Time for Change

3 years ago, the entire nation was shocked. The world's attention turned to a neighborhood strip mall near Tucson. And 19 people were shot that day. One of them was then Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona). 6 others died, including a federal judge, a Giffords staffer, and a 9 year old girl.

In some ways, things have changed in the past 3 years. Gabby Giffords herself has made an amazing recovery since that day. This week, she even managed to take a pleasant little sky dive.



Yet in other ways, things haven't changed all that much in the past 3 years. The 6 people who passed away are still gone. Many more lives have been lost to senseless gun violence since then. And far too many politicians are still too afraid to consider enacting sensible gun safety policies.



Of course, the actual people who have firsthand knowledge of the tragedy of gun violence are speaking out. This actually has been a breakthrough we've experienced in the past 3 years. It's even led Senator Harry Reid (D) and the Nevada Legislature to take gun violence more seriously.

Unfortunately, none of this was enough for Governor Brian Sandoval (R-NRA), Senator Dean Heller (R-NRA), Rep. Joe Heck (R-??!!), and other G-O-TEA politicians in Carson City & DC who were too worried about their standing with the NRA to even consider any type of gun safety legislation. After all, the NRA and the rest of the gun lobby consider gun safety reform to be far more offensive than making death threats on talk radio!



Nearly a year ago, Gabrielle Giffords herself urged her former colleagues in Congress to be courageous. Her message is just as relevant and timely now as it was then. How many more of these painful anniversaries must we endure? It's time for change.

Witness Tonight

Yesterday, Rep. Joe Heck's district office heard from constitutents on gun safety reform.

8 News NOW

Tonight, he will be listening to President Obama making his case for gun safety reform at tonight's State of the Union Address. And not only that, but he will also be seeing several gun violence survivors in the audience. One of them will be Heck's former colleague in Congress, Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords herself as plenty to say about gun violence, and she isn't waiting until tonight.



I've already caught this ad on local cable here. Constituents of Heck, and of Senators Harry Reid & Dean Heller, are seeing this. And they're reminded of the horror of what happened in Tucson just over two years ago. Can we really afford any more of that, or of what happened in Aurora & Newtown last year?

That's not the question that the gun lobby wants us to think about. That's why a NRA lobbyist tried to dismiss current efforts for gun violence prevention as "The Connecticut Effect". You see, it's easier for the NRA to sweep this under the rug when it's just some distant, esoteric, and sterilized philosophical debate. It becomes much more difficult for gun industry lobbyists to defend what they're doing when confronted with actual reality.



Yet that's what's happening today. The gun lobby, along with Members of Congress, must confront reality. Harry Reid, Dean Heller, and Joe Heck must see those who lost loved ones to gun violence tonight. And they must ask themselves if we can go any longer without significant gun safety reform.

A Sober Reality Check on Gun Violence

So it happened again. We saw yet another shooting yesterday. This time, it hit very close to home.

For years Jim McCarty hid whatever troubles that may have weighed on him behind the rhythms of normalcy.

He lived in a single-story home with his wife and her two children at 2225 La Sombra Street, an aging residential neighborhood. Neighbors say he never missed a day of work as a tractor-trailer driver, leaving each morning at 7 a.m. and coming home at 5 p.m. like clockwork. When he wasn’t at work, they saw him obsessing over his lawn making sure it stayed lush and green despite the dry desert heat. He loved that lawn.

Work and the yard, the “everyman” routine. They were his constants — until Tuesday.

That day, Catrina Garrett, who lives across the street from the family, noticed he missed work. Then, around 3:45 p.m., next-door neighbor Andrew Newkirk heard gunshots. [...]

The Clark County Coroner’s Office identified the first two victims as Jim McCarty’s stepchildren, Bonnie Scherrer, 38, and Robert Scherrer, 41. The third victim, neighbors say, is his wife, Linda McCarty.

It is impossible to know what may have caused McCarty to snap and allegedly shoot his family and then himself, but neighbors who know the family well say underneath his routine was a bleak life.

Believe it or not, gun deaths often occur by way of victims' own guns. Accidents happens. And then in this case, Jim McCarty turned his gun on his own family, then on himself.

This wasn't a topic discussed at yesterday's US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun safety, but plenty of other issues were brought to the table. What was perhaps most chilling about yesterday's hearing was how the typical decorum of a Senate hearing was interrupted by reminders of all the recent bloodshed from epic gun violence. Salon
's Joan Walsh has more.

I’m sure he never dreamed that barely a month later the carnage would claim a 15-year-old majorette who’d just marched in his inaugural parade. Hadiya Pendleton is only one of 42 people to die of gun violence in Chicago this month, the deadliest January in 10 years. And there’s still another day to go.

Nor did he likely envision that a popular school bus driver in rural Alabama would be killed by a man the Southern Poverty Law Center listed as an anti-government “survivalist,” after he tried to stop him from taking two boys off his bus as hostage (he wound up getting one, a six year old who’s still his prisoner.) The rampage after an office dispute in Phoenixis a little more common: Too many “office disputes” are settled by gunfire.

Hadiya Pendleton’s godfather had a searing if unintended rejoinder to LaPierre’s post-Newtown nonsense that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Duane Stewart, a police officer, told the Chicago Sun-Times about his happy honor-student god-daughter: “As usual, the bad guy aims, but he never hits the other bad guy . . . He hits the one that hurts the most to lose. I changed her diapers, I played with her growing up. My heart is broken.” [...]

But the same forces that block sensible gun laws also block action on other social problems. We have too many guns in this country; we also have too much poverty and inequality and mental illness, and they’re all tied together. It’s galling to watch LaPierre and others on the right pretend they care about mental health treatment, for instance. The same political stalemate that’s blocked action on guns has also made it harder to deal with other social problems that fracture us. While Hadiya Pendleton went to a good school and was shot in an upper middle class neighborhood not far from the president’s Chicago home, her assailants are reportedly gang members, and the plague of gang violence —which springs from generations of chronic, festering and unanswered urban poverty and violence –has been ignored for too long because it rarely touches the people deemed to matter in our country.

Durbin mentioned Pendleton during the hearing, noting that her inaugural parade appearance was “the highlight of her young life.” Then she returned to a city “awash in guns,” he said. “The confiscation of guns per capita in Chicago is six times the number in New York City,” said Durbin. “We have guns everywhere and some believe the solution to this is more guns. I disagree.”

Gabby Giffords didn’t mention Pendleton in her moving testimony, but she did talk about children. “Too many children are dying. Too many children,” Giffords said haltingly. “We must do something. It will be hard, but the time is now. You must act. Be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you.”

Last night, Rep. Steven Horsford (D-North Las Vegas) was on "Ralston Reports" last night to discuss a variety of issues. One of them was gun safety. And while noting the unique challenge of tailoring gun laws to Nevada, he nonetheless made clear why President Obama and various Members of Congress are pursuing gun safety reform.



No one is talking about doing what's described in the gun lobby's crazed conspiracy theories. Rather, Congress is debating common-sense gun safety measures meant to protect communities. It's about preventing unnecessary deaths. It's about taking basic steps to stop the slaughter of innocent children.

The New Republic's Walter Kirn is a gun owner himself. He recently wrote about his own experience with guns, and he explained why he and many more gun owners really don't see eye to eye with NRA lobbyists. Are military style assault weapons actually necessary for "recreational shooting" and deer hunting? Are background checks really "unreasonable"? Is gun trafficking truly a "civil right"?

That's all we're talking about. And that's what Members of Congress should keep in mind... That, and the continuing count of people who've lost their lives to gun violence.

Tucson. Gabby. Guns. Two Years Later.

Almost exactly two years ago, this happened.

I'm incredibly horrified by what happened today in Southern Arizona... But sadly, I'm not all that shocked. This was bound to happen. When our political climate becomes so heated, so polarized, and so radicalized, violence is bound to result. In the next few days, I hope Gabrielle Giffords survives surgery and begins full recovery. And I hope all of our political leaders- left, right, and center- condemn this horrid, criminal, possibly terrorist act, and urge Americans not to allow our politics to become so bloody.

Fortunately, Gabrielle Giffords survived that assassination attempt. However, 8 people died that day and several others were wounded. And even since that happened, there have been more horrific mass shootings throughout America.

Back in January 2011, we discussed this.

Yes, yes, I've heard that famous clause: "Guns don't kill. People do." But you know what? When mentally disturbed people can access extremely lethal "weapons of mass distruction" so easily at the neighborhood gun store or local gun show, that's a serious problem.

Unfortunately, nothing happened after Tucson... Other than even more mass shootings. After the July 2012 theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, I just couldn't contain my frustration over a crisis that we let get out of hand.

It's become so easy in most parts of this country (Nevada included) to purchase not just guns, but the very assault weapons that are DESIGNED to kill masses of people. As we've discussed before, it's been easier to buy guns than to access affordable mental health care in most states. There's something seriously wrong with that. [...]

Frankly, I don't think we can afford to keep avoiding this subject. And I don't think it's fair to dismiss all gun safety advocates as "nanny state socialists who want to ban hunting". That's actually not what we're talking about.

Rather, we're asking how logical it is that instruments intended for mass murder are so readily available. And does it make sense that nearly anyone and everyone can access these instruments intended for mass murder? So when will we finally be allowed to have a rational discussion on improving gun safety?

And then, Newtown happened. Apparently, the sight of 20 children and 7 adults slaughtered in their elementary school horrified the entire nation. And it finally led to some deep soul searching on the issue of gun safety.

Of course, there are deranged and disgusting people in this world. Unfortunately, that will never change. However, what has to change is allowing these very people to commit acts of terrorism on our soil. And what has to change is the celebration and downright worship of assault weapons that should have never been allowed to become so commonplace in civilian life.

There. I said it. [...]

[... S]o far, it's looking incredibly likely that Newtown, Connecticut, is now suffering immense loss because of a deranged individual getting one's hands on dangerous assault weapons. There may have been no background check. And clearly, there was no fail-safe to prevent so many bullets from being released so quickly.

Will we ever learn? And will we ever have an honest discussion on how to correct this horrifying failure in public policy? How many more people have to die before we reconsider our extreme allegiance to the gun lobby?

Even Giffords herself, a formerly "pro-gun Democrat" in Congress, has had second thoughts on the extremely permissive attitude towards deadly assault weapons in this country. And she & her husband are now taking action to change that.



And they're not alone. President Obama plans to continue pressing for gun safety reform. And other grassroots voices have emerged in calling for better gun safety. Some of these voices even know firsthand the horrors of extreme gun violence.



Tucson was not the first incident of mass gun violence, nor has it been the last. But as we look back on the last 2 years, we must ask ourselves how much we've done to make our communities safer and free our people from the fear of being "the next victims". And we must demand change.

10 of 11: Gabby... & Jared

Even though this clip is from 2010, it's a lurid foreshadow of how 2011 was to begin:



And yes, sadly, there's a Nevada Angle to this story.



While she may not have been the main cause of the Tucson massacre that killed six people and wounded nineteen others, including US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), Sharron Angle's and the tea party's increasingly violent rhetoric certainly helped to create the environment that encouraged fringe radicals like Jared Lee Loughner to use "Second Amendment Remedies". Back in January, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik pointed it out.

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” [...]

“We need to do some soul searching … It’s the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business. People tend to pooh-pooh this business about the vitriol that inflames American public opinion by the people who make a living off of that. That may be free speech but it’s not without consequences.”

And the Southern Poverty Law Center researched the origins of the conspiracy theories Loughner embraced, and found some startling clues for what motivated him to turn violent.

At one point, Loughner refers disparagingly to “currency that’s not backed by gold or silver.” The idea that silver and gold are the only “constitutional” money is widespread in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement that produced so much violence in the 1990s. It’s linked to the core Patriot theory that the Federal Reserve is actually a private corporation run for the benefit of unnamed international bankers. So-called Patriots say paper money — what they refer to with a sneer as “Federal Reserve notes” — is not lawful.

At another, Loughner makes extraordinarily obscure comments about language and grammar, suggesting that the government engages in “mind control on the people by controlling grammar.” That’s not the kind of idea that’s very common out there, even on the Internet. In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that Loughner is taking ideas from Patriot conspiracy theorist David Wynn Miller of Milwaukee. Miller claims that the government uses grammar to “enslave” Americans and offers up his truly weird “Truth-language” as an antidote. For example, he says that if you add colons and hyphens to your name in a certain way, you are no longer taxable. Miller may be mad as a hatter, but he has a real following on the right.

Loughner talks about how you “can’t trust the government” and someone burns a U.S. flag in one of his videos. Although certain right-wing websites are already using that (and his listing of The Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books) to claim that Loughner was a “left-winger,” that does not strike me as true. The main enemy of the Patriot movement is certainly the federal government. And so-called Patriots have certainly engaged in acts like burning the flag.

And if you think this is all just "crazy talk", tell that to Iowa. According to PPP, Ron Paul has now taken the lead there as the Iowa Caucus is fast approaching. Remember, Ron Paul has repeatedly winked and nodded at these conspiracy theories as he's trying to turn the fringe into mainstream. And it's not just Paul. The whole radical right likes to play footsie with this kind of crazy... Until something like this occurs, when they then try to rewrite history.

As I wrote back in January...

OK, so Loughner may have been dabbling in some looney tunes nonsense, possibly even including a known white supremacist hate group. What does this have to do with Glenn Beck... Or Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle for that matter? Well, it comes back to the ["tea party"]. The "tea party" is a sort of umbrella classification of a number of far right organizations and politicians, but there is definitely strong evidence to show that leading "tea party" figures are trying to legitimize the same extreme ideology of the extreme right that influenced past terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh.

And worse, as Glenn Beck warns of supposed "conspiracies of the left" to bring about "imminent violent revolution", and as Sarah Palin tells her followers, "never retreat, instead RELOAD!", and as Sharron Angle suggests "Second Amendment Remedies" to take care of "enemies in our own system... in the walls of Congress"...

Far too many media pundits and politicians in DC have been far too willing to simply dismiss this as "politics as usual". This is NOT "politics as usual". This is an ever escalating culture of political violence that must stop!

Again, I had feared something like this would eventually happen. Last year, I feared Harry Reid would be the victim. I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the teabaggers' unplugged, unfiltered, and unfettered irrational hatred of Harry Reid... As well as President Barack Obama, for that matter. While "Tea Party, Inc." consultants in California were just focusing on building enough opposition to win an election, the opposition among many teabaggers ran far deeper.

And that January, we found out the hard way how deep that was.

Yet while we saw the far right turn increasingly radical, we also saw glimmers of hope as folks in The Southwest turned away from it. Pay attention again to Gabby's own words.



Strangely enough, Giffords talked with an long time Republican friend about starting a campaign to tone down the increasingly extreme rhetoric in today's politics right before her "Congress on Your Corner" town hall that turned so bloody. Yet while Giffords herself ultimately couldn't lead on this, others soon filled that void. Extreme anti-immigrant Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is now facing his own legal troubles for politicizing law enforcement there. Russell Pearce, the state senator who briefly turned Arizona's legislature into a breeding ground for "tea party" extremism, was recalled by his own constituents just last month. Jan Brewer, the Arizona Governor that signed the SB 1070 "papers, please" law and campaigned for reelection on it, is now seeing her popularity fade fast in light of a failed redistricting power grab. And in another twist of fate, Daniel Hernandez, the intern who helped to save Gabby Giffords' life, won election to a seat on the local Tuscon school board.

So maybe there is hope, after all. Gabby Giffords herself continues to recover. She's showing remarkable progress for someone who suffered that kind of brain injury, and is showing interest in running for reelection to Congress.

I'll leave you with this from Time.

There was much to hate about politics this year, especially the amount of hate that seemed to poison it. But if there was an antidote, it came from one of the victims: Gabrielle Giffords, vibrant and valiant member of Congress from Arizona, gunned down when a deranged shooter outside a supermarket put a bullet through her brain. That she survived at all was a miracle; that she recovers — slowly, stubbornly, each day a search for another word, another milestone — is a model. "You have to have hope and faith," she says at the end of Gabby, the book she wrote with her husband and fellow warrior against all odds and expectations, astronaut Mark Kelly. "I will get stronger. I will return."

Where Has the Dream Gone?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream. All too often, we don't talk about the entire dream. And all too often, we don't want to talk about our failures over the last four decades to get anywhere close to that dream.





So where are we? And what has happened to King's dream? When did the dream become this nightmare?









Not that long ago, it was easy to just laugh off "tea party" extremism as silly... But look at what's happened. And for far too long, questions of inequality have been placed aside. And as we wonder when our occupation of Iraq will end, when our occupation of Afghanistan will come to a close, and when another military invasion and occupation might ensue, we must wonder if we've become far too much of a culture of violence.

When did we forget this...



And embrace this?





What happened? What happened to Dr. King's dream? Where have we gone wrong in the last 43 years? Why are so many of our people still treated as "second class citizens"? Why do we never have the resources to help our people help themselves, but we somehow always have more money to wage more wars? Why have we become so violent toward each other?

These are the questions I have today. As six people have been buried in Tucson, our country is still mired in two wars abroad, Congress is set to debate (again) why we should or shouldn't have access to affordable health care, and federal courts consider whether queer folk actually have Constitutional rights, we need to ask ourselves what happened to Dr. King's dream... And how we can finally turn the dream deferred into the dream fulfilled.

After the Attack: Can We Change? Will We Change?

When I saw this, I was frustrated... Yet again. Why don't they get it?

Tom Danehy at Tucson Weekly makes a really good point.

I would never say that the Tea Party wanted somebody to put a bullet in Gabrielle Giffords' head, but at the same time, you can't tell me that everybody in that movement feels bad that it happened.

I would never claim that talk-show lemmings—who leapfrog each other in a desperate attempt to be the one who is most out there—are giving secret orders to listeners to go out and shoot members of Congress, but at the same time, you can't tell me that the ratcheting up of the vile content by some of these creeps isn't enough to push some Travis Bickle-wannabe over the edge.

And I don't believe that Sarah Palin wanted Gabby Giffords to get shot, but damn you if you try to claim that putting a bulls-eye over the district of a United States congresswoman is all just good, clean fun.

This all goes way past disingenuous. You can't build a bonfire in a clearing and then deny any culpability when the embers get caught in the breeze and ignite dry tinder somewhere downwind. You don't have to ascribe to chaos theory to make that connection. You do, however, have to practice self-delusion on a grand scale to claim that the connection doesn't exist.

As Rush Limbaugh himself loves to say, words mean things; words are important. Messages tend to morph and degrade as they are passed along from one person to the next, even if they are done so on a word-for-word basis. It should surprise no one that hate speech that is spewed as self-congratulatory cleverness can, after a few iterations, become an insistent whisper in some nut-job's head.

Many Tucsonans understand this. After all, they've been living this nightmare for the last week. And they saw firsthand the build-up of anger from all the diatribes of the last two years.



Words matter. People matter. Actions matter. That's why it's critical for all of us to lead by example.

Gabby Giffords understands that. I'm reminded again of her victory speech last November.



And I'm reminded of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer's speech last night. Yes, you heard me right. I've had plenty of policy disagreements with her before, but that's just it. Those disagreements over policy should not negate someone's human value and should not prevent us from finding common ground.



I appreciate what Governor Brewer is doing there, as well as President Obama's words yesterday. Hopefully, we can all continue to learn from their example.

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Gabby Giffords is healing and recovering... And perhaps our democracy can, too. I guess some on the extreme right, a few on the far left, and others will continue slinging mud and hurling dung until the cows come home, but that doesn't mean our government has to plagued with vitriol and reduced to paralysis just because the "tea party" demands its pound of flesh and no one wants to negotiate in good faith.

We need to learn from this. Danehy concludes his essay with this.

I'm actually proud to live in a community that reacted the way it did, from the woman who grabbed a spare magazine away from the shooter, to the emergency-response teams and medical personnel who all did their jobs heroically. I'm especially proud of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who spoke his mind and did his job while wearing his emotions on his sleeve. He focused in with laser-like precision and told all the Tree of Liberty jackasses what they could do with their cooler heads.

I don't want to hear about "senseless tragedy." This was a calculated act with a cause and an effect. Let's just hope that part of that effect is to admit that the cause exists—and to take peaceful steps to deal with it.

Perhaps we can all learn from the good people of Tucson.

After the Attack: Hope Restored? Change Coming?

I watched and listened as President Obama spoke in Tucson last night. And I came away with the kind of sentiment that Joan Walsh expressed at Salon.com last night.

The event billed as a memorial service for victims of the Tucson, Ariz., massacre turned into what critics called a "pep rally," with cheering and hooting and hollering crowds. I don't understand what bothered people, because it was clear to me from the start: The University of Arizona crowd was celebrating the heroism that was on display last Saturday, when ordinary people became heroes and saved lives. And they were cheering the very idea of America.

There it was, folks, Saturday morning and again Wednesday night: our country, as good as it gets. Remember how great it looked and felt and sounded, when things inevitably get ugly again. Reagan-appointed Supreme Court Justice Sandra O'Connor, now retired, sat admiringly next to Daniel Hernandez Jr., the 20-year-old Gabrielle Giffords intern who helped save her life Saturday (who happens to be gay and Mexican American). Attorney General Eric Holder was side by side with Gov. Jan Brewer, whose racial profiling law he's fighting. The service began with an Indian blessing from Dr. Carlos Gonzales, who described his mother as Mexican, his father as a Yaqui survivor of "genocide," and his son as a soldier in Afghanistan, who praised "this great country, where a poor barrio kid from the south side of Tucson could get an education at a fine institution like the University of Arizona -- and then, even better, come back and teach here."

Like it or not, that's American history: We are imperfect, descended from people who took land from Indians and Mexicans and who held slaves, but also from people who fought for equal rights for everyone, and who, over time, managed to create laws and values and customs that (mostly) do that. Daniel Hernandez began his speech with the words "e pluribus unum" -- out of many, one -- and even if it's not an ideal we always live up to, it's the best idea we've ever had as a nation. President Obama delivered what I think was his best speech ever, but for a while Wednesday night, Hernandez stole the show, reminding us "what defines us is not difference ... we are all Americans," and rejecting the label "hero," since he said, "The real heroes are those who have dedicated their lives to public service." Obama correctly differed with Hernandez, congratulating him as a hero for helping to save Giffords' life.

E pluribus unum. When did we lose this? And how can we get it back? President Obama's speech last night gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, we can find our way again.

Last night, Gabrielle Giffords opened her eyes for the first time since last Saturday. So far, her recovery has been remarkable. Just 10% of those shot in the head survive this kind of injury, and even fewer make the kind of full recovery that Giffords' doctors now say may be possible for her.

It's already encouraging to see Giffords recover, but I hope that as she recovers, our representative democracy also recovers. For far too long, our system has been ripped apart. People have been intimidated out of participating. Congress has often descended to a madhouse of constant "political warfare". We have to get past this.

So will we? Will we see the kind of change that Americans have been longing for so long? Will we see our government work? Will we see inflammatory rhetoric on caustic politics replaced with honest dialogue on good policy? I think this may very well be the best way we can honor Gabby Giffords, the other survivors of last Saturday's attack, and all those we've lost.

Below is the video from last night's ceremony.

Terror in Arizona: Heroes Among Us

Again, sometimes we need to step back, pause, and remember & honor those among us who show the courage to stand up and help others... Even when their own lives are at risk.

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Lessons from Gabby... And From My Fellow Nevadans

This keeps haunting me. Even as we've already been discussing the danger of extremist rhetoric turning violent, Gabrielle Giffords and her message of breaking through partisan barriers seems more poignant and relevant than ever before.



Strangely enough, while Giffords was talking of bridging divides, this was playing in the background.



This takes me back to the night of Tuesday, November 2, 2010, and Harry Reid's hard earned Senate win here in Nevada.



As I talked about early this morning, last year's Senate campaign often brought out the worst in us. We saw brawls break out at "candidate forums", people's lives threatened, and an overall climate of unfettered rage and unprecedented fear plague our state. It was frightening...

But even amidst all of that, there were glimmers of hope. I saw the best of us shine through as I talked with my friends, my family, and my neighbors, even as the campaign blabber on TV often devolved to outright insanity.

One of my all time favorite videos of last year, if not my #1 favorite, was City of Reno Sustainability Administrator and Nevada System of Higher Education Regent Jason Geddes discussing what he does and how he viewed Senator Reid and his legislative agenda.



He just told it like it was, without resorting to histrionics or inflammatory language. And as I've said before, good policy always puts a big smile on my face.

And he wasn't the only one. I beamed with pride last month as I recounted my experience on the campaign trail over the last year.

[L]et's face it, it's much easier to believe the stereotypes of Nevadans than to take the time to really get to know us. It's easy to look at the numbers, but it's harder to look at the stories behind the numbers.

I actually did that. I met the kids who confronted Sharron Angle at Rancho High School over her race-baiting ads. I met my typically Republican neighbors in Henderson who voted early for Harry Reid. I met people who drove many miles to Dina Titus' campaign office because they believed she was "the real deal". I met folks pissed off at everyone and everyone, because they felt "overwhelmed" by all the negative campaign ads. I met volunteers who tuned out the political insanity as they were collecting food for the hungry, keeping community centers open, making parks and trails accessible to all the neighbors to use, and keeping the local libraries running with new and interesting knowledge just around the corner. [...]

Over the years, many authors have come to "investigate" Nevada and uncover all our "deep, dark secrets". We've been called everything from "The New American Dream" to the most evil, corrupt hellhole on the planet. However, you showed me that reality is quite different from any fairy tale or horror story shared by outsiders. You showed me that Nevada can be rough, but the people can be awfully tough.

There were many people, Democrats, Republicans, Nonpartisans, and others, here in Nevada who reaffirmed my faith in our country and our democracy. I will never forget that. Despite the efforts of some to rip our communities apart, there were so many Nevadans I met who just did what they knew to be best for our state and our country. And even when we disagreed, I was able to discuss issues with my friends, family, and neighbors respectfully.

I was thinking about this as Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Hillsborough, CA), someone who survived the horror of Jonestown in 1978, went on CNN to remind us what politics and public service are all about.



Someone else who survived another tragic incident in 1978, Cleve Jones of Courage Campaign, had something to say about all this.



Maybe we need to listen to them. Maybe we need to listen to what Gabby tried to tell us. Right before Saturday's "Congress on Your Corner", Giffords did this.

The night before she and 19 others were shot at an event in Tucson, Arizona, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) wrote a warm email to Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, where she told the Republican "we need to figure out how to tone our rhetoric and partisanship down."

Giffords remains in the hospital in critical condition after being shot in the head Saturday.

According to cn|2 Politics, which obtained the email, Giffords sent the message to congratulate Grayson for his recent appointment as director of Harvard University's Institute of Politics.

"After you get settled, I would love to talk about what we can do to promote centrism and moderation," Giffords wrote. "I am one of only 12 Dems left in a GOP district (the only woman) and think that we need to figure out how to tone our rhetoric and partisanship down."

Giffords and Grayson met in 2005, when they were part of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute's Rodel Fellowship. In her email, Giffords promised to visit Grayson, and told him she thought his new job was "truly an incredible opportunity that will lead to wonderful things." Grayson told cn|2 Politics that he and Giffords spoke often about divisiveness in politics.

"That is something she and I have been quite passionate about -- to run for office in the right way and for the right reasons," Grayson said. "I think Gabby was really sincere in that email ... And I am going to to redouble my efforts."

I don't need to repeat what I've already said about this whole matter. When we've become so desensitized to violence and averse to honest policy discussion, there's a problem. We can't operate representative democracy like warfare. It only leads to bloodshed like we saw in Arizona on Saturday.

We all need to put aside our hostilities and have a serious conversation on how to move forward as a country without violence, with mutual respect, with a renewed focus on discussing policy rationally, and without fearing what happens when we seek common ground.

ENOUGH.

In my readings last night, I found myself combing through Dave Neiwert's archives. If you haven't done so already, bookmark him. He's tracked the radical right for years, and he's been warning us for some time of what might happen if we continue to let the extremist hate speech escalate. Last month, he caught Glenn Beck uttering this nonsense...



Nonsense that now feels creepy for some reason. I wonder why.

Now he's predicting IMMINENT VIOLENT REVOLUTION led by those evil progressive radicals who hate the Republic inside the Obama administration. In case he didn't notice, the actual dynamic in Washington these days is actually just a wee bit different, since it's become manifestly clear that President Obama is anything BUT a radical revolutionary. But hey, nothing ever deters the intrepid Beck in the pursuit of his apocalyptic conspiracy theories.

Well, let's be clear: Beck has been warning about this dire imminent threat for quite awhile now. You'll recall he predicted last spring that eeevil progressives were planning a 'summer of rage' filled with violence, death and chaos.

Yeah, that really panned out, eh? Instead we got Byron Williams. Hmmmm.

This theory really is just a warmed-over version of the IMMINENT DIRE THREAT Beck has been shouting at us about since he signed onto Fox. It's become repetitive but more intensified, a manifestation of Beck's steadily creeping paranoia.

After all, he's been theorizing that Obama's band of administration radicals are planning a "global redistribution of the wealth" for a long time -- often flavored with black-helicopter militia theories about a "New World Order". He's been predicting George Soros would try to kill him, and warning that the eeeevil Left is plotting to frame the Tea Partiers for an act of domestic terrorist violence, adding that if right-wing violence does break out, it will have been provoked by Obama and the liberals.

More recently, there have been such similarly credible theories that the European Union Parliament building was intended to resemble the Tower of Babel, and that the evil Holocaust survivor George Soros is plotting to take over the world.

This is yet another reason why I was not all that surprised when my dad called me Saturday morning and told me that a Congresswoman in Arizona, along with dozens more, were shot. Sadly, this was bound to happen.

From a moral viewpoint Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is the victim of demagogues such as Glenn Beck and his allies at Fox News and in the Tea Party Movement. This is not about legal liability but abour moral culpability. This is about a nation that has lost its moral compass.

Some of us progressive writers have been warning about this dangerous trend for several years. This includes my colleagues Fred Clarkson, David Neiwert, Sara Robinson, John Amato, Adele Stan, and others. We blame right-wing demagogues like Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter and a culture that tolerates their vicious targeting of scapegoats.

Now the shootings have created a new word floating across cyberspace: "becking." To be "becked" is to be held up as such an evil and destructive person that someone, somewhere, will interpret it as a call to eliminate that problem through violence.

Pima County, Arizona, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik couldn't have been any clearer in explaining how the escalating culture of "violent politics" paved the way for Jared Lee Loughner to commit his heinous crime.

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” [...]

“We need to do some soul searching … It’s the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business. People tend to pooh-pooh this business about the vitriol that inflames American public opinion by the people who make a living off of that. That may be free speech but it’s not without consequences.”

And while Loughner's exact motives for Saturday's massacre are still unclear, the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has tracked extreme right and hate groups for decades, has unearthed some frightening clues.

At one point, Loughner refers disparagingly to “currency that’s not backed by gold or silver.” The idea that silver and gold are the only “constitutional” money is widespread in the antigovernment “Patriot” movement that produced so much violence in the 1990s. It’s linked to the core Patriot theory that the Federal Reserve is actually a private corporation run for the benefit of unnamed international bankers. So-called Patriots say paper money — what they refer to with a sneer as “Federal Reserve notes” — is not lawful.

At another, Loughner makes extraordinarily obscure comments about language and grammar, suggesting that the government engages in “mind control on the people by controlling grammar.” That’s not the kind of idea that’s very common out there, even on the Internet. In fact, I think it’s pretty clear that Loughner is taking ideas from Patriot conspiracy theorist David Wynn Miller of Milwaukee. Miller claims that the government uses grammar to “enslave” Americans and offers up his truly weird “Truth-language” as an antidote. For example, he says that if you add colons and hyphens to your name in a certain way, you are no longer taxable. Miller may be mad as a hatter, but he has a real following on the right.

Loughner talks about how you “can’t trust the government” and someone burns a U.S. flag in one of his videos. Although certain right-wing websites are already using that (and his listing of The Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books) to claim that Loughner was a “left-winger,” that does not strike me as true. The main enemy of the Patriot movement is certainly the federal government. And so-called Patriots have certainly engaged in acts like burning the flag.

Finally, I think Loughner’s reading list, although it included children’s books and a few classics, had an underlying theme — the individual versus the totalitarian state. Certainly, that’s the explicit central theme of Ayn Rand’s We the Living and Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, among others. I would argue that that’s the way Loughlin seems to be reading The Communist Manifesto and Hitler’s Mein Kampf — as variants of a kind of generalized “smash the state” attitude.

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, which does similar work to that of Hatewatch, points out in a post earlier today that Loughner also makes a reference to a “second American constitution.” As Chip notes, that is commonly understood to refer to the Reconstruction amendments that freed the slaves and gave them citizenship, among other things. Chip says that “raises the question of a possible racist and anti-immigrant tie” in the Arizona shooting.

OK, so Loughner may have been dabbling in some looney tunes nonsense, possibly even including a known white supremacist hate group. What does this have to do with Glenn Beck... Or Sarah Palin and Sharron Angle for that matter? Well, it comes back to the teabaggers. The "tea party" is a sort of umbrella classification of a number of far right organizations and politicians, but there is definitely strong evidence to show that leading "tea party" figures are trying to legitimize the same extreme ideology of the extreme right that influenced past terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh.

And worse, as Glenn Beck warns of supposed "conspiracies of the left" to bring about "imminent violent revolution", and as Sarah Palin tells her followers, "never retreat, instead RELOAD!", and as Sharron Angle suggests "Second Amendment Remedies" to take care of "enemies in our own system... in the walls of Congress"...



Far too many media pundits and politicians in DC have been far too willing to simply dismiss this as "politics as usual". This is NOT "politics as usual". This is an ever escalating culture of political violence that must stop!



Again, I had feared something like this would eventually happen. Last year, I feared Harry Reid would be the victim. I had seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the teabaggers' unplugged, unfiltered, and unfettered irrational hatred of Harry Reid... As well as President Barack Obama, for that matter. While "Tea Party, Inc." consultants in California were just focusing on building enough opposition to win an election, the opposition among many teabaggers ran far deeper.



I saw it for myself last March in Searchlight. Thankfully, I observed no violent acts there. But without a doubt, the same overheated rhetoric seen there has also encouraged violence throughout the country in the last two years. And even in the course of the last year, I myself was hearing people saying things as vile as hoping for Harry Reid's death. Some friends of mine were nearly run over by a "tea party"/Sharron Angle fan in a white truck.

But that wasn’t the only violent incident. Before the event began, about 50 Harry Reid supporters lined the sidewalk facing Haulapai with supportive signs. We were getting dozens of honks, thumbs up and waving. A few sour faces drove past, but one bitter Angle supporter in particular took her distaste for Harry Reid too far. She ran her white Toyota truck (NV license plate SCL-006 ) on to the sidewalk, nearly hitting me, a man to my left (who was disabled and had a brace on his right foot) and two women to my right. Several people chased after her and took pictures of her license plate.

Apparently the woman confronted some people in our group after parking her car because she was upset we took pictures of her license plate. I did not see her come near our group because I was consoling the women to my right who were on the verge of tears. People who were across the street were coming over to see if we were okay, and to verify if they saw what they thought they saw: a woman in a white truck (covered in “Angle for Senate”, “Dump Reid” “Don’t Tread on Me” “Nobama” stickers) drive her car onto the sidewalk and try to hit us. She in fact did.

Tire marks on the sidewalk:

Ironically, the driver (who turns out, is a school teacher) was escorted out of the forum by police just minutes before “the fight” broke out for being disruptive.

Sharron Angle has called for an armed revolt against the United Stated government should she lose this election. She has called forHarry Reid to be killed. The leader of the Republican Tea Party, Sarah Palin (who has endorsed Angle and gave the Angle campaign money via Sarah PAC) repeatedly instructs people not to “retreat” but to “reload” when faced with adversity.

The behavior we saw tonight was the result these violent provocations. I have a feeling the worst is yet to come.

Yes, that was the night of the fateful "forum" at Faith Lutheran High School in Summerlin. And yes, this actually happened BEFORE a male Sharron Angle fan started punching a female Harry Reid supporter inside!

Even while I was confident a majority of Nevadans would reject this extremism, I was also afraid of how an enraged, radicalized minority would react.

And again, this has been happening throughout the country. Andrew Sullivan reminded us again yesterday of the violent hate speech that had often been limited to fringe extremists, but has now been popularized by "tea party" icon Sarah Palin.

The point here is not that there is any connection between this random post and political violence. The point is the worldview Palin holds. It is zero-sum. It expresses itself in clear and stark violent imagery. It is constantly about attack, conflict, combat, "enemy territory", "Big Guns", battle. This rhetorical background is so deeply part of the narrative we barely notice it any more. But it is not truly the language of politics; it's the language of war.
Just look again at this ad that ran against Giffords last November. And ponder a moment:

If you are not disturbed by what it proclaims as the essence of true conservatism - a sun-glass-wearing soldier with a machine gun in his open crotch - you should be.

And again, there's a strong possibility that the revolting rants of the "Patriot Movement" fringes of the "tea party", backed up by the radicalized messaging pushed by the likes of Beck and Palin, are encouraging mentally disturbed people like Jared Lee Loughner to resort to violence.

In a series of videos, he gave a rambling account of obsessions and paranoias that appeared to be troubling him with increasing intensity up to the catastrophe. They included references to conscious dreaming, or "conscience dreaming" as he called it, a process of directing one's own dreams that he is thought to have practised. Another was a belief in the gold and silver standard of currency – a favourite topic of the rightwing of American politics that is regularly propounded by the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck.

The tone of Loughner's rantings is almost exclusively conservative and anti-government, with echoes of the populist campaigning of the Tea Party movement. "Don't trust the government listener!" he said in one video, accusing Washington of mind control and brainwashing.

The US constitution, the bible of the Tea Parties, features heavily, as does the suggestion that the federal government is acting against the text. "You don't have to accept the federalist laws. Read the United States of America constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws."

There is also a strong streak of implicit violence in the postings.

He linked to his favourite video, America: Your Last Memory in a Terrorist Country, which shows a ghostly figure burning the US flag in the desert to a heavy metal song that repeatedly chants "Let the bodies hit the floor!"

He referred to people calling him a terrorist and wrote "a terrorist is a person who employs terror or terrorism, especially as a political weapon."

So are all teabaggers terrorists? No, far from it. Are Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Sharron Angle guilty of murder? No, and I would never accuse them of that. But has the tone of the "tea party" become so enraged that it's encouraged violence? There is increasing evidence to show just that. And has the message of the "tea party" turned so hateful that the mentally disturbed take it the wrong way and take images of "take Harry Reid out", "Obamanation", and cross hairs over Gabrielle Giffords' district as a more literal call to arms? I fear so.

Enough is enough. This just has to stop.

I'll conclude with a warning from Desert Beacon.

Perhaps the notion that this act of violence was the result of a deranged mind will become popular in some circles. If this is the case then there are two problems to address. First, if this individual was, in fact, mentally incompetent to understand the consequences of his actions, when - where - and how did his family and community miss the signals that his mental health was deteriorating?  Did they attempt to seek help for him? Where mental health services available? Affordable?

The second issue is, of course, who filled that fragile mind?  Was he listening to hate radio broadcasts -- ones with fiery rhetoric replete with visions of doom and gloom for the republic? Was he watching broadcasts or reading inflammatory media which made violence an attractive option? There's a precedent for this. In April 2007 a man was arrested in California for stalking and harassing then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. [WaPo] In April 2010, Charles Alan Wilson, stalked and harassed Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) leaving messages saying "It only takes one piece of lead." His family was disturbed by the effect Glenn Beck's television show had on him.  [HP] August 10, 2010, the California Highway Patrol arrested Byron Williams while he was wearing his body armor and threatening to take out the Tides Foundation, because, as his family explained, Beck had "opened his mind." [WaPo] [SFgate]

These weren't the first incidents. In April 2009 three police officers were assassinated in Pittsburgh by Ron Poplawski, who feared, "Obama would take away his gun rights." [NDN] In July 2008, Jim Adkisson of Powell, TN, killed 2 and wounded 7 in his attack on a Knoxville church. Adkisson explained: "He felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets," the affidavit said. "Because he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement ... he would then target those that had voted them into office." [CNN] In June 2009, white supremacist and former resident of Butler's Hayden Lake, ID compound walked into the U.S. Holocaust Museum and killed the African American guard who opened the door for him. [CNN] It only took a very few individuals to bring down the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. [wik] There's an older song about all this:

"You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid 
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late, 
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!" [link, credits]

Terror in Arizona: The People Behind The Headlines

As we're still trying to make sense of what happened yesterday, we should remember the real human toll of this horrid act of domestic terrorism. We now know more about the victims slain yesterday...

Christina Greene, 9,who was born in Maryland on 9/11. She was featured in a book called "Faces of Hope: Babies Born on 9/11". A neighbor took her to the event, thinking the girl would enjoy it. We're told the neighbor was also shot.

Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, was recently engaged to be married, was Giffords' director of community outreach. He graduated from University High School in 1998 where he was active in student government. A vigil was held tonight by his friends who described him as "caring," "motivated," "a free spirit," and "a man who understood how to live life"

U.S. District Judge John Roll, 63, earned his law degree from UA in 1972. Roll was nominated to the federal bench in 1991, and has been the chief judge of the district of Arizona since 2006.

Dorwin Stoddard, 76, was a church volunteer. When the shooting started, Dorwin tried to protect his wife by laying on top of her when the shooting started. She was wounded in the attack.

Others killed:

Dorthy Morris, 76
Phyllis Scheck, 79

These people come from various walks of life, and were at that suburban Tucson strip mall yesterday for various reasons.

There was federal judge John Roll, known for his dedication to his country, his state of Arizona, and the law.



And there was Gabe Zimmerman, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' director of community outreach. Two other Giffords aides were also injured by yesterday's attack, but are expected to recover.

Gabe Zimmerman was chatting with constituents in the line to speak with U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords when the first shots rang out.

Zimmerman, one of five staffers and two interns at the "Congress on Your Corner" event, was killed by a gunman who opened fire on Giffords before spraying the crowd with bullets.

Two other Giffords staffers, district director Ron Barber and community-outreach worker Pam Simon, also were injured in the shooting, but are expected to recover. All three were part of a loyal core of Giffords staffers who have been with the congresswoman since she first went to Washington, D.C., Giffords' spokesman C.J. Karamargin said.

As director of community outreach, Zimmerman had organized the event.

"He was asking them what they needed," said Mark Kimble, a speech writer standing a few feet away.

Zimmerman, a 30-year-old social worker with a master's degree, brought compassion to his job.

"Gabe was a master at dealing with people," Karamargin said. "He truly cared about helping people. There were no politics involved in this." [...]

Michael McNulty, a Tucson attorney who chaired Giffords' campaigns since she first ran for the state House, said Zimmerman was "as close to a purely good human being as I've ever known. He worked tirelessly to solve people's problems."

And there was Christina Taylor Greene, a 9 year old girl who already had a strange association with another sad day of terrorism.

The 9-year-old girl who died is Christina Green, says her uncle Greg Segalini. A neighbor was going to Saturday's event and invited Christina along because she thought she would enjoy it.

"The next thing you know this happened. How do you prepare for something like this. My little niece got killed-took one on the chest and she is dead," Segalini said outside the girl's house.

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.

Christina was involved in many activities, from ballet to baseball, Segalini said.

"She was real special and real sweet," Segalini said.

But even amidst the unfettered evil and hate that was brutally unleashed yesterday, there were also a few courageous American heroes.

Daniel Hernandez Jr., a 20-year-old University of Arizona student who’d been working as an intern for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for only five days, is being credited with saving her life after she was shot on Saturday.

Hernandez, who confirmed that he is gay in an interview with Instant Tea on Sunday morning, is a member of theCity of Tucson Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. “She’s been a great ally to the LGBT community,” Hernandez said of Giffords during the brief interview across a bad connection.

According to the Arizona Republic, Hernandez was standing about 30 feet from Giffords during the “Congress on Your Corner” event outside a Safeway store near Tucson. When the gunshots began, Hernandez ran toward them and began checking the pulses of people who’d been hit. When Hernandez got to Giffords, he used his hand to apply pressure to the entry wound on her forehead.  He pulled her into his lap and held her upright so she wouldn’t choke on her blood.

Daniel Hernandez is shown with Giffords in this image from his Facebook page.

Hernandez used his hand to apply pressure to the wound until someone brought clean smocks from the meat department of the grocery store. He stayed with Giffords until paramedics arrived, then climbed into an ambulance with her. On the way to the hospital, he squeezed her hand and she squeezed back.

Thank goodness Daniel Hernandez was there, and thank goodness he knew what to do.

He waited at the hospital while she went into surgery. He needed to tell police what had happened. He overheard people walking by talking about how Giffords had died. He also heard this on NPR. Later, he learned she had lived.

"I was ecstatic," he said. "She was one of the people I've looked up to. Knowing she was alive and still fighting was good news. She's definitely a fighter, whether for her own life, or standing up for people in southern Arizona."

The fact that Hernandez was nearby and able to react quickly probably saved Giffords' life, said state Rep. Matt Heinz, D-Tucson, and a hospital physician. He talked to Hernandez at the hospital after the shooting.

Eight hours after the shooting, Hernandez stood with Giffords' friends and staff and told them what had happened. The tall, strong 20-year-old said, "Of course you're afraid, you just kind of have to do what you can."

They hugged and thanked him. Later, he sat with his mom and sisters and told them about his friends and the staffers who had died that day.

"You just have to be calm and collected," he said. "You do no good to anyone if you have a breakdown. . . . It was probably not the best idea to run toward the gunshots, but people needed help."

Sometimes it takes a few people, people like the victims of this senseless tragedy, along with the heroes who saved lives yesterday, to remind me of the veracity of something President Bill Clinton once said, that there isn't anything wrong about our country that can't be fixed by what's right about our country.

What happened yesterday harmed real people. And these people were keen on helping other people. This should not have happened to them.

A 9 year old girl who was already excited about serving the community was lost. A 30 year old guy who was just engaged was lost, right as he was organizing yet another community event for Southern Arizonans to discuss their problems, issues, and concerns with their local member of Congress. A local church volunteer laid down his life so that his wife's could be spared. And a highly respected judge, a judge who just wanted to stop at the local Safeway to say hello to his Congresswoman, was lost.

I'm still trying to make sense of all of this.

We can't forget these people and the stories they've told. And we shouldn't forget those like Daniel Hernandez and Dorwin Stoddard, people who put themselves at risk (which proved to be fatal for Stoddard) to save others. Even as I wonder how our country and our political system can move forward after this gruesome show of brutality, I am reminded of the compassion, the caring, and the spirit of service of our people. This is what still makes America great, and we can't ever forget that.