injured. There will be an investigation and a trial. Everything that is even remotely related will be dissected. And, hopefully, we will see in all of this that there were multiple paths to tragedy. Since we cannot predict the path that might be taken, it is in our best interest to control the things that we are able to, and to not turn away when we see that things are getting out of hand.
Sadly, tragedies are often associated with profound moments of truth.
Liza,
I hope you are right about Palin's popularity circling the drain. She addresses only her core audience of rural, uneducated crazies, and doesn't even attempt to reach out to Mainstream Humanity. That's not a formula for electoral success on a national level.
I don't believe she really wants to be President. She doesn't want to accept the paycut of being elected President, and I think even she knows it's not a job she really wants to have to do. The status appeals to her, but not the work.
Her favorability rating is down to 22%, and many notable Republicans opted to stay silent on her tasteless blood libel speech.
Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, is joining the race, and he seems like a potentially formidable force among the R's. She wouldn't beat him for the nomination, I don't think.
I know Gabby Giffords, but not Gabe or the other folks who lost their lives.
It has been striking how many interconnections have become apparent in the last week as people disclose their relationships with the victims. For example, Joe Higgins at "Wake Up Tucson", was married by Judge Roll, and his mother worked for the judge.
Tucson has done well the last week to represent itself as a community where people care about each other, not simply as a breeding ground for gun-toting crazies. I hope that Tucson can pull together not just to share our collective pain, but to move things forward towards greater prosperity and an improved quality of life.
Today a bipartisan bunch of Tucson elected officials held a press conference to pledge to work together in a civil manner. It included the flame-throwing state senator Frank Antenori, Raul Grijalva, Walkup, Ray Carroll, Steve Farley, Bruce Wheeler, Council Members Uhlich, Scott, and Kozachik, County Democratic Chief Jeff Rogers, Republican head Brian Miller, and others.
Good for them. Let's hope some of the extremists in Phoenix can honor that pledge as well. It would be nice if they didn't totally gut our school funding this year.
Robish,
Thank you for the kind words.
It is good to know that some of the community leaders agree that we have a problem that must be addressed and are making moves in that direction.
I hope that this becomes a sustained effort and that local media supports these leaders. It is going to be a very long road.
Imagine a world where Sarah Palin was/IS ignored.
That needs to start TODAY.
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