What the Shooter is like...a perspective

Chicago Boyz is a great website. On of their writers is a man by the name of Shannon Love. This is so insightful, but visit Chicago Boyz for more and the comments.

From Shannon Love:

He believes himself more intelligent, more knowledgeable and more skilled than he actually is. He is incapable of accepting responsibility for the consequences of his own foolish actions. This exaggerated sense of his own worth leads him expect far greater rewards in all areas of life than he actually receives. He does not get the jobs, pay, authority, awards, social circle, romantic interest and overall social status he believes that he justly deserves.

Constantly thwarted in all areas of life and unable to accept personal responsibility, he has no other logical alternative than to presume that some sort of conspiracy exists that holds him down. In particular, he will lash out at any real or imagined source of authority or influence in both his personal life and the greater world.

(Someone suggested he was an Afghan war vet. If so, he won’t be a combat vet but rather will have been in a low-level support position e.g. file clerk, fork lift driver etc. Because he cannot submit to any authority for any reason, his military record will be filled with instances of insubordination and demotions. He most likely has a less than honorable discharge. He will, however, have exaggerated his military record when he talks about it.)

In politics, he will begin to lash out at any real or imagined political entity that he believes has influence in the world. He will hate the Federal government. He will hate the military. He will hate any long established and large religious denominations. He will hate other racial or ethnic groups. He will hate those both richer and poorer than himself. He will hate socialists. He will hate big business, Wall Street and capitalism.

He will read all across the political spectrum and cherry pick ideas from every possible ideology. From each ideology, he will select only those ideas which: (1) claim this or that group has disproportionate, unjust and often secret influence or control over the world and (2) justify significantly altering the status quo to correct that group’s unjust power. In the end, his personal ideology will be a Frankenstein-like creation of unrelated ideas stitched together by the thread of his own hubris and narcissism. He will create an ideology that purports to explain why the “ordinary person”, which he sees as himself, is constantly screwed over by the world.

He will leave behind some rambling manifesto that anyone can themselves cherry pick to “prove” he supported some political point of view the cherry-picker opposes.

In the end, we will find out that he turned to violence because he became enraged at his own irrelevance and anonymity. The triggering stressor will be something personal and probably relatively trivial. His targets will have been primarily ones of opportunity. (Those who stalk and attack specific individuals are always schizophrenics and/or have some personal connection to the victim.) He will have shot the congresswoman because he could reach her and not because he had any specific personal animosity toward her or her politics. She was just a convenient authority figure, a personalization of the unjust power and order of the world.

The left plays a dangerous and ultimately self-defeating game when in every case to date, they have immediately, often literally within minutes, of a reported act of political violence, sprung out to denounce ordinary non-lefitsts as culpable in the attack. Since it is widely known that such attackers are either seriously mentally ill or individuals with highly egocentric and idiosyncratic ideologies, seeking to link such attacks to their mainstream political opposition makes it clear that they see instances of political violence merely as chances to advance their political power. Moreover, since such attackers have a hodgepodge ideology, one can just as easily blame leftist’s rhetoric for such attacks as non-leftists.

More darkly, by linking ordinary, mainstream political opponents to such political violence, the left appears to be creating a context for suppressing or even violently attacking such opposition. They are desperately trying to create an equation in which disagreeing with a leftists is tantamount to a violent attack.

The Ugly American is Loud, Fat, a Bully and Crude

I love my country. I do. I think it has at it's origin goodness.

That goodness has been lost. It has become a platform for some of the most gross behavior unimagined a generation ago. We are now become what we thought about and watched on TV for so many years.

• Feuding hillbillies on Jerry Springer
• Unwed Mothers trying to figure out who their baby daddy is on Morey Povich
• Yelling and Screaming TV talking heads talking over each other
• Talk Radio Bullies demeaning everyone who doesn't agree with them
• WWF type interviews with sports stars being all macho even over football or hockey
• Admiration of bullies on Orange County Chopper, Pawn Men and even on Top Chef with hundreds of F words every show
• The side show that is our political class who represent us are just posing bullies who try to pull a fast one on the other side. Both side do it all the time.
  

And so many of US (me included) are way too fat. I was in a restaurant this week and wanted to have a nice quiet dinner. I was atmospherically assaulted by a group of loud patrons I could not get far enough from. And the level of language. YIKES.

I know we in the USA are not alone, but it was not always like this here. Recently there were events where a mob of kids rampaged thru a Milwaukee area mall. Or beat up a Marine and his wife after he asked them to be quiet in a movie theater.

Culturally, we are in the toilet and swirling. I know I'm an older man but I no longer get nor understand this life.

This last week I was shocked to be bullied about by the owner of a company I did business with. I have been proud of the fact that we do business in the Nursery world on just our word. That no longer seems to be the case.

We have lost much. Now the courts are the only source of relief from such bullies. Of course winning means that you will have to have a better bully than they hire to represent them.

American has lost much and I'm afraid until a substantial crunch comes, much will not be regained. If ever.

I'm pessimistic about the future of this nation.

Americans have become very ugly to me.

Do we really want the outcome of these "Lovers Quarrels" in our Military?

I saw this on Drudge today. It's not unusual for Homosexuals to have fights. Do we want this? The first time this happens in some barracks or on the battlefield it will be very bad.

Gay Activist Slain, Castrated in N.Y.C. Hotel
Portuguese Producer/Journalist, 65, Found Murdered;
Male Model in Police Custody in Bellevue Hospital

A prominent Portuguese journalist and gay activist was found murdered in a New York City hotel, his body brutally mutilated.

Carlos Castro, 65, was found dead last night inside a 34th-floor room at the Intercontinental New York Times Square Hotel.

Sources tell CBS Station WCBS that Renato Seabra, a male model in his 20s who checked into the hotel with Castro late last month, is in police custody at Bellevue Hospital.

Authorities said police responded to a 911 call of an unconscious male at the InterContinental New York hotel. When police arrived at the scene, they found Castro around 7 p.m. in Room 3416, unresponsive with trauma to the head.

Net neutrality fight: GOP wields garlic against FCC "vampires"

The new, Republican-controlled House of Representatives started work yesterday, and it took only a few hours before anti-net neutrality legislation was introduced to stop the "vampires" at the FCC from imposing net neutrality on American Internet access providers.

No surprises here; Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had last year made plain her opposition to net neutrality, and she pledged back in November to legislate against the FCC.

"Chairman Genachowski has little if any Congressional support for net neutrality," she said at the time. "He can expect this folly to be resolutely overturned in the new year, and to ensure that, I will reintroduce my bill to pull the FCC from the policy making process on the first day of the 112th Congress."

Net neutrality fight: GOP wields garlic against FCC "vampires"

I never even knew what G I was other than Ralph G

(Newser) – AT&T pulled off the cheapest network upgrade ever yesterday, changing its 3G network into a 4G one by… renaming it. Yep, in a move that’s sure to make the term “4G” even more meaningless than it already was, AT&T has rebranded its existing network, and will begin selling new phones with the 4G label soon, all without upgrading its technology at all, the Wall Street Journal reports.

AT&T can get away with the marketing move because the International Telecommunications Union hasn’t actually set firm standards for what constitutes 4G. AT&T has also announced that it’ll speed up work on its “Long-Term Evolution” network boost, but that still won’t be ready until the end of 2013. The company also slashed the price on the iPhone 3GS to just $49, in anticipation, the Journal suspects, of competition from the upcoming Verizon iPhone.

Obama's Foolhardy Fight with Windmills

What is becoming clearer is that the concept of “manmade global warming” may be one of the greatest hoaxes in world history. How soon this will become generally known will depend on how forcefully the political effort seeking both national and international control of industry and wealth redistribution can keep the hoax hidden by intimidation and forcefully amplified rhetoric while systematically jeopardizing the economies of America and other developed nations.

A couple of months later, the Climategate e-mails appeared. What was revealed therein changes the “may be” in the excerpted paragraph’s first sentence to “is.”

It is the Obama administration that is “systematically jeopardizing the economies of America” for no reason, as the IBD editorial makes clear:

In just two years, as Steve Everley of the American Solutions blog has noted, the Obama administration has:

• Virtually shut down oil drilling in the Gulf. Yes, the six-month moratorium announced during the BP oil spill ended in November. But regulators have made it nearly impossible for oil firms to restart operations and have slapped strict new rules on drilling even in shallow waters.

• Put hundreds of billions of barrels of offshore oil and gas off-limits to exploration and production. By executive order, the administration has taken much of the energy-rich Outer Continental Shelf out of play. This, according to the Energy Information Administration, will cut this year’s output by 220,000 barrels a day.

• Canceled 77 existing drilling leases in Utah, one of Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s first actions and a move that set the tone for the Obama administration’s war on energy.

• Proposed new taxes on energy, including the cap-and-trade fiasco, that have had a chilling effect on new investment in energy. Steven Chu, Obama’s energy secretary, has already let the cat out of the bag by saying he wants to see pump prices in the U.S. as high as they are in Europe. Last we checked, that was $7 a gallon.

America has the oil and natural gas resources to ensure its energy future as we develop reasonable, economically viable alternatives to fossil fuels. And that oil and gas is available right now.

Yet, our government has systematically put those resources out of reach, making us more dependent on unreliable foreign sources. Today we’re more, not less, vulnerable to the predations of foreign dictators and tyrants who would do us ill.

… Obama’s war against fossil fuels is a direct assault on our oil-dependent economy and standard of living.

Cedra Crenshaw and Issac Hayes were legitimate alternative voices in the last election. They deserved a hearing. The Republican establishment eschewed them as did the Democrat driven electorate did by putting back in office people who do not represent them. Something is wrong with this picture. Now we will have Rahm Emmanuel as mayor because of a lack of a competent conservative voice from the community. WHY??

Cedra Crenshaw | About Cedra

Cedra Crenshaw is the Republican candidate for Illinois State Senate in the 43rd District. She is a wife, stay at home mother, education reformer, and professional accountant. The trifecta of marriage, mortgage, and motherhood catapulted her into the independent thinker that she is today. Cedra is a

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News Lies

If you depend on NETWORK TV news you never heard a peep about these news stories. OH WELL. That's why I blog.

Here's the list of the most UNREPORTED stories of 2010

Top Five Things Obama Has Done to Raise Gasoline Prices

Top Five Things Obama Has Done to Raise Gasoline Prices

Cultural Collapse...People waxing worse and worse. Lawlessness Increases

I will post a few evidences of how young people have become lawless. This is the beginning of the end of civilization brought on by failed schools and failed families.

Mob attacks Prince Charles

Mob attacks Attack on Marine at Florida Theater Comes Months After Brother's Death at Navy Hospital

Mob destroys a mall in Milwaukee area

I have to tell the truth. In the second two cases the mobs were made up of Black Teenagers.

We have a culture that is failing.

Things that will destroy a church, business or nation

I have NOT read this book, but I was forwarded this page. It really speaks to the decline of a church, a company or even a nation. Look at the list

Leadership Is An Art, Part 3 Max Depree,
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc., New York 1989, A Critique by Dale Roach

Depree presents communication as essentially important for the survival of any organization. I agree with his theories. He says that “only through good communication can we convey and preserve a common corporate vision.”(107) His thesis on communication includes the need for leaders to “sharpen” and help “enact” the vision of the organization. (107) These acts of any leader will enable or cripple the purpose and mission of the organization.

Communication cannot be ignored. A strong and memorable quote used by Depree to describe the need for clear communication was by Plato. “Plato said that a society cultivates whatever is honored there.” (108)

This is a good quote to use in team development. “What is of value here?” Depree goes on to give an easy way in understanding any congregation. That which an organization values is “it’s life’s blood.”(108)

Depree notes that this list will help leaders recognize signals of impending deterioration in their organization. These signs are:

• a tendency toward superficiality
• a dark tension among key people
• no longer having time for celebration and ritual
• a growing feeling that rewards and goals are the same thing
• when people stop telling tribal stories or cannot understand them
• a recurring effort by some to convince others that business is, after all, quite simple (The acceptance of complexity and ambiguity and the ability to deal with them constructively are essential.)
• when people begin to have different understandings of words like “responsibility” or “service” or “trust”
• when problem-makers outnumber problem-solvers
• when folks confuse heroes and celebrities
• leaders who seek to control rather than liberate
• when the pressures of day-to-day operations push aside our concern for vision and risk (I think you know that vision and risk can never be separated.)
• an orientation toward the dry rules of business school rather than a value orientation that takes into account such things contribution, spirit, excellence, beauty, and joy
• when people speak of customers as impositions on their time rather than as opportunities to serve
• manuals
• a growing urge to quantify both history and one’s thoughts about the future (You may be familiar with people who take a look at a prototype and say, “In 1990 we’ll sell $6,493,000 worth”– nothing is more devastating because then you plan either to make that happen or to avoid it.)
• the urge to establish ratios
• leaders who rely on structures instead of people
• a loss of confidence in judgment, experience, and wisdom
• a loss of grace and style and civility
• a loss of respect for the English language

Public Education Fix

I was reading some weak apologetics from an academic who was crunching PISA scores until he could make America’s performance look better. This got me to thinking just how awful it is that so many smart people are engaged in “debating” education when we could just be educating our nation. That cascaded into a process of asking some random questions in no particular order.

* What if…

…education was provided by a large, independent network of content providers, each using varying methods?

* What if parents who wanted to groom their kids to be football stars and parents who wanted to raise the next Einstein (and the vast majority in between) where free to do so with out the interference of the state?

* What if tests were on-line, and allowed for the testing of specific content, the passage of which earned you “merit badges” to go on the next topic and direction of the parents’/child’s choosing?

* What if we got rid of school districts? Of what use is a school district or a superintendent? What do they do to connect neurons in a child’s head?

* On what planet would a rational civilization create a LAUSD or a CPS, or even a small district?

* What if we had REAL neighborhood schools? How can there be a “neighborhood school” when the entire public apparatus is run by a conglomerate of protected (essentially “privatized”) interests who churn bonds, taxes, and contracts for their own financial gain?

___

I could go on for days with these vignettes, but they all revolve around a simple truth that no one wants to admit. Education is an industry regulated by those who have captured the regulatory apparatus. This has created mini-industries (reform, measurement, building, consulting, curriculum, transportation, etc.), all of which are playgrounds for academics and adults to bruit about never-ending debates that accomplish exactly nothing.

The actual education of the child has become an afterthought (if that).

Given that we have this system of “controlled chaos,” where no amount of money, “reform,” or other aspect of government force shows any significant improvement, why not allow for a system of “spontaneous order?”

How might that look?

1. Pick a state (nothing is going to happen nationally).

2. Set up some rigorous, broad, sequenced standards, and create a testing system completely independent from the content providers. Give strong incentives to move testing on-line. (tech is getting good enough to allow for live coaching, oral exams, and even review of art/visual content) This should take 5-10% of the current ed budget.

3. Take the remaining 90+% and have it follow the child to any content provider/educational institution that succeeds at training/educating the child up to the testing standards.

4. Free up the entire system to design 100s, if not 1000s, of ways to meet standards. This means dissolving the massive political and bureaucratic apparatus currently spending entire states into bankruptcy with out showing that they can educate every child.

Would such a system be perfect? No. Would some fall through some cracks? Yes, but nowhere near the number currently being utterly failed by the current system.

Would there be political resistance to this transformation? Surely, but if educating such as large, diverse, nation is the goal, then it is time to ignore and/or defeat this political coalition.

It doesn’t have to be this way. To begin the process of transformation, all you have to do is withdraw all political support from the existing system. It will rapidly start to collapse of its own weight.

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individual freedom.

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This is a man who has a great future. Let's see what happens. We need clear thinking men like this at the helm.

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But you knew that...

Ten Predictions for the New Year 2011

Happy New Year 2011!

January 1st 2011

Predictions:

1. Hillary will leave the Obama administration.

2. Attorney General Eric Holder will leave the Obama administration.

3. Germany will pull out of the Euro.

Read all ten. He's not joking