Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) in critical condition, 6 others killed in Arizona

[anvi]

She was probably shot through the upper part of her forehead, and the bullet, if it passed through the upper part of her cerebral cortex and cerebellum, it would not necessarily have damaged any part of the brain that controls circulation, respiration and the vital functions, which are all regulated by the lower parts of the brain around the neck.

[anvi]

Yeah, that kind of wound suggests the bullet only went through parts of the cortex, and as long as the surgeons could control the bleeding, chances for survival are good.  The fact that she was responding to commands also suggests that her hearing and at least good portions of the motor cortex still function.  How much of her cognitive skills and decision-making capacities may be diminished depends on which tissues were damaged and remains to be seen. 

[anvi]

Are you a doctor?
Not to sound callous but it sounds like she will be out of politics for a long time.

No.  I've been sitting here watching the news come in about this with my fiancee, who is a neuroscientist and teaches, among other things, neuroanatomy.  I was just responding to posts asking about or indicating things about the nature of the wounds.  It's impossible to say at this point what the congresswoman's condition will be, but it seems, from all indications so far, that her survival chances are decent, relatively speaking.

[anvi]

Frodo, odds are that she is not even close to being brain dead.  She was reported before the surgery to be responding to commands like holding up two fingers and controlling other very basic motor functions.  That seems to indicate that she can hear, understand, control at least some motions on her own, and still has at least some executive function.  Since the wound seems to have been confined to the upper part of the cortex, I don't think sustained life support will be required either.  It's just still unclear what sorts of cognitive or decision-making capacities she will retain, since the parts of the cortex the bullet seems to have traversed would effect things like that.  But, again relatively speaking, for a woman who was shot through the brain, she seems at least so far to have been incredibly fortunate.

Our hearts go out to the people who lost their lives in the shooting, including a precious and irreplaceable 9-year old girl, and others who were wounded, and condolences to all their families.  Truly awful.  

[anvi]

Even if her condition stabilizes and continues to improve, she will be in critical condition for a little while; brain swelling and hemorrhaging are still real dangers at this point.  But the facts that she is responding to questions and identifying people, at least by signaling, are really wonderful signs.  As said, it remains to be seen what kinds of cognitive capacities she will have as she comes through all this.  But, wow, the congresswoman is one fortunate, and tough, lady.

[anvi]

I can't help but reproduce here a quote from the story posted by Refudiate, from Daniel Hernandez, 30, who rushed to Giffords' aid after she was shot, probably while shots were still being fired, and helped control the bleeding until the paramedics arrived.

“You just have to be calm and collected.  You do no good to anyone if you have a breakdown.. .. It was probably not the best idea to run toward the gunshots, but people needed help.”

[anvi]

Franzl,

I lived in Germany for some time, and one of the first things I discovered there was that the newspaper journalists don't primarily operate according to the American "norm" of "objectivity."  Each major paper has a pronounced political orientation, often featuring opinion pieces on the front page.  Most newspaper journalists split their time between reporting and writing opinion pieces from week to week.  They don't see their job as involving bias, but as representing the perspective of the paper they work for.  So, if one wanted more leftist perspective, one would read Berliner Zeitung, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel, whereas, for a righty perspective, one would look at Allgemeine Frankfurter Zeitung and Die Welt.

Just to comment on the topic being bandied about on this thread, I've tried to post things here that have focused on those who have been injured and killed, as well as heroism seen on that afternoon.  But, in my own view, no matter who is espousing inflamed political rhetoric, sure they have the right to say whatever they want, but they should also be aware that generally crazy talk accepted in the cultural atmosphere helps give genuinely crazy people ideas.  

[anvi]

I just have to smile every time I see Jefferson's letter to William Stevens Smith about Shay's Rebellion cited in defense of Angle's famous "second amendment remedies."  (And I take cinyc's word for it that he did not quote the passage in order to rely on its purported truth.)  First of all, the people who were killed in Shay's rebellion were some of the militia rebels.  Secondly, I'll refer to the same quote to demonstrate that Jefferson's point was that he believed the rebellious crowd in question was ignorant and that the right way to deal with them was to educate them.

"The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

The points of the damned passage are that, 1. while aggrieved people should express their grievances openly, those very people should be given the facts that would pacify them, since lack of a command of the facts is what incited them to rebel in the first place, and 2. the lost lives of the armed Shay's rebels didn't mean particularly much to Jefferson.  But, toward the end of the same letter, Jefferson indicated that he was basically being flippant through the whole thing:

"The want of facts worth communicating to you has occasioned me to give a little loose to dissertation. We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot inform."

The letter, while it does defend the speech rights of citizens for sure, is not a justification of armed rebellion, it's a rejoinder to armed rebellion.  If people who talked about "second amendment remedies" were a little more about history than histrionics, they wouldn't rely on this letter, which, in any event, was one of the most self-admittedly flip things Jefferson ever wrote.

Anyway, speaking for myself regarding political rhetoric in the U.S., all I will say is that I wish we all, left, right, center, up, down, wherever we're all coming from, expected a little more from ourselves.  Laws and rights are fundamental to a democracy, but so are civic virtues.

[anvi]

I'm sure this will be ignored, like most of my posts in this forum are.  But I'm going to say it, and then let y'all get on with your fight.

First off, let me say I don't have any reason to believe that what caused this kid to go and blow people to pieces was some left or right ideology or persuasion.  I have no reason to believe any such thing unless and until the evidence says so, and so far, the evidence is not saying so.

But what this thread has become about to me is just everyone rushing to proclaim their own innocence and their opponent's guilt.  Lefties blame the right for political discourse, the right castigates the left for jumping to conclusions and stifling rights and free speech.  And a hollow agreement is supposed to be found in the comfort that this kid was just an isolated case, an inscrutable nutjob, and the grounds for his insanity don't have to be worried about beyond that affirmation.  He is condemned, everyone else is absolved...and nothing gets solved.

Like I said, we don't yet have nearly enough information to understand all this, and no grounds for coming to any conclusions about anything.  But what bugs me is that there seems to be so much concern to merely establish our own political innocence and the opponents' guilt.  As long as individuals can feel they have no stake in understanding what happened beyond showing off their own purity, all this just becomes an exercise in futility.  

Instead of all this, what I believe is that we should as citizens who share a society, who take one another's lives into our hands every time we go into the voting booth, be passionate not about just absolving ourselves, but about finding out what happened, finding out all the real causes, wherever they might lead us, so we can do our part in the future to prevent it from happening more often.  Look at all the very real people involved in this story, parents, teachers, army recruiters, police officers, lawmakers, bystanders; so many people were effected by this, and how much would it have helped if more of them tried harder in advance to understand, to intervene, to be sure that this kid got counseling and help before this all went down?  Don't get me wrong; I'm not in any way excusing what this kid did; he should now be punished to the full extent of the law.  But doing all we can to prevent horrific things like this is far, far better than reacting to them when they happen.  If we had half as much determination to really understand and intervene in similar cases in our own lives and experiences as we do to declare ourselves pure and uninvolved, we wouldn't all have to get so completely bent out of shape in mutual recrimination on an internet forum.

JMO.  I'll do myself a favor and not look at this particular thread again, and do you all a favor and spare you my opinions about it.  Back to the wars we go, I guess.

[anvi]

Did anybody else find the amount of cheering and applause during the memorial slightly awkward?

Why did you find it awkward?

[anvi]

They started applauding and cheering in response to opening prayers and statements.  Then they applauded as the president talked about each victim and the heros that were there.  I feel it just built up, and ended up in kind of a catharsis when the 9-year old girl was talked about, and then it was mentioned that Giffords had opened her eyes.  I think maybe they also wanted to show the country that the citizens of Tucson are proud and stick together, despite this terrible thing that happened to them.  I didn't have the sense that anyone was treating it like a political rally.  Besides, they're the people most effected, and it's their memorial, they can respond however they like.

[anvi]

A lot of the families and victims' friends were there; I saw many of them sporadically applauding and standing too.  And, insofar as this event was a tragedy that drew the whole nation's attention, it was the city's people at large that were effected too.  Even Brewer has said as much.  As far as applause that broke out when the girl was mentioned, maybe they were applauding her memory, not her death; she too had already been talked about several times before in the service.  It may have been the audience's way of communicating their support for the families.  I don't know; it was not a traditional memorial service held in a church, of course.  But it didn't make me feel awkward. 

[anvi]

One of the good signs that has come out of the first few days is that Giffords has been able to respond to verbal communication and move parts of her body on command.  That seems to indicate that, perhaps to a large extent, her speech-recognition and speech-motor control areas, in the left parietal lobe and Brocca's area, may not have been badly damaged.  It remains to be seen how well she will be able to speak herself, as well as how the wound will effect her decision-making capacities and cognitive abilities in general.  It will be a tough hall.  But as far as having sentience, being able to recognize those around her, being able to understand her environment and respond to verbal communication, as well as being able to control important kinds of movement, all the signs so far are surprisingly encouraging.  I'll say it again, that's one tough lady.

[anvi]

Yeah, even my Republican friends on FB who were feeling angry and frustrated at the debate this week were praising Obama's speech. Glad to see it hit the right notes.

A turning point in his presidency.

I think I just vomited in my mouth a little.  I gave praise for his speech too, but that doesn't change the fact that he is hurting the country.  It doesn't change our unemployment level and it doesn't change the fact he passed healthcare.  It's sick that you and particularly the guys at the Politico want to trump up this meme that a memorial service can change things for Obama.  It really shows what bad shape you guys are in if he's in desperate need of a massacre to bring his poll numbers up.

I don't think the speech does or will represent a turning point in Obama's presidency; I think, however it pans out, the midterms will be considered a turning point.  But, while it's certainly not the case that a single speech on any occasion gets a president reelected, it does matter whether the country likes the president, and finds him inspiring and/or optimistic.  Right before the 2004 election, according to Gallop, Bush's job approval numbers stood at 44% approval and 46% disapproval, and people were not happy about the economy (though it was hardly as bad as it is now).  Still, Americans personally did not dislike president Bush; they certainly felt more comfortable with him as a person than they did with the stiff-as-a-board Kerry.  I think the concerns of the country with national security, to a lesser extent "moral values", and personal comfort and likability, along with an outstanding Rove GOTV operation, were contributory factors in getting Bush reelected.  In close races, and I take it for granted that 2012 will be a closely contested race, likability matters; it's not decisive by itself by any means, but it matters.  Emotions are important to people walking into a voting booth who are on the fence, and, as Drew Westen wisely points out; "if you don't win the heart first, the mind won't follow."  Uplifting, comforting and hopeful speeches in times of crisis help presidents, no matter what their party.  And they should.