"A crazed loner, an old story, and a harsh political climate
The latest in a rogue’s gallery of misfits, mental cases, and crazed zealots to turn gunman. That fact alone suggests that the usual questions — about why he never got treatment for his mental problems and how he had access to guns — are still good ones. And yet the shooting spree, for which Loughner is the main suspect, was aimed at a congresswoman in a state wrestling with political extremism, and occurred in a country where many people, including the intended victim, fretted about how dangerously the rhetoric of violence has entered mainstream discussion.
Yeah, I get war-promoting lies in my newspaper every day, what is your point?
And if he is the main suspect that means there is more, right?
Loughner’s Internet postings suggest that he was hunting for scapegoats — and seeking panaceas — on the fringes of the political spectrum, from the “Communist Manifesto’’ to “Mein Kampf.’’
Yeah, what's a right-wing Tea Partier doing with those books?
What is a commie doing with a copy of Mein Kampf?
Kid was a self-hating commie?
Here and there he touched on conspiracy theories of the moment, including rants about currency and endorsement of the gold standard.
When the AmeriKan media starts throwing that word around you know you have hit a nerve.
The breadth of his political furies serves as a useful reminder that there is no single repository of extremism, and that faltering minds will journey into the far reaches of the political universe to feed their cracked fantasies.
And yet that doesn’t fully explain why such minds turn violent, and how they choose their targets....
Here are a couple of clues:
PNAC
A Clean Break
Recognize anyone, readers?
In a culture less conducive to the fantasies of unstable minds....
Like Saddam's nooks?
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Related:
"Internet postings and material investigators said they found at Loughner’s home suggest that he had prior contact with Giffords and might have been planning the rampage....
Why isn't the media investigating or reporting that like the blogs?
a social outcast with almost indecipherable beliefs steeped in mistrust and paranoia.
That record has been soooooo played!
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And CONSIDER THIS:
"Government commits violence against the innocent on a daily basis. In foreign lands, hundreds of thousands have died in the last decade, in a killing spree unleashed by the U.S. government in response to 9/11. On the local level, police frequently brutalize the accused and taze, beat and shoot innocent people. The TSA has become an agency of routine sexual molestation. In detention centers at home and abroad, the criminal justice system has become an accessory to mass rape and gang violence. The feds commit torture.
Yet rarely do people suggest that gun control is the answer to these atrocities. And of course, what would that even entail? Disarming the police? That would be part of it, yet even that would not suffice, for so long as there is political power at all, we can say that Mao was right that it flows from the barrel of a gun. Government is institutionalized violence.
The state will necessarily abuse the coercive tools we allow it to have. The overwhelming majority of private individuals, however, will use guns responsibly, and in many cases defensively. Violent private criminals can never be stopped with gun control, which only empowers the state and predators, both private and governmental, while disarming the victims. Despite all these truths, a truly terrible crime as the one that occurred in Arizona is used to bolster the case for tipping the scales of power further toward those who do not feel bound by the law.
--MORE--"
Yes, the gun-grabbing legislation is being prepared on Capitol Hill as I type.
"Few words as suspect faces court; Lawyer may push to have Ariz. case moved" by Marc Lacey, New York Times / January 11, 2011
Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the FBI, traveled to Tucson to oversee the shooting investigation at Obama’s request. He said Sunday that agents were trying intensively to determine “why someone would commit such a heinous act and whether anyone else was involved.’’
Yeah, sure.
Mueller added that discussions were underway to increase security for all members of Congress.
Capitol security agencies are planning to join the FBI tomorrow in a security briefing for members of Congress....
--more--"
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Raising Arizona
The Arizona Agenda
Did I call the media agenda or did I call the media agenda?
"Most from Mass. refuse more security" by Mark Arsenault, Globe Staff / January 11, 2011
WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner has asked the Capitol Police and the FBI to provide a security briefing for members tomorrow. Representative James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, has called for more spending on security for Congress members, who, except for top leaders, do not generally have security details in their home districts.
Aren't taxpayers paying for enough already?
Oh, sorry, party members need protection, sig heil.
Some lawmakers were taking measures into their own hands. At least two representatives, Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat, have said they planned to carry guns at events in their home districts.
“It’s very scary, but that’s just kind of the reality of the job at this point,’’ Shuler told WLOS-TV, adding that he has occasionally carried a gun since a threat was made in 2009. He also encourages his staff to be trained in firearms.
He said he would not carry a weapon in the District of Columbia. The Capitol Police provides security for members on Capitol Hill.
Security has gradually increased in Washington over many years in response to terrorist attacks.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Pennsylvania Avenue was permanently closed to traffic in front of the White House, and rings of protective pylons were placed at key buildings to deter truck bombs.
Related: Oklahoma City (about 16 minutes in, run time 30 mins)
Since the anthrax attack of 2001, congressional mail has been screened off-site, causing long delays in delivery.
See: The Anthrax Attacks and the AmeriKan MSM
The FBI and the US Capitol Police have documented a surge in threats against lawmakers, up 300 percent in the last year alone, said Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, in a statement. “We want more citizen participation in our democracy, but we also must ensure that parents feel safe bringing their children to town hall meetings,’’ said Kerry....
--more--"
Also see: Giffords wrote to Harvard, seeking dialogue on civil discourse
Passionate Arizona gun culture, permissive laws stand out in US
It’s not the violence; it’s the insurrection
What’s senseless is our tolerance for guns
Political overtones, but mental illness underneath
Yeah, about what is underneath:
Also see: Giffords wrote to Harvard, seeking dialogue on civil discourse
Passionate Arizona gun culture, permissive laws stand out in US
It’s not the violence; it’s the insurrection
What’s senseless is our tolerance for guns
Political overtones, but mental illness underneath
Yeah, about what is underneath:
"WE know there has been an epidemic of suicides and pointless acts of violence associated with prescription mood-altering drugs. We also know that Jared Loughner was being "encouraged" to seek psychological help by his school. What we cannot confirm yet is whether he was on psych meds, but given the reported dramatic change in his personality in those last few weeks, coupled with the obvious weight gain, it is an aspect of the case that should be resolved before we start blaming Republican-Democratic-Tea-Nazi-Gay-Spacealiens for the tragedy."-- Wake the Flock Up
Updated: STORY CHANGES AGAIN! Doctor: Giffords likely shot in front of head, not back
"Shades of JFK's throat wound! This was a 9mm round, and even if it were FMJ it is going to be obvious where the entrance and exit wounds were. They would be unmistakable, especially from the bone splinters visible in a skull X-ray. This idea that they mistook the bullet path is simply unbelievable. We cannot trust anything coming out of the official story from this point on." -- Wake the Flock Up
Speaking of the official story:
"Dear Rachel Maddow
As of last night, you have lost me forever as a viewer, nor will I be inclined to direct the readers of my own blog (a not inconsiderable number of people) to yours.
I watched you shamelessly exploit the tragedy in Arizona to serve the gun-grabber agenda, gleefully dancing on the bed of Gabriella Giffords in your haste to claim that machined metal, and not a deranged boy, committed this heinous crime.
I would caution you to be careful in the rush to exploit this shooting for political gain. Too many apparatchiks have already been embarrassed by this event. Liberals who tried to link Jared Loughner to the Tea Party hoisted with their own petard when Loughner’s YouTube web page listed the Communist Manifesto as a “favorite” book; hardly conservative book-of-the-month club fare. Likewise, the ADL’s attempt to describe the shooting as motivated by anti-Semitism fell apart on reports that the Loughner family is Jewish, and that Loughner’s mother attended the same synagogue as Gabriella Giffords herself. As actual facts emerge about Loughner, from the psychological review ordered by his school to the strange altar with a skull in his back yard, it is clear that mental illness, not politics, lay behind the shooting. Jared Loughner worked for Gabriella Giffords for two of her campaigns. There was a personal relationship between the families and between the individuals. Even Loughner’s friends are saying he was not really political at all.
Was Loughner unhappy with the US Government? Probably. Which puts him clearly in the majority opinion these days. Unless one lives in Washington DC or Wall Street, where life looks pretty good, it is easy to see this nation is not being managed very well at all. It must be remembered that a prime motivation for the firing of the previous management was to escape the enslavement of private central banking, and in the nearly 100 years since the re-enslavement of the American people to the private Federal Reserve, we are reminded of why King George III’s Currency act so enraged the American colonists, and why the two previous US Banks had to be disbanded.
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. We are no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -- Woodrow Wilson 1919, commenting on his signing of the Federal Reserve Act
"Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God, I will rout you out." -- Andrew Jackson, as he prepared to shut down the Second Bank of the United States. In 1835, an unemployed painter, Richard Lawrence, attempted to shoot President Jackson twice, with both pistols failing to fire. Lawrence gave as his reason for the attack that with the President dead, money would be more plentiful, an obvious reference to Jackson’s shutting down of the Second Bank of the United States.
Oh, to have leaders of such moral courage today in these dark times!
Certainly it is clear that no shooter with an extended magazine, or for that matter a terrorist with a nuclear bomb, could lay waste to so many American lives as Wall Street and Congress have done in the decade since the repeal of Glass-Steagal. One need only look at the crumbling infrastructure and lost manufacturing to see that this country is on a wrong track. There seems to be ample money to bail Wall Street out of the consequences of the fraudulent mortgage-backed security bubble (roughly $14 trillion so far) but little money for schools and hospitals. US roads are being allowed to return to dirt and gravel for lack of funding, yet US taxpayer dollars pay for new paved Jews-only roads in the West Bank. We are losing the wars we are already mired in, yet Washington DC salivates over which land to invade next. We are in the middle of WW3, suffering a wartime economy, and we are losing this one through chronic mismanagement. Anyone who thinks this government is doing a good job for the people is delusional.
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” -- The Declaration of Independence
As for the guns, I found your comment about target shooting and hunting wholly inappropriate. This issue is not about sporting arms. It never was. Kindly re-read the Second Amendment.
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
It speaks of militias and security and free states. Clearly, the arms being reserved to the people are military arms, not sporting or hunting weapons. Indeed, in the days when the Constitution was being created, hunting arms were a given fact of life whose possession was beyond question. When General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm seized Fort William Henry in 1757, the colonial militia were allowed to take their weapons with them, lest their families starve in the coming winter. So hunting weapons were never an issue in those times. It was only the possession of military weapons by the people that was under debate, and of course it was the government’s attempted seizure of the citizens’ military weapons that triggered the battles of Lexington and Concord.
The reason for the Second Amendment has nothing to do with target shooting and hunting. It is the recognition of a very unpleasant reality that the Founding Fathers of this nation knew all too well. All governments tend towards corruption and oligarchy. No matter how perfectly a political system is set up, it is doomed to eventually fail, because political power attracts the very sort of people who should never be allowed to have it. Even Thomas Jefferson himself predicted that his daring experiment in representative government would only last a century before the people would have to tear it down and create something newer and better.
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." – Thomas Jefferson
The First Amendment reserves to the people the right and the moral duty to warn the government when the government is not representing the best interests of the people. The Second Amendment stands ready if the government fails to heed that warning. That was the stated intent of the people who created this nation.
“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” – Thomas Jefferson
Do I approve of the shooting in Arizona? Of course not. But as shocked by the shooting as I may be, I find myself utterly disgusted at the apparatchiks waving the bloody sheets around as battle flags for their own particular causes. In your case you blame guns. But if guns were banned (which has never worked) people unhappy with the government always have other means. When Joe Stack decided to attack the IRS, he used an airplane (as a side note, it turned out that Stack had been right all along and the IRS had unfairly cheated him). The Bath School Disaster, the worst school mass murder in US history, did not even involve guns at all.
And if Americans angry at Congress, or at the banks engaged in a firestorm of fraudulent foreclosures, resort to firearms as the court of last resort, should blame not go to that government which has set the social example? For the last two decades the lesson we see every day in the TV news is that if someone doesn’t do as you tell them to, you shoot them. Shoot the Iraqis. Shoot the Afghani. Shoot the Pakistani, Shoot the Yemeni. Even now the US Government is trying to add Koreans and Iranians to this gruesome goulash. Daily we are deluged by TV commercials from military recruiters that portray instant mass death as a video game. What message does that send to mentally unstable young men with skulls on display in their back yard? If you want gun control, let us start by controlling the biggest gun-murderer of all!
I think that maybe success has spoiled Rachel Maddow. The world must look very pretty from inside your TV studio. From here where I do my own daily radio show I look down on a homeless encampment. 1/3 are veterans. Many are woman and children. The only notice the government gives to them is to make sure the few tourists able to stomach TSA fondling at the airports don’t have to look at them.
I think that maybe your life has become a bit too sheltered, and that before you start condemning other people’s concerns about life in the United States, that you need to get out there into the back roads and take a long walk around the place to see what is really going on and why people are so angry right now.
Because based on your comments last night, you don’t have a clue.
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I have not watched any cable news shows in months, and I never watch cable or network news anymore. My lone prism into the corporate media is the Boston Globe.
