A simple question: If Jared was a leftist,

[Jackpine Radical]

why didn't he gun for a Republican politician? There are a few in AZ, aren't there?

[kentuck]

1. He did know she was a Democrat?

Right?

[Dappleganger]

5. The police have evidence of previous direct contact with Giffords.

He knew exactly who she was.

[AspenRose]

2. The argument is that Giffords wasn't liberal enough

And of course, it's bullshit.

I've yet to see a far-left person use violence within the past 40 years.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. But I don't hear the wingnuts targeting Olympia Snowe.

They express their outrage at the "socialists" :crazy: like Obama.

With so many right-wingers around, why would he have gone after a "moderate?"

One who voted for the Healthcare bill & earned a place on Sarah's infamous list?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. That also has given me pause

Rep. Giffords has been attacked here, even since she was shot, as being a DINO and worse. She was pretty clearly centrist and reflected her district. There are much more suitable targets for an ideology based shooting. There was also some sort of prior contact (unsatisfactory in the eyes of the shooter) and his alleged recent decline to consider.

My current take is he is to some extent crackers. How much and did it impact this is still TBD.

[Jackpine Radical]

12. Of course he's nuts.

That's not in dispute.

I'm not as good at that remote-evaluation psych stuff as opthalmologist Ron Paul, being only a psychologist, so I won't offer a specific Dx, but he's surely wandering somewhere in the vast wonderland of psychosis.

But my point is that wackjobs tend to pick out what they view as the extremes of the other side as their enemies. And Gabby had been portrayed as an extreme "liberal" by the 'baggers and Palin for her healthcare vote.

[Name removed]

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[Spoonman]

23. 40 years?

Ted Kaczynski
Matthew Murray
Daniel Andreas San Diego

[Jackpine Radical]

24. Kaczynski was a Luddite primitivist, fighting "big government."

Hardly a leftist within any recognizable sense of the term.

Murray was pissed and avenging himself after he got kicked out of a right-wing religious group.

Andreas was a PETA type. Most leftists seem to consider PETA to fall on a continuum somewhere between annoying and loony.

[Spoonman]

25. You are simply cherry picking "leftist" traits

to fit your assertion.
Given your response, you are very unfamiliar with Kaczynski.

His manifesto had ONE statement about big government, not what most people would consider his defining agenda.
His issues were with capitalism, and industrial development and it's effect on the environment, mainly his little cabin in the woods.

By most peoples standards, he would be considered an extreme leftist, as would the other two I mentioned.

[LynneSin]

4. Actually he did. The judge was a Bush Sr appointee

However, the judge had death threats against him because he allowed an immigration lawsuit to go forward that favored the immigrants and not the farmers.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

8. Righties are trying to equate it as a "bipartisanship" assasination

There's no way this guy knew he was going to be there if he would even know who he was.

[seabeyond]

10. the judge was not an expected show. i dont see he is really a factor any more than the little girl.

[Jackpine Radical]

13. Also, he seems to have set out for Giffords;

he apparently planned this some time in advance and the judge showed up only at the last moment.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

6. We know he's not a leftist

He's going to be portrayed as extreme right, and we need to connect the dots to prove he's more mainstream right than the media would have you believe.

[Name removed]

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[Zax2me]

9. He's NOT a leftist.

He's not anything - but insane.

[Canuckistanian]

11. You can't throw a stone in AZ without hitting a Republican

So that was some pretty specific aim.

[DirkGently]

14. Correct. Gifford was already a target of rightwing rage. She was threatened, and her office

vandalized after she voted in support of healthcare reform. The fact that she was a "moderate" whose views were not always supported by the left, has no bearing, and if anything, demonstrates just how crazy the American right has become. She was already the target of rage and threats by the right and NOT the left, for failing to be sufficiently conservative in her views.

There's no mud to stir here. The right painted the target on Gifford. The fact that the man who took aim at it was likely clinically unhinged does not absolve the people who in the first place suggested her views were worthy of threats and violence.




editted for speling.

[Jackpine Radical]

16. You have stated exactly my position on this whole thing.

[lumberjack_jeff]

15. Here's the problem with equivalencies

The rhetoric of the right is consciously and carefully designed to attract the crazies.

Leftists (as we use the term in the US) aren't violent, because the left holds no attraction for the violent.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. Again a post that captures my position precisely.

[EstimatedProphet]

20. If he were a leftist, why did he have guns at all?

EVERYONE KNOWS that leftists are all anti-gun. EVERYONE KNOWS that leftists are all weaklings too. So, since EVERYONE KNOWS those things, how can they possibly explain him shooting people?

How can the right claim continually that the left wants to ban all guns, and that the left is afraid of everything and is a bunch of cowards, and then immediately claim that the left is responsible when an assassination takes place?

[Name removed]

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[slackmaster]

21. He was just a nut jobbie

He had been staling Gabrielle Giffords for several years before he shot her.

[DirkGently]

26. The rightwing actively recruits "nut jobs." "Got a gun and paranoia? Sign up here."