For those who would like to see this chart placed next to the Sept. 11 chart and the progressions for Sept. 11 we have posted all three charts to this link.
Update: One of the surgeons in a news conference said that Rep. Giffords was out of surgery and that her prognosis was as good as could be expected. She was conscious despite her injuries prior to being operated on. Huffington Post is identifying Jahred Lee Longner, 22, as the shooter. They have posted the three text-only videos from his You Tube channel that will give you some insight into the workings of his mind. Here is that link. MSNBC is reporting a total of 19 shot, six killed.
Update: This AP report published by RSN is worth reading, as are the comments. Also notable, the child killed today in the assassination attempt on Giffords was born on Sept. 11, 2001.
[Based on Politico.com‘s report] — Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic representative from Arizona, was shot and critically injured this morning. She was hosting a public event outside a local grocery store.
Numerous other people were injured in the shooting, six of whom were killed, according to the Arizona Daily Star. This beings to a peak an increasingly vicious political environment in Arizona and seem to be a natural outgrowth of that atmosphere.
Giffords, who was first elected in 2006, was hosting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a supermarket when a man started shooting. A federal judge, John McCarthy Roll, was assassinated in the shooting. He was appointed by Pres. George H.W. Bush in 1991.
Giffords was taken to University Medical Center in Tucson, according to the report.
Twelve people were injured in the shooting shortly after 10 a.m. local time, according to Jason Ogan, a spokesman for the Pima Country Sherriff’s department. The police are sweeping the area for any other possible suspects and currently have one person in custody.
Giffords’ congressional office was a target of violence during the health care vote last year — she had a brick thrown through her window.
Just hours before the shooting, Giffords tweeted about the event. “My 1st Congress on Your Corner starts now,” she wrote just before noon Eastern time “Please stop by to let me know what is on your mind or tweet me later.”
The chart has the Moon in Pisces rising. The Moon is sextile Pallas Athene, which is the exact aspect at the moment the shooting occurs, indicating the political motive colored by some overwhelm, drugs or delusion of that accentuated the Pisces Moon.
The 8th ruler should give a motive — we find Saturn in Libra in the 8th, ruled by Venus in Sagittarius in the 9th. The shooter is going to turn out to be a religious fanatic who is targeting Democrats as being pro-abortion. One slightly ominous thing about this chart is the presence of the Great Attractor and Pholus at the very top — on the 10th house cusp. We need to do what we can to keep the ripple effect of this event down to a minimum.
Mystes – thank you for your kind, wonderful words. Let the healing begin.
Fe – I know that tomorrow I’ll be having to deal with my student’s questions and thoughts about this. I shall approach the day as best I can, and have constructive conversations with them about needless violence. Many of them have been abused in one way or another, and they know what pain it brings. I need to get them to see another way.
If I have to start somewhere, I’ll start with the next generation, for they shall fill our shoes soon enough.
Brendan, I haven’t physically been to Tucson in 20 years, but I traveled there extensively in lightbody when I was pregnant with my son, and several times since. This: “Today the largest employer is Raytheon missiles, which ought to tell you about the city’s karma.” wasn’t too surprising. It has been my experience that areas that carry a loving, restorative charge are heavily targeted. Austin is one, Portland another, I imagine Tucson has suffered the same general bombardment. It has also been my experience that the moderately-aware usually hold their ground, especially once the local Wisdoms get wind of the riffraff.
This is the subject of an entire essay, but suffice it to say I have traveled enough in the US and Mexico to have seen that it is consistent. We have one of the most powerful upwellings on the globe about 70 miles due west of here. It was clogged and broken –which meant that it had become a major source of malice– when some of the regional guardians found it in 1979 and began the long, slow process of bringing it back.
There are hot spots all over the Southwest like this: two that come to mind besides Tucson are Crestone and Durango. Crestone is doing better, but for a while there was a major military installation nearby that was using it for sound barrier practice. What that did to the subtle body of the place was just ghastly. I spent a week there, holed up in retreat in 2004, spackling as fast as I could.
Same period – I also found a really bad one about 40 kms east of Avignon in France.
Well… ‘bad’ — hmm… they are “bad” to the extent that they are magnificent when treated honorably.
Hang in there; weirder is better.
Lovelove,
M
Obama has sun in leo and moon in gemini.
Giffords has moon in leo and sun in gemini.
In the astral sense, since they are opposite gender,
this indicates they are both in the same astral matrix.
As Obama is now entering a 3 tro 5 month period of
transformation surrounded by the forces controlling accidents,
force majeure, etc., it is possible that Giffords took the “hit”
for Obama.
Seething for the need of a little love is what someone in Tucson conveyed to me on Thursday. The exact words were like this, “I just wanted to let you know how much it means to me that you are always so helpful and friendly. Anyone in DC (washington) that you talk to is like, ‘I am not friendly and you can’t make me be friendly.’ ” I swear there were tears in his voice. He was on my mind all day Friday and all of this weekend.
The violence is too much. I just wish everyone would get as indignant when illegal drugs are traded and sold, or when someone dies of an overdose. The ghosts are everywhere, and it is hardly to do with guns. has everything to do with a lack of love.
rucognizant – yes, ripe with metophor – the death of the Judge, the wounding probably with brain damage of the Politician, the Innocent Child with admirable aspirations now watching us from another place, the attacker mad with dissolutionment and on….
These are the “dark places” yes? – into which we reflect source light…
The death of Christina Taylor Greene, 9 year old girl……………..needs MUCH BIGGER coverage, not just an adjunct to a politician’s attempted assassination!………..
Christina, 9, just elected to her student council, just trying her fledgling wings into
participatory democracy.
Could mark the “death” of a youth movement on a much larger scale.
This past summer while stapling bunting & streamers to a truck to represent the town Democratic party in our annual parade……………….I looked around and realized; there we were…………..4 old ladies………all over age 65, sprier than most I admit but still……. I said to the others,”where are the kids?” In a town of 1,200. 200 of us Dems……where WERE the others? The kids are disinfranchized, disinterested, detached. don’t think they can make a difference.
I began talking up the idea of a Youth Civics Group with “carrots” to draw them in.
How to get funding for a DC trip? I grew up in NJ, 3 hours away from DC and we made school day trips there……………..Here in Maine a lot of these kids have never even been out of State, much less to DC. How do you make it REAL to them? I had the idea to initiate a computer generated newsletter ( Common Sense) or better still a regular Graphic Novel telling the REAL NEWS! Ideally they’d be so involved in the creative pro cess, the civics/history/political science could sneak in the back door ……………..
I found an interested organization already running an after school enrichment program
And I am going to a meeting tomorrow, to talk about setting it up.
But after yesterday’s shooting…….as a parent…. I would hesitate to send my child all the way to DC or even some local political event!
( Years ago my Daughter’s 6 grade teacher won a city wide essay contest that gave his class a spring week of camp/school in the country north of Philly. The other winner was a teacher from the “worst” school in the city, and none of the Mothers ( and they were liberals) was going to let their kids go. I did some pretty fancy talking and volunteered to go along as chaperone, a decent sized group relented and we went and had positively wonderful week, no problems at all……except that one of the kids tried fly casting with a hook on a string..caught my own daughter on the finger..and so I met the camp nurse, a delightful; young Black American, married to a lovely white man Art teacher whose Father a lawyer, defended one of the Black Panthers in court, and then brought him home for safekeeping that night…………………until he could be safely passed on to where he was headed. We remained close friends for several years until life inevitably sent us in all divergent directions.)
That was the 60’s, the Mothers all HAVE to work these days………………
People need water to survive. Arizona with all its green lawns is a physical wound as well as it steals water from the Colorado river, which no longer reaches the sea, so that a bunch of greedy humans can live in a sunny locale. That many people living in a desert seems to my energetic sensibilities to be a recipe for all kinds of psychic wounds. As I walked outside today the aftermath of a rainstorm left the air feeling clean and fresh. In places where it hardly ever rains it’s possible for humans to survive, but in such large numbers and with such toxic lifestyles, all that heat and cold, the extremes of temperature and the lack of moisture…I don’t know, it’s a feeling and not exactly scientific but I think it’s not good for humans to live that way. There’s not enough water to cleanse the emotional bodies of the inhabitants. Rather than watering lawns they could arrange the land to hold what little rain falls to grow plants that would shade the ground and encourage more rain to fall. A forest creates its own rain. The more plants that grow there, the more rain will fall there. Starving the fish that migrate from sea to river entangles your water with all sorts of bad vibes. And that’s without the ongoing electric media spectacle freaking most people out so a few people can make even more money.
Here’s some videos of permaculturist Bill Mollison describing dry land permaculture strategies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W15RRvKyJSk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIelsCmdTA8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIelsCmdTA8&feature=related
The little girl is from a well-known family in the world of baseball – one of the American Dreams, yes? To eat hot-dogs n apple pie and play baseball?
I think there is a lot of metophor to be found here. Not the least of which is that the real “victims” of our gloabal hatred crisis are our children – represented both by the pink-cheeked child who was killed and the disillusioned child who murdered her.
Brendan:
“I was four when JFK was killed, nine when RFK and MLK were killed. We so need to abandon this ugly strain of political violence in America. We need the light.”
You and I are in the same age bracket of the “psyche shock” that the Kennedy assassination was in the 1960s. It feels as if the defense mechanisms we’ve built up over the years to cope with that have been working on overload for far too long. Because of that, I feel I want to be forefront on that effort to insert words and thoughts that change the chemistry of the national dialogue, teaching by arguing the merits in a peaceful fashion.
“It is a pastiche of much that has been going wrong in America: a lack of mental health care, a surfeit of political vitriol, an impressionable young person, and yes, the tools to commit an act of extreme violence.”
These are strange days, chickens coming home. The work now is to make sure we don’t lose track of our collective memory and history. The lessons continue to be powerful from the 60s era where the last Uranus-Pluto aspect occurred, and as Rick Tarnas has said, those of us born or young and around that time are also destined to complete the cycle begun with that era.
So sayeth Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King Jr., and President Obama.
Morning Fe and all,
I’ve been slowly catching up to what has been said since late afternoon. I simply had to turn things off here, and escape for a while. I used to live not all that far from Gabby’s office in Tucson, now I’m somewhat further away but still in the district.
Tucson used to be much more peaceful, but the drug wars have changed all that the last ten years or so. As to a “Tombstone” style history, I’m not sure at all that it was like that ever. There was nothing to really get upset about in the old Tucson, no silver, no gold, no incredible wealth.
Native Americans have lived in the Tucson valley for upwards of 10,000 years, and the Spanish started western civilization there as we know it. It was mostly ranching and agriculture until way after the US showed up and found minerals all the state. Today the largest employer is Raytheon missiles, which ought to tell you about the city’s karma.
Tucson has long been considered a blue island in a sea of red, although that has also changed over the last 20 years. I would say it is now a bluish purple.
I’ve seen statements to the effect that the shooting shouldn’t be considered a political event: nonsense. If it wasn’t political, why was she targeted at all?
It is a pastiche of much that has been going wrong in America: a lack of mental health care, a surfeit of political vitriol, an impressionable young person, and yes, the tools to commit an act of extreme violence.
I was four when JFK was killed, nine when RFK and MLK were killed. We so need to abandon this ugly strain of political violence in America. We need the light.
Myst:
Doesn’t Tucson have a history of the cowboy-gunslinger-OK-Corral type of violence? You’re right. The place has developed a karma so deep a fissure has worn through to Darkmatterland.
One need not be a literal religious fanatic to display all those tendencies. The fervor we’re hearing about draws on the same qualities, and it stoked by the same sources.
So perhaps literally, no. But functionally, yes.
mystes, you reminded of this episode, i showed it in classes last spring because it gives some critical insight into the mentality of the area and people in such a state of mind. may we all find oUr power withIn. ♥☮♫
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/01/201015124739316797.html
Oh, Tuscon. Of course. As the news spread out, that key fact didn’t make it into my consciousness until now.
That city has a rather formidable psychic infection… a little worse than your average urban undertow. That’s one reason Doctress Neutopia http://www.lovolution.net/ has been assigned to that spot — and I know a few other people who come and go with panaceas in their pockets.
It’s not a creature that any of you will want to mess with individually, but this particular event might be seen as an incision on a very, very infected body. Pour seething love into the opening.
All yours,
Myst
from Olbermann’s special edition of Countdown (video at link):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/08/keith-olbermann-arizona-shooting_n_806311.html
“Left, right, middle – politicians and citizens – sane and insane. This morning in Arizona, this age in which this country would accept “targeting” of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended.”
…
He concluded his impassioned message with this powerful statement: “Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans.”
Smart pastor……….we all need to be doing somethimg pro-active, not reactive and sitting and crying or analyzing or judging…..talk is cheap
xoxoxox
Found this at Starlight News:
Rev. Peter Morales, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), issued the following statement on Saturday, January 8, 2011, in response to the day’s tragic events in Tucson, Arizona:
“I am shocked and profoundly saddened by the news of the shootings in Tucson. Our first response must be one of reaching out in love to the victims, their families, and friends. This is a time for embracing one another and helping each other find strength and solace.
I am also deeply disturbed and, frankly, angered that these acts of wanton violence occur repeatedly in America. These murders in Tucson should cause all Americans to reflect humbly, to look into our souls. Ours is a society in which such acts occur far too often. Sorrow and compassion when people are murdered are not enough. We must rededicate ourselves to creating a culture where differences are resolved without violence, where the mentally unstable do not have ready access to lethal force.
First, we must respond with acts of tenderness. Then we must join hands to create a culture where violence has no place.”
http://www.uua.org/news/newssubmissions/174795.shtml
The shooter was not a religious fanatic at all, if you watch his youtube videos you will see he was anti religion, anti belief and stated very clearly his beliefs on how he saw beliefs being created. He was tormented and in great fear by all he saw around him. He also knew that the US dollar is defunct, useless, a lie etc.
This is our younger generation raised in an atmosphere of war, violence and fear….quite profound this little girl’s life began the day the fear, violence and war really stepped up in the USA…….perhaps her death will be the thing to finally get people to wake up…..but I doubt it.
A child was shot at a supermarket today but in a celebrity obsessed country….it is the famous getting the press…..the politician and the judge……….
A child died today……a child……….an innocent child…..by another child raised in fear with a war mentality………..I have great compassion for both…….wake up american…..before its too late.
xoxoxoxox
Hear, hear, wandering_yeti, thank you for spelling that out so beautifully. I could not agree more with all your points. thank you thank you thank you.
This morning during the incident in AZ I pulled together a group of friends to practice in my neighborhood park for the first time. I’d been practicing there for months almost every day by myself. My friend Tony reminded me of a martial arts concept: no good nursing anger. All you do is poison yourself while hoping your enemy dies. We’ve got a whole country sick with anger as our empire comes apart.
I want to do whatever is necessary to be able to teach kids internal martial arts. The dominant culture doesn’t exactly provide anything in the way of real teaching on how to channel emotional energy. My friend Tony teaches kids who have emotional problems that mainstream teachers can’t deal with. Without people like Tony those kids would be left to their own devices or maybe simply shut down with drugs. Our culture’s anger has deep roots and the only way to pull the weed is to teach the children how to heal themselves and channel their emotions in healthy ways. Maybe if Laughran had a good martial arts teacher earlier in his life he wouldn’t have resorted to violence.
Internal martial arts are one of the best ways I’ve found to deal with the human capacity for violence in a way that doesn’t push it into the unconscious mind to make us victims or abusers when violence comes knocking. Rather than drugging our kids out of their minds we could make martial arts instruction easier to obtain. The discipline and relaxation leading to whole body power is the physical reflection of an integrated inner being whose heart is connected to root and head. Whole body power can’t be maintained in rage cause rage closes the path between head and heart. Whole body power comes with whole body orgasms. When the energy can circulate, it doesn’t stagnate and explode.
Music too. Walking with my other friend Adam after martial arts practice I ran into one of my elder music teacher friends. The gongfu of music, the art of gongfu. Easier access to good teachers of these things for all children. That’s the vision I’m holding in light of this tragedy.
Thank you ‘shebear13’ for the heads up.
I don’t normally recall me dreams but this entire week past i’ve been pounded with violence in my dreams.
What I don’t understand is why this senator, the youngest senator ever sworn in and even now at the ripe age of 36, fighting for a life that very well may be only a struggle to live with brain damage, who had been receiving numerous threats would avail herself so openly, in what is a righteous form of political outreach, without security. And why security would even be necessary for something that is simply democratic politics. That is point that makes this whole tragedy even more sickening.
She’s on the verge of martrydom, but I hope we can all send prayers and love her way.
I won’t even touch the Tea Party’s encouragement of such manslaughter.
The whole thing makes me want to spit up all the bile in my liver because hatred is toxic.
HI
Just say this on Huffingtonpost – the little girl who died was born on 9/11
The Child Who Died
A sad note on the nine-year-old girl who was gunned down in Arizona on Saturday, Christina Taylor Green, from AZCentral.com: A neighbor was going to the Giffords event and invited Christina along because she thought she would enjoy it, said her uncle, Greg Segalini. Christina had just been elected to the student council at her school. The event, held outside a Safeway supermarket north of Tucson, was an opportunity for constituents to meet Giffords and talk about any concerns they had related to the federal government.
Tucson CBS affiliate KOLD notes that Green was featured in the book, “Faces Of Hope: Babies Born On 9/11.”
Thanks Aword for the link, it looks interesting.
So you had a headache as well? I hope it has cleared up like mine has, though I know it’s our hearts that will feel shock and despair for some time to come. Loss of life to guns just makes me despair so much. I grew up during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland and an incident like today’s shooting rampage churns my stomach, knowing it causes inconsolable grief to so many families.
On some sort of a brighter note, I am pleased to hear that Congresswoman Giffords has come out of surgery and that her prospects of survival look that much better than a few hours ago. Somehow I sense that she’ll be a healing catalyst of sorts as this situation plays out and that important issues that simply must be dealt with get front and centre in the political arena of your country.
Thanks Brendan…… now my tinfoil hat is sending me those messages again: wonder if this guy got in contact with something, when he tried to enlist, that sent him wonkers?
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. The analysis from SubGothius of shooter’s mental functioning and the contents of his verbiage sure sounds accurate to me. (My apologies for having forgot his poor name already….) I also have to note that care of such beings in our culture has gone steadily down the toilet since Reagan admin. So heck yeah, it would be highly desirable for public officials to hew to a standard of non-inflammatory speech, and even more so now than in previous eras when presumably civility was still a value in public discourse. I hear tell.
Aword, you and me both, to them and to all of us and to the entire sphere we ride the waves upon and within. May Light prevail.
shebear..I read earlier today that the earth’s magnetic fields are shifting at a measureable rate. Apparently this is not a new thing but was newsworthy because an airport in Florida had to close a few days to re-do runway signs.
I am out of school once again – have not read up on this magnetic field shift beyond this tidbit.
I post it here for you as it ironically popped up today (during our headaches -me too- and mini-lightening storms jolting through limbs as well as out-of-sync feeling.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110107/sc_yblog_thelookout/florida-temporarily-closes-runway-due-to-magnetic-pole-shifting
I am doing best to take this energy and channel “light” to those who have lost friends and family in Az today – and all of us.
Kyla – the Army has announced that he did try to enlist but was not accepted for reasons they cannot say due to the Privacy Act.
I was just reading the NY Times Live Blog covering this, and the TP’ers are both decrying the act and then saying they had nothing to do with it, that both left and right have been using over-the-top rhetoric all of last year.
I’m sorry, but I never heard any one on the left call for the elimination of politicians and candidates they opposed – did anyone else? I’m not being sarcastic here, I simply did not hear anywhere near the same level of tripe that the right was and has been producing all along.
I had to turn off all the streaming stuff, I just couldn’t take it any more. Time to light some candles…
Taking the shooter’s YouTube videos at face-value, he comes across as a paranoid schizophrenic with highly disordered reasoning apparently influenced by an incoherent, contradictory range of strident political rhetoric ranging from the Communist Manifesto to Mein Kampf, Orwell to Ayn Rand, Brave New World to Fahrenheit 451, filtered through shards of current reactionary radicalism (a mishmashed melange of libertarian, militia, gold-standard/anti-Fed, and constitutionalist concepts).
Perhaps now politicians and pundits fond of inciteful invective referencing gun metaphors like “target”, “take aim”, “reload not retreat”, etc. will realize they can’t count on everyone in their audience to be reasonable people who understand a figure of speech when they hear it. There’s more than mere propriety at stake in striving to conduct civil, respectful discourse against those you disagree with.
Interesting about those timings, shebear. During that time I was struggling to chill with some out-of-proportion pissed-offness at a minor thing. Fortunately I was easily successful and would hardly take note of it at all now, except for your comment…..
anyway, be that as it may, I did read that poor man’s Youtube “manifesto” and got the impression he might have been on his way into the military? or have been rejected by same? due to some of the remarks…. sure we would hear if he is an enlisted chap.
sheesh. Wellsir, in order to send the currents toward different type events than this one (an aspiration I applaud and share) seems to me we need to pay some attention to this character and to the sorts of things he was or might have been set off by — in order to wash them clean in some sanity.
I have to admit the Palin/target connection is right tasty as a posited catalyzer for this mess. That woman! Yow! But she is not the only one who has suggested arms as a “common man’s” solution to human frustration blamed on current events. Not the only one. It’s a trend that perhaps ought to be more actively discredited, that calling to arms thing. And if possible, made unappealing to raw folks like this fellow.
I just got in after being out and media free all day to learn of this tragedy. My thoughts are with those who lost loved ones, with those wounded and hoping that they survive and also with my American friends here dealing with the fallout.
From an astrological point of view, may I offer up something anecdotally. I read somewhere earlier in the week, I think via Aword, about some people experiencing a sensation similar to static electricity but different, and I can attend to that happening to me as well, several times over during this week. It did catch my attention and made me think.
Then today, as I headed out to an event, I got a rotten headache that started around 12:30pm (EST) and lasted until around 3:30-4:00. I rarely if *ever* get headaches. So it made me think about the unusual “zappings”, and of Uranus and its conjunction with Jupiter earlier this week, right after the solar eclipse. I also learned that at the same time I had my headache, a close friend who has Uranus very prominent in his chart, in a first house stellium with Sun, Moon and Mercury, has been sicker than sick this afternoon and it started at the same time as my headache, which also coincides with the time of today’s rampage.
Please disregard my comment on Gabrielle Giffords natal Moon. it was in Leo not Cancer.
A commenter on Nancy’s Blog gave Gabrielle Giffords birthdate as June 8, 1970. If this is correct we can say this about her chart:
*transiting Mercury squared her natal Pluto (24 Virgo 40) today
*transiting Moon crossed her natal north node (5 Pisces 58) today
*her natal Mars at 4 Cancer 17 squared her natal Uranus at 4 Libra 39 rx
The New Moon eclipse (Jan 4) was opposite the natal U.S. Sibly Sun and square the U.S. Saturn.
*the Winter Solstice had Pluto 4 Cap 58 opposite Gabrielle’s natal Mars
*the Winter Solstice Mars at 10 Cap 39 was opposite the Moon at 8 Cancer 18 (Gabrielle’s natal Cancer Moon could have been around 8-12 degrees if born at noon)
*the Winter Solstice Mercury was retro at 25 Sagittarius 25 square Gabrielle’s natal Pluto
The Gemini Lunar Eclipse which was earlier the same day as the Winter Solstice (12/21) was quincunx Gabrielle’s Neptune at 29 Scorpio 01 rx. Transiting Hades was also conjunct the Gemini eclipsed moon and implies something unpleasant and unsavory.
In all sincerity, I would caution against predicting this kind of thing in the future and I would ask that readers not do so here. Predicting is not going to shift the pattern, and our role is more than of passive observers. Let’s do what we can to shift the mental and emotional patterns involved and to take a leadership role in guiding our culture in a different direction.
Expect more of this. Now, it’s truly beginning.
In some ways, this feels to me like the beginning of what we refer to as “2012.” The sort of madness that comes about when all moorings just come loose for those who are so susceptible to the rant of the right. No holds barred, a free for all where murder and chaos feels – well, right.
My prayers to the Universe are out to Congr. Giffrords and all the victims. Especially, the 9 yr. old victim caught up in the savagery.
Via Huff Po
The President was notified of this terrible tragedy by John Brennan and Jim Messina a little after 1:20pm Eastern.
Beginning at 3pm Eastern, the President made a number of phone calls and was then briefed by FBI Director Mueller, Secretary Napolitano, Attorney General Holder, Bill Daley, John Brennan, Jim Messina, Phil Schiliro, Tom Donilon, David Axelrod, Dan Pfeiffer, Alyssa Mastromonaco and a number of other senior white house officials. The President asked Director Mueller to travel to Arizona to personally oversee the coordination of this investigation.
The President made calls to Representative Gifford’s husband, whom he left a message for, Governor Jan Brewer, Speaker John Boehner, Representative Eric Cantor, Majority Leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader, Representative Steny Hoyer, Democratic Whip, Representative James Clyburn, Assistant Democratic Leader and Representative Ed Pastor to express his deep concern and to update all of them on the latest information.
Giffords speaking to MSNBC last march about being in Palin’s ‘crosshairs’:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36033690#36033690
youtube chanell of killer:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Classitup10
Hospital presser sez that Gabby sustained through-and-through head shot, neurosurgeons are encouraged that she will recover. She goes to intensive care now. No news on brain damage sustained.
The child, approximately 9 years old, died.
Gabby is my congressperson, and yes, this is hitting very hard.
She’s in critical condition, but recovery looks good following surgery (from trauma surgeon @2:02 MST, who is optimistic considering injury). It was “through and through,” in and out of the brain. A 9 year old girl died as a result of the shooting, at UMC.
http://www.kold.com, http://www.kvoa.com are streaming, MSNBC is streaming the KVOA coverage.
Any time a political leader is shot, it’s a political incident. The killer can say anything he or she wants, after the fact. It does not matter.
CNN had the UMC rep from the Presidents office on line, answering questions. They’re PAINFULLY politically correct there, liability is first and foremost and they’re old hands at “breaking news” events. If they issue such a statement, I believe them.
Interesting about the abortion angle, because this Rep was reportedly pro-life, among other things, a bit of a cultural mixed bag. But, she was one of the Palin “targets” inheriting the full weight of the gun rhetoric. I’d also comment that this is hardly what I’d call a “bad” part of town. It is, however, a very SMALL town, at heart … and this is going to rock them hard.
I think you’re probably on the money about this being wing-nut inspired, victorialynn, and I would expect we will discover that the shooter, who is reportedly quite young, is Very White and Very Right-wing.
– reeks of tea-bagger vigilante-ism doesn’t it.
Sarah “Republicans don’t retreat, they reload” Palin included Gabrielle Giffords on her list of 10 Democrats that needed to be targeted during the midterm elections:
behttp://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20001021-503544.html
It is still too early to definitively point to politics as the reason this tragedy occurred, but it seems highly likely with all the heated rhetoric that has been in the media lately.
UMC representative is announcing that she is NOT dead but in surgery, shot in the head. Six others have died and the rest are in critical condition.
That is a reference to Nevada senate candidate Sharon Angle’s comment. She was defeated by Harry Reid for senate rep from Nevada.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/sharron-angle-floated-2nd_n_614003.html
“Second Amendment Solution”?
So Tragic. I’m all for freedom of speech and am thankful to live in a country where citizens are allowed to publicly assemble and express their grievances, but violence is never part of a solution.