WTF is wrong with these people?

[999969999]

As these emails prove, these weren't the actions of a political zealot, these were the actions of a psychotic person...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/...ior-recor.html

Jared Loughner's behavior recorded by college classmate in e-mails
By David A. Fahrenthold
In early June, Lynda Sorenson, 52, had gone back to community college in Tucson in hopes of getting back on the job market. One of her classes was a basic algebra class--and one of her classmates was Jared Loughner, now identified by authorities as the man who killed six people and critically wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in a shooting rampage Saturday. Sorenson's e-mails to friends from last summer, provided to the Washington Post, reveal her growing alarm at Loughner's strange and disruptive
behavior in class.



From June 1, the first day of class:
"One day down and nineteen to go. We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I'm not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit. The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon."

From June 10:
"As for me, Thursday means the end to week two of algebra class. It seems to be going by quickly, but then I do have three weeks to go so we'll see how I feel by then. Class isn't dull as we have a seriously disturbed student in the class, and they are trying to figure out how to get rid of him before he does something bad, but on the other hand, until he does something bad, you can't do anything about him. Needless to say, I sit by
the door."

From June 14:
"We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast..."

The class's instructor, Ben McGahee, said in an interview Sunday that Loughner had been removed from class in its third or fourth week, because of repeated disruptions.

[devilsadvocate]

Rather than chipping away at everbody's Freedom of Speech and the Right to Bear Arms because of the actions of one nut, it would probably be better to look at what happened here.

Jared was a schizophrenic who fell through the cracks of the system. He was kicked out of his college due to mental health issues and ordered to not return until he had a psychiatric evaluation and a letter from the psyhiatrists stating he was not a danger to himself and other students and staff. Why was there no follow up with the Tucson Police Department and Terros (Arizona's mental health agency)?

You jumped to a conclusion with absolutely no evidence with your first post.

Your post after the one I quoted with the E.mails may very well point to a disturbed mind. What it doesn't rule out is other influences. A disturbed mind can be a political zealot mind as well. The two mixed together are when acts like this one become more likely. We do know so far that the congresswoman was the pre-planned target. I don't know if the rhetoric had anything to do with it, I don't know if it didn't. You seem to have made up your mind.

Who is talking about chipping away at freedom of speech?

BTW I'm still wondering how you connected my earlier post to blaming Jodie Foster for something.

[999969999]

"Jared Loughner is a product of Sheriff Dupnik’s office

with 44 comments

This is the report that Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has been dreading since the tragic event on Saturday January 8.

The sheriff has been editorializing and politicizing the event since he took the podium to report on the incident. His blaming of radio personalities and bloggers is a pre-emptive strike because Mr. Dupnik knows this tragedy lays at his feet and his office. Six people died on his watch and he could have prevented it. He needs to step up and start apologizing to the families of the victims instead of spinning this event to serve his own political agenda.

Jared Loughner, pronounced by the Sheriff as Lock-ner, saying it was the Polish pronunciation. Of course he meant Scott or Irish but that isn’t the point. The point is he and his office have had previous contact with the alleged assailant in the past and that is how he knows how to pronounce the name.

Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff’s Office was informed, his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County. Amy Loughner is a Natural Resource specialist for the Pima County Parks and Recreation. My sympathies and my heart goes out to her and the rest of Mr. Loughner’s family. This tragedy must be tearing them up inside wondering if they had done the right things in trying to manage Jared’s obvious mental instability.

Every victim of his threats previously must also be wondering if this tragedy could have been prevented if they had been more aggressive in pursuing charges against Mr. Loughner. Perhaps with a felony conviction he would never have been able to lawfully buy the Glock 9mm Model 19 that he used to strike down the lives of six people and decimate 14 more.

This was not an act of politics. This was an act of a mentally disturbed young man hell bent on getting his 15 minutes of infamy. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department was aware of his violent nature and they failed to act appropriately. This tragedy leads right back to Sherriff Dupnik and all the spin in the world is not going to change that fact."

[999969999]

Chipping away at the Freedom of Speech:




"Bob Schieffer: Giffords Shooter Motivated By 'Dangerous, Inflammatory Words'
By Noel Sheppard | January 09, 2011 | 18:36


24 hours after the senseless killings in Tucson, Arizona, liberal media members are still convinced Jared Lee Loughner was somehow motivated by inflammatory comments he recently heard or read.

Despite there still being absolutely no evidence that this is the case, CBS's Bob Schieffer concluded Sunday's "Face the Nation" making the same silly point (video follows with transcript and commentary):



BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: Finally today, we live, as we were reminded yesterday, in a dangerous, hair-trigger time when tempers always seem near the boiling point and patience seems a lost trait. Democracy’s arguments have never been pretty, but technology has changed the American dialogue. Because we can now know of problems instantly, we expect answers immediately. And when we don’t get them, we let everyone know in no uncertain terms. We scream and shout, hurl charges without proof.

Those on the other side of the argument become not opponents but enemies. Dangerous, inflammatory words are used with no thought of consequence. All is fair if it makes a point. Worse, some make great profit just fanning the flames.

Which wouldn’t amount to much if the words reached only the sane and the rational, but the new technology ensures a larger audience. Those with sick and twisted minds hear us too, and are sometimes inflamed by what the rest of us often discard as hollow and silly rhetoric. And so violence becomes part of the argument.

In an eloquent statement, the new Republican House Speaker John Boehner said yesterday’s attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. But it is much more. It is an attack on each and every one of us and our way of life. If elected officials cannot meet with those who have elected them without fear of being shot, if the rest of us allow such a situation to exist, then we are no longer the America that those who came before us fought and died to protect and defend. We must change the atmosphere in which this happened, and we can begin by remembering that words have consequence. Like all powerful things, they must be used carefully. More and more, we seem to have forgotten that.

In a segment about the meaning of words, Schieffer sure seemed not to understand many.

Exactly what definitive connection has been made to what happened Saturday and dangerous, inflammatory words? As there has yet to be one categorically factual and legally relevant revelation concerning Loughner's real motive, how does Schieffer or anyone else know he was incited by anything anyone said?

As Howard Kurtz observed on Sunday's "Reliable Sources," the man that shot President Reagan in 1981 was trying to impress actress Jodie Foster.

For all we know at this point, Loughner might have been trying to get Lady Gaga's attention. Or maybe he's despondent that Simon Cowell isn't returning to "American Idol."

Either of these possibilities at this point are just as likely as the reasons being offered by America's press the past 24 hours.

But somehow, despite there currently being absolutely nothing that has surfaced regarding what really drove Loughner to this heinous act, media members like Schieffer are convinced it had to be something to do with either a midterm elections strategy by Sarah Palin, or a comment made by a conservative talk show host.

Is this the state of journalism today? And how do these folks complaining about people being "inflamed by what the rest of us often discard as hollow and silly rhetoric" not understand that their wild, unfounded speculations concerning what set Loughner off fall into the very same category?

"We scream and shout, hurl charges without proof." "

You indeed do, Bob.

And with what Americans have witnessed on their television screens since the first shot was fired Saturday morning, folks have to be thinking all of these networks have been suddenly taken over by either the National Enquirer or TMZ.

On second thought, those tabloids would likely have done a far better job of presenting the facts concerning this horrible tragedy than what the so-called serious media have.

With this in mind, to all those using inflammatory rhetoric to discourage inflammatory rhetoric I say, "Physician, heal thyself."

[999969999]

Quote:

"

Hillary Clinton: Loughner Is "An Extremist;" Blames Shootings on "Crazy Voices" That "Get On TV"

Chicken status: Thoroughly fucked.

Allah collected up some particularly good quotes of the day on free speech, incitement, and desperate, blood-libeling Democrats.

Particularly hard-hitting and pointed is this WSJ essay from Glenn Reynolds. This is a serious read-the-whole-thing piece, as I really cannot quote all the cutting parts. It's all cutting.


American journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner's Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting "Allahu Akhbar!" the press was full of cautions about not drawing premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist terrorism. "Where," asked Mr. York, "was that caution after the shootings in Arizona?"
Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no waiting for the facts on Saturday. Likewise, last May New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and CBS anchor Katie Couric speculated, without any evidence, that the Times Square bomber might be a tea partier upset with the ObamaCare bill.

So as the usual talking heads begin their "have you no decency?" routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?

...

To be clear, if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America's political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?

Let us count this all up. The following people have been alleged, with hope in their black hearts, to be white conservative anti-government types:

1. The DC Sniper. FBI profiling said he was a white man (he wasn't; in fact he wasn't "a man") and the media ran with that. You couldn't miss the fact they desperately wanted him to be white (and Christian), which became particularly obvious when they refused to use his real, chosen, legal name -- John Allen Muhammad -- instead insisting on calling him by his original but no longer legal name, John Allen Williams.

2. The IRS Plane-Bomber. Joseph Stack was alleged to be an "anti-government extremist" (wink, wink) even though he quoted from the Communist Manifesto -- "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" -- and savaged capitalism in his suicide note. How the media played this is clever -- in news reports, they imply, but do not say, he was a Tea Party type ("anti-government extremist"); they don't say he's a Tea Partier so much as they drop the implication and leave that possibility open for the reader to infer. In opinion columns savaging the right for "hate speech," they cite Stack as an example of the consequences of such. They don't make their errors by direct statement, but they continue making the same error, deliberately, by unavoidable implication.

3. The Discovery Channel Shooter. In one bullet point out of 20 or so, he mentioned that he didn't like illegal immigrants filling the USA with additional dirty, carbon-dioxide creating people. The media seized on this and dubbed him an "anti-immigration extremist," overlooking the fact that the other 19 bullet points in his manifesto were all about environmental, not immigration, extremism, and in fact that he didn't just hate illegal immigrants' babies -- he hated human babies, period, and wished to see them all dead.

4. The Times Square Bomber, who, as Reynolds notes, was immediately dubbed a likely Tea Party by the "centrist" Michael Bloomberg.

5. The census worker hanged in the woods with the word "FED" not, in fact, written on him. He was killed, famously, by an anti-government Tea Party type. In fact, the census worker himself was the culprit -- he killed himself. But this story was barely reported after that, so in the minds of a large percentage of the public, he was in fact killed by a Tea Partier. (Note that the media isn't concerned with dispelling all myths -- they really want you to know that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii; but they don't really mind if you continue to believe the census worker was murdered by conservative conspirators.)

6. The Fort Hood shooter -- initial reports were pregnant with insinuation that this had been a poor white fellow, one of the guys John Kerry had said hadn't done well in school, so they went to Iraq, who'd gone off his nut. But more importantly, after the shooter's identity as an extremist Muslim had been outed, the media continued to speculate that it was the horror of war and not Islam which had animated him -- that is, that it was still the policies of the right which had driven him to kill. Chris Matthews infamously suggested that he had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder by proxy -- that he had gone mad from the horrors of war not by experiencing them himself (he was always safely stateside) but from hearing about such horrors from his patients.

Or, given that he would soon be deployed overseas, that he was suffering from pre-traumatic stress disorder -- a new psychological condition, minted by Dr. Matthews, postulating that people can go nuts do to the fear that, in the near future, they will be exposed to the horrors of Bush's War Machine.

And now:

7. An atheist (Satanist?) leftist pot-smoking 9/11 truther who apparently became obsessed with Rep. Giffords when she did not sufficiently respond to his concerns about government mind-control by use of grammar-- also, of course, animated by "hate speech" on the right.

Gee, you'd almost start to think there was some kind of Narrative going on here, with the media dead-set on who the Black Hat would turn out to be in every crime and every horror. And even when it's disproven, conclusively, that their patsies of choice were not in fact behind the crime, they continue to insinuate that we were.

Enough. Enough.

Note: You may be wondering when I'm going to do my own apologia on this score. I am aware, such is owed. I'm writing it; but it's a bit long and involved, and I decided I can't finish it during the day when headlines are supposed to come up rat-a-tat-tat, so I've put it aside and will finish it later.


Housekeeping: rdbrewer's been on fire in the headlines and asked, hey, why am I not a coblogger? Well, good question. So welcome him aboard.

And Incidentally... I'd bet money that he isn't a Satanist. That sounds like day-after media sensationalism to me; I bet the "shrine" isn't a shrine. He just likes skulls or something.

I can relate."

[devilsadvocate]

"Jared Loughner is a product of Sheriff Dupnik’s office

What the heck is that? a report or an internet rumor?

Chipping away at the Freedom of Speech:

How is that chipping away at freedom of speech?

Last post with all the crap in it- So there's speculation, you are guilty of that yourself. What exactly is your point?

[999969999]

"Heightened and "vitriolic" political rhetoric is being blamed by some for the kind of violence that landed Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in intensive care following a mass casualty shooting on Saturday, but others say a blame game is hardly appropriate or useful right now.

Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Dupnik sparked much of the debate during a press conference Saturday evening in which he blamed talk radio and television for a decline in America.

"I think the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business and what (we) see on TV and how our youngsters are being raised, that this has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in. And I think it's time that we do the soul-searching," the sheriff said.

On Sunday, Dupnik didn't back down.

"I think we're the tombstone of the United States of America," Dupnik said of The Grand Canyon State, which a day earlier he called the “Mecca” of hatred and bigotry. "To try to inflame the public on a daily basis 24 hours a day, seven days a week has impact on people, especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with."


1 "The sheriff out there in Tucson, I think he's got it right," Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., the assistant minority whip, told "Fox News Sunday." "Words do have consequences. And I think that we have to really -- this is nothing new. I've been saying this for a long time now."

"I think the sheriff was right," added Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"Bob, when you and I grew up, we grew up listening to essentially three major news outlets: NBC, ABC, and of course, CBS. We listened to people like Walter Cronkite and Eric Sevareid, and Huntley-Brinkley, and they saw their job as to inform us of the facts and we would make a conclusion," Hoyer said. "Far too many broadcasts now and so many outlets have the intent of inciting, and inciting people to opposition, to anger, to thinking the other side is less than moral. And I think that is a context in which somebody who is mentally unbalanced can somehow feel justified in taking this kind of action. And I think we need to all take cognizance of that and be aware that what we say can, in fact, have consequences."

Others suggested that the shooting that left six dead and 14 wounded is a one-off that can't be attributed to any logical explanation or current events.

"Our politics takes place in the halls of Congress and at the ballot box. It doesn't happen at a barrel of a gun. This is clearly an isolated incident," Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, told Fox News.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., who appeared with Clyburn, said she is not aware that alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner is tied to a political movement or engaged in a politically motivated act.

"You know, his favorite books are 'the Communist Manifesto' and 'Mein Kampf.' I think it's important that we recognize that this is an individual that had -- that has mental challenges, and we need to act appropriately in dealing with him and making sure that justice prevails here," she said.

Still, blame seems to be pouring out from all kinds of sources. FBI Director Robert Mueller said in a Sunday press conference that the "ubiquitous nature of the Internet" has made hateful information "much more readily available to individuals than it was eight or 10 or 15 years ago and that absolutely presents a challenge to us particularly as it relates to lone wolfs."

Mueller added that investigators are looking through Loughner's computer for indications of possible motives.

After news broke Saturday about the shooting, Republican Sarah Palin issued a statement offering "sincere condolences" to Giffords and other victims and said her family was praying for peace and justice.

But on Sunday, ABC reporter Dan Harris interviewed Facebook consumer marketing director Randi Zuckerberg, who said the top question being asked on Facebook is whether Palin is to blame for the violence. During the election season, Palin had written a post that used crosshairs on districts in a visualization congressional districts targeted for Republican takeover. In 2004, Democrats used bullseye targets in a similar appeal.

A Palin aide told USA Today that the sights used on the election map were not meant to represent the sights of a gun, and any suggestion otherwise is the work of political flame-throwers.

"This is a terrible politicization of a tragedy," former Palin aide Rebecca Monsour told the newspaper. "We don't know (the shooter's) motive. It doesn't seem like he was motivated by a political ideology. Craziness is not an ideology."

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who appeared Sunday on CNN, said it's the responsibility of those in public life and the media to "try to bring down the rhetoric."

"The phrase, 'Don't retreat; reload,' putting crosshairs on congressional districts as targets. These sorts of things, I think, invite the kind of toxic rhetoric that can lead unstable people to believe this is an acceptable response," he said.

Other politicians suggested the Tea Party movement is somehow responsible for the shooting, which elicited a fierce response from Judson Phillips, co-founder of Tea Party Nation, who issued a statement condemning attribution of the tragedy to heated political discourse.

"At a time like this, it is terrible that we do have to think about politics. No matter what the shooter's motivations were, the left is going to blame this on the Tea Party movement. While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died, we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City Bombing. Within the entire political spectrum, there are extremists, both on the left and the right. Violence of this nature should be decried by everyone, and not used for political gain," Phillips said.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., agreed that it's reckless to impute the motives of the shooter to any particular group of Americans who have their own political beliefs.

"What we know about this individual, for example, is that he was reading Karl Marx and reading Hitler ... That's not the profile of a typical Tea Party member and that's the inference that's being made," Alexander told CNN's "State of the Union."

"It's tempting to say this person's actions might have been a result of [another] person's comments, but I think we need to be very careful about imputing any of these actions on someone else," he said.

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a liberal firebrand, added that it's easy for some people in society not to make a distinction between words and actions, but talking to the shooter will help reveal his true motivations.

"Whatever this young man was responding to or whatever we find out ... one of the most interesting things here is that we have the shooter in custody and he's alive ... we're going to find out an awful lot about what's going on, but we've got to be careful about what we say to each other," McDermott said. "

[999969999]

"Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) reportedly plans to introduce legislation that would make it a federal crime to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a federal official or member of Congress.

Brady told CNN that he wants federal lawmakers and officials to have the same protections against threat currently provided to the president. His call comes one day after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot, along with 19 other people, at a public event in Tucson. A suspect is currently in custody.

"The president is a federal official," Brady told CNN in a telephone interview. "You can't do it to him; you should not be able to do it to a congressman, senator or federal judge."

Among the six people killed was federal Judge John Roll.

While it is unknown at this time whether the shooting was politically motivated, that has not prevented a vigorous debate about whether heated political rhetoric seen during the healthcare reform debate and during the 2010 campaign is inciting violence.

RELATED ARTICLES
•Federal district judge among those killed
•Chief Justice Roberts: Judiciary suffered 'terrible loss'
•Biden: 'Horrific act' beyond explanation
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has had to fend off a fresh round of criticism for a map posted on one of her websites targeting 20 congressional districts that voted for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2008 presidential election but had Democratic members that voted in favor of healthcare reform.

Critics originally took Palin to task for the apparent use of the crosshairs of guns to identify the districts. The controversy re-ignited Saturday after the shooting, since Giffords's district was included on the map.

Brady singled out the map as the type of rhetoric he opposed.

"You can't put bull's-eyes or crosshairs on a United States congressman or a federal official," he said.

However, a Palin spokeswoman denied Sunday that the image was intended to depict gun sights. Palin offered condolences to the Giffords family and other victims of the shooting on her Facebook page Saturday.

"The rhetoric is just ramped up so negatively, so high, that we have got to shut this down," Brady said.
"

[999969999]

"Jared Loughner is a product of Sheriff Dupnik’s office"
What the heck is that? a report or an internet rumor?

I knew you would hate that. Dupnik has a lot of explaining to do, doesn't he?

You can find it here: http://kfyi.com/pages/barry.html (Arizona talk radio)


Or here... (with comments) http://thechollajumps.wordpress.com/...upniks-office/

...

[devilsadvocate]

I knew you would hate that. Dupnik has a lot of explaining to do, doesn't he?

You can find it here: http://kfyi.com/pages/barry.html

About what exactly? Someone's opinion?

Newsflash. The sheriffs dept. doesn't decide who gets locked up in the loony bin. They can arrest and charge. That's it.
The man made a comment about vitriol being spewed on radio and TV. Seems some on radio and TV are protesting too much.

You keep posting crap and still haven't explained how "By my logic, Jodie Foster should have been held responsible for the shooting of Reagan." and who is chipping away at freedom of speech.

Red flags are flapping