I am glad that folks held their cool and gave proper respect to all those who attended from all sides of the political isle.
Peace
Yeah. It was hard not to notice the huge difference between the polite applause for Jan Brewer and the extended and loud cheering for Janet Napolitano, but there were no negative moments.
There is some negative feedback coming in over the Native American blessing (from Brit Hume, for example) but I expected that.
Dr. Rhee, head surgeon for Gabby, is an amazing man. He said something to the effect of "She has a 101% chance of living. She does not have my permission to die." Also, when he was asked about his workload being overwhelming with ten patients, he said something to the effect of "I'll be overwhelmed when I have 150."
It's weird that the VA Tech shootings popped up in this thread. The first person killed in that event was the best friend of a friend of mine (I believe his name was Ryan.) She was a resident advisor with him at that school and was out of town when the shootings occurred.
Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- They described it as "a miracle."
Shot in the head less than a week ago, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords opened her eyes briefly for the first time Wednesday, with her husband, her parents and other members of Congress in the room.
"It was extraordinary," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, who was holding Giffords' hand at the time. "It was a miracle to witness."
The incident occurred shortly after President Barack Obama had visited Giffords in her hospital room. Less than an hour later, given permission to disclose the information by Mark Kelly, Giffords' husband, Obama electrified a memorial-service crowd and a national television audience by revealing one of the most promising pieces of news about Gifford's condition to emerge since an assassination attempt against her on Saturday.
Giffords was squeezing and stroking Gillibrand's hand, as doctors previously said she had been able to do.
Giffords "absolutely could hear everything we were saying," Gillibrand said. "And Debbie (Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida) and I were telling her how much she was inspiring the nation with her courage, her strength, and we were talking about the things we wanted to do as soon as she was better."
Gillibrand mentioned having another night out with Giffords and her husband for beer and pizza. And Wasserman Schultz recounted telling her, "Come on, you've got to get better, because we expect you up in New Hampshire this summer" at Wasserman Schultz's vacation home.
"And just as I said that, that's when she suddenly was struggling to open ... her eyes," Wasserman Schultz said. "First just a little bit. And the doctors couldn't believe it. They said, 'This is such a good time.' "
Kelly saw her struggling, Gillibrand said, and he and the others began to encourage her, saying, "Open your eyes, Gabby. Open your eyes."
And Giffords did. Her right eye remains bandaged, but Giffords is opening both of them, doctors said Thursday
"She took a moment to focus, you could see she was focusing," Gillibrand said. "And then Mark said ... 'Gabby, if you can see me, if you can see me, give us a thumbs-up ... She didn't only give a thumbs-up, she literally raised her entire hand. We were just -- we couldn't stop crying ... It was just one of those moments that life brings you so rarely."
But Giffords didn't stop there, Gillibrand said. She reached out and grabbed her husband "and is touching him and starts to really choke him like she was really trying to hug him." He asked her to touch his wedding ring, "and she touches his ring, then she grabs his whole watch and wrist and then the doctor was just so excited, he said, 'You don't understand ... this is amazing what she is doing right now and beyond our greatest hopes.' "
Of the six patients the hospital is still treating from Saturday's shooting, Giffords is the only one in critical condition. Four others are in fair condition, and the sixth was being released from the hospital Thursday, said Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the University Medical Center's trauma center.
Giffords remains in critical condition because doctors are worried about her losing ground, said Dr. Michael Lemole, chief of neurosurgery at the hospital.
A 9-year-old girl, Christina Green, and Arizona's chief federal judge, John Roll, are among the dead, along with Gabe Zimmerman, a Giffords staffer. A funeral mass was being held for Green on Thursday.
Authorities say Giffords was the target of the shooting. Thirteen other people suffered gunshot wounds, the Pima County Sheriff has said, while others were injured trying to flee the scene.
Tucson resident Jared Lee Loughner, 22, is facing federal charges in the attack. Police said Thursday they believe they have found a black bag that may have caused an argument between Loughner and his father the morning of the shooting.
The milestone is only the latest for the Arizona congresswoman, who doctors said could respond to commands even upon arrival at the hospital trauma unit -- she squeezed a doctor's hand when asked to do so -- less than an hour after the shooting. Even when her prognosis was grim, she has consistently defied the odds and met or exceeded expectations.
The next step, doctors told reporters Thursday, is the removal of Giffords' breathing tube. She is breathing on her own "with very little support," Rhee said, but he wasn't sure when the tube might come out.
Giffords is "becoming more and more alert at this time," he said, telling reporters she acts like someone waking up in the morning -- yawning and rubbing her eyes. "We have seen the eyes begin to track" and focus, he said.
She has been opening her eyes more often since the first time Thursday night, Lemole said. "This is all very encouraging," he said. "... It is a significant move forward."
Rhee said Giffords has been undergoing physical therapy, in which staffers sit her up with her legs dangling off the side of the bed. When asked, she can move both legs, straightening them out, he said.
Safeway, which owns the grocery store where the shooting took place, took out a full-page ad in Tucson's Arizona Daily Star newspaper Thursday, saying it is proud to be part of a community that cares so deeply about one another. Since Saturday, Safeway employees have been praying for the victims and their families, and the company is working to reopen the store, it said. Supermarkets pride themselves on reopening quickly following disasters, it noted, but Saturday's events were not a tornado or hurricane.
Doctors have cautiously described Giffords' recovery as going according to plan, so far absent of any complications or issues, and have said throughout that she has been able to communicate when they lessen her sedation and allow her to awaken.
"Other than the birth of my kids, this was the most incredible feeling, to see literally one of your closest friends struggle to come to you, her family, her friends," said Wasserman Schultz, who spoke on CNN's "AC360" along with Gillibrand. "We know how strong Gabby is. ... You could see all the strength pouring out of her to touch her husband."
"She wanted to tell us, 'I'm with you,' " Gillibrand said.
Lemole said he also was in the room when Giffords opened her eyes, saying it might have been the "unexpected familiarity" of having close friends visit that perhaps Giffords wasn't expecting.
"This is the part that doctors, I think, have the hardest time with -- those intangibles in medicine," he said, referring to the role that family and friends can play in prompting patient progress.
"Miracles happen every day," Lemole said. "... A lot of medicine is outside our control."
"It was, as you can imagine, a glorious moment," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was also in the room.
The road ahead for Giffords may be long. Her recovery may last a lifetime, like that of Jim Brady, a former White House press secretary under President Ronald Reagan who was shot in the head in 1981. Several parallels have been drawn between the two. Now 70 and blind, Brady told CNN's Jim Acosta this week he routinely goes to physical therapy near his Delaware home.
"Life will always be good again," Brady said. "It may be different. But that doesn't mean it's bad."
And Giffords has been described by many as tenacious and fearless.
"Our boss is a fighter, and she's fighting," C.J. Karamargin, Giffords' spokesman, said on "AC360." "And we saw that today."
Soulstrut's political groundhog day: where many pages of text are typed out in order to reach the conclusion that Rockadelic doesn't approve of multi-culturalism
Cut and paste anything I've posted in this thread that supports you're above statement.
I didn't think so.
Allow me to give you a lesson in multi-culturalism..
In every culture, when you lie, it means you're a liar.
I'm surprised no one has commented on the shooter's appearance, in true Soul Strut fashion, yet. Did dude shave off all his facial hair, including eyebrows?
I'm surprised no one has commented on the shooter's appearance, in true Soul Strut fashion, yet. Did dude shave off all his facial hair, including eyebrows?
They have (images of uncle fester from the Munsters), it just got drowned out in the political hoo-ha. Besides does it really help to be glib and say, "I am not feeling his elbows?"
On Jan. 8 at 10:10 a.m., a then-unidentified gunman opened fire outside a Tuscon, Ariz., supermarket, killing six people and injuring 13 others. The suspect was detained at 10:15. By 3:11 p.m., The Associated Press had his name: Jared Lee Loughner. At 6:59 p.m., police served a search warrant at Loughner's parents' home.
By that time, we knew everything we needed to know. Mental illness.
We called it different names, but we were talking about the same thing. And because we're experts, we didn't speculate; we knew.
Most of us took one of three basic positions:
--Loughner was a psycho menace on a rampage.
--Loughner was a tragic victim of untreated mental illness and of society's general lack of caring.
--Loughner was a dangerously sick individual who must be warehoused for his own good -- and ours as well.
No matter the words, we had an identity and a diagnosis: "mental illness." That was enough. Instantly we were all well-qualified to offer our opinions. And we did.
The Arizona Daily Star, on the same day as the shooting, found former classmates of Loughner with such expertise that they felt confident in offering a mental status exam on the basis of having shared a classroom. One concluded that Loughner was "obviously very disturbed."
On Jan. 9, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik considered possible motives for the shooting but quickly found his way back, reminding us the suspect "may have a mental issue."
In the pages of The Oregonian, "experts" were out in force, and it didn't take much to qualify.
We're experts. We know all of this.
Still, on Jan. 23, when The Oregonian published actual data on the link between violence and mental illness, we were glad for the information -- half of it.
Some of us skipped the parts about the "weak" link between mental illness and violence. The rest of us skipped the parts that said, "Yet, there is a link."
Perhaps it would be better if we were a little less smart, a little less sure, a little less perfect.
If we were, we might take a look around. What we'd see is appalling. Incivility, hate and vitriol -- but not where we've been looking. It's in the constant, cruel, over-the-top bigotry used to characterize Jared Lee Loughner. We call him names, say he's "evil," a "monster," set him outside humanity. Do any of us dare to call Loughner a person? Would anyone add, "like me"? Of course not. He's no longer a human accused of a crime; he's a monster. He's entirely unlike us in every way.
It's even in his face -- and because he's so terrible and strange, it's OK to talk about his appearance or ridicule his expression.
Loughner "would sit [in class] with a grin on his face and mumble something to himself." (The Oregonian, Jan. 11) Loughner "appeared in federal court ... with a smirk on his lips and a red strawberry bruise on the right side of his forehead." (The Arizona Republic, Jan. 11)
"The smiling mug shot of Jared Loughner, meanwhile, has I'm sure sent chills down people's spine." That's from Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, an associate professor of psychology at Berkeley, in an article venturing that Loughner might not, in fact, be a monster (Berkeley Blog, Jan. 12). He continues: "The picture, and the reports of his increasingly erratic behavior over the past year, convince me that mental illness played a critical factor."
To a college psychology professor, a smile is substantial proof of mental illness.
It's widespread. It's not pretty. But bigotry?
It's there, but it's hard to see. So let's change the context and suppose for a moment that Gabrielle Giffords was shot by an African American.
Would we talk about his appearance? His smile? Would we trade statistics on the link between race and violent crime? Would we draw conclusions about all black people? Would we use slang terms with no thought at all that we might offend someone?
Consider: "Psycho killer Jared Lee Loughner's eyes look 'dead -- he's pure evil,' one prison worker told a visitor. Another person said the madman with the ghoulish grin is living up to his image as a cold-blooded murderer." (The New York Post, Jan. 17)
That's offensive. Not to "crazies." To human beings.
Consider this as well: We talk about honoring Gabrielle Giffords while forgetting what she honored: the rights and dignity of all people, including people with mental illness.
In 2004, Mental Health America of Arizona named Giffords its legislator of the year. In 2008, her office issued a press release celebrating passage of a mental health parity bill. It included a quote from Giffords: "Discrimination has no place in our society." In the next years, she sponsored bills to aid veterans with mental health problems.
If we really want to honor Giffords, let's stop repudiating her work.
If we really want to reduce incivility, let's look in our own backyards.
Let's dial down the expertise and ask ourselves the question that's now a mantra for Giffords' staff: "What would Gabby do?"
Last night I DJed the holiday party for the trauma unit that saved Gabby's life. The chief surgeon's first and only request was "Gangnam Style." Dude even did the dance! Not a fan of that song at all but the man and his team are heroes in my book and I was honored to play it for him. He was dancing the whole night too! Awesome.
Comments
Yeah. It was hard not to notice the huge difference between the polite applause for Jan Brewer and the extended and loud cheering for Janet Napolitano, but there were no negative moments.
There is some negative feedback coming in over the Native American blessing (from Brit Hume, for example) but I expected that.
It's weird that the VA Tech shootings popped up in this thread. The first person killed in that event was the best friend of a friend of mine (I believe his name was Ryan.) She was a resident advisor with him at that school and was out of town when the shootings occurred.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/01/13/arizona.shooting/index.html
Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- They described it as "a miracle."
Shot in the head less than a week ago, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords opened her eyes briefly for the first time Wednesday, with her husband, her parents and other members of Congress in the room.
"It was extraordinary," said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, who was holding Giffords' hand at the time. "It was a miracle to witness."
The incident occurred shortly after President Barack Obama had visited Giffords in her hospital room. Less than an hour later, given permission to disclose the information by Mark Kelly, Giffords' husband, Obama electrified a memorial-service crowd and a national television audience by revealing one of the most promising pieces of news about Gifford's condition to emerge since an assassination attempt against her on Saturday.
Giffords was squeezing and stroking Gillibrand's hand, as doctors previously said she had been able to do.
Giffords "absolutely could hear everything we were saying," Gillibrand said. "And Debbie (Wasserman Schultz, D-Florida) and I were telling her how much she was inspiring the nation with her courage, her strength, and we were talking about the things we wanted to do as soon as she was better."
Gillibrand mentioned having another night out with Giffords and her husband for beer and pizza. And Wasserman Schultz recounted telling her, "Come on, you've got to get better, because we expect you up in New Hampshire this summer" at Wasserman Schultz's vacation home.
"And just as I said that, that's when she suddenly was struggling to open ... her eyes," Wasserman Schultz said. "First just a little bit. And the doctors couldn't believe it. They said, 'This is such a good time.' "
Kelly saw her struggling, Gillibrand said, and he and the others began to encourage her, saying, "Open your eyes, Gabby. Open your eyes."
And Giffords did. Her right eye remains bandaged, but Giffords is opening both of them, doctors said Thursday
"She took a moment to focus, you could see she was focusing," Gillibrand said. "And then Mark said ... 'Gabby, if you can see me, if you can see me, give us a thumbs-up ... She didn't only give a thumbs-up, she literally raised her entire hand. We were just -- we couldn't stop crying ... It was just one of those moments that life brings you so rarely."
But Giffords didn't stop there, Gillibrand said. She reached out and grabbed her husband "and is touching him and starts to really choke him like she was really trying to hug him." He asked her to touch his wedding ring, "and she touches his ring, then she grabs his whole watch and wrist and then the doctor was just so excited, he said, 'You don't understand ... this is amazing what she is doing right now and beyond our greatest hopes.' "
Of the six patients the hospital is still treating from Saturday's shooting, Giffords is the only one in critical condition. Four others are in fair condition, and the sixth was being released from the hospital Thursday, said Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the University Medical Center's trauma center.
Giffords remains in critical condition because doctors are worried about her losing ground, said Dr. Michael Lemole, chief of neurosurgery at the hospital.
A 9-year-old girl, Christina Green, and Arizona's chief federal judge, John Roll, are among the dead, along with Gabe Zimmerman, a Giffords staffer. A funeral mass was being held for Green on Thursday.
Authorities say Giffords was the target of the shooting. Thirteen other people suffered gunshot wounds, the Pima County Sheriff has said, while others were injured trying to flee the scene.
Tucson resident Jared Lee Loughner, 22, is facing federal charges in the attack. Police said Thursday they believe they have found a black bag that may have caused an argument between Loughner and his father the morning of the shooting.
The milestone is only the latest for the Arizona congresswoman, who doctors said could respond to commands even upon arrival at the hospital trauma unit -- she squeezed a doctor's hand when asked to do so -- less than an hour after the shooting. Even when her prognosis was grim, she has consistently defied the odds and met or exceeded expectations.
The next step, doctors told reporters Thursday, is the removal of Giffords' breathing tube. She is breathing on her own "with very little support," Rhee said, but he wasn't sure when the tube might come out.
Giffords is "becoming more and more alert at this time," he said, telling reporters she acts like someone waking up in the morning -- yawning and rubbing her eyes. "We have seen the eyes begin to track" and focus, he said.
She has been opening her eyes more often since the first time Thursday night, Lemole said. "This is all very encouraging," he said. "... It is a significant move forward."
Rhee said Giffords has been undergoing physical therapy, in which staffers sit her up with her legs dangling off the side of the bed. When asked, she can move both legs, straightening them out, he said.
Safeway, which owns the grocery store where the shooting took place, took out a full-page ad in Tucson's Arizona Daily Star newspaper Thursday, saying it is proud to be part of a community that cares so deeply about one another. Since Saturday, Safeway employees have been praying for the victims and their families, and the company is working to reopen the store, it said. Supermarkets pride themselves on reopening quickly following disasters, it noted, but Saturday's events were not a tornado or hurricane.
Doctors have cautiously described Giffords' recovery as going according to plan, so far absent of any complications or issues, and have said throughout that she has been able to communicate when they lessen her sedation and allow her to awaken.
"Other than the birth of my kids, this was the most incredible feeling, to see literally one of your closest friends struggle to come to you, her family, her friends," said Wasserman Schultz, who spoke on CNN's "AC360" along with Gillibrand. "We know how strong Gabby is. ... You could see all the strength pouring out of her to touch her husband."
"She wanted to tell us, 'I'm with you,' " Gillibrand said.
Lemole said he also was in the room when Giffords opened her eyes, saying it might have been the "unexpected familiarity" of having close friends visit that perhaps Giffords wasn't expecting.
"This is the part that doctors, I think, have the hardest time with -- those intangibles in medicine," he said, referring to the role that family and friends can play in prompting patient progress.
"Miracles happen every day," Lemole said. "... A lot of medicine is outside our control."
"It was, as you can imagine, a glorious moment," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who was also in the room.
The road ahead for Giffords may be long. Her recovery may last a lifetime, like that of Jim Brady, a former White House press secretary under President Ronald Reagan who was shot in the head in 1981. Several parallels have been drawn between the two. Now 70 and blind, Brady told CNN's Jim Acosta this week he routinely goes to physical therapy near his Delaware home.
"Life will always be good again," Brady said. "It may be different. But that doesn't mean it's bad."
And Giffords has been described by many as tenacious and fearless.
"Our boss is a fighter, and she's fighting," C.J. Karamargin, Giffords' spokesman, said on "AC360." "And we saw that today."
CNN's Steve Dolce contributed to this report.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/01/13/eveningnews/main7244094.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+CBSNewsTheEarlyShowFoodRecipes+(The+Early+Show:+Food+&+Recipes:+CBSNews.com)
I didn't think so.
Allow me to give you a lesson in multi-culturalism..
In every culture, when you lie, it means you're a liar.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70E03420110115
They have (images of uncle fester from the Munsters), it just got drowned out in the political hoo-ha. Besides does it really help to be glib and say, "I am not feeling his elbows?"
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/01/15/20110115gabrielle-giffords-shooting-victim-kent-state-shootings-randy-gardner.html#ixzz1B83WbTsf
http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/02/walking_the_talk_of_gabby_giff.html
By Jenny Westberg
On Jan. 8 at 10:10 a.m., a then-unidentified gunman opened fire outside a Tuscon, Ariz., supermarket, killing six people and injuring 13 others. The suspect was detained at 10:15. By 3:11 p.m., The Associated Press had his name: Jared Lee Loughner. At 6:59 p.m., police served a search warrant at Loughner's parents' home.
By that time, we knew everything we needed to know. Mental illness.
We called it different names, but we were talking about the same thing. And because we're experts, we didn't speculate; we knew.
Most of us took one of three basic positions:
--Loughner was a psycho menace on a rampage.
--Loughner was a tragic victim of untreated mental illness and of society's general lack of caring.
--Loughner was a dangerously sick individual who must be warehoused for his own good -- and ours as well.
No matter the words, we had an identity and a diagnosis: "mental illness." That was enough. Instantly we were all well-qualified to offer our opinions. And we did.
The Arizona Daily Star, on the same day as the shooting, found former classmates of Loughner with such expertise that they felt confident in offering a mental status exam on the basis of having shared a classroom. One concluded that Loughner was "obviously very disturbed."
On Jan. 9, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik considered possible motives for the shooting but quickly found his way back, reminding us the suspect "may have a mental issue."
In the pages of The Oregonian, "experts" were out in force, and it didn't take much to qualify.
We're experts. We know all of this.
Still, on Jan. 23, when The Oregonian published actual data on the link between violence and mental illness, we were glad for the information -- half of it.
Some of us skipped the parts about the "weak" link between mental illness and violence. The rest of us skipped the parts that said, "Yet, there is a link."
Perhaps it would be better if we were a little less smart, a little less sure, a little less perfect.
If we were, we might take a look around. What we'd see is appalling. Incivility, hate and vitriol -- but not where we've been looking. It's in the constant, cruel, over-the-top bigotry used to characterize Jared Lee Loughner. We call him names, say he's "evil," a "monster," set him outside humanity. Do any of us dare to call Loughner a person? Would anyone add, "like me"? Of course not. He's no longer a human accused of a crime; he's a monster. He's entirely unlike us in every way.
It's even in his face -- and because he's so terrible and strange, it's OK to talk about his appearance or ridicule his expression.
Loughner "would sit [in class] with a grin on his face and mumble something to himself." (The Oregonian, Jan. 11) Loughner "appeared in federal court ... with a smirk on his lips and a red strawberry bruise on the right side of his forehead." (The Arizona Republic, Jan. 11)
"The smiling mug shot of Jared Loughner, meanwhile, has I'm sure sent chills down people's spine." That's from Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, an associate professor of psychology at Berkeley, in an article venturing that Loughner might not, in fact, be a monster (Berkeley Blog, Jan. 12). He continues: "The picture, and the reports of his increasingly erratic behavior over the past year, convince me that mental illness played a critical factor."
To a college psychology professor, a smile is substantial proof of mental illness.
It's widespread. It's not pretty. But bigotry?
It's there, but it's hard to see. So let's change the context and suppose for a moment that Gabrielle Giffords was shot by an African American.
Would we talk about his appearance? His smile? Would we trade statistics on the link between race and violent crime? Would we draw conclusions about all black people? Would we use slang terms with no thought at all that we might offend someone?
Consider: "Psycho killer Jared Lee Loughner's eyes look 'dead -- he's pure evil,' one prison worker told a visitor. Another person said the madman with the ghoulish grin is living up to his image as a cold-blooded murderer." (The New York Post, Jan. 17)
That's offensive. Not to "crazies." To human beings.
Consider this as well: We talk about honoring Gabrielle Giffords while forgetting what she honored: the rights and dignity of all people, including people with mental illness.
In 2004, Mental Health America of Arizona named Giffords its legislator of the year. In 2008, her office issued a press release celebrating passage of a mental health parity bill. It included a quote from Giffords: "Discrimination has no place in our society." In the next years, she sponsored bills to aid veterans with mental health problems.
If we really want to honor Giffords, let's stop repudiating her work.
If we really want to reduce incivility, let's look in our own backyards.
Let's dial down the expertise and ask ourselves the question that's now a mantra for Giffords' staff: "What would Gabby do?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/17/gabrielle-giffords-able-t_n_824469.html
Giffords just walked onto the floor of the House of Representatives. No idea if she is voting yea or nay.
Edit: She is voting yea "to prevent economic crisis".
2 years ago last Tuesday.