Giffords was shot in the head. Ten others were wounded and along with her taken to hospital for rescue. One of the wounded, a nine-year-old girl, died at the hospital. For hours, word kept getting out that Giffords had died, but surgeons finally came out to report that they were able to save her life and that she will with hope recover. Five others, including a federal judge John Roll attending the public meet-and-greet, were killed on the spot.
It is difficult to explain the rage I have at this moment, for almost the whole day...
Regardless of the political leanings of the shooter - and the Far Right are eager to point out how Loughner is some left-wing hippie, with the Far Left pointing out Loughner's gold-standard obsessions fit right in with Ron Paul's - this horrifying crime underscores a LOT that is f-cking wrong with this country.
In case Giffords was someone you didn't know before today, she was one of 20 Democratic House members targeted - LITERALLY TARGETED - by Sarah Palin's crew during the 2010 midterms. And in case you didn't know this by this evening, but Palin and her supporters had quickly pulled that poster (THAT THEY STILL HAD UP ON THEIR WEBSITES AFTER THE MIDTERMS) from their pages, trying desperately to scrub away the violent rhetoric that they have been pushing on our nation over the
We had violent rhetoric about an abortion doctor in the Midwest, and Bill O'Reilly kept talking about him and about how he needed to get taken out. Someone comes along and shoots him AT A CHURCH. The Fox-Not-News crowd of opinionated pundits rail against liberals as socialists and how they're destroying our nation. Someone who listens and reads their crap, writes up his own list of targets to kill before driving out to a Unitarian church to shoot up a recital of Annie.
We get political candidates on the Right running for office screaming about "gathering your armies" and relying on "Second Amendment remedies," throwing tantrums for special treatment and privileges and reviling their opponents for un-American actions they can't ever prove in court but are able to convince their teabagger followers as God's honest truth. But then the second any actual violence on a Democrat or Liberal takes place, then by God the same Far Right talking heads come out of the woodwork insisting the violence is all from the Left while quickly scrubbing away the evidence that it was the goddamn Right wingnut lies in the first place.
There is blood on the streets of Tucson Arizona. There is sorrow within most of our souls tonight as we mourn the dead. But will there ever be any semblance of accountability on the Right for their lying bullshit, for their obsession with violence?
Probably not. Welcome to our Hell.
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