UConn James

From this post, it seems like you're still under the impression that the shooter's mother was a teacher. She was not. Who's the one 'speaking retard'?! This is the pot calling the Dove soap black. But to the other point, the thing about this town in Texas is that the nearest police presence is 20 minutes away from the school. In a scenario like Newtown/Columbine, everyone in the school could be dead by the time police car's rubber even enters the parking lot. Shootings where the intent is to kill as many as possible and then the killer shoots himself/is shot by police are done within and dependant on the margins of police response time. Now, they've learned some things --- in Columbine, police waited outside in an expectation of negotiation and as it turned out, the shooters used that time to keep killing. Since then, as in Newtown, police go in right away. But we're still left with the age-old problem that transportation of resources takes valuable time. We have not yet invented the teleportation device from Star Trek. I know all you liberals would like to think that dialing 911 and police are you need. People who live in the real world, tho, realize the truth to the adage that "when EVERY SECOND counts, police are just MINUTES away." And so, in many instances of violent crime, personal security is self-help. Police show up after the factto collect evidence to see if they can catch the perp and file reports for the insurance companies to use. And so, in this Texas school, since police physically cannot show up until it's all over, someone with an ounce of sense decided to try something that could handle a situation in a much more timely manner. These teachers receive extensive training and their weapons are secured. would be able to do more than shield and cower and wait. Perfect solution? Dunno. But it's a better option than simply shielding students with your body (an act that is THE most truly heroic, as reports of what Vicki Soto did, don't get me wrong) or cowering and waiting. And response times, even in developed parts of the country, can be on par to this 20 minutes and give those intent on destruction a lot of free, unopposed operating time.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism-security/2012/1218/NBC-s-Richard-Engel-released-in-Syria-a-journalist-danger-zone *Whew*

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2249562/Award-winning-NBC-News-foreign-correspondent-Richard-Engel-missing-Syria-Thursday.html Hoping for the best here.... He's been the best source of what's actually going on the Middle East for over ten years now.

I don't want to hear the contraction screams.... Show me the baby!

Wow, Denise is really shooting herself in the foot in this final tribal. Basically, telling the whole jury, 'I'm better than you!' and using that as her case. Lisa kinda screwed herself by not coming back with an 'I'm not rich from that...' to Penner. He just laid the wood to her chances there.

Actually, talking the experience through is one of the most effective forms of therapy. Another of the symptoms of PTSD is when remembering it brings about those same feelings of panic/anxiety/etc. One of the points of therapy is being able to talk about it without re-experiencing it. I would reference the PBS miniseries "This Emotional Life" in this regard. Granted... talking to the media isn't any form of this kind of therapy. But, people want to try to understand this event, and the people who experienced it are the kids. It's naive to think that this won't or shouldn't happen.

It doesn't merit censorship. On that I agree. I said far less about Ralph Wilson in the Shoutbox (that when he kicks the bucket, the state of the franchise will be better off. Literally. That's what I wrote.) and got banned and 2 "warning points" for it. So as for any consistency in moderating on this site... every mod is a sheriff in his/her own right and is above questioning as Beerball wrote in the Customer Service forum. We don't want them here, we don't need them here, we "police ourselves." You have the right to write your opinions here, but incumbent in that is a personal duty to not be a prick before dead first graders are buried. I know someone who has/is working the scene. In the school, in those two rooms. It is beyond terrible. This person is as hard-boiled as they come, had seen everything... and I can see a change in this person's personality already. It will be their nightmare for the rest of their life. Post traumatic stress disorder has been described as the brain trying and failing to make sense of the insensible. Someone has to do it, and it is unenviable. There's a reason why people in the military are rotated through Graves Registration. I have an uncle who did that through two tours of Vietnam; most of those guys blew their own brains out. I don't see how it's such a hard thing to let this settle down a bit before people go poking the nerve.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/legally-recognize-westboro-baptist-church-hate-group/DYf3pH2d

And still, there's a time when it's necessary to show a modicum of respect and period of reflection in the wake of tragedy without being a total *. Even here on PPP, this applies.

They are saying that the virus likely caused dehydration, which caused the faint, which caused the concussion. That thought crossed my mind too, but I don't think even a Clinton would try that as an excuse. I mean... if they were really looking for an out, they would probably just have someone killed.

I get what you're saying about predictability and habits... but that's an extremely marginal factor in a case where there's a determined individual bent on destruction and who doesn't care a wot about consequences b/c he's preparing to die anyway, and is simply seeking personal vengeance and then whatever he can get to try to rack up a high score. There is no way that routines and/or changing them up would have made a difference here. He had deadly weapons combined with psychotic bent, and they hid behind doors and under desks. Feel however you want in whatever way helps you sleep. But if someone has you as a target for whatever reason and you have no method of security other than the police with 10 minute response times... you're on a slab, bro. Safety in the crucial first couple of minutes is self-help.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/15/children-and-adults-gunned-down-in-connecticut-school-massacre/ It's in the 3:06 p.m. update. Just going to say that I found out off the record just how bad this was going to be ("over 20 dead" someone told me) a little over an hour before the media got it and were still only saying the gunman was dead. Still didn't prepare me one iota for the shock. I feel 100 years old.

Evidently, his mother was NOT a teacher there. There is some speculation that was either a substitute or a sometimes-volunteer. The latest I read was the shooter had an agument with four teachers/staffers on Wed or Thursday, when he went to the school. He returned Friday and killed three of those four (the other had called in sick and was home yesterday), apparently primarily targeting them. What the nature of that argument was has not yet been detailed. In retrospect, if someone who doesn't belong there/has no reason to be there comes onto school grounds and gets in a tiff with staff, maybe it would have been best to get police involved and check it out. Not assigning blame here, just to be clear, but this was a warning sign and may be an area of stress going forward. If you have no business at a school, GTFO.

On the subject of SoS comes the news today that Hillary Clinton fainted, hit her head and suffered a concussion last week. http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-73709151/ I'm certainly not her biggest fan, but I wish a speedy recovery. Scary thing to see someone faint out of the blue. Happened in college ~10 years ago when a girl was standing at the printer not far from me and she suddenly just went totally limp and flopped like a sack of potatoes. Came to and fainted again. Called 911, medics came... She was really classically pretty too... but from what I suspect as I was trying to keep her talking, she hadn't eaten and was likely borderline anorexic.

Where do you think abortion falls in that? 'If this emerging life is too much for you to handle, if you can't afford it, if it's a cramp to your lifestyle... just snuff it out. Problem solved!' Now, I actually support many abortion rights and the stare juris of Roe, but you CANNOT remove it with a clean break from the degradation of society's views on the preciousness and value of life. Maybe especially in this case, of innocent life that did nothing wrong, it was simply viewed by an older person with the means as so detestable/inconvenient/etc. that it should be gotten rid of. From what little we know, he hasbeen described by a couple of people who knew him as a First-Person-Shooter-Videogame player. Personally, I think if we were to dial back those games to the Nth degree in availability and content, as well as encourage fewer murder-death-kill teevee shows (NCIS: Alabama, CSI: Waterloo, Law&Order: 7 Spinoffs, Criminal Minds, Bones and WAYYYY too many more to name here) with ever more graphic content, it would go some of the way toward ending the desensitization bent. Monkey see, monkey do. And if programmers don't want to do this voluntarily, then by other means, including broadcast licenses, First Amendment be damned. This stuff is obscenity much moreso than porn that gets all the focus in this section of law.

I'm not entirely sure whether Brown's ~2 years would count in that... but, yes, I'm under the impression that the Sr./Jr. designation goes by consecutive time spent in office, not by non-consecutive. As it stands, that terminology is only important to newspaper reporters to have another non-proper-noun when referring to the two.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/kerry-replace-hillary-state-dept-report-article-1.1220883 Gotta say that this is much more preferable to Susan Rice. Kerry will be confirmed easily with Senate collegiality. ----- Aside from all that, it would set up an interesting special election in Mass. if, as expected, Scott Brown runs for the seat and the challenger can't ride the Obama/general-ticket coattails.

Uhh... except that's not what happened here, as far as all the info out there right now. It was two 9mm and a rifle of some sort. I worry less about some survivalist who wants a hundred guns to put in his safe than I do about a guy who just wants one for each hand to enact some sick fantasy and so he can work up the courage to do what he should have simply done in the first place... and just put it up to his own temple. But we apparently don't live in that world anymore where if you're sad or angry, you take out just yourself or the one person you're really angry with.... Now, these people take out as many as they can like they're trying to rack up a high score.

Note that the time stamp there was BEFORE reports of children dead, and merely that the gunman was. I actually heard that this was REALLY bad about an hour and a half before it hit media from someone in the Major Crimes unit. The tenor of your posting in this thread is pretty sick, EiI. Shouldn't be censored, as I have had recent issues with all that, an abuse of moderating, and a total failure of consistency in application (but whatever... moving on now). We don't need that here, but it requires a baseline/floor of decency more than the regular boards, and a thicker skin. Words don't bother me no more, in that way. Making light once we find out that there's dead kindergartners... that's a line of special *-dom. ----- Like Jauronimo, I really want there to be almost NIL coverage/photos/borderline glorification of this shooter on the Whys of whatever his motivations and/or manifesto was. What is most important is the Hows. How did a guy dressed entirely in black and wearing tactical clothing gain entrance to a school? Likely, this will follow the same pattern as the other in Colorado, VT, etc. We'll hear about someone who ignored warning signs. People will exert themselves to come up with security measures to stop this from happening again... again... again. But the simple truth is that a determined individual who doesn't care what happens to him/her can accomplish a great deal of their violent bent before they meet resistance. Maybe especially in a school, which are 'gun free zones' where Sam Colt's maxim of equality has become perverted by those who think criminals care about such things... newsflash... that only emboldens such a person even more when they know they'll have free reign for whatever police response time is. Police are 90% of the time there to clean up after the fact, file paperwork for the insurance companies and do their part in security theatre. Just to note, tho, that this is just a more extreme version of the intense anger that's built up just beneath the surface in this bipolar country, reinforced in our entertainment and 1st-person-shooter-video-games (not blaming them specifically, but these things DO NOT HELP this society!!!) Kindergartners, tho? I... I just have no words.

I'm just going to say that MD could learn a few things from Mantai T'eo. I get that you can be sad after a close relative dies. But that doesn't mean you let it affect your job so negatively. It's like when a soldier goes to war, the term is that to a large degree, they have to put their personal life in a box. T'eo handled his grief constructively and in a way it seems to have actually helped his game, because it was a vent for his emotions. It doesn't seem like MD was (and maybe, is) coping healthily.

Seriously, I just can't fathom how this guy is getting flak for two great pass defense plays in an age where breathing wrong on WRs draws anywhere from a 15 yard to a 70 yard penalty. GW didn't make an interception. Whoopie. Yep, he was right there, his hands were so close, and it just didn't happen. I'm not going to blame him a bit and he didn't suddenly become a bad SS b/c he didn't get a pick, when a team is doing really good to get 15-20 per season. The team shouldn't have been in that position to start with. GW did his job on those plays and is getting faulted b/c he's not Superman?!?

The NFL isn't really about defense anymore.

Obama / Democrats wanted a class war... well... they got it. [shrug] A lowering tide sinks all boats.

Of the $1.6T in new taxes Obama is seeking, $1.2T would be going to new spending. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/75-percent-obamas-proposed-tax-hikes-go-toward-new-spending_666067.html NO cuts are on the table. Tax and spend.... Tax and spend....

Brace yourselves.... http://pinmobo.com/17644,brace-yourself-winter-is-actually-coming#