Now imagine someone in a schoolroom skilled with a sword or machete. You can always find a bogeyman to justify something you want to do, that makes a criminal out of someone else who has not done and will not do anything to hurt you. It's called propaganda. It's what is bad when directed at you, but good when directed elsewhere, especially if it serves as a shield to prove that you are "reasonable" to your detractors.
Especially detractors who have misused power over you. People who have or are fighting for the rights of people with mental illnesses to be free of bigotry have blamed "high-capacity magazines" for the deaths in Connecticut. The NRA has, just as wrongfully and stupidly in my opinion, directed criticism away from magazines and onto people with mental illnesses, asking for an expansion of the NICS.
I'm not sure I have enough personal courage to go around wearing black triangles or six-pointed stars in protest. Although in the large majority, Jews weren't the only ones to die by gassing or in the Nazi camps. Black would have been my color. On January 1st, I wrote to the people on the Yarrow Campus in Tulsa asking for help with a legal problem on that basis. No response. Perhaps it's fear of association.
Consider all the laws in different places that have been passed on this kind of reasoning: you can't tell which Jew will cheat you; you can't tell which Arab will throw a bomb; you can't tell which Black will rape a white woman; you can't tell which person with mental illness will go postal; you can't tell which "assault weapon" or "high capacity magazine" will be used to kill. Guilt by association, without need of individual proof. Somewhere I read that our Constitution is supposed to be against that.
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. - Dorthy Parker
So you can coexist with people who have guns and mental illnesses, and don't have to worry about someone with the combination going postal, especially at school. Then stop child abuse, and give everyone a valued productive place in society of which they can be proud, whatever their abilities. Until you have done that, you haven't yet done much of anything.
I seem to recall that Christ told the Pharisees (aggresively proud of their religiousity and truthyness) that they were like whitewashed tombs, gleaming on the outside, bones and corruption on the inside. Sonehow I don't think that Christ died on a cross just to have his followers walk around with one inserted next to their backbones. If for no other reason than it's terribly constipating.
There was a time when I was living in hell and needed someone to come see about me. I'd been maimed and disabled by a drinking driver, and given the kind of hospital experience you might wish on Sadaam Hussein. I got the impression that Baptist thinking at the time concluded that it would only weaken people with cancer (my departed Aunt, among others) and crushed bones to give them enough painkiller to rest comfortably, and tempt them onto the road to addiction. My job had gone away when I couldn't take a vain Zebco executive's verbal abuse. I had gone back to graduate school in Colorado to work on physical therapy and getting my life back together, but was reliving that hospital experience every night.
I'd hear from Mom about family going to the ski slopes almost every winter, often in the same state. But no one came to visit me. Well, why see about a brother in hell when you can Praise His Name on the slopes. Maybe it was a Christian family values package tour. I really learned to hate Christmas then. Job might have understood, but he had the advantage of a good family life before God let Satan put him on the ash heap.
Right on, Scott. Mr. Hamilton is a decent man and humanitarian who seems to have little if any experience with and expertise in firearms. If he did, he would know that even revolvers, which fire "with every pull of the trigger", can be reloaded in about a second or so with a speed clip. And I think that a .357 magnum round would probably penetrate multiple small victims, whereas a .223 round would might blow up in the first one. An ugly math, that.
Personally, I don't think a single CLEET training course would be enough. Any school official who is going that route would be well advised to join or form a practical shooting club, and practice safe handling and scenarios monthly. Or, they could train with law enforcement officers on a regular basis, if those organizations run practical shooting schools. For those who can afford it, there are defensive combat firearms courses, such as those at Gunsite, which one can read about in most firearms magazines.
Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Hamilton has ever been to a shooting range, and observed the absolute emphasis that most if not all place upon safety and respect for innocent human life.
At the end of the 1960s, I forget exactly what the chief environmental concern was, probably acid rain. But I met this hippy dude who had the answer to it all. Somehow I doubted that he could explain the chemistry or physics, exactly what was affecting what how, the amplitude, frequency or type: particle, acoustic or electromagnetic. But he knew what was causing it all. It was what those jet airplanes high up in the atmosphere were putting out. It was Vibrations.
Now I hear that other people have the answer to the cause of all our economic woes. They may not be able to tell you which ones affect businesses and families how. They may not be able to tell you which ones are good and which are bad, or why. But they know that it's what government puts upon the marketplace. It's Regulations.
Wait a minute. Wasn't the shovel that dug this hole the unaccountable, unwise and unethical excesses of mortgage lenders and investment firms? Those Ponzi schemes and banks "to big to fail"? Those byzantine derivative trades in imaginary financial value? And less regulation would have helped us avoid that how, exactly? Will the people with all the answers kindly explain, in detail, with evidence that can be confirmed, exactly how we got from the budget surpluses under Clinton to our current fine mess. Not that I would credit any President for budget surpluses, but didn't we have a conservative Republican anti-regulation administration between then and now?
Whether it's a long-haired bearded hippy or a short-haired Tea Party partisan spouting them, I don't see how, without some deeper thought, mere buzzwords give us much hope for something better.
The Washington Post has an interesting article on mass murderers at http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/predicting-violence-is-a-work-in-progress/2013/01/03/2e8955b8-5371-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html
But, trust the math- and science-challenged Post. On page 2, it lists success rates of 1/3 (Monahan) and/or 41% (http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4692?view=long&pmid=22833604) in predicting violence as "slightly better than chance". That would be a success rate of better than 50%. They fail to mention that the figure of 41% was the median of a interquartile range of (27%-60%). Median is not the same as average, which is the generally accepted way to express statistical expectation. You might want to check the math and statistics.
The abstract of the British Medical Journal articles says: Conclusions Although risk assessment tools are widely used in clinical and criminal justice settings, their predictive accuracy varies depending on how they are used. They seem to identify low risk individuals with high levels of accuracy, but their use as sole determinants of detention, sentencing, and release is not supported by the current evidence. Further research is needed to examine their contribution to treatment and management.
So my dear brother in Christ now agrees that Mom shouldn't be climbing my stairs. Unlike the stairs at his home, they aren't padded and are open between the treads. If she slipped and a leg went through, you could almost guarantee a broken one. So he generously offers to let me spend two hours with her this afternoon at his house, or drag he out of his comfortable home to a mall or library to play dominoes.
Christian family values. I've never to my recollection put any condition on how the rest of my family can see her. I'd be ashamed to be that kind of jerk. I don't think that's what Jesus meant us to do. Nice guy, Jesus, to most accounts. If you weren't a money changer or a Pharisee. Not to proud to associate with prostitutes and publicans. Unlike some of his professed followers.
Before this problem with Mom's heart came up, my brother and his family were pushing her to move to Tulsa into an assisted living complex. A lot more expensive than just renting an apartment, for someone who still did her own laundry and meals. Why they didn't want her to live with them, I might not be able to say. Now that their own kids have families, they don't lack for space. And their house is a lot nicer than anything I've ever been able to afford.
I offered once to let Mom move in with me, if she could help me get set up with a home and mortgage I can afford. She has credit and I don't, having gone through bankrupture after surgery looking for cancer. And her reply was that she couldn't, because "then some people wouldn't come to visit", and she wants to see all her family. And these are all professing Christians who regularly attend church. Go figure. Must be those Christian family values. They sure make an impression on me.
Ah, the joys of Christian family values. My Mother had a heart problem while visiting my brother and his family for Christmas, and ended up in St. Francis. They took her to Warren Clinic Urgent Care first, and my brother tried to keep me from going to be with her, telling me that they would take care of it and let me know what happened. I told him, "Thanks for the attitude", and went anyway. I forget just how many days she was in the hospital, but I went to stay with her every afternoon. Which was better than I usually get when she's in town - just one afternoon.
Last weekend, I had called to ask her if she wanted me to visit. I heard her tell my brother and his wife that she wanted me to come visit and asked when they weren't doing anything. So I said I'd come over that afternoon, after lunch. That afternoon, I walked in, found her, set up dominoes on one of the dining tables, and played quietly with her for maybe four hours. I left before dinner that evening so as not to impose in a place where I'm not exactly welcome.
This morning, Saturday, I called her there at the same time we usually talk on the phone every week, and asked if she wanted me to visit. This time I heard her say that I wanted to come over and ask when it would be convenient. Apparently, an entire afternoon playing dominoes was too much for them - I could come between 2 and 4 PM. Somehow I didn't take well to rationing my time with my own Mother, and told her to ask them what they wanted to do. I would call her back.
The next I heard, she was going to come over to my place. And climb a flight of stairs to my apartment with bad knees and a leaky heart valve. I thought about that a while and left a message on their phone asking what kind of people would make her do that. Then went out for groceries.
When I got back, I found a message on machine, my dear Christian explaining how the problem was with me being a poor "guest", coming in without knocking, "any time you want, to spend as long as you want". I could come visit her, but I had to let them know ahead of time when I would come and when I would leave. I really have no interest in their silverware, just playing dominoes and visiting with my Mother.
I may not have the sequence of events just right, but at any rate called my brother to remind him that I had been invited that last time, and listened to him play the aggrieved and put-upon involuntary host. Whereupon I suggested that we could discuss in in family court and hung up while he was still ranting.
That is the mentally stable and Christian part of my family. As opposed to me, who takes medication for depression and doesn't go to church anymore. It might have something to do with the way I've been treated. So tomorrow Mom is coming over to climb my stairs and spend an afternoon with me. As opposed to the rest of the week with my betters. The ones with the Christian family values.
She thinks that she can climb the stairs. But then she didn't want to bother anyone about her arrhythmia until she started to collapse, and no heart doctor or G.P. has released her to climb stairs. I hope she's right, and am ready to call 911 if she isn't. I really hate this nonsense. I think that one of us is so full of himself, it's a wonder he can get it back out to take a leak. The Jesus I recall reading about wasn't like that.
"Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears."
"Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Whitney v. California, 1927
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 89 S.Ct. 1827, 23 L.Ed.2d. 430 (1969): The Supreme Court established the modern version of the "clear and present danger" doctrine, holding that states only could restrict speech that "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action."
from http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/firstamendment/courtcases/courtcases
By what procedure does one redress grievances against the Court itself, without appeal of a lower court case? When the Court makes a series of god-awful bad calls, which damage tens of thousands of innocent lives, particularly military families, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in waste and abuse, and lead to Jim-Crow-like laws against a significant minority of people who will never be a realistic threat to anyone or become criminal, how does one ask the Court to review its own decisions?
The 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision in particular raised psychiatrists up to a near-infallible priesthood and set up a moral hazard for the subsequent insurance scams by psychiatric hospitals that did all of that. All to kill just one prisoner. Witness the 1990s "Profitable Addictions" series by the Houston Chronicle, and other sources.
When no lawyer will take on such a case, how does one Pro se, in forma pauperis petitioner get the Court to take responsibility for the bad and perhaps unintended consequences of its own actions and decisions? If the only answer is a terse "follow the Rules", then one gets the idea that the Court has abandoned any pretense of justice and accountability. That it simply does not care what kind of hell it wreaks upon the rest of us.
Getting such a petition thrown back in one's face certainly makes that point. This problem has festered for decades up to this day. Did the Founding Fathers and their Constitution really intend for a Court to be so haughty and arbitrary that no one can ever ask it directly to reconsider the horrendous results of its own bad decisions, in the face of such continuing suffering and injustice?
I may not agree with everything AndyB believes, but at least he stepped up and said something. I've been uncomfortable with my "monopoly" in these pages and wish others would make use of this space. The people at TCBH with medical and counseling training do not so much lack training as they are trained is a system of belief as to who needs their help and intervention. To a people with a Diagnostic Manual, everyone looks like someone who needs their help. In the same manner as a man with a hammer sees everything as a nail.
I don't think you can paint everyone at TCBH with the same brush. Many of those who serve in a technical capacity were once inmates themselves, often with prior substance abuse problems. They appear to have honestly found some salvation in the system and have returned to help others. Their motivation seems much less questionable than those higher up who will go so far as to falsify medical records and evaluations to assure that they have involuntary patients.
Mr. Wayne LaPierre, Exec. V.P. Mr. Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA Exec. Dir. American Rifleman Letters Editor National Rifle Association 11250 Waples Mill Road Fairfax VA 22030
RE: Your December 21, 2012 Press Statement on recent school shootings
Gentlemen,
As a Life Member of the NRA since about 1982, I want to express just how much your statement sickens me. Oh, not the part about protecting school children. I agree wholeheartedly with that. No, it’s the part where you state:
“A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”
Excuse me, but instead of being put into a national list of undesirables, couldn’t we just wear those six-pointy yellow stars? Then everyone would know who to spit upon, and round up along with all the usual suspects, when some other person with some superficial resemblance commits some god-awful twisted and terrible act. And then there’s all those innocent people over the years who have a mental health record because psychiatric hospitals had them dragged off to be falsely committed, so their medical insurance could be drained. Not to mention anyone who sought help for nightmares, PTSD or depression, because of abuse, death threats, assaults, maiming injuries by drinking drivers, cancer surgery, natural disasters and other things. Or anyone with a mental illness who was falsely accused of making threats, and then committed by state psychiatrists willing to suppress and fabricate medical information to achieve the commitment and force someone into their care to justify their jobs.
And let’s not forget war. Are you aware that many of the psychiatric hospital scams were directed at military families because of their relatively rich medical benefits? Isn’t that all just a terribly special way to treat those whom you send off to be damaged in wars, fighting for you.
I note with irony your concern for creating soft targets for evil people to exploit. I’m sure you are aware the BATF has opined that anyone with any record of commitment at any time for any reason, no matter how transitory, is saddled with a permanent disability in the civil right to possess firearms and ammunition. And that Congress has refused funding to process appeals (at least for felons, who get even more legal protections for due process rights than anyone in a civil commitment hearing). Under your recommendation, any criminal can create soft-target prey by simply setting up a trauma or assault so bad that the target has to seek help, thus becoming ineligible to use self-defense in the future.
I can tell you that living with a legacy of repeated violence and trauma is quite difficult, especially when one has to turn any temptation to commit violence inward upon one’s self. But who would ask for help if they know that they will be made permanently into second-class citizens, and subject to suspicion, hatred, contempt and bigotry in their society? Even handcuffed in front of their neighbors and friends and locked up in the local loony bin for saying the same things about self defense that anyone else may say? A place where, if one protests false charges, one will be kept for months longer than those who actually assaulted others, fought with or threatened police, or attempted suicide.
If I had known that this would be the price of asking for help, I would have kept my mouth tightly shut, even if it meant my death. The same way that liberals create a run on gun shops every time they start blaming people and tools that had no direct participation in or intention to perpetrate evil tragedies, you and they create barriers to any kind of help for mental illness when you make a public and permanent loss of civil liberties and social acceptance the price of asking for it. Small wonder so many kill themselves rather than ask for the kind of help you would prescribe.
I’m enclosing a CD with a set of references describing the Supreme Court’s poorly-reasoned decisions on mental illness issues, and how they created the moral hazards that allowed psychiatric hospitals to engage in scams. With reportage of their acts to entice and drag innocent people off the street into false commitments, and the resulting cost to society. Perhaps you should read it before making any further pronouncements in this area of your unexpertise, sacrificing innocent people on the alter of ugly, bigoted and expedient politics.
In one of the NPR.org forums, a loud and obvious gun-control Obama liberal wished he could have an ATF swat team knock on my door in the middle of the night. What is it about liberals that makes them think that if they have people with guns and badges violently suppress those who disagree with them, none the violence and hatefulness attaches to them? That they are civilized humanitarians if they just get someone else to do their dirty, violent work, under the color of law. As ALF said when he watched a toilet flush, "Interesting concept."
For those suffering long-term emotional damage from the Sandy Hook shootings, the shootings themselves are not the last obscenity they will have to face. Current psychiatric models hold that anyone who has a history of trauma and mental health issues is more likely to be violent. Current legal models and practices in many state mental health codes and courts hold that anyone with such a history is dangerous until proven otherwise, if that person is merely accused by another claiming to have a "reasonable fear" of threat from the person with a mental health issue. So any baby involved in and affected by a school shooting will in the future be suspected as another potential babykiller. And in order to keep itself safe from such people, society has set up a mental health judicial system whereby no one who is so accused can be assured even of zealous legal counsel, or the right to remain silent when examined.
This is hardly new. Soon after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the EEOC's March 1997 Enforcement Guidance one the Americans with Disabilities Act and Psychiatric Disabilities, businesses and news editors started opposing it on the basis that the ADA would require crazy people, such as ax murderers according to one cartoon. See http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/psych.html, Part 30, Example C and Part 31. See http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/ada/ch5.htm
It all had an effect. For example, in the 2000 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law [Vol. 21, page 248], in their article on workplace violence and psychiatric disabilities, Laden and Schwartz cite a report that, "in 1998 a postal worker was fired merely for telling co-workers about his nightmares that involved a shooting at work—a shooting in which he, himself, was a victim." Footnote 10: "10. See generally Georgia Pabst, Man Fired over Dreams Presaging Shooting, Postal Service says his Dreams, Gestures Threatened Others, MILWAUKEE J. SENT., Dec. 15, 1998, at A1. Ironically, the dreams turned out to be correct; another worker did in fact attack that office." See https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=21+Berkeley+J.+Emp.+%26+Lab.+L.+246&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=7277eddb51fc6910b1014f5921cc3320
It's a bit like some Kluxer afraid that black will rub off on him. Or that a black male whistling at a white woman is a sure sign of an eminent sexual assault. Ain't political correctness grand? It's amazing what even liberals can rationalize when they have assured themselves of its righteousness, the unpopularity of the target group, and their inability to organize and fight back.
What bigoted fool thinks that people with mental illnesses can't cry over dead children? Nobody knows exactly why such killings happen, but the Demoncrats are getting out their humanitarian white sheets and soaking their gun control crosses in politically correct gasoline. They're going to "do something!" I bet there are a lot of parents of collaterally dead children in Pakistan and Afghanistan that would like to ban Mr. Obama's drones. Aren't they something that is "only good for killing people"? Aren't their dead children the price of Mr. Obama's concept of freedom? Well, what better way to assuage one's conscience than to point the bigots at innocent people who never hurt anyone, but still "look suspicious". Kill children in the Middle East, pretend to save them in America. Ain't politics grand?
That would be a Black President, with barrels of "collateral damage" blood on his hands, including children, demanding that a minority, even more disliked than his own, be shoved even farther away from first-class citizenship, in order to "make sure" that no child in a school is ever killed again in a mass shooting. As if anyone with a mental illness, who is 10 to 13 times more likely than the general population to be the target of crime and violence (source PubMed.gov), is more willing to kill children than he is.
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COMMENTS
Posted by: Don B
208 comments total
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Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Now imagine someone in a schoolroom skilled with a sword or machete. You can always find a bogeyman to justify something you want to do, that makes a criminal out of someone else who has not done and will not do anything to hurt you. It's called propaganda. It's what is bad when directed at you, but good when directed elsewhere, especially if it serves as a shield to prove that you are "reasonable" to your detractors.
Especially detractors who have misused power over you. People who have or are fighting for the rights of people with mental illnesses to be free of bigotry have blamed "high-capacity magazines" for the deaths in Connecticut. The NRA has, just as wrongfully and stupidly in my opinion, directed criticism away from magazines and onto people with mental illnesses, asking for an expansion of the NICS.
I'm not sure I have enough personal courage to go around wearing black triangles or six-pointed stars in protest. Although in the large majority, Jews weren't the only ones to die by gassing or in the Nazi camps. Black would have been my color. On January 1st, I wrote to the people on the Yarrow Campus in Tulsa asking for help with a legal problem on that basis. No response. Perhaps it's fear of association.
Consider all the laws in different places that have been passed on this kind of reasoning: you can't tell which Jew will cheat you; you can't tell which Arab will throw a bomb; you can't tell which Black will rape a white woman; you can't tell which person with mental illness will go postal; you can't tell which "assault weapon" or "high capacity magazine" will be used to kill. Guilt by association, without need of individual proof. Somewhere I read that our Constitution is supposed to be against that.
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think. - Dorthy Parker
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
So you can coexist with people who have guns and mental illnesses, and don't have to worry about someone with the combination going postal, especially at school. Then stop child abuse, and give everyone a valued productive place in society of which they can be proud, whatever their abilities. Until you have done that, you haven't yet done much of anything.
Re: Unbuckling the bible belt
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
There was a time when I was living in hell and needed someone to come see about me. I'd been maimed and disabled by a drinking driver, and given the kind of hospital experience you might wish on Sadaam Hussein. I got the impression that Baptist thinking at the time concluded that it would only weaken people with cancer (my departed Aunt, among others) and crushed bones to give them enough painkiller to rest comfortably, and tempt them onto the road to addiction. My job had gone away when I couldn't take a vain Zebco executive's verbal abuse. I had gone back to graduate school in Colorado to work on physical therapy and getting my life back together, but was reliving that hospital experience every night.
I'd hear from Mom about family going to the ski slopes almost every winter, often in the same state. But no one came to visit me. Well, why see about a brother in hell when you can Praise His Name on the slopes. Maybe it was a Christian family values package tour. I really learned to hate Christmas then. Job might have understood, but he had the advantage of a good family life before God let Satan put him on the ash heap.
Re: Opting Out of the State
Re: Arming Teachers Ain't the Answer
Personally, I don't think a single CLEET training course would be enough. Any school official who is going that route would be well advised to join or form a practical shooting club, and practice safe handling and scenarios monthly. Or, they could train with law enforcement officers on a regular basis, if those organizations run practical shooting schools. For those who can afford it, there are defensive combat firearms courses, such as those at Gunsite, which one can read about in most firearms magazines.
Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Hamilton has ever been to a shooting range, and observed the absolute emphasis that most if not all place upon safety and respect for innocent human life.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
At the end of the 1960s, I forget exactly what the chief environmental concern was, probably acid rain. But I met this hippy dude who had the answer to it all. Somehow I doubted that he could explain the chemistry or physics, exactly what was affecting what how, the amplitude, frequency or type: particle, acoustic or electromagnetic. But he knew what was causing it all. It was what those jet airplanes high up in the atmosphere were putting out. It was Vibrations.
Now I hear that other people have the answer to the cause of all our economic woes. They may not be able to tell you which ones affect businesses and families how. They may not be able to tell you which ones are good and which are bad, or why. But they know that it's what government puts upon the marketplace. It's Regulations.
Wait a minute. Wasn't the shovel that dug this hole the unaccountable, unwise and unethical excesses of mortgage lenders and investment firms? Those Ponzi schemes and banks "to big to fail"? Those byzantine derivative trades in imaginary financial value? And less regulation would have helped us avoid that how, exactly? Will the people with all the answers kindly explain, in detail, with evidence that can be confirmed, exactly how we got from the budget surpluses under Clinton to our current fine mess. Not that I would credit any President for budget surpluses, but didn't we have a conservative Republican anti-regulation administration between then and now?
Whether it's a long-haired bearded hippy or a short-haired Tea Party partisan spouting them, I don't see how, without some deeper thought, mere buzzwords give us much hope for something better.
Could you be a little more specific, please?
Re: Love Letters, hate mail
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/predicting-violence-is-a-work-in-progress/2013/01/03/2e8955b8-5371-11e2-a613-ec8d394535c6_story.html
But, trust the math- and science-challenged Post. On page 2, it lists success rates of 1/3 (Monahan) and/or 41% (http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4692?view=long&pmid=22833604) in predicting violence as "slightly better than chance". That would be a success rate of better than 50%. They fail to mention that the figure of 41% was the median of a interquartile range of (27%-60%). Median is not the same as average, which is the generally accepted way to express statistical expectation. You might want to check the math and statistics.
The abstract of the British Medical Journal articles says:
Conclusions Although risk assessment tools are widely used in clinical and criminal justice settings, their predictive accuracy varies depending on how they are used. They seem to identify low risk individuals with high levels of accuracy, but their use as sole determinants of detention, sentencing, and release is not supported by the current evidence. Further research is needed to examine their contribution to treatment and management.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Christian family values. I've never to my recollection put any condition on how the rest of my family can see her. I'd be ashamed to be that kind of jerk. I don't think that's what Jesus meant us to do. Nice guy, Jesus, to most accounts. If you weren't a money changer or a Pharisee. Not to proud to associate with prostitutes and publicans. Unlike some of his professed followers.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
I offered once to let Mom move in with me, if she could help me get set up with a home and mortgage I can afford. She has credit and I don't, having gone through bankrupture after surgery looking for cancer. And her reply was that she couldn't, because "then some people wouldn't come to visit", and she wants to see all her family. And these are all professing Christians who regularly attend church. Go figure. Must be those Christian family values. They sure make an impression on me.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Last weekend, I had called to ask her if she wanted me to visit. I heard her tell my brother and his wife that she wanted me to come visit and asked when they weren't doing anything. So I said I'd come over that afternoon, after lunch. That afternoon, I walked in, found her, set up dominoes on one of the dining tables, and played quietly with her for maybe four hours. I left before dinner that evening so as not to impose in a place where I'm not exactly welcome.
This morning, Saturday, I called her there at the same time we usually talk on the phone every week, and asked if she wanted me to visit. This time I heard her say that I wanted to come over and ask when it would be convenient. Apparently, an entire afternoon playing dominoes was too much for them - I could come between 2 and 4 PM. Somehow I didn't take well to rationing my time with my own Mother, and told her to ask them what they wanted to do. I would call her back.
The next I heard, she was going to come over to my place. And climb a flight of stairs to my apartment with bad knees and a leaky heart valve. I thought about that a while and left a message on their phone asking what kind of people would make her do that. Then went out for groceries.
When I got back, I found a message on machine, my dear Christian explaining how the problem was with me being a poor "guest", coming in without knocking, "any time you want, to spend as long as you want". I could come visit her, but I had to let them know ahead of time when I would come and when I would leave. I really have no interest in their silverware, just playing dominoes and visiting with my Mother.
I may not have the sequence of events just right, but at any rate called my brother to remind him that I had been invited that last time, and listened to him play the aggrieved and put-upon involuntary host. Whereupon I suggested that we could discuss in in family court and hung up while he was still ranting.
That is the mentally stable and Christian part of my family. As opposed to me, who takes medication for depression and doesn't go to church anymore. It might have something to do with the way I've been treated. So tomorrow Mom is coming over to climb my stairs and spend an afternoon with me. As opposed to the rest of the week with my betters. The ones with the Christian family values.
She thinks that she can climb the stairs. But then she didn't want to bother anyone about her arrhythmia until she started to collapse, and no heart doctor or G.P. has released her to climb stairs. I hope she's right, and am ready to call 911 if she isn't. I really hate this nonsense. I think that one of us is so full of himself, it's a wonder he can get it back out to take a leak. The Jesus I recall reading about wasn't like that.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
"Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
- Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Whitney v. California, 1927
Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 89 S.Ct. 1827, 23 L.Ed.2d. 430 (1969): The Supreme Court established the modern version of the "clear and present danger" doctrine, holding that states only could restrict speech that "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action."
from http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/firstamendment/courtcases/courtcases
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
By what procedure does one redress grievances against the Court itself, without appeal of a lower court case? When the Court makes a series of god-awful bad calls, which damage tens of thousands of innocent lives, particularly military families, and cost hundreds of millions of dollars in waste and abuse, and lead to Jim-Crow-like laws against a significant minority of people who will never be a realistic threat to anyone or become criminal, how does one ask the Court to review its own decisions?
The 1983 Barefoot v. Estelle decision in particular raised psychiatrists up to a near-infallible priesthood and set up a moral hazard for the subsequent insurance scams by psychiatric hospitals that did all of that. All to kill just one prisoner. Witness the 1990s "Profitable Addictions" series by the Houston Chronicle, and other sources.
When no lawyer will take on such a case, how does one Pro se, in forma pauperis petitioner get the Court to take responsibility for the bad and perhaps unintended consequences of its own actions and decisions? If the only answer is a terse "follow the Rules", then one gets the idea that the Court has abandoned any pretense of justice and accountability. That it simply does not care what kind of hell it wreaks upon the rest of us.
Getting such a petition thrown back in one's face certainly makes that point. This problem has festered for decades up to this day. Did the Founding Fathers and their Constitution really intend for a Court to be so haughty and arbitrary that no one can ever ask it directly to reconsider the horrendous results of its own bad decisions, in the face of such continuing suffering and injustice?
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
The people at TCBH with medical and counseling training do not so much lack training as they are trained is a system of belief as to who needs their help and intervention. To a people with a Diagnostic Manual, everyone looks like someone who needs their help. In the same manner as a man with a hammer sees everything as a nail.
I don't think you can paint everyone at TCBH with the same brush. Many of those who serve in a technical capacity were once inmates themselves, often with prior substance abuse problems. They appear to have honestly found some salvation in the system and have returned to help others. Their motivation seems much less questionable than those higher up who will go so far as to falsify medical records and evaluations to assure that they have involuntary patients.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
An open letter to:
Mr. Wayne LaPierre, Exec. V.P.
Mr. Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA Exec. Dir.
American Rifleman Letters Editor
National Rifle Association
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax VA 22030
RE: Your December 21, 2012 Press Statement on recent school shootings
Gentlemen,
As a Life Member of the NRA since about 1982, I want to express just how much your statement sickens me. Oh, not the part about protecting school children. I agree wholeheartedly with that. No, it’s the part where you state:
“A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation's refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?”
Excuse me, but instead of being put into a national list of undesirables, couldn’t we just wear those six-pointy yellow stars? Then everyone would know who to spit upon, and round up along with all the usual suspects, when some other person with some superficial resemblance commits some god-awful twisted and terrible act. And then there’s all those innocent people over the years who have a mental health record because psychiatric hospitals had them dragged off to be falsely committed, so their medical insurance could be drained. Not to mention anyone who sought help for nightmares, PTSD or depression, because of abuse, death threats, assaults, maiming injuries by drinking drivers, cancer surgery, natural disasters and other things. Or anyone with a mental illness who was falsely accused of making threats, and then committed by state psychiatrists willing to suppress and fabricate medical information to achieve the commitment and force someone into their care to justify their jobs.
And let’s not forget war. Are you aware that many of the psychiatric hospital scams were directed at military families because of their relatively rich medical benefits? Isn’t that all just a terribly special way to treat those whom you send off to be damaged in wars, fighting for you.
I note with irony your concern for creating soft targets for evil people to exploit. I’m sure you are aware the BATF has opined that anyone with any record of commitment at any time for any reason, no matter how transitory, is saddled with a permanent disability in the civil right to possess firearms and ammunition. And that Congress has refused funding to process appeals (at least for felons, who get even more legal protections for due process rights than anyone in a civil commitment hearing). Under your recommendation, any criminal can create soft-target prey by simply setting up a trauma or assault so bad that the target has to seek help, thus becoming ineligible to use self-defense in the future.
I can tell you that living with a legacy of repeated violence and trauma is quite difficult, especially when one has to turn any temptation to commit violence inward upon one’s self. But who would ask for help if they know that they will be made permanently into second-class citizens, and subject to suspicion, hatred, contempt and bigotry in their society? Even handcuffed in front of their neighbors and friends and locked up in the local loony bin for saying the same things about self defense that anyone else may say? A place where, if one protests false charges, one will be kept for months longer than those who actually assaulted others, fought with or threatened police, or attempted suicide.
If I had known that this would be the price of asking for help, I would have kept my mouth tightly shut, even if it meant my death. The same way that liberals create a run on gun shops every time they start blaming people and tools that had no direct participation in or intention to perpetrate evil tragedies, you and they create barriers to any kind of help for mental illness when you make a public and permanent loss of civil liberties and social acceptance the price of asking for it. Small wonder so many kill themselves rather than ask for the kind of help you would prescribe.
I’m enclosing a CD with a set of references describing the Supreme Court’s poorly-reasoned decisions on mental illness issues, and how they created the moral hazards that allowed psychiatric hospitals to engage in scams. With reportage of their acts to entice and drag innocent people off the street into false commitments, and the resulting cost to society. Perhaps you should read it before making any further pronouncements in this area of your unexpertise, sacrificing innocent people on the alter of ugly, bigoted and expedient politics.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
For those suffering long-term emotional damage from the Sandy Hook shootings, the shootings themselves are not the last obscenity they will have to face. Current psychiatric models hold that anyone who has a history of trauma and mental health issues is more likely to be violent. Current legal models and practices in many state mental health codes and courts hold that anyone with such a history is dangerous until proven otherwise, if that person is merely accused by another claiming to have a "reasonable fear" of threat from the person with a mental health issue. So any baby involved in and affected by a school shooting will in the future be suspected as another potential babykiller. And in order to keep itself safe from such people, society has set up a mental health judicial system whereby no one who is so accused can be assured even of zealous legal counsel, or the right to remain silent when examined.
This is hardly new. Soon after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the EEOC's March 1997 Enforcement Guidance one the Americans with Disabilities Act and Psychiatric Disabilities, businesses and news editors started opposing it on the basis that the ADA would require crazy people, such as ax murderers according to one cartoon.
See http://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/psych.html, Part 30, Example C and Part 31.
See http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/ada/ch5.htm
It all had an effect. For example, in the 2000 Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law [Vol. 21, page 248], in their article on workplace violence and psychiatric disabilities, Laden and Schwartz cite a report that, "in 1998 a postal worker was fired merely for telling co-workers about his nightmares that involved a shooting at work—a shooting in which he, himself, was a victim." Footnote 10: "10. See generally Georgia Pabst, Man Fired over Dreams Presaging Shooting, Postal Service says his Dreams, Gestures Threatened Others, MILWAUKEE J. SENT., Dec. 15, 1998, at A1. Ironically, the dreams turned out to be correct; another worker did in fact attack that office."
See https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=21+Berkeley+J.+Emp.+%26+Lab.+L.+246&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=7277eddb51fc6910b1014f5921cc3320
It's a bit like some Kluxer afraid that black will rub off on him. Or that a black male whistling at a white woman is a sure sign of an eminent sexual assault. Ain't political correctness grand? It's amazing what even liberals can rationalize when they have assured themselves of its righteousness, the unpopularity of the target group, and their inability to organize and fight back.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
Re: Are You Pissed Off? Tell us about it.
That would be a Black President, with barrels of "collateral damage" blood on his hands, including children, demanding that a minority, even more disliked than his own, be shoved even farther away from first-class citizenship, in order to "make sure" that no child in a school is ever killed again in a mass shooting. As if anyone with a mental illness, who is 10 to 13 times more likely than the general population to be the target of crime and violence (source PubMed.gov), is more willing to kill children than he is.
Ain't politics grand?