tagged w/ giffords shooting
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If you ever have a chance to hear Daniel Hernandez give a speech, do it! He’s an excellent motivational speaker. I was at a fundraiser where Daniel Hernandez was the keynote speaker. The people who came to the fundraiser were the type who could be there at noon, in late May, in the middle of Arizona. The place seemed to favor retired schoolteachers. The last time I was in the restaurant where the fundraiser was held, I heard Tipper Gore talk about the recount. It’s been awhile.
If you remember the speech Pres. Obama gave in Tucson after Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot, then you will remember who Daniel Hernandez is. Daniel Hernandez is the aide to former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who is credited with saving her life. When Pres. Obama came to Tucson to speak to the grieving families after the shooting, Daniel Hernandez’s speech, in which he rejected the word “hero,” grabbed me. I was not expecting a good political speech at that moment, and was relieved to see it.
When I was expecting to hear a good speech, it really didn’t happen. I was in Congressman Harry Mitchell’s office in D.C. the day he was sworn in in January 2007. There was a reception for constitutions in his office, and I was in D.C. at the time. I left a little disappointed and worried. I had expected more specific information about what would be happening next in his campaign, and what I could do to help. All I heard from his aides were their worries about fundraising, which I really couldn’t do anything about. But money never won a campaign, people do, and I left feeling disconnected from his campaign. So, I wasn’t really surprised, although I was disappointed, when he eventually lost his second re-election campaign.
In contrast, Daniel Hernandez can speak to you in such a way that you feel connected to the larger issue of what’s going on. When I left that fundraiser, I felt like something had actually happened. At the Mitchell gathering, I felt like I had just missed the party, somehow or another.
After the shooting, Daniel Hernandez lost the University of Arizona student body election, but went on to win the “real” election to the Sunnyside school board. That sounds like the college I remember. When I went to the University of Arizona, the highly contested position of student body president ended up being between a couple of students from my dorm. Since then, I’ve never really been able to convince anyone who wasn’t there that trying to become the U of A’s student body president is actually really difficult. I think that Daniel Hernandez’s story puts that problem into perspective.
The only advice I have for Daniel Hernandez would be to give just a little bit more of the party’s current specific strategy, or overall vision, in his speeches, so that we will all know what tangible overall goal that we are all working on, and to be sure that everyone leaves knowing exactly what they are supposed to be doing next for the campaign. You don’t want people wanting to help, but not knowing specifically what’s going to happen next. I don’t want him to lose the connection he currently has with the voters.
It’s hard to get involved in politics. It’s hard to connect into something with forward momentum. It’s easy to get brushed aside or lost in the shuffle. There is no good starting place. It’s even hard to know if you are actually involved in politics for those in the middle of the fray. One reason people get involved in politics is to lose the sense of isolation felt in daily life. Politics can be a place where we can all come together. Unfortunately, a lot of the time the phone banks, and such, is just the campaign talking at people instead of involving them.
So, who was Daniel Hernandez’s speech for anyway? The person, David Schneider, whose campaign he was stomping for, is trying to get one of the outlet malls at the I-10 & I-8 interchange, which has been bought by Chinese immigrant investors, turned into a kind of farmer’s market for Chinese hotel suppliers. It was a mall that, despite being in an excellent location, became run down due to the economic collapse. I am secretly glad that Chinese investors decided to come in and buy it. I don’t want to be unkind, but I was worried about the gangs immediately south of the mall having a spot to claim. This is keeping that from happening. (Pres. Obama’s strictly enforced deportation policies have also kept it from happening, which I was not expecting.) Plus, they are updating the railway in order to accommodate the anticipated shipments coming in and out of the area. It’s interesting to watch a person who was the local librarian trying to do international commerce with the Chinese. Mercifully enough, the deal is still on. I hope it doesn’t turn into something like Jamie O”Neil’s song There is no Arizona.
Follow Daniel Hernandez on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/djblp.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFFleBUIOhE
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/09/20110109daniel-hernandez-gabrielle-giffords-arizona-shooting.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/09/daniel-hernandez-gabrielle-giffords-school-board-election_n_1084672.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/23/daniel-hernandez-loses-student-election_n_852945.html
http://www.trivalleycentral.com/articles/2012/01/21/casa_grande_dispatch/business/doc4f1b07f998346060756501.txt
http://www.rhapsody.com/artist/jamie-oneal/album/shiver/track/there-is-no-arizonaIf you ever have a chance to hear Daniel Hernandez give a speech, do it! He’s... more
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Do you recognize the picture? Those are musket balls. They come from the most advanced weapon around in the year 1791, the year the Second Amendment was adopted. Post-Tucscon, I was curious about the "arms" that our Constitution gives us the right to "bear."
I found this article: http://www.scotwars.com/equip_smoothbore_musketry.htm
Here were a few things that caught my attention:
"Reloading took a long time, involving some 48 distinct movements."
"The method of loading the musket introduced inaccuracies in the amount of powder used, causing variations in the performance of the weapon. The firing mechanism, with its crude method of priming, was also by no means reliable and misfires occurred frequently."
"It was said that an individual, aiming at a target the size of a man at a range of 150 yards, had as much chance of hitting the target as he did of hitting the moon. "
_________
I've never fired a gun, and I don't really want to. But if I wanted to, and if it took 48 steps to simply fire that gun, I probably would have thought a lot about it. And if I thought a lot about it and still fired into a crowd of innocent people, I'd probably only get one shot off before I was stopped. And I'd probably miss. And I certainly wouldn't have killed anyone.
Imagine 48 steps for Loughner, for the shooter of Oscar Grant (whose name I forgot), for the shooter of Virginia Tech (whose name I also forgot).
We have the right to 48 steps. Maybe it's time to consider one or two of them?
http://www.scotwars.com/equip_smoothbore_musketry.htmDo you recognize the picture? Those are musket balls. They come from the most... more
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This is not what we want to see.
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It shouldn't surprise anyone that she uses the term wrong.
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Tuscon, Arizona Shooting Victims Include N.J. Grandma A Comment on the Tuscon, Arizona Shooting. RESPONSE from a United States Veteran: To:Jared Lee Loughner, the man charged in the Tucson, Arizona, shooting spree that left six people dead and Rep.Tuscon, Arizona Shooting Victims Include N.J. Grandma A Comment on the Tuscon, Arizona... more
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kamoo
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1 year ago
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Latest Complete News Updates Today The nation will be observing a moment of silence to honor the victims of the shooting in Arizona. Jared Lee Loughner, the man charged in the Tucson, Arizona, shooting spree that left six people dead and Rep.Latest Complete News Updates Today The nation will be observing a moment of silence to... more
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kamoo
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1 year ago
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Sometimes, rumors of violence beget actual violence. Saturday's mass shooting at a Safeway on North Oracle Road in Tucson, which killed six and left Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others gravely wounded, may well be one of those occasions.
It's impossible to know this early what the motivations for the attack were. Was the alleged shooter — who has been identified as 22-year-old Tucsonan Jared Loughner — angry about immigration? Or perhaps another hot-button issue? YouTube videos ascribed to him bore the mark of mental illness — they were conspiratorial, unintelligible, espousing no particular cause — but no matter his mental state, his crime took place in an overheated political environment. Last March, at the height of the health care reform battle, Giffords' office was vandalized. She mentioned in an MSNBC interview that a Sarah Palin graphic had depicted her district in the crosshair of a gun sight. "They've got to realize there are consequences to that," she said. "The rhetoric is incredibly heated." The corner next to her office had also become, she said, a popular spot for Tea Party protests.
As Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik put it in an extraordinary and melancholic press conference after the shooting, "we have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry." He added that he's "not aware of any public officials who are not receiving threats."
Another shooting victim, a federal judge named John Roll, had been placed under 24-hour security in 2009 after ruling in favor of illegal immigrants in a high-profile case. It's unclear why he was at the supermarket event. But for almost a year now, Arizona's leaders have been grappling with anti-immigration sentiments, inflamed by reports of crossborder violence. National media attention, with its attendant voices of hysteria, only added to the churn. Pundits spoke gravely about a wave of violence, born in Mexico and now flooding Arizona. Arizona's two most famous politicians fueled the fury. Republican Senator John McCain, facing an unexpected reelection challenge from the right, ran a campaign obsessed with crossborder crime. And GOP Governor Jan Brewer, who invited the national spotlight by championing strict anti-illegal immigrant legislation, talked of beheadings in the desert.
The only problem with all this talk about a massive crossborder crime wave is that it wasn't true. Phoenix had not become one of the world's kidnapping capitals. Crime rates in Arizona had been steady or even fallen in some areas. There had been no beheadings in the desert. There were plenty of deaths there, but they were pathetic and meek tragedies: impoverished border-crossers, abandoned by their heartless guides, dying of exposure and dehydration.
But the idea of a state under siege took hold. When I was on the border last year reporting on the murder of rancher Rob Krentz, I talked to many who sincerely believed that they were under attack. Krentz's murder was a terrible event, but it was an isolated event. The relatively small number of home invasions, holdups and other crimes deeply disturbed border communities, but only because they had been living in such calm for so long. Their crime rates still don't match most cities in the states.
The supermarket meet-and-greet where Giffords was shot was actually a testimony to just how safe southern Arizona is. As a press release from her office last week put it, "'Congress on Your Corner' allows residents of Arizona's 8th Congressional District to meet their congresswoman one-on-one and discuss with her any issue, concern or problem involving the federal government." Not exactly the kind of event a politician would hold in a war zone.
It's true that Giffords was not a fan of the state's anti-immigration bill SB1070, but there were higher-profile opponents, such as her fellow Congressional Representative in Tuscon, Raul Grijalva. Yet the idea that Arizona is under attack has been pushed hard enough that it's very possible that the coward who shot her (in the head, according to a Tucson paper) believed that the 40-year-old Democrat, who had been tarred by some as soft on immigration because she didn't support SB1070, was contributing to larger-scale violence against Arizonans.
If that is the case, it would only add to the tragedy. The fact is, that among all the overwrought promises and all the panic I heard last summer in Arizona, I found that Giffords was one of the few politicians offering concrete law enforcement steps that would actually work against the drug cartels and other smugglers. It's not just that she fought for more money and police for border protection, although she did that. She co-sponsored legislation last year with a California Republican that aimed to give law enforcement important new tools in cracking down on the cash cards that were a favored methods of money-laundering. It was one of the many sensible, pragmatic ideas she had for cracking down on crime.
Whatever dark fantasies drove someone to try to take her life, Giffords is a sensible politician who was likely shot because she dealt with Arizona's reality, not its rumors.Sometimes, rumors of violence beget actual violence. Saturday's mass shooting at... more
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In the wake of the violence in Arizona, here's a reminder of some of what our Tea Party friends and neighbors had to say this year. Does this mean that they deserve to be censored? No. But they deserve our scorn. And they deserve the shame they SHOULD feel today.In the wake of the violence in Arizona, here's a reminder of some of what our Tea... more
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Fox News started covering a vigil that was happening at the steps of the capitol in Arizona in honor of Gabrielle Giffords after she was shot earlier today. As soon as a young man mentioned Sarah Palin's name, FOX News abruptly cut to commercial. It's sickening. FOX News will do anything to protect the investment they have made in Sarah Palin, even at the expense of Rep. Giffords.
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/fox-news-cuts-away-giffords-vigil-when-Fox News started covering a vigil that was happening at the steps of the capitol in... more
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Dallas Green's Granddaughter killed in Arizona This live blog will try to capture the latest developments throughout the day.One man is in custody and authorities are looking for another the day after a mass shooting at a Tucson, Ariz.Dallas Green's Granddaughter killed in Arizona This live blog will try to capture... more
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FOX News cuts away from ‘Giffords vigil’ when Sarah Palin’s name is mentioned |
The Cloudy Logic of ‘Political’ Shootings
Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in PoliticsFOX News cuts away from ‘Giffords vigil’ when Sarah Palin’s name is... more
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Recently Complete News Updates The shooting of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others at an Airzona shopping center shocked former Rep. The motives of the alleged shooter, who wounded Democratic Congresswoman Mrs. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people....Recently Complete News Updates The shooting of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others... more
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kamoo
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1 year ago
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