Gross exploitation of poor brown people in the developing world is like really bitchen but dumb, mean comments about a few middle class black girls is more or less the worst thing ever.

I hope some good will come from this tragedy, and it can if we can understand how a clearly mentally/emotionally disturbed student, raising red flags of all kinds long before, was allowed to remain without other students knowledge, and fix it by law.

It should be common knowledge that torture is heinous, barbaric, uncivilized and outdated in civilized countries. So it should not be debated.

For the media “ethicists”: It should be common knowledge that when a perpetrator of a mass murder incorporates into his crime a justifying manifesto, its publication is acting as accessory and collaborator to the crime. So it should not be debated.

The fact that the two subjects are in fact debated shows how debased this country has become.

Here’s what I wonder about. It does seem that your response, which was also mine, was to mourn the students in Virginia and then wonder about making bumper stickers that say Blacksburg Happnes 2X a day in Baghdad.

What it seems the offended americafirstandonlies don/t understand is that those women and children dying in Baghdad are real, that their parents and children and husbands and wives suffer exactly as wel do. Somehow, dead children don’t count unless they are within our national boundaries…and maybe don’t even count if they die in drive-by shootings in LA or the Bronx.

WHO: Virginia Tech Alumni Association, Los Angeles Chapter 52

WHAT: Candlelight Vigil

WHEN: Friday, April 20, 7pm

WHERE: Santa Monica Beach, CA, North side of the main pier on the beach

WHY: In memory of the 32 students who lost their lives on April 16.

For additional information please contact

Terry Gravely at vtgravely@hotmail.com or Kate McNally at
katemcnally@aol.com

I now return you to the real world!

(Proud of the fact that I last fired a weapon in Nov 1971 while requalifying at Ft. Meade)

Here’s Lt.Col. Bob Batemen, snipped from his comments at “Altercation”:

I am sick of idiots with an agenda pretending that what happened at Virginia Tech is not because we have too many damned guns in this country. Muzzle-loading blackpowder rifles, single-shot breech-loading hunting rifles, and single-barrel breech-loading shotguns, and that is about it, are all that should be allowed. Those tools can be used, legitimately, to hunt. You want more, move. Leave the United States to those who know the difference between something that is useful for hunting, and something that replaces the manhood you never attained. If you want more, join the Army. If you can’t do that, and if you still want something that reloads quickly and gives you plenty of shots, BUY A DAMNED BOW!

But what really puts me over the top is one particular brand of NRA stupidity. That is the myth of the Wild West. In other words, if I hear one more stupid gun-loving sonuvabitch talk about how, “Well, if they just had allowed all those students to have guns, this lunatic at Virginia Tech wouldn’ta got far,” I am going to slap his dumb ass on the first plane smokin’ for Iraq, where I would like to personally drop him off, with as many guns as he would like, in Dora (that’s a particularly nasty South Baghdad neighborhood with which I am familiar).

Yes, Dora would be perfect. In my mind’s eye I am imagining plopping said gun nut off outside the blue-painted major police sub-station, just about six or seven blocks from another walled-in compound which is now a police barracks (or, at least it was, last year.). As a microcosm, Dora should be the NRA’s dream town, as it perfectly matches the NRA “Wild West” theory of what is needed in a society: honor is important to the individual; the family is the most important part of society; all of the inhabitants are very religious (except for when they are not); and absolutely everyone has at least one gun.

In fact, I would very much like to personally place the CEO of the NRA, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, there right now. What’ya say, Wayne? Want to experience a world where everyone has a gun? C’mon, buddy, I’ll even let you hump the pig.

(That means, “Carry the M-240 7.62 mm machine gun,” people. Get your minds out of the gutter.)

OK, I’m calmer now.

“But what I think is interesting is that this argument resonates with the American public because it taps into the “hero” narrative of American TV and movies: the hero saves the day by drawing his gun (it’s almost inevitably a “him”) and blowing away the bad guys.”

Always a him? The most recent movie I’ve seen, “Grindhouse”, has a chick with a machine gun for a leg as well as a female stunt driver who takes a shot at Kurt Russell’s shoulder. TV shows like CSI and Law and Order routinely have female cops drawing arms. The armed, kick ass super-female is as American as apple pie.

You might be able to get away with “mostly” but not “inevitably”.

Make no mistake, I think that there are situations when people have to be armed. I know people in rural areas who would have to wait an hour for police to arrive in case of robbery/intrusion, etc. They have a perfectly understanadbale reason to own guns. But treating them like another commodity while throwing Tommy Chong in jail for distributing waterpipes reflects very skewed priorities.

i do think, when all is said and done, someone with this guys’ profile woudl have found an illict weapon if he wasn’t able to buy one though.

Same thing with me: In many ways, I am more of a traditional conservative (anti-abortion, pro-second amendment, free speech advocate, pro-freedom, critic of communism and socialism) than you. But it doesn’t seem to innoculate me from being called - by you - a “liberal.” In fact, I don’t even merit a “moderate liberal” label!

So all this talk about “liberal, liberal, liberal”…just buzzwords that mean nothing. I can call you a fascist, but beyond namecalling it means little.

On gun control, the US will never go house to house collecting the 350 million guns or whatever. We can make certain kinds illegal, but a personal handgun is never going away unless white kids start dropping in the numbers darks skinned kids do…

BISHOP, Ryan A., 32, Specialist, Army; Euless, Tex.; 10th Mountain Division.

BORBONUS, John G., 19, Pfc., Army; Boise, Idaho; 25th Infantry Division.

BOWMAN, Larry R., 29, Sgt., Army; Granite Falls, N.C.; 513th Transportation Company, 57th Transportation Battalion, 593rd Corps Support Group.

PUTNAM, Cody A., 22, Cpl., Army; Lafayette, Ind.; 25th Infantry Division.

SANTEE, Daniel J., 21, Lance Cpl., Marines; Mission Viejo, Calif.; Second Marine Logistics Group, Second Marine Expeditionary Force.

Conservatives? Independent Thought? Those terms don’t even go together. They’re like sheep following the herd and manipulated by politicians willing to solicit their votes with promises that carry no implicit or explicit costs. On the topic of 9-11, every site with Conservatives participating links the terrorist attacks to Iraq.

I come close to agreeing with, “If you want to understand the individual, you have to understand conservatives.”, but I would amend that statement to read, If you want to understand the individual, you should consider classical liberal thought. Still, I would add that individuals have both self-centered and other-centerd concerns. Although (unselfish) individual altruism is not adequately explained by economic, theologic, or conservative thinkers, it does not follow that (unselfish) individual altruism does not exist. [Where, unselfish=no expected return; the absolute absence of quid pro quo.]

Cummings, the facts are far from in, but the easy access of the rapid repeating gun is sure looks a big part of the story here. In addition, the issue of this kid’s medication should be explored, as it wasn’t in the case of Columbine.

I’ve come to get pretty fatalistic about these events. They are pretty much ritualistic human sacrifices the NRA seems to require making to the Gun Gods.