Nut jobs have been using any excuse in their warped minds to kill prominent people for decades. It would be great if politicians and media take this incident as a lesson to tone down rhetoric, but mentally ill people will still try to kill people regardless. What little has come out about Loughner follows the lone assassin playbook to a "T". These people don't need a stupid comment from Beck, Olbermann, or Palin to act out. There's enough crazy talk swirling in their head already.

If we want to do some good let's all go out and kill the mentally ill first. Ok j/k, but the mental health systems in most states are pretty damn pitiful. Since massive reforms started taking place 100 years ago the pendulum has swung too far the other way IMO. We shouldn't be throwing people in dirty cells to rot away, but random mass shootings are an expected consequence of trying to treat mental illness without confinement. Early detection, diagnosis, and intake procedures are dominated by the desire (through so-called compassion and a huge lack of resources/money) to leave patients out on their own without supervision. This is what we get unfortunately.

No one in particular here, but since people are still going on about Palin's "target" list on faceplant.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/6/25 ... 511/541568

Which further punctuates why I don't think this was politically motivated. She was more disliked by the far left than the far right.

One new piece of info I heard this morning was that the shooter is an antisemite...the congresswoman is Jewish.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

wtf...this is getting strange.

So, a super far-left, anti-Semitic, book club volunteer? This sounds like one of those sesame street things "One of these things is not like the other...one of these things just doesnt belong"

They don't even get a rise out of me anymore. Whenever I see one of their flyers or when the news talks about them picketing a funeral, all they'll get out of me is an eye roll.

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"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hockey Night in Buffalo

You're not eluding to the "I" word are you???? The severely mentally ill need to be integrated into society so they do not feel like outcasts. At least that's the fucking argument until something like this happens. Then it'll be "the system needs to be reviewed for changes." Just like the Va Tech shootings here in Va. No doubt there was reporting issues since that nut job had already been diagnosed a nut job so he should have never been sold a gun. It's almost impossible to get someone to get treatment against their will here. There is nothing like the 941 law in NYS. Law enforcement has to PROVEthat the person is an imminent threat to themselves or others.....If you can't you send them on their way and tell them to have a good day. Don't get me started on criminals can be rehabilitated....

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I remember watching that, haha.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

Yeah, their schtick is so tired and predictable at this point it's not even worth paying attention to.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

The 9 year old girl killed is the granddaughter of former pitcher and MLB manager, and current executive for the Phillies Dallas Green. Her father does scouting for the Dodgers.


http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6004887

She was born on September 11th, 2001.

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Wheelhouse

Yeah, that was mentioned earlier in the thread.

So sad that she was born on a day of senseless violence and her life ended (much too soon) on a day of senseless violence.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

To anyone saying that mental ill people need to be tucked away etc etc. From someone who has seen first hand how you can't heal someone who doesn't want to be healed, i have to say that it's not as easy as just putting them away. Unless someone actually seeks help and is honest in therapy there isn't a whole lot that can be done. I've seen people who seem as sane as you or I turn around and kill themselves or other people leaving the professionals sitting there going...well fuck, I was fooled. I had friends killed at Fairchild AFB in a shooting. A patient who had been cleared and concidered out of crisis came in to the clinic and shot his provider and a few others. No one saw it coming and going back to what I said, if you as a care giver are duped or not told the truth, there is littlw you can do. Yes you can tell when someone is lying sometimes but most people can hide their true intentions pretty well if they are serious and not just trying to get attention.

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Nothing is dominated by a desire to leave patients out on their own. What dominates is a desire to change our care from reactionary to proactive. The entire feild has shifted from waiting for someone to have an accute event to trying to keep them from becoming so severely effected. The availability of care and types of care available now are far better than what used to be out there for the public. Not to say anything is perfect, that funding isn't an issue or that there aren't road blocks still but huge gains have been made in the treatment of the "mentally ill" in the last decade. Most of what we see in violent crimes are people that either didn't show signs of this future behavior or acted within the heat of the moment...which wouldn't have been preventable. In this case and I have no idea what was wrong with the kid, he was a loner. It is very hard to get someone treatment when they have little personal contact with other people. It's like trying to prevent a fire when you can't see the smoke.

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Here's evil Ass McFuckface grinning for his mugshot.
My how I would like to gouge his eyes out with a rusty spoon.

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Hold my beer and watch this...

Wow. He looks so creepy.

Oh how I would like 20 minutes in a room alone with him.

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"Counting all the assholes in the room, I'm definitely not alone!" ~ Michael Poulsen, Volbeat, Still Standing.

But I want a wooden baseball bat with spikes.

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"Counting all the assholes in the room, I'm definitely not alone!" ~ Michael Poulsen, Volbeat, Still Standing.

Yeah DP, I had started a response before your post but had to do something else and ran out of time. Anyway I was going to say that treatment has been much improved over the last 10-20 years, but a sever lack of funding that won't get better in a down economy has forced many, if not all, state and local mental health agencies to downsize and/or reduce long-term commitments.

This is on top of the, IMO, bigger issue of de-institutionalization. The stigma of abuse from those days won't allow a return to pro-confinement treatment regardless of the accomplishments made more recently. The flaws in the system don't lie so much with the doctors and counselors that get fooled or not. The bigger flaw is the level of danger a patient must exhibit in order to be involuntarily commited. If there was funding for more rooms in more mental health facilities and longer term care, the whole system would be set up to perform initial treatment under confinement.

Half the prison system could be transitioned to mental health facilities and most prisoners would still be in the right place. Even still, as you say, many of these crazy people wouldn't raise enough flags before killing. I see a lot of lower level crime that could be avoided though if these people were treated in house.

My brother says he looks like Jason Voorhees without his mask on...pretty acurate.

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"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hockey Night in Buffalo

that is one ugly dude.

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