Off Topic · OT U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and many other shot to death just minutes ago (page 4)
Nalod wrote:While Palin is repulsive we as a country have long embraced guns as symbols for decades. TV Westerns like "Gunsmoke" and dozens of others always had shoot outs. This guy is nuts. But the "left" can't use politic rhetoric as the blame.I know many people who are Tea party people and are plenty upset with things. They are very emotional and passionate about their politics and see it as Patriotic to be so. They embrace many non truths as "news".
I know a guy going off on how great Texas is and he should have moved there! No deficit! Nobody checked that Texas does its budget ever TWO years and the down turn was not felt in 2008 tax rolls but sure did in 09 and 10! They are just as bad if not worse I think with the 4th largest deficit!
This shooting was bound to happen not by politics but because there are many guns and many crazies out there.
Palin is a moron but I can't put this one on her.
It most likely wasn't her and there are a lot of crazies, but you know as well as I do that A LOT of people look up to her. I can also see you'd have to be kinda crazy to look up to someone like that, so when Palin makes a chart the way she did... hey, maybe people will take it literally, even if she's joking in a very sick way. People will do what she says if they love her that much.
The problem is... she's f'ing nuts.
"The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks."
nykshaknbake wrote:Whose favorite books include the Communist Manifesto?Markji wrote:markvmc wrote:nykshaknbake wrote:ALso it's hard to say where this guy lies. He is an anti governement type with some weird feeeings about our education system. His favorite books include Mein Kamf and Communist Manifesto(both leftist publications).
Mein Kampf is not a leftist publication.
Thank you Markvmc for straightening out the Limbaugh-ites. The Nazis and the Mussolini fascists were Ultra-Right Wing. Russ Limbaugh, in his hate-creating dialogues tries to label the worst modern dictators as left-wing liberals to fuel the fires of hate. He tries to change history by denying the truth.nykshaknbake-ALso it's hard to say where this guy lies.
No its not. He is an Ultra-Right wing terrorist.
I'm sure we'll get a post in here explaining how Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were really all Rush Limbaugh ditto heads.
Surprised I haven't seen any entries about how this is all Bush's fault. Good thing he's no longer relevant. I'm sure the shooter has some type of ties to big oil.
Left wing liberal rhetoric spouting off about right wing rhetoric. America as usual.
jrodmc wrote:nykshaknbake wrote:Whose favorite books include the Communist Manifesto?Markji wrote:markvmc wrote:nykshaknbake wrote:ALso it's hard to say where this guy lies. He is an anti governement type with some weird feeeings about our education system. His favorite books include Mein Kamf and Communist Manifesto(both leftist publications).
Mein Kampf is not a leftist publication.
Thank you Markvmc for straightening out the Limbaugh-ites. The Nazis and the Mussolini fascists were Ultra-Right Wing. Russ Limbaugh, in his hate-creating dialogues tries to label the worst modern dictators as left-wing liberals to fuel the fires of hate. He tries to change history by denying the truth.nykshaknbake-ALso it's hard to say where this guy lies.
No its not. He is an Ultra-Right wing terrorist.
I'm sure we'll get a post in here explaining how Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were really all Rush Limbaugh ditto heads.Surprised I haven't seen any entries about how this is all Bush's fault. Good thing he's no longer relevant. I'm sure the shooter has some type of ties to big oil.
Left wing liberal rhetoric spouting off about right wing rhetoric. America as usual.
Sorry to disappoint you but I am not a left wing liberal. I am much more of an old school Northeast Republican - generally socially liberal and financially conservative. And anti-war except in times of defense. I register as Independent because I don't subscribe to either party's ridiculous rhetoric.
Getting on to my Rush Limbaugh statement, the only people I know of who claim Hitler and Nazism to be left wing are 3 of my friends (supposedly highly educated) who are diehard Limbaugh listeners and Rush himself. Most everyone categorizes Nazi and fascism are ultra-right but really mostly "Ultra" and definitely not "Liberal".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Paxton wrote that fascism is:
a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy, but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.[36]
On economic issues, fascists reject ideas of class conflict and internationalism, which are commonly held by Marxists and international socialists, in favour of class collaboration and statist nationalism.[58][59] However, Italian fascism also declared its objection to excessive capitalism, which it called supercapitalism.[60] Zeev Sternhell sees fascism as an anti-Marxist form of socialism,[61] but he still places fascism on the political Right.
Many more quotes and discussion on that site.
But Limbaugh creates hate and the strong hate between the ultra right and the "Liberal Left" is destroying My country.
Markji wrote: However, Italian fascism also declared its objection to excessive capitalism, which it called supercapitalism.
I don't know if I agree with that one.
"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. Benito Mussolini ."
Someone else said it first but Mussolini seemed to have subscribed to that interpretation. Unfortunately we seem to headed in the same direction.
Olberman has named my uncle one of his "worst people in the world" multiple times and I get that its done in a sort of tongue and cheek way, but some people don't.
When you get down to brass tacks I really believe that the changing of the congressional districts a few years back has led to the current extremist environment and must be changed. The districts now are set up to reflect left or right leaning areas. This leads to competition to see how far left or how far right the political leaders in those districts can go to win elections. This needs to be changed. The districts should be completely random so that the representatives are motivated to be more moderate.
JohnWallace44 wrote:Be it Olberman, Limbaugh, Palin, Marc Rubio or any of the players in the current political scene who like to one up eachother and talk as if control by the opponent is akin to Armageddon should certainly take a step back and think about the words they use.Olberman has named my uncle one of his "worst people in the world" multiple times and I get that its done in a sort of tongue and cheek way, but some people don't.
When you get down to brass tacks I really believe that the changing of the congressional districts a few years back has led to the current extremist environment and must be changed. The districts now are set up to reflect left or right leaning areas. This leads to competition to see how far left or how far right the political leaders in those districts can go to win elections. This needs to be changed. The districts should be completely random so that the representatives are motivated to be more moderate.
oh wow, without naming your uncle, can you describe the actions that made him a mention on Olberman's list?
martin wrote:JohnWallace44 wrote:Be it Olberman, Limbaugh, Palin, Marc Rubio or any of the players in the current political scene who like to one up eachother and talk as if control by the opponent is akin to Armageddon should certainly take a step back and think about the words they use.Olberman has named my uncle one of his "worst people in the world" multiple times and I get that its done in a sort of tongue and cheek way, but some people don't.
When you get down to brass tacks I really believe that the changing of the congressional districts a few years back has led to the current extremist environment and must be changed. The districts now are set up to reflect left or right leaning areas. This leads to competition to see how far left or how far right the political leaders in those districts can go to win elections. This needs to be changed. The districts should be completely random so that the representatives are motivated to be more moderate.
oh wow, without naming your uncle, can you describe the actions that made him a mention on Olberman's list?
He's a pretty level headed talking head for the right and runs his own organization, but Olberman just takes him to task for his talking points every once in a while. Nothing too exciting.
orangeblobman wrote:Guy was just crazy. His political views are inconsistent. Mein Kampf and the Manifesto? That's contradictory. I don't think his politics were very serious, it's likely he was just a crazy guy, just out of his mind, not on this planet.
based on the early info that's in i would agree with you. seems to be a mark chapman/john hinckley type. would love it if we could figure out a way to keep guns out of these guys' hands.
Markji wrote:jrodmc wrote:nykshaknbake wrote:Whose favorite books include the Communist Manifesto?Markji wrote:markvmc wrote:nykshaknbake wrote:ALso it's hard to say where this guy lies. He is an anti governement type with some weird feeeings about our education system. His favorite books include Mein Kamf and Communist Manifesto(both leftist publications).
Mein Kampf is not a leftist publication.
Thank you Markvmc for straightening out the Limbaugh-ites. The Nazis and the Mussolini fascists were Ultra-Right Wing. Russ Limbaugh, in his hate-creating dialogues tries to label the worst modern dictators as left-wing liberals to fuel the fires of hate. He tries to change history by denying the truth.nykshaknbake-ALso it's hard to say where this guy lies.
No its not. He is an Ultra-Right wing terrorist.
I'm sure we'll get a post in here explaining how Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were really all Rush Limbaugh ditto heads.Surprised I haven't seen any entries about how this is all Bush's fault. Good thing he's no longer relevant. I'm sure the shooter has some type of ties to big oil.
Left wing liberal rhetoric spouting off about right wing rhetoric. America as usual.
Sorry to disappoint you but I am not a left wing liberal. I am much more of an old school Northeast Republican - generally socially liberal and financially conservative. And anti-war except in times of defense. I register as Independent because I don't subscribe to either party's ridiculous rhetoric.Getting on to my Rush Limbaugh statement, the only people I know of who claim Hitler and Nazism to be left wing are 3 of my friends (supposedly highly educated) who are diehard Limbaugh listeners and Rush himself. Most everyone categorizes Nazi and fascism are ultra-right but really mostly "Ultra" and definitely not "Liberal".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
Paxton wrote that fascism is:
a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy, but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.[36]On economic issues, fascists reject ideas of class conflict and internationalism, which are commonly held by Marxists and international socialists, in favour of class collaboration and statist nationalism.[58][59] However, Italian fascism also declared its objection to excessive capitalism, which it called supercapitalism.[60] Zeev Sternhell sees fascism as an anti-Marxist form of socialism,[61] but he still places fascism on the political Right.
Many more quotes and discussion on that site.But Limbaugh creates hate and the strong hate between the ultra right and the "Liberal Left" is destroying My country.
Marv wrote:orangeblobman wrote:Guy was just crazy. His political views are inconsistent. Mein Kampf and the Manifesto? That's contradictory. I don't think his politics were very serious, it's likely he was just a crazy guy, just out of his mind, not on this planet.based on the early info that's in i would agree with you. seems to be a mark chapman/john hinckley type. would love it if we could figure out a way to keep guns out of these guys' hands.
agreed... the rhetoric is such that most people want to associate this incident with the political climate. But this dude was just flat out crazy... he was incoherent, paranoid about "the governemnt", and his local, most-available Representative just became the most likely symbolic target of the "government" that was torturing his head. He was armed with a gun, 100 bullets, and a knife, and attacked at point-blank range. This was not some Jack-Bauer-style political statement
SupremeCommander wrote:Marv wrote:orangeblobman wrote:Guy was just crazy. His political views are inconsistent. Mein Kampf and the Manifesto? That's contradictory. I don't think his politics were very serious, it's likely he was just a crazy guy, just out of his mind, not on this planet.based on the early info that's in i would agree with you. seems to be a mark chapman/john hinckley type. would love it if we could figure out a way to keep guns out of these guys' hands.
agreed... the rhetoric is such that most people want to associate this incident with the political climate. But this dude was just flat out crazy... he was incoherent, paranoid about "the governemnt", and his local, most-available Representative just became the most likely symbolic target of the "government" that was torturing his head. He was armed with a gun, 100 bullets, and a knife, and attacked at point-blank range. This was not some Jack-Bauer-style political statement
Anyone who's never seen Taxi Driver, now is the time.
BlueSeats wrote:SupremeCommander wrote:Marv wrote:orangeblobman wrote:Guy was just crazy. His political views are inconsistent. Mein Kampf and the Manifesto? That's contradictory. I don't think his politics were very serious, it's likely he was just a crazy guy, just out of his mind, not on this planet.based on the early info that's in i would agree with you. seems to be a mark chapman/john hinckley type. would love it if we could figure out a way to keep guns out of these guys' hands.
agreed... the rhetoric is such that most people want to associate this incident with the political climate. But this dude was just flat out crazy... he was incoherent, paranoid about "the governemnt", and his local, most-available Representative just became the most likely symbolic target of the "government" that was torturing his head. He was armed with a gun, 100 bullets, and a knife, and attacked at point-blank range. This was not some Jack-Bauer-style political statement
Anyone who's never seen Taxi Driver, now is the time.
you talkin to me?
I saw that movie when I was 17... I probably should re-watch it with some added life experience under my belt
They keep saying the guy is crazy but I wonder how true that is.
Exclusive: Loughner Friend Explains Alleged Gunman's Grudge Against Giffords
A longtime friend shares a message sent hours before the massacre.By Nick Baumann on Mon. January 10, 2011 12:01 AM PDT
At 2:00 a.m. on Saturday—about eight hours before he allegedly killed six people and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), in Tucson—Jared Lee Loughner phoned an old and close friend with whom he had gone to high school and college. The friend, Bryce Tierney, was up late watching TV, but he didn't answer the call. When he later checked his voice mail, he heard a simple message from Loughner: "Hey man, it's Jared. Me and you had good times. Peace out. Later."That was it. But later in the day, when Tierney first heard about the Tucson massacre, he had a sickening feeling: "They hadn't released the name, but I said, 'Holy shit, I think it's Jared that did it.'" Tierney tells Mother Jones in an exclusive interview that Loughner held a years-long grudge against Giffords and had repeatedly derided her as a "fake." Loughner's animus toward Giffords intensified after he attended one of her campaign events and she did not, in his view, sufficiently answer a question he had posed, Tierney says. He also describes Loughner as being obsessed with "lucid dreaming"—that is, the idea that conscious dreams are an alternative reality that a person can inhabit and control—and says Loughner became "more interested in this world than our reality." Tierney adds, "I saw his dream journal once. That's the golden piece of evidence. You want to know what goes on in Jared Loughner's mind, there's a dream journal that will tell you everything."
On Sunday, federal prosecutors charged 22-year-old Loughner with one count of attempting to assassinate a member of Congress, two counts of unlawfully killing a federal employee, and two counts of attempting to kill a federal employee. Giffords was the target of Loughner's rampage, prosecutors say, and the sworn affidavit accompanying the charges mentions that Loughner attended a Giffords "Congress in Your Corner" event in 2007. The affidavit also mentions that police searching a safe in Loughner's home found a letter from Giffords' office thanking the alleged shooter for attending an August 25, 2007 event.*
Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He's unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the charges—Loughner "might have gone to some other rallies," he says—but Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: "He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, 'What is government if words have no meaning?'"
"He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question.' Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."
Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. "He said, 'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and I told him, 'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney recalls. "Ever since that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."Tierney says he has "no clue" why Loughner might have "shot all those other people." But, he notes, "when I heard Gabrielle Giffords has been shot, I was like 'Oh my God...' For some reason I felt like I knew...I felt like if anyone was going to shoot her, it would be Jared."
Loughner would occasionally mention Giffords, according to Tierney: "It wasn't a day-in, day-out thing, but maybe once in a while, if Giffords did something that was ridiculous or passed some stupid law or did something stupid, he related that to people. But the thing I remember most is just that question. I don't remember him stalking her or anything." Tierney notes that Loughner did not display any specific political or ideological bent: "It wasn't like he was in a certain party or went to rallies...It's not like he'd go on political rants." But Loughner did, according to Tierney, believe that government is "fucking us over." He never heard Loughner vent about about the perils of "currency," as Loughner did on one YouTube video he created.
Tierney, who first met Loughner in middle school, recalls that Loughner started to act strange around his junior or senior year of high school. Before that, Loughner was just a "normal kid," says Tierney. When the two friends started hanging out in sophomore year of high school, "there was nothing really dark about Jared," Tierney says. "He was playing drums, doing band things, playing sax. He was raised on writing and reading music." Loughner also did a lot of creative writing in his high school days, Tierney says, and he used to carry around a copy of a short story he wrote involving a character named Angel; he'd ask people if they would like to read it. "It had a lot of hidden metaphors in it," Tierney says.
Loughner would tell Tierney and his friends that life "means nothing."
As Loughner and Tierney grew closer, Tierney got used to spending the first ten minutes or so of every day together arguing with Loughner's "nihilist" view of the world. "By the time he was 19 or 20, he was really fascinated with semantics and how the world is really nothing—illusion," Tierney says. Once, Tierney recalls, Loughner told him, "I'm pretty sure I've come to the conclusion that words mean nothing." Loughner would also tell Tierney and his friends that life "means nothing," and they'd reply, "If it means nothing, what you're saying means nothing." Other times, Tierney says, Loughner acted like any teen: "We'd go to concerts, play music, get into trouble."Tierney believes that Loughner was very interested in pushing people's buttons—and that may have been why he listed Hitler's Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books on his YouTube page. (Loughner's mom is Jewish, according to Tierney.) Loughner sometimes approached strangers and would say "weird" things, Tierney recalls. "He would do it because he thought people were below him and he knew they wouldn't know what he was talking about."
In college, Loughner became increasingly intrigued with "lucid dreaming," and he grew convinced that he could control his dreams, according to Tierney. In a series of rambling videos posted to his YouTube page, dreams are a frequent topic. In a video posted on December 15, Loughner writes, "My favorite activity is conscience dreaming: the greatest inspiration for my political business information. Some of you don't dream—sadly." In another video, he writes, "The population of dreamers in the United States of America is less than 5%!" Later in the same video he says, "I'm a sleepwalker—who turns off the alarm clock."
"When you realize you're dreaming, you can do anything, you can create anything."
Loughner believed that dreams could be a sort of alternative, Matrix-style reality, and "that when you realize you're dreaming, you can do anything, you can create anything," Tierney says. Loughner started his "dream journal" in an attempt to take more control of his dreams, his friend notes, and he kept this journal for over a year.In October 2008, Tierney was living in Phoenix, and Loughner came to visit. They went to see a Mars Volta concert with friends, and Tierney was surprised when Loughner said he had quit partying "completely." Loughner, according to Tierney, said, "I'm going to lead a more healthy lifestyle, not smoke cigarettes or pot anymore, and I'm going to start working out." Tierney was happy for his friend: "I said, 'Dude, that's awesome.' And the next time I saw him he was 10 pounds lighter." Tierney never saw Loughner smoke marijuana again, and he was surprised at media reports that Loughner had been rejected from the military in 2009 for failing a drug test: "He was clean, clean. I saw him after that continuously. He would not do it."
After Loughner apparently gave up drugs and booze, "his theories got worse," Tierney says. "After he quit, he was just off the wall." And Loughner started to drift away from his group of friends about a year ago. By early 2010, dreaming had become Loughner's "waking life, his reality," Tierney says. "He sort of drifted off, didn't really care about hanging out with friends. He'd be sleeping a lot." Loughner's alternate reality was attractive, Tierney says. "He figured out he could fly." Loughner, according to Tierney, told his friends, "I'm so into it because I can create things and fly. I'm everything I'm not in this world."
"He figured out he could fly."
But in this world, Loughner seemed ticked off by what he believed to be a pervasive authoritarianism. "The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar," he wrote in one YouTube video. In another, Loughner complains that when he tried to join the military, he was handed a "mini-Bible." That upset him: "I didn't write a belief on my Army application and the recruiter wrote on the application: None," he wrote on YouTube. In messages on MySpace last month, Loughner declared, "I'll see you on National T.v.! This is foreshadow." He also noted on the website, "I don't feel good: I'm ready to kill a police officer! I can say it."One of the last times Loughner and Tierney saw each other, a mutual friend had recently purchased a .22-caliber rifle. Until then, Loughner had never shown much interest in guns, Tierney says. "My friend had just gotten a .22, and Jared kept saying we should go shooting together." But Tierney and the friend who had bought the .22 demurred. "We were sketched out," Tierney says, "and we were like, 'I don't think Jared's a good person to go shooting with.'" That was in February or March 2010. After that, Tierney didn't hear much from Loughner.
Since hearing of the rampage, Tierney has been trying to figure out why Loughner did what he allegedly did. "More chaos, maybe," he says. "I think the reason he did it was mainly to just promote chaos. He wanted the media to freak out about this whole thing. He wanted exactly what's happening. He wants all of that." Tierney thinks that Loughner's mindset was like the Joker in the most recent Batman movie: "He fucks things up to fuck shit up, there's no rhyme or reason, he wants to watch the world burn. He probably wanted to take everyone out of their monotonous lives: 'Another Saturday, going to go get groceries'—to take people out of these norms that he thought society had trapped us in."
Tierney dwells on the phone call he missed early Saturday morning. But it was late, and the TV show Tierney was watching was creeping him out. So he didn't pick up. "I sort of wish I would have," he says. "I wonder what would have happened if I answered it."
*This sentence has been corrected to reflect that August 30, 2007 was the date of the letter, not the date of the event itself. The event was on August 25.
http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message
Logic Puzzle
Jared Lee Loughner's philosophy professor reflects on the shooting in Arizona.
By Christopher Beam
Posted Monday, Jan. 10, 2011, at 9:08 AM ETA photo from Jared Lee Loughner's MySpace pageThe videos posted by Jared Lee Loughner on YouTube at first appear to be a jumble of disjointed thoughts. He claims to be a "conscience dreamer" concerned with "English grammar structure" and "mind control" who wants to see the United States return to the gold standard. Yet Loughner expressed these wild ideas in an organized form: the logical syllogism.
A syllogism is a form of argument in which a conclusion is inferred from a set of premises. "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Socrates is mortal," goes the famous Greek inference. In one video, Loughner offers syllogisms of his own, including: "If A.D.E. is endless in year, then the years in A.D.E. don't cease. A.D.E. is endless in year. Therefore, the years in A.D.E. don't cease."
"Yeah, that's him," says Kent Slinker, when I read him some of Loughner's syllogisms over the phone. "That kind of nonsensical, disconnected thinking." Slinker, an adjunct philosophy professor at Pima Community College, taught Loughner in Introduction to Logic during the spring semester of 2010. Slinker's impression of Loughner was that of "someone whose brains were scrambled."
Loughner was a model student when it came to attendance—he always showed up on time to the twice-a-week class, at least before he dropped out toward the end of the semester. But in other respects, he was a mess. He didn't perform well on tests. He would ask questions that didn't make any sense. "His thoughts were unrelated to anything in our world," says Slinker. One time, he handed in an assignment with geometric doodles instead of answers. Slinker also remembers that Loughner would have "exaggerated 'Aha!' moments just completely not connected to anything in class." He was mentally checked-out. "He always was looking away, not out the window, but like someone watching a scene play out in his mind."
Starting about halfway through the semester, Slinker says, he tried repeatedly to talk to Loughner one-on-one. "I wrote [on his test] saying, Please talk to me after class so we can discuss your performance and explore alternative assignments," says Slinker. But at the end of class, Loughner would cast his eyes down and run out the door.
Eventually, Slinker and the chair of the philosophy department, David Bishop, who taught Loughner in a different philosophy class at the same time, discussed ways to get help for Loughner. But for the school to give a student special treatment, the student has to "self-identify" as having problems, says Slinker: "If we could get him to go to a testing center, then we could help him." But they were never able to engage him enough to raise the subject.
In retrospect, there were no conventional warning signs, says Slinker: "I never sensed violence from him." Asked whether Loughner ever brought up politics, Slinker says "never." The class didn't talk about current affairs. That said, Slinker did point students to political ads for examples of logical fallacies.
Slinker heard about the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday while reading the Arizona Daily Star online. The news was especially shocking, considering that Slinker had also taught Spencer Giffords, Gabrielle's father, in a philosophy class in the summer of 2009.
Slinker hit it off with the elder Giffords, who had handed the family tire company over to his daughter, so much so that Giffords invited Slinker to his 75th birthday party, where Slinker briefly met Gabrielle. "She was full of energy, full of life, always with a smile, very sincere," Slinker remembers. As for Giffords Sr., says Slinker, "It was like, this is my long-lost friend and we've been separated by so many years." Giffords gave Slinker a picture of his daughter with her husband and President Obama.
The odd thing about Loughner's syllogisms is that they're not far off from examples Slinker might use in class. "When you teach logic, you draw a distinction between truth and inference," says Slinker. To illustrate that, a teacher might say, "If chickens could fly upside down, then George W. Bush would be president in 2098." The statement isn't true. It just serves as a premise from which to draw conclusions. The purpose, says Slinker, is "to show it's the form of the argument rather than the content that's the expression of validity." But that only works when talking in the abstract. In real-world logic, premises matter. "If the premises aren't true," says Slinker, "all bets are off."
http://www.slate.com/id/2280653/
SupremeCommander wrote:
I saw that movie when I was 17... I probably should re-watch it with some added life experience under my belt
Yes, I watch it every 10 years or so. It keeps getting better and better.
Marv wrote:orangeblobman wrote:Guy was just crazy. His political views are inconsistent. Mein Kampf and the Manifesto? That's contradictory. I don't think his politics were very serious, it's likely he was just a crazy guy, just out of his mind, not on this planet.based on the early info that's in i would agree with you. seems to be a mark chapman/john hinckley type. would love it if we could figure out a way to keep guns out of these guys' hands.
Right, then right after that, you could figure out explosives, fertilizer, knives, blunt objects, broken candles, empty milk cartons, mean faces, psycho eyes...etc etc etc
NYShakenbake
I don't care about your political background.
[Then don't make assumptions and categorize me about my political leanings ....i.e. Your quote---Left wing liberal rhetoric spouting off about right wing rhetoric. America as usual.
I'd like youto formulate non adhominen arguments. It's like me saying I like frosted flakes and you berating me because you hate tigers. Who cares how educated or supposedly(how do you not know, if they're your friends) how educated your friends are? I'm not even sure how your wikipedia posting correlates here. This reminds me of the movie team America where all the muslims say durka, durka Mohammed jihad....except here it's durka, durka, Limbaugh, Palin.
Don't want to seem like I avoided you but I had to run out to a couple of meetings and just returned. As Martin wrote - maybe we can open up an OT thread to discuss politics.
(Note in reply: I should have written/edited - supposedly "intelligent", highly educated friends......) They are highly educated - M.D.; PhD.; MBA. and extremely competent in their fields, but logic goes out the window and pure emotions are expressed when politics comes up. Usually best to just avoid the subject - and talk basketball.
The main thing is that I hope Giffords continues to improve, and my heart goes out to all of the innocent people who were hurt in this.