Giffords Stepping Down

Tearing up here, but we need to remember that she was a Blue Dog for a long time. Still, the insane voters in AZ will no doubt replace her with a white male Republican who is convinced that Mexicans are secretly running the country through the Kenyan Indonesian usurper.

@blogenfreude: Is Arizona still part of the union? I thought they seceeded and formed their own Falang – style government…

Look at that smile, by the way…

@blogenfreude: I understand why she needs to do it, for her own health and so that her constituents have a representative who can devote 110% to representing them. But I think why the announcement saddens me so much is that in a way, Jared Loughner has succeeded in getting an up and coming, open minded and gifted woman out of public office. Also, I fear that your prediction of her successor will be accurate.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: That is a Class A smile, and I hope she’s back together mentally.

I’m heartbroken. Yes, everything, but still, lot of class.

And I have to say, you look at something like this and you have to realize not everyone in marketing is an asshole.

She is inspirational to me. Oh, does my leg hurt? Wah, wah, wah. She got shot in the head, for fuck’s sake, and wakes up every morning and gets to work.

@Dodgerblue: Her example puts things in perspective, that’s for god damn sure. And her husband could teach Newticle a thing or two about what “in sickness and in health” means.

@SanFranLefty: Mark is the anti-Newt. Honestly, Newticle’s abandonment of both his previous wives when they were seriously ill is more repugnant to me, and says more about his character IMO, than his affairs.

@Benedick: There are three of us that aren’t, and to be honest with you I’m not quite so sure about me.

@Mistress Cynica: Ain’t it the truth?

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: Wasn’t it Gerard Manley Hopkins who once famously said, When you’re inside the asshole looking out it’s sometimes hard to maintain a sense of perspective.

Four people were shot in the head at close range in the Tucson shooting with the same 9 mm full metal jacket round* used on Rep. Giffords. She was the only one of the four to survive. The bullet that hit Giffords went through one hemisphere of her brain and exited her skull. The other head wound victims appear to have had more than one hemisphere of the brain involved according to the autopsy reports. (The other two victims suffered torso wounds that damaged their aortas, which led to massive bleeding. At least two or three of the victims may have been shot on the ground, judging by the location of their wounds and bullet path in the body.) Six people were killed with nine rounds.

* a solid, non-expanding bullet used for target practice, and by the military because of international rules of warfare prohibiting the use of non-expanding rounds. Although such bullets are said to be more “humane”, wounding a guy creates more of a burden on the other side than just killing him outright. This shooting shows that even a non-expanding bullet can cause fatal wounds, however.

Expanding, hollow point rounds used by law enforcement and for personal defense and hunting create a larger wound channel resulting in greater tissue damage and bleeding. The purported “hydrostatic shock” effect of a hollow point on tissue may be overstated.