I wish I could find the short story this all reminds me of. In it guns are everywhere and people have taken the idea that 'everyone gets shot once" Literally and thus put all their children in bullet proof vests for that inevitable day they will get shot, maybe a classmate, maybe a mailman, maybe another toddler. "Where's your vest" replaces "Don't forget your coat." Bigger/nicer vests have become part of coming of age celebrations. In it the protaganist ends up having a freak out and shooting herself in the vest protected chest in attempt to alleviate the fear of the day she will get shot.
I'm so, so tired of living in a country where this thread has cause to get updated multiple times per week. The shooter's motive is currently unknown, but I can't help wondering whether the right-wing attacks on the press contributed (it is irresponsible not to speculate, after all).
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
I think this is the point where someone is supposed to post the Casablanca clip, but to be honest, I'm just not in the mood.
(To be fair, he seems to have had a vendetta against the paper since at least 2012 or so... but he didn't act on it in 2012. He acted on it today. And AFAIK it's not officially confirmed that the screenshotted Twitter account is the terrorist's, but if it's not, someone was playing a long game impersonating him - some of the tweets appear to be pretty old.)
Carl Hiaasen's brother is among the confirmed murder/terrorism victims, by the way.
My condolences to everyone who lost family members in today's attack.
ETA: on this thought, I'll try to get some sleep
The Times-Picayune kept working while Katrina destroyed their homes.
WDBJ didn't stop working when two of its reporters were murdered on air.
KHOU 11 kept filming as their offices flooded during Harvey.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith
It's got nothing to do with firearms, of course. The problem is that Americans are simply more homicidal that other human beings. If there were no firearms, said fucker would be running around Mercy Hospital in Chicago strangling people to death.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
You other, un-American countries ought to be ashamed of yourselves. All you have to do is relax gun ownership everywhere, so we can test this theory out.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Do you have another source for that? One that can cope with European readers?
Worry not, in a few months you'll be free of the EU legal yoke that renders it silly for foreign local news rags to bother with compliance. You too will have easy access to Montana's cat up the tree stories.
Website idea: willmylinkworkineurope.com
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
Alas, freedom from overbearing democratically-deficient rules from Brussels doesn't mean the overbearing democratically-deficient buffoons in Westminster will work any faster or be any more able to agree on anything.
The civil lawsuit of Sandy Hook parent Scarlett Lewis against Alex Jones and Infowars is generating some interesting discovery. Here we learn about how the NRA contacted a piece of shit Infowars Sandy Hook troofer for pointers on how to gin up some obfuscatory bullshit about the Parkland, FL school shooting in early 2018.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
"What the fuck is a German muffin?" ~ R. Swanson
Last edited by Stephen Maturin; 03-29-2019 at 06:46 PM.