A Gentleman’s view.

1. ”(Gay marriage) is probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, thirty years. I am not understating that.”

2. “During the last 100 days we have seen an orgy. It would make any local smorgasbord embarrassed … The government spent its wad by April 26.”

3. ”I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?”

4. ”I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.”

5. ”Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”

6. “But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”

7. ”Does that mean that someone’s 13-year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus? That night, mom and dad are never the wiser.”

8. ”Not all cultures are equal.”

9. ”[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said she has even said she is trying to save the planet. We all know that someone did that 2,000 years ago.”

10. ”A woman (Terri Schiavo) was healthy. There was brain damage, there was no question. But from a health point of view, she was not terminally ill.’

11. ”I think there is a point where you say enough is enough to government intrusion. …Does the federal government really need to know our phone numbers?”

12. “Unelected bureaucracies will decide what we can and cant get in future health insurance policy. Thats why theyre called death panels.

13. ”This cannot pass. What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

14. ”Unfortunately, the Census data has become very intricate, very personal, a lot of the questions that are asked. I know for my family, the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won’t be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn’t require any information beyond that.”

15. ”And what a bizarre time we’re in, when a judge will say to little children that you can’t say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it.”

16. ”Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man!”?

17. ”It is horrific to know that in the African American community, 50 percent of all African American pregnancies in the United States end in abortion, 50 percent. That is a genocide of African Americans of the United States. It should not be. There are Americans all across this country who would love to adopt African American babies, but they can’t because 50 percent of all African American pregnancies today are ending in abortion.”

18. ”If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.”

19. ”I’m very concerned about the international moves they’re making, particularly … moving the United States off the dollar and onto a global currency, like Russia and China are calling for.”

20. ”Normalization (of gayness) through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of ‘The Lion King’ for instance, and a teacher might say, ‘Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?’ The message is: I’m better at what I do, because I’m gay.”

21. ”There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.”

22. ”I don’t know where they’re going to get all this money because we’re running out of rich people in this country.”

23. ”This is an earthquake issue. This will change our state forever. Because the immediate consequence, if gay marriage goes through, is that K-12 little children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural and perhaps they should try it.”

24. ”We will talk a little bit about what has transpired in the last 18 months and would we count what has transpired into turning our country into a nation of slaves.”

25. ”I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”

26. “If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I’m not saying that that’s what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.”

27. “Lady Liberty and Sarah Palin are lit by the same torch.”

28. “The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. Its all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax.”

29. “Carbon dioxide is natural, it is not harmful, it is a part of Earth’s lifecycle. And yet we’re being told that we have to reduce this natural substance, reduce the American standard of living, to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occuring in Earth.”

30. “The President of the United States will be taking a trip over to India that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day.”

31. “I just take the Bible for what it is, I guess, and recognize that I am not a scientist, not trained to be a scientist. I’m not a deep thinker on all of this. I wish I was. I wish I was more knowledgeable, but I’m not a scientist.”

From Alternet
The Smirking Chimp by Dennis Rahkonen

15 Awful Things Republicans Would Do If They Had the Chance

The GOP’s agenda, if fully implemented, would prove catastrophic. Here’s what an unfettered Republican Party would do “for” America.

Always the political instrument of moneyed elites, and a retrograde societal force, the GOP today is more negatively impactful than ever. Its agenda, if fully implemented, would prove catastrophic. Here’s what an unfettered Republican Party would do “for” America:

1) Greatly reduce or entirely eliminate taxes on the rich, thereby forcing hard-pressed working families to painfully make up resulting revenue shortfalls.

2) Bust labor unions, cruelly preventing the collective bargaining that’s the key reason why US workers ever won decent wages and benefits.

3) Stubbornly deny the existence of ominous climate change while blithely pumping more pollutants into the environment from lucrative, dirty industries and practices. Although reputable scientists say 350 carbon parts per atmospheric million is the safe limit for sustained life on Earth, Republicans dismiss the frightening fact that we’re already at a carbon level of roughly 390 ppm.

4) Remove “restrictive” regulations on everything from investment banks and credit card companies to a broad array of “profit-eroding” consumer protections, leaving the American masses exposed to a host of resulting abuses and dangers.

5) Continue to criticize and insufficiently fund public education, advocating private schooling instead, thus entirely ignoring that progressive public systems are used in every country that has education outcomes superior to our own.

6) Outlaw abortion, under a fraudulently moral guise, compelling the US to bloodily join those benighted, backward nations where thousands of already-born, living, breathing, socially functioning females perish because of sexist denials of their basic reproductive rights.

7) Continue to recite a Pledge of Allegiance whose last six words are “with liberty and justice for all,” while remaining numbly oblivious to the harsh hypocrisy of preventing our homosexual citizens from marrying.

Speak often and loftily of freedom, but engage in secret wiretapping, repression of domestic dissent, neo-McCarthyite witch hunts, Red-baiting name calling, and a panoply of Patriot Act transgressions against the Constitution of the United States…all under the misused rubric of “national security.”

9) Show the rest of humankind nothing but bullying world-cop arrogance through endless US interventions and aggressions on foreign soil, resulting not just in countless lives extinguished in indefensible wars, and billions of badly-needed dollars flushed down the drain, but constant al Qaeda recruitment against hated Yankee interlopers.

10) Generally drive down the income levels of America’s working-class majority, as a purported cost-saving corporate measure, without appreciating that a populace that’s too poor to buy back what society produces is doomed to economic ruin. A living wage is the ultimate “stimulus,” but try to find even one Republican who favors it!

11) Continue to lie about the alternative, affordable health care for all that some fifty world nations’ people overwhelmingly support, thereby propagandistically leading Americans to think that having private insurance whose premiums are rising at rates three times higher than our pay — and which routinely denies coverage when it’s required most — is somehow preferable

12) Unleash de facto ethnic cleansing against 12 million immigrant men, women, and children, making them contemporary equivalents of the Jewish scapegoats that Hitler blamed for hardships Germans experienced during a prior period of capitalist economic distress.

13) Shamefully try to lend credence to their avarice and social irresponsibility by revising the Bible to obscure passages that place human need before abject greed, attempting to turn it into a facilitating guide for modern peers of the temple moneychangers whose tables Jesus angrily knocked to the floor (and who undoubtedly wouldn’t be mentioned in the amended version that one conservative group is actually, amazingly trying to put into circulation).

14) Give full vent to the intensely bigoted hatred that has crazed extremists dreaming of literally tearing Barack Obama to pieces and gassing all liberals…if only they could.

15) Place the livelihoods and lives of over 300 million Americans in the hands of incompetent ideological “purists” such as Sarah Palin.

While there are certainly Democrats who’ve yet to show spine in furtherance of vital change, let’s be absolutely clear about the unmitigated disaster that would follow if Republicans, in their present ultra-rightist incarnation, ruled our country exactly as they wickedly wished.

One Lady wants to have it her own way! by Alessandra Stanley

Representative Michele Bachmann, a Tea Party leader, didn’t bring a “prom date” to the State of the Union address, she didn’t wear the ribbon corsage and she crashed the after party known as the official Republican response. When Ms. Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, addressed the nation with her own, more alarmist assessment of its state, she seemed almost like the telekinetic high school heroine of “Carrie.”

Ms. Bachmann defied Democratic and Republican leaders who had scripted a night of unity, courtesy and common purpose. Instead, Ms. Bachmann gave viewers a blast of Tea Partisan fury that served as a rebuke to both President Obama and to the milder, more conciliatory official Republican response delivered by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

It wasn’t just what she said, though she used words like “explosion” and “exploded” and “Obamacare” a lot. It was the way Ms. Bachmann spoke, smiling and gesturing with an intensity that almost cracked the screen.

“Instead of a leaner, smarter government, we bought a bureaucracy that now tells us which light bulbs to buy and which may put 16,500 I.R.S. agents in charge of policing President Obama’s health care bill,” Ms. Bachmann said, standing in front of a huge chart of unemployment figures.

She didn’t look directly into the camera but stared slightly to her right, which added to the sense of discordance. (She was looking into a Tea Party Express camera, but was recorded by a pool camera that belonged to Fox News.)

During Mr. Obama’s speech, Ms. Bachmann defied the bipartisan seating plan, electing to sit between two fellow Republican congresswomen instead of a Democrat. (Even Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina who famously shouted “You lie” at Mr. Obama during the president’s 2009 address, sat between two Democrats.)

Ms. Bachmann didn’t wear the black and white ribbon in honor of Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of the Tucson assassination attempt that so many of her colleagues, including Mr. Ryan, donned for the night.

CNN was the only television news organization to show Ms. Bachmann’s speech live, and was quickly attacked for elevating her above her real importance. Her speech was obviously newsworthy, though: rival news organizations didn’t dare ignore it. The NBC anchorman Brian Williams interviewed her live after she delivered her response. MSNBC showed clips. Fox News chose to run it in delay, after the anchorwoman Greta Van Susteren first solicited the views of the former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and two Republicans.

There was more than a hint of exploitation to CNN’s decision to show it live — less an Edward R. Murrow moment than a flashback to CNN’s manic live coverage of the errant “balloon boy” in 2009. But unlike that moment of cable news madness, Ms. Bachmann isn’t a hoax. She represents a powerful faction in Congress that insisted on speaking out even on a night when political leaders asked for some quiet. Viewers had every right and reason to hear what she said, when she said it.

Her timing, after all, was what shocked even members of her own party. Ms. Bachmann spoke up with the kind of polemical passion that official Washington forswore for the night — for good reason.

Viewers of the speech not only watched the president address both houses of Congress, but they also saw the first lady’s box, where invited guests included the parents and brother of Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old who was one of six people killed by the Tucson gunman. They even caught a fleeting glimpse of Ms. Giffords, whose seat in the Capitol was left empty and who was shown after the speech from her hospital bed alongside her husband, Capt. Mark E. Kelly, a NASA astronaut. (Captain Kelly allowed a camera to shoot them watching the television, but the picture was framed to show only her hand clasped in his, not her face.)

Ms. Bachmann assured her audience that she didn’t intend to “compete” with the official Republican response, but she certainly clashed with most everyone in the room.

http://www.annotatedrant.com

Fuck the South. Fuck ‘em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they’d stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves – yeah, those are states we want to keep.

And now what do we get? We’re the fucking Arrogant Northeast Liberal Elite? How about this for arrogant: the South is the Real America? The Authentic America. Really?

Cause we fucking founded this country, assholes. Those Founding Fathers you keep going on and on about? All that bullshit about what you think they meant by the Second Amendment giving you the right to keep your assault weapons in the glove compartment because you didn’t bother to read the first half of the fucking sentence? Who do you think those wig-wearing lacy-shirt sporting revolutionaries were? They were fucking blue-staters, dickhead. Boston? Philadelphia? New York? Hello? Think there might be a reason all the fucking monuments are up here in our backyard?

No, No. Get the fuck out. We’re not letting you visit the Liberty Bell and fucking Plymouth Rock anymore until you get over your real American selves and start respecting those other nine amendments. Who do you think those fucking stripes on the flag are for? Nine are for fucking blue states. And it would be 10 if those Vermonters had gotten their fucking Subarus together and broken off from New York a little earlier. Get it? We started this shit, so don’t get all uppity about how real you are you Johnny-come-lately “Oooooh I’ve been a state for almost a hundred years” dickheads. Fuck off.

Arrogant? You wanna talk about us Northeasterners being fucking arrogant? What’s more American than arrogance? Hmmm? Maybe horsies? I don’t think so. Arrogance is the fucking cornerstone of what it means to be American. And I wouldn’t be so fucking arrogant if I wasn’t paying for your fucking bridges, bitch.

All those Federal taxes you love to hate? It all comes from us and goes to you, so shut up and enjoy your fucking Tennessee Valley Authority electricity and your fancy highways that we paid for. And the next time Florida gets hit by a hurricane you can come crying to us if you want to, but you’re the ones who built on a fucking swamp. “Let the Spanish keep it, it’s a shithole,” we said, but you had to have your fucking orange juice.

The next dickwad who says, “It’s your money, not the government’s money” is gonna get their ass kicked. Nine of the ten states that get the most federal fucking dollars and pay the least… can you guess? Go on, guess. That’s right, motherfucker, they’re red states. And eight of the ten states that receive the least and pay the most? It’s too easy, asshole, they’re blue states. It’s not your money, assholes, it’s fucking our money. What was that Real American Value you were spouting a minute ago? Self reliance? Try this for self reliance: buy your own fucking stop signs, assholes.

Let’s talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It’s fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that’s right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that’s just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we’re-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.

But two guys making out is going to fucking ruin marriage for you? Yeah? Seems like you’re ruining it pretty well on your own, you little bastards. Oh, but that’s ok because you go to church, right? I mean you do, right? Cause we fucking get to hear about it every goddamn year at election time. Yes, we’re fascinated by how you get up every Sunday morning and sing, and then you’re fucking towers of moral superiority. Yeah, that’s a workable formula. Maybe us fucking Northerners don’t talk about religion as much as you because we’re not so busy sinning, hmmm? Ever think of that, you self-righteous assholes? No, you’re too busy erecting giant stone tablets of the Ten Commandments in buildings paid for by the fucking Northeast Liberal Elite. And who has the highest murder rates in the nation? It ain’t us up here in the North, assholes.

Well this gravy train is fucking over. Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.

And no, you can’t have your fucking convention in New York next time. Fuck off.

In America, little gems come from all places and peoples.

‎”This is America, where a white Catholic male Republican judge was murdered on his way to greet a Democratic Jewish woman member of Congress, who was his friend. Her life was saved initially by a 20-year old Mexican-American gay college student, and eventually by a Korean-American combat surgeon, all eulogized by our African American President.” – Mark Shields,


Repeated Branding of 78-Year-Old Professor Frances Fox Piven as “Enemy of the Constitution” Incites Death Threats
CONTACT: press@ccrjustice.org

January 20, 2011, New York – Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued a written appeal to Fox News president Roger Ailes to help put a stop to the increasing threats against progressive Professor Frances Fox Piven, largely incited by Fox News host Glenn Beck. In the letter, co-written by Legal Director Bill Quigley and Executive Director Vince Warren the CCR asks that Ailes distinguish between First Amendment rights, of which they are “vigorous defenders” and an “intentional repetition of provocative, incendiary, emotional misinformation and falsehoods [that place that person] in actual physical danger of a violent response.”

Beginning in September of 2010, Glenn Beck started branding Piven, a distinguished professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, as an “enemy of the Constitution.” Piven, well known for advocating for the organizational rights of the poor and encouraging voter registration, has since received threatening phone calls and letters, and has become the subject of many death threats left open to the public on Glenn Beck’s website, The Blaze.”

The CCR letter cites many of the incendiary quotes from Beck in reference to Piven. Beck compares Piven to the Hutaree militia, infamous for violent threats against government and law enforcement workers, and equates her calls for social movements to “terrorism.” On December 31, a headline on The Blaze read, “Frances Fox Piven Rings in the New Year by Advocating Violent Revolution,” further stating that “violence has always been Piven’s preferred method of collapse.”

The Center for Constitutional rights details a backlash through some of the many violent quotes on Beck’s website. Examples include, “Maybe they should burst through the front door of this arrogant elitist and slit the hateful cow’s throat,” “We should blow up Piven’s office and home,” and “I am all for violence and change Frances: Where do your loved ones live?”

The letter states that the “threats must be taken seriously by Fox News,” and that “Professor Piven’s life could well be at stake.” It further asks that Mr. Ailes “order an immediate investigation into this, and insist on a speedy and fair resolution which will stop the Fox and Beck generated threats on Professor Piven.”
Follow @theCCR.
Attached Files
CCR Letter to Fox re: Professor Piven

Sadly, Happy Birthday Dr. King?

This weekend would be the 81st birthday celebration of the late Dr. King and I wonder how he would see things. As a writer and an illustrator who penned his portrait on a calendar for a fund raising project during a time in the early 90’s, I think of him and his impact on me. I’m not sure were he to be alive today, that his heart would not be broken for the passage of time since long ago back in the winter of 2007 when then Senator Barack declared that he was running for President of the United States of America. Pride that day and even the day the Reverend Jesse cried, but much dismay along the way that gained us the Tea Party Movement, the permission to disrespect the office of the President and what the position means to us as a country simply because a Black man holds it. The freedom the White men at all levels have given themselves in the manner of consideration and respect the black population once took for granted, no longer feel obligated to continue. It is a blanket across America mindset that says simply this; if a Black man can win the office of the Presidency here, then we don’t owe the Black people shit anymore! All previous perceived debts and obligations have now been eliminated! Don’t ever ask again for the White male to give up anything for slavery, ever, period. That is because it is a statement of acceptance that must only be interpreted to mean racism, as we once knew it has been all but wiped out here in America. Amen! Mission Accomplished America!

That Dr. King, would have been the pride side of the experience I suggested earlier, along with the fact that Barack Hussein Obama, son of American White Kansasonian woman and Black Ivy League educated Kenyan, actually went on to win the election by a very large margin. You would’ve had more pride with many of his accomplishments with his appointment of two, count them, two women to the Supreme Court: Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan. Many legislative victories and a couple of executive orders worthy of your attention and respect such as fair pay for equal work for women: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act to name a few. These things and many others happening at the orders and decision making of a Black man would’ve definitely given you some level of pride for us of accomplishment. But what pride you’ve gained would be with some serious pain and major pause and trepidation about where all it is headed. You might even fear for the future of this great country of ours because this is much more than a difference of opinion, much, much more.

You know Dr. King, after you and Medgar Evers were gunned down back in the 1960’s along with the Kennedy brothers and Malcolm X; I believe all of the fight just went out of the movement and the participants. We all got tired seeing everyone who seemed to believe in equality murdered off. We were stunned most of all by your death because you were the Gandhi of the bunch with the turn the other cheek mentality that literally drove me nuts as a kid being slammed up against those walls up in the Bronx as a kid. When they killed you Dr. King, I think everyone was in such a state of shock that we didn’t wake up from until Reagan was sworn in and it was already too late then, but I digress. The debate against all that has taken place here in America that made history with this last presidential election would not warm your heart in the same fashion as it has been as least for me as a Black American, a very painful experience to say the least.

Prior to the 2008 election campaign there has been a protocol here in American that seemed to be developed around the opinions of the outcome of the OJ Simpson trial. Belief of his guilt or innocence ran along the racial divide that exists here in America and turned into one of those ‘We haven’t done well in this area since we lost you, Dr. King’ not so proud developments of our race relations. I personally was one of not so many Blacks who believe he was guilty as sin and did kill his wife, but that’s just me. This particular election brought out a group that has been on the down low since it was deemed improper to appear in one’s robes and hoods as in the old days of the Klu Klux Klan. They have grown up Dr. King and using thievery as a means to their public relations; that is to say they are now known as the Tea Party Movement, that’s right they went and stole a perfectly legitimate concept to prostitute their corrupted agenda to re-institute slavery as a legitimate means to deal with labor in today’s modern world and keep America competitive. Mind you Dr. King, none of these concepts have been actually vocalized, but I have been able to project when I see a movement afoot. I must say since the Tea Party has risen, there is definitely some kind of movement afoot presently here in America.

Suffice it to say that since we’ve had a Black Man run for and win the office of the Presidency, there are some White men in various positions of power and in and of their own experiences, some influence, who find this to be blasphemous to no end. This has taken effect on White males to such a high degree; I would suggest that it is not unreasonable to declare a potential epidemic to be in place. We have Whites males behaving in the most inexplicable manners never before seen to date when dealing with the most prestigious of positions in our country. Hollering and screaming, walking around with signs publically stating willingness to bring guns next time, spitting and cursing out elected officials, elected officials encouraging sedition and treason, threats being made against the highest office in the land, newspaper stations becoming political propaganda machines and you name it… It has gotten to the point of just straight out shooting politicians you don’t agree with and other politicians cheering you on while you load up in full public view no less! And Dr. King, the things they allow themselves to say about our first Black President, I tell you, I am glad that you’re not alive to hear some of them or see how they portray him during protests and such. It would break your heart, Dr. King. I just know it would. I am optimistic because if this country that can elect a Black man in spite of how he’s been portrayed here, we have to have a brighter future and just suffering a rough patch presently. Happy Birthday Dr. King, sadly, you might have to look away for a minute while we clean this crazy mess up some.

President Obama Speaks to the Nation from Tucson

Posted on Thursday, January 13, 2011

To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university, the public servants gathered tonight, and the people of Tucson and Arizona: I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow.

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts. But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through.

As Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

the holy place where the Most High dwells.

God is within her, she will not fall;

God will help her at break of day.

On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff, and many of her constituents gathered outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free speech. They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our founders – representatives of the people answering to their constituents, so as to carry their concerns to our nation’s capital. Gabby called it “Congress on Your Corner” – just an updated version of government of and by and for the people.

That is the quintessentially American scene that was shattered by a gunman’s bullets. And the six people who lost their lives on Saturday – they too represented what is best in America.

Judge John Roll served our legal system for nearly 40 years. A graduate of this university and its law school, Judge Roll was recommended for the federal bench by John McCain twenty years ago, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and rose to become Arizona’s chief federal judge. His colleagues described him as the hardest-working judge within the Ninth Circuit. He was on his way back from attending Mass, as he did every day, when he decided to stop by and say hi to his Representative. John is survived by his loving wife, Maureen, his three sons, and his five grandchildren.

George and Dorothy Morris – “Dot” to her friends – were high school sweethearts who got married and had two daughters. They did everything together, traveling the open road in their RV, enjoying what their friends called a 50-year honeymoon. Saturday morning, they went by the Safeway to hear what their Congresswoman had to say. When gunfire rang out, George, a former Marine, instinctively tried to shield his wife. Both were shot. Dot passed away.

A New Jersey native, Phyllis Schneck retired to Tucson to beat the snow. But in the summer, she would return East, where her world revolved around her 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and 2 year-old great-granddaughter. A gifted quilter, she’d often work under her favorite tree, or sometimes sew aprons with the logos of the Jets and the Giants to give out at the church where she volunteered. A Republican, she took a liking to Gabby, and wanted to get to know her better.

Dorwan and Mavy Stoddard grew up in Tucson together – about seventy years ago. They moved apart and started their own respective families, but after both were widowed they found their way back here, to, as one of Mavy’s daughters put it, “be boyfriend and girlfriend again.” When they weren’t out on the road in their motor home, you could find them just up the road, helping folks in need at the Mountain Avenue Church of Christ. A retired construction worker, Dorwan spent his spare time fixing up the church along with their dog, Tux. His final act of selflessness was to dive on top of his wife, sacrificing his life for hers.

Everything Gabe Zimmerman did, he did with passion – but his true passion was people. As Gabby’s outreach director, he made the cares of thousands of her constituents his own, seeing to it that seniors got the Medicare benefits they had earned, that veterans got the medals and care they deserved, that government was working for ordinary folks. He died doing what he loved – talking with people and seeing how he could help. Gabe is survived by his parents, Ross and Emily, his brother, Ben, and his fiancée, Kelly, who he planned to marry next year.

And then there is nine year-old Christina Taylor Green. Christina was an A student, a dancer, a gymnast, and a swimmer. She often proclaimed that she wanted to be the first woman to play in the major leagues, and as the only girl on her Little League team, no one put it past her. She showed an appreciation for life uncommon for a girl her age, and would remind her mother, “We are so blessed. We have the best life.” And she’d pay those blessings back by participating in a charity that helped children who were less fortunate.

Our hearts are broken by their sudden passing. Our hearts are broken – and yet, our hearts also have reason for fullness.

Our hearts are full of hope and thanks for the 13 Americans who survived the shooting, including the congresswoman many of them went to see on Saturday. I have just come from the University Medical Center, just a mile from here, where our friend Gabby courageously fights to recover even as we speak. And I can tell you this – she knows we’re here and she knows we love her and she knows that we will be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey.

And our hearts are full of gratitude for those who saved others. We are grateful for Daniel Hernandez, a volunteer in Gabby’s office who ran through the chaos to minister to his boss, tending to her wounds to keep her alive. We are grateful for the men who tackled the gunman as he stopped to reload. We are grateful for a petite 61 year-old, Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away the killer’s ammunition, undoubtedly saving some lives. And we are grateful for the doctors and nurses and emergency medics who worked wonders to heal those who’d been hurt.

These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned – as it was on Saturday morning.

Their actions, their selflessness, also pose a challenge to each of us. It raises the question of what, beyond the prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?

You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless. Already we’ve seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “when I looked for light, then came darkness.” Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

After all, that’s what most of us do when we lose someone in our family – especially if the loss is unexpected. We’re shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

So sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

That process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions – that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires. For those who were harmed, those who were killed – they are part of our family, an American family 300 million strong. We may not have known them personally, but we surely see ourselves in them. In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners. Phyllis – she’s our mom or grandma; Gabe our brother or son. In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America’s fidelity to the law. In Gabby, we see a reflection of our public spiritedness, that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union.

And in Christina…in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic.

So deserving of our love.

And so deserving of our good example. If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost. Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here – they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation’s future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.

Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called “Faces of Hope.” On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child’s life. “I hope you help those in need,” read one. “I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in restful and eternal peace. May He love and watch over the survivors. And may He bless the United States of America.

Remarks of President Barack Obama

At a Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Arizona

University of Arizona, McKale Memorial Center
Tucson, Arizona
January 12, 2011