Sarah Palin Criticized Over Gabrielle Giffords Presence on "Target List"
John Moore/Getty Images
Updated 12:20 p.m. Eastern Time Sunday
We do not yet know what prompted 22-year-old accused gunman Jared Loughner to allegedly shoot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and others, including a child and federal judge who died from their wounds.
But critics of Sarah Palin have already drawn a link between the shooting and the fact that the former Alaska governor put Giffords on a "target list" of lawmakers Palin wanted to see unseated in the midterm elections.
In March, Palin released a map featuring 20 House Democrats that used crosshairs images to show their districts. (You can see it here.) Critics suggested at the time that she was inciting violence by using the crosshairs imagery and for later writing on Twitter to her supporters, "'Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!'"
Special Section: Tragedy in Tucson
"We're paying particular attention to those House members who voted in favor of Obamacare and represent districts that Senator John McCain and I carried during the 2008 election," Palin wrote when she released the target list.
She specifically cited Giffords and then went to say: "We'll aim for these races and many others."
In response to the news that Giffords had been shot, Palin posted the following on Facebook: "My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today's tragic shooting in Arizona. On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice."
In the comments section below, her critics did not hold back.
This photo obtained from the 2006 Mountain View High School yearbook shows Jared L. Loughner. U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head Saturday when an assailant opened fire outside a grocery store during a meeting with constituents, killing at least five people. Police say that Jared L. Loughner has been taken into custody in conjunction with the shooting incident.
/ AP Photo"More than condolences, I hope you will think carefully in the future when you call on supporters to 'take aim' at opponents, and refer to elections as 'salvos,'" wrote Kirsten Sherk. "A child was killed today by someone who can't tell the difference between 'inspiring' speech and a call to arms. I was appalled by your violent speech before, I'm horrified now."
A Palin aide, meanwhile, called it "obscene" and "appalling" to blame Palin for the shooting.
"We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you'd see on maps," Rebecca Mansour said on the Tammy Bruce radio show.
"I don't understand how anybody could be held responsible for somebody who is completely mentally unstable like this. Where I come from the person that is actually shooting is the one that's culpable," added Mansour.
She also said that "it seems that he people that knew him said that he was left-wing and very liberal -- but that is not to say that I am blaming the left."
Preliminary examinations of Loughner's web presence suggest he shared passions with both the far left and far right. The evidence -- which includes a video linking government mind control to grammar -- also suggests he may have been mentally ill.
Arizona Democrat Rep. Raul Grijalva, meanwhile, told The Nation in the wake of the shooting that "we're feeding anger, hatred, and division for quite a while. Maybe it is time for elected officials and leaders in this country that have been feeding that disease to realize that there are consequences to it."
Asked if the Tea Party right was to blame, he added: "[When] you stoke these flames, and you go to public meetings and you scream at the elected officials, you threaten them--you make us expendable you make us part of the cannon fodder. For a while, you've been feeding this hatred, this division...you feed it, you encourage it....Something's going to happen. People are feeding this monster....Some of the extreme right wing has made demonization of elected officials their priority."
Giffords is in the beginning of her third term in office after recently winning a very close election. She is a conservative Democrat in a conservative state, but was the target of heated rhetoric.
Gabrielle Giffords: Who is She?
Boehner on Giffords: "Attack on All who Serve"
Obama: "A Tragedy for our Entire Country"
Around the time of the Palin post, Giffords's district office was vandalized with a window being shot out. CBS News's Jill Jackson reported at the time that staffers were "kind of shaken up" after receiving numerous threats including "nasty language, foul language."
In August of 2009, someone dropped a handgun at a Giffords town hall meeting, prompting calls to police from Giffords' staff. A spokesman said then that "We have never felt the need before to notify law enforcement when we hold these events."
Asked by the New York Post in the wake of the shooting if Giffords had any enemies, her father responded, "Yeah. The whole Tea Party."
Actress Jane Fonda attends the Maria Shriver Women's Conference on Oct. 25, 2010, in Long Beach, Calif.
/ Frederick M. Brown/Getty ImagesThe Tea Part Express, meanwhile, said in part: "These heinous crimes have no place in America, and they are especially grievous when committed against our elected officials. Spirited debate is desirable in our country, but it only should be the clash of ideas. An attack on anyone for political purposes, if that was a factor in this shooting, is an attack on the democratic process."
John McCain, the man who brought Palin to national attention by tapping her to be his running mate, didn't mention Palin in his response to the shooting in his home state. "Whoever did this; whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race, and they deserve and will receive the contempt of all decent people and the strongest punishment of the law," he wrote.
When Palin was being criticized for the target list, McCain came to her defense, saying, "I have seen the rhetoric of targeted districts as long as I've been in politics."
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
/ APResponding to Palin's rhetoric last year, Giffords herself told MSNBC's The Daily Rundown, that "the rhetoric is incredibly heated."
Giffords - who is a gun owner and supporter of gun rights - went on to say: "The way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district, when people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that," she added.
Palin is not the only politician taking heat in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy - critics are also pointing the finger at Giffords' general election opponent, Jesse Kelly. The liberal website firedoglake noted that Kelly held an event on June 12th urging supporters to "Get on Target for Victory in November/Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office/Shoot a fully automatic M15 with Jesse Kelly."
Here's how the Arizona Daily Star described the event at the time:
Jesse Kelly, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be bothered in the least by the Sarah Palin controversy earlier this year, when she released a list of targeted races in crosshairs, urging followers to "reload" and "aim" for Democrats. Critics said she was inciting violence.
He seems to be embracing his fellow tea partier's idea. Kelly's campaign event website has a stern-looking photo of the former Marine in military garb holding his weapon. It includes the headline: "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."
Congresswoman Shot in Arizona
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Quo warranto, B.O.?
Quits or loses at everything: her Governor job, her reality TV shows, and my stars, was even fired from FoxNews! She is a comedian; a buffoon; a quitter; a loser (with a capital "L")!
about what anybody said in San Clemente. Nixon called the bulk of them the Silent Majority in an effective psychological bit of slogan that stuck. He won because voters wanted a tough conservative president who could refine things. He didn't, the war by the way ended 6 years later. Read this example and remember what Sarah Palin said, if they need me I will run. She could not care less about the ridicule, if she is needed in 2012, just as Nixon did, she may win.
Palin, fronting for the same treasonous Fifth Column now, shall be afforded the most proficient operators to deflect and deny the guilt her "reticle crosshairs" targeting of Gabrielle Giffords won her.
Look at Palin's father: his being inbred makes her inbred.
Look at her "family values" hypocrisy while her poor daughter gets pregnant as a means of escape.
Look at Palin's proven lies and now the shedding of innocent blood by her incitement: she is trash.
Loughner was drugged-up and alienated: proclaiming hid G-dlessness. At least he's honest: Palin and the Bushes are also G-dless but they lie.
To be G-d's Country America must be ruled by Truth and Justice. Loughner's US Rep., judiciary and LEOs, in his addled mind, have no moral authority unless Bush and Cheney are brought to justice: Equal justice for all.
Finally, this fundamental American believes some responsible citizens at the Palin Massacre in Tucson should have terminated Loughner, sending him back to Our Maker, doing his tortured soul a favor...just as we should for Bush's and Cheney's souls by trying and frying them for their 9/11 treason.?
Those who disagree are neither liberal nor American.
Palin's camp, after removing?their provocative "reticle crosshairs" map is telling all who care to listen that it had nothing to do with the telescopic sights on Palin's often seen rifles, suggestive of shooting opposing politicians, and was merely a map symbol: patently and factually incorrect (compare - compass rose), whether from ignorance (preposterous) or a blatant lie. But then the woman was already caught lying about "the Bridge to Nowhere" as soon as she appeared on Our Nation's political stage inarguably inbred whitetrash (e.g.: father, daughter, her transparent lies and hypocrisy, and likely racism), yet garners the attention of otherwise legitimate media outlets?and numbers of "enfranchised" followers, ostensibly voting members of the American Electorate. Is her backing by the "Babylonian pedophile priesthood's false aristocracy and "Big Oil" a mystery?
What "Americans" have no qualms about affiliating with a proven liar and inciter of shedding the blood of innocents when the Ancient Scripture which helped the Founders derive and bequeath Our Creed's "Annuit Coeptis" tells us all "G-d hates a liar?" Shall we prosper as the Promised Land, blessed by "divine Providence," or be "guided" on "another path" accepting corruption, injustice, a spiraling concentration of wealth, unchecked illegal immigration as invasion for conquest openly published by the institution identified by Our Author, Founder, and Prophet, Th. Jefferson, as "the real Anti-Christ," and the unadjudicated treason troubling the pathetic drug-addled pervert shooter: 9/11?
Loughner objected to "In God We Trust," explicitly refusing to trust in G-d, and mentally supplanted the comfort and guidance gained from faith in "the Infinite" with his fixation on "grammar," the "righteousness" and meaning of language.
We, the sovereign People, enlist Government, our servant, to "pursue justice," "seek truth," "abolish evil," and "establish righteousness," simulating, in our Novus Ordo Seclorem (New Secular Order), attributes of divinity by which all Citizens, whether "believer" or not, can profit, free and sovereign.
When Giffords essentially mocked Loughner by responding to his question, of "grammar" and the meaninglessness of words, in Spanish, his G-dlessness and lack of moral discipline compounded the anger and confusion he felt in the knowledge that Bush and Cheney committed 9/11 and none, especially the friendly and otherwise approachable Giffords, was doing anything about it (recall Travis Bickel's political epiphany in "Taxi Driver").?
The rest is history. Pres. Obama performed well in Tucson. Are we now to be the best America the dead nine-year old "imagined?"?
Sen. Obama "wrapped his mind" around Bush's and Cheney's having committed 9/11 in "Audacity of Hope" (page number on request).?
Were we gulled by one more "happy face," like that of the draft-dodging closet-queen illegally appointed by only the Roman Catholics on the SCOTUS, whose family has fronted for the Vatican banker, Hitler-financing Rockefellers since Standard Oil was built on unredressed murder and arson, whose grandfather was Hitler's banker, and whose father took part in the assassination of John Kennedy (and Dr. King) to send 58,000 of us to die for South Vietnam's corrupt Roman Catholic ruling false elite, because he lied and said he knew "Jesus?"
Wake up, America. Chaos and confusion shall reign until Cheney and Bush hang at the Navy Yard. Whistle past the graveyard all you want but we, as a nation, are doomed unless Righteousness is established through the abolishment of Evil.
G-d is not mocked. All is revealed.
theamericanfundamentdotblogspotdotcom
by lockdnloaded January 13, 2011 10:05 PM EST
HATER
...you clearly are a befuddled fellow traveler of treason. Come out of Babylon. G-d is not mocked. The Beast you're "riding," whether socio-politically, "religiously," or economically, is doomed.
She is neither an idiot or retarded. She is sans insight and caring for anyone but herself. She is EVIL INCARNATE.
Unfortunatley your right--but, maybe we can be better.]
O'Reilly on Fox was after Dr. Tiller in Kansas, again and again and again calling him a baby killer. And what happened to him, a fake pro-lifer got him. Palin put targets on named individuals and then went around talking about reloading. And she was involved with the racist, violent Republican Corporate Tea Bag Party. Many of them were doing the same thing.
What is a firm father figure conservative supposed to do with all that pressure filling their reactionary brains? Go kill someone. That is why Dr. Tiller is dead and the Palin Massacre happened.