[New York Post] Even as evidence mounts of the health problems associated with marijuana, New York has insisted on joining other greedy states scrambling to legalize this deceptively dangerous drug.
It makes no sense at a time when American youth is suffering from an unprecedented mental health crisis.
And, in all honesty, we cannot rule out a connection between increasing marijuana use, mental illness and the recent spate of mass shootings by disturbed young males.
We don’t yet know much about the mental state or drug use of the El Paso or Dayton killers. But a former girlfriend of Dayton killer Connor Betts, 24, has indicated he was mentally ill, and two of his friends interviewed by reporters this week mentioned his previous drug use.
Just last year, the Parents Opposed to Pot lobby group tried to sound the alarm on the link between marijuana and mass shootings, compiling a list of mass killers it claims were heavy users of marijuana from a young age, from Aurora, Colo., shooter James Holmes and Tucson, Ariz., shooter Jared Loughner to Chattanooga, Tenn., shooter Mohammad Abdulazeez.
Until we understand those links, it is nuts to enact lax laws that encourage more young people to use a drug proven to trigger mental illness.
#1
given that we can extract THC and CBD from marijuana it seems to me that we could make both legal (with some restraint on quantity) and keep marijuana illegal
the problem with marijuana is that there are dozens of different chemicals in it (double that if it is smoked) and each one may have different effects including synergistic ones
Posted by: lord garth ||
08/09/2019 4:02 Comments ||
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#2
Why are we taking the risk?
We found out - decades are the fact - that introducing lead into the atmosphere was a contributing cause for the extraordinary increase in violent urban crime in the late 20th century. We got rid of lead paint and lead as an additive in gasoline, and by the 2000's, this had helped to bring down the rate of violent crime in many of our big cities, especially New York. (See James Q Wilson's research on this.)
Why are we so callous about this? How does society benefit?
Nearly all of our society's wounds are self-inflicted.
#6
People do indeed try to self-medicate with pot — and with alcohol, too. And we know what a bad idea the latter is, when that approach is used long term.
The thing about pot is that for those who are genetically susceptible, it flicks the switch for schizophrenia. For those who do not have that specific genetic mutation it isn’t a risk, as far as I am aware, except for changes in the developing brain if used too often when young, but alcohol poses the same risk there.
It’s the kind of thing that, knowing there is a risk of alcoholism in the family, I talked to the trailing daughters early and often about being careful about drinking and drugs because they were at risk for problems. They also inherited near-sightedness and crooked teeth, which we watched out for and dealt with when it became necessary. *shrug* Genetic variability is a reality.
#7
A little Bayesian statistics may help. GIVEN that someone is a mass shooter, we can find that they used pot, or had a traumatic childhood, or that they had a triggering event, or that they bought a gun, with just about 100% certainty.
BUT GIVEN that someone did any or all of the above, we can find that they will become a mass shooter with almost infinitesimal probability.
In other words, the probability works one way but not the other.
Posted by: Tom ||
08/09/2019 13:09 Comments ||
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#8
Green tracers at night are really cool when you're toked up.
#9
As for the El Paso guy, I think his mommy called the cops to state that he was procuring an AR and that she didn't think he could handle it with his misdeveloped brain.
Call it what you want. Law enforcement is always to blame. If bureaucracies do their jobs right instead of turning to systems theory and assembly-line jurisprudence, these things would be fewer and far between.
#10
The highest Bayesian probability is a prior shooting, amplified beyond all restraint by saturation media which glorifies, in the minds of depressed/bipolar/alienated/abused/grievance-laden individuals, the act of mass killing.
Take away the media coverage, and the incidence of mass shootings will fall to where it was 40 years ago: once a decade instead of 3x per year.
[Townhall] So, how many heads are going to roll in September? Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz is supposed to release his long-awaited report on Obama-era FISA abuses. The focal point centers on the DOJ’s FISA spy warrant against Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, which was secured thanks to the Clinton-funded opposition research project called the Trump dossier. It was compiled by ex-British spook Christopher Steele. It was unverified. It was biased. And the DOJ knew it. Not only that, former top DOJ official Bruce Ohr kept contacting Steele months after it was revealed his worked was biased (via Fox News):
The FBI formally documented the anti-Trump bias of British ex-spy Christopher Steele months before the November 2016 presidential election, yet used his unverified dossier in multiple Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant application renewals, records obtained by Fox News show.
The documents, first obtained by Judicial Watch, also revealed that top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr maintained contact with Steele for at least six months after Steele was fired by the FBI for unauthorized media contacts in November 2016.
The summaries of FBI interviews with Ohr, known as 302s, showed that Ohr knew by September 2016 -- a month before the initial FISA application to surveil the Trump campaign -- that Steele was "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President."
A source close to the matter told Fox News "this had the effect of putting a senior DOJ official on notice that a witness/source had an extreme bias." Nevertheless, the FISA warrant application went through in October 2016 with multiple renewals.
While the FISA records are heavily redacted, it does not appear that the FBI's documentation about Steele's bias was ever shared with the FISA court.
The 22 pages of reports on interviews with Ohr also revealed his extensive contacts with Steele. The two communicated on the encrypted messaging app "WhatsApp," according to the records.
The FBI documents showed Ohr's contacts with Steele extended through May 2017, when Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed. Ohr then became a kind of backchannel linking Steele to the FBI after his termination.
So, it was used to renew warrants against Page. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for the research firm Fusion GPS, which was contracted by the Democrats to find dirt on Trump. GPS then reached out to Steele to compile the document.
#1
....a month before the initial FISA application to surveil the Trump campaign -- that Steele was "desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being the U.S. President."
But that was his (Steele's) JOB! Never mind that fact he was a non-US person, foreign source.... with obvious connections to a foreign intelligence service.
#5
Trump didn't expect to be elected. If he had, his transition team could have looked at how poorly Boosh was served by beltway lifers and acted accordingly right after inauguration.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 10:09 Comments ||
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#6
All the nonsense about "years of experience" and "dedicated public servant" should always be a red flag...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 10:12 Comments ||
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#7
The article is pure tripe, but look at how, with access to all intelligence product in the US, the outgoing deputy DNI could not absorb any information on how to dress or eat...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 10:19 Comments ||
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#8
It's taken too long to roll out. Nobody watches this story anymore.
#9
The ball is in Barr and Durham's court. How much do you trust Barr and Durham to do the right thing? The right thing to do is to prosecute the crimes regardless of who the person is.
#10
Barr and Durham are far enough along that it comes down to this: Has the retirement clock hit the point where a Trump loss in 2020 would hurt them or not.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 12:14 Comments ||
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#11
#5 Trump didn't expect to be elected. If he had, his transition team could have looked at how poorly Boosh was served by beltway lifers and acted accordingly right after inauguration.
I'm not so sure about the first part. Losing hugely doesn't sound like the Trump we know. Sure, all the smart kids said he was going to get his ass kicked, but they were blinded by their aversion to the man, IMAO.
Trump *did* have a problem getting people to work for him. People who normally would have stepped up to be part of the new administration bailed. (Boris Johnson is experiencing the same thing now in the UK). And as we have seen, a whole bunch of people who did stay decided to work actively against the new president. I'm sure this has happened before, but never on this scale where we have deep staters trying to run a coup. Pity that hanging has gone out of fashion.
[Guns America] A Kansas City woman decided earlier this week that she’d had enough of the AR-15 she’s been storing in her home for a friend, so she decided to purchase it and then destroy it.
"I don’t even like touching this thing. It’s upsetting to me," Sandy Skaggs told KMBC News 9, gingerly holding what she called a "killing machine." Notifying all miscreants, burglars, and killers that she lives in a gun-free home zone, and has adequate assets to throw money away
She told the outlet that the recent mass murders in Dayton and El Paso motivated her to buy and destroy the weapon.
"I do not want this gun. I want to destroy this gun," Skaggs clarified.
She contacted local police to ask about the proper way to destroy the rifle or request that they do it, telling law enforcement that she does not want it used for parts. She’s willing to do anything to render the weapon inoperable, even "pouring acid down the barrel to destroy the mechanism inside," according to KMBC’s Michael Mahoney.
"I’m not opposed to hunting. I’m not opposed to hunters. I’m not opposed to people having guns in their possession for protection. But this is a killer. It’s a killing machine, and that’s all it’s for," she said.
#2
Across the country today several hundred ARs will probably be bought, but not to be destroyed in a grandstanding and ultimately futile gesture like this one. If the woman had actually wanted to do some good, she could have donated that $400-$1200 to a worthy cause. Aren't we always being told this time of year that "teachers are having to reach into their own pockets" to buy pencils and note paper?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 8:51 Comments ||
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#3
Aren't we always being told this time of year that "teachers are having to reach into their own pockets" to buy pencils and note paper?
Speaking of which in the age of sagging backpacks and crooked schoolbook industry why are the kids not being given a kindle removing the need for a backpack and textbooks or an i-pad with a graphic stylus that removes the need for pencils and paints and paper?
It would be good for the kid's backs too! While at it she could just buy a ipad or e-books for the kids then.
#4
For whatever reason, I just pictured the hag jumping and stomping on the poor gun until it fires accidentally and a slug ricochets into her embittered old ass.
"Oww ! I knew it ! You are a dirty, dirty machine !"
#6
Re #3. I use a Nook for pleasure reading, it is a relief from shuffling physical books. As for computers in classrooms (if you can call a chromebook a computer) see David Gelernter. Kids don't need computers in school, the need the three Rs (and not what formerly somewhat sane guy turned Never-Trump foamer George Will said, 'Racism recycling and reproduction.')
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 11:35 Comments ||
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#7
Prop glasses don't look any more convincing on her than on teevee talking heads or grotesque "tech site" freaks.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 11:41 Comments ||
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#8
Look at those glasses and that face, Kat Timpf. That's you in 30 years...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 11:44 Comments ||
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#9
I give up. It's my birthday, I just bought a Brownells BR-180 upper. I get free birthday shipping. F-U kansas city grandstander...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 11:46 Comments ||
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#10
F-150's are KILLERS I tell ya. Please Sandy, buy mine and get it off the street !
BLUF:
[VOE] Most critical is Ranelid of the "writers and debaters on cultural and editorial pages" who "imitate each other and try to explain away and deny the events with silly litanies about the alienation of certain people in relation to society in general".
According to Ranelid, "these murderers in the gangs" are outside society "solely through their own actions and choices in life", and he points out that they "are in many respects extremely privileged individuals in relation to billions of people in India, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, African countries and China. In essence, they have nothing to complain about in Sweden".
He concludes by once again stating that "if ten, eleven or twelve cities in Sweden are centers for various gangster gangs and criminal networks that time and again resolve conflicts with automatic weapons where the public reside, then there is a small-scale or more widespread war in Sweden".
#1
"if ten, eleven or twelve cities in Sweden are centers for various gangster gangs and criminal networks that time and again resolve conflicts with automatic weapons where the public reside, then there is a small-scale or more widespread war in Sweden".
#3
Multiculturalism + immigration unrelated to advanced skills = collapsing democracies. It's not working.
Time to scrap this model and close the gates for a decade or more - at least until the public can have a calm, rational, fact-based and above all, honest, no-BS discussion about what works and what doesn't when it comes to pluralism.
#4
You can't depend on law enforcement and governments to rid you of immigrant gangs and crime. This is something the citizen has to fight for. Armed and with resolve to do whatever it takes. A nation is not a damn assisted living community. At times, people must assume the role of militia.
#6
We need some magic number that determines when of citizens from country X travel illegally to country Y then the government of Country X are considered illegitimate, possibly criminals and country X becomes a territory of Country Y to do with as they will.
Patriotism and enlightened self-interest would stop the flow.
#7
Oh, come on. Gimmigrants are coming for the welfare. Take that away and the flow stops instantly except for those who expect to be robbers when they get here. What to do with those is fairly self-evident.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 12:46 Comments ||
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#8
The gimmigrants are not stopped because most of that welfare spending circles back to the establishment.
[Deseret News] SALT LAKE CITY ‐ Utah is counting on yet another state budget surplus, this time adding up to $97 million, and supporters of tax reform say the numbers make it clear why lawmakers need to act, including on a tax cut.
A preliminary report shows that as of the end of the fiscal year on June 30, the education fund that largely comes from income tax collections grew $140 million, an increase of 9.1% over the previous year and well above the projected 6% growth.
But it's a different story for the general fund that pays for the rest of state government services and is heavily dependent on the state's share of sales tax revenues.
While the general fund is also up, the report issued recently by the Governor's Office of Management and Budget and the Legislative Fiscal Analyst warns of a potential $43 million revenue deficit because growth was 3.6%, not the 5.3% projected.
The actual numbers are likely to change as the books are closed on the budget year.
#2
If there is a surplus, taxes are too high. Returning that to the taxpayers should be the other side of the balanced budget coin. Instead, the pols want it for a "rainy day" or to hand along to gimmigrants.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 12:37 Comments ||
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#3
In a true capitalist model, the gummint would be allowed to spend only what it took in last year. No borrowing except in WW II style emergencies...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 12:39 Comments ||
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#4
Imagine how your bank president would respond to a letter on the subject of "what I intend to spend this year."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 12:40 Comments ||
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#5
If there is a surplus, taxes are too high.
Or the Temple is covering many expensive budget services which is in the State's charter to provide citizens.
#8
My local power company which is an EMC whatever that means gives customers refunds every year depending on their profits. Usually between $100-$200.
#9
Cool Vern, but the tithing and spending is not taxed or externally audited, or distributed for the 'public good' if one is not in the right ward. Little different than sharecropper citizens.
#10
Ah, the problem is that the Church is corrupt and impenetrable. That's especially hard to deal with in our society when churches enjoy practically no scrutiny (if you think it is just Utah, let me assure you, Detroit's black pastor's do the same thing on a smaller scale). It is a sticky situation when most people see the government or investigative reporters taking a look at churches and assume that it is coastal liberal elites trying to destroy religion (it often is, but churches are still corrupt just as often as everywhere else).
Three years ago, a bloody summer of black nationalist violence claimed the lives of eight police officers with the massacre of five police officers by Micah X. Johnson in Dallas and the murder of three police officers in Baton Rogue by Gavin Long.
Johnson had declared his support for the Black Lives Matter racial nationalist group and told police that he wanted to kill white people, and especially white police officers.
In the fall, Marc LeQuon Payne tried to run over Phoenix police officers. Next spring, Kori Ali Muhammad went on a shooting spree in Fresno, murdering three white men.
...The alternating mass shootings by white nationalists and black nationalists predated Trump. They’re part of a cycle of violence going back decades if not generations. The cycle of violence had largely died down until it was triggered by the resurgence of identity politics in the Obama administration.
...By 2014, what had been a cynical and divisive political strategy became a killing field as violence exploded in major cities, initially by mobs, and then through acts of racial nationalist terrorism.
The gunmen spreading terror and death are the manifestation of the identity politics strategy.
...The resurgence of racial nationalist violence won’t end until we affirm the centrality of the nation over the identity politics that has fractured our political and cultural life. Until we get rid of identity politics, racial nationalist violence will continue tearing apart communities across a divided United States.
BLUF:
[The Federalist] We have discarded social institutions that have helped people understand their value and place in the world for thousands of years. And their decline is not just mirrored in the rise of mass shootings.
Human beings are not designed for isolation. We require deep and meaningful connection. We need family and community. We are desperate for life and the love of others. We need people and institutions to help us navigate the world, to help us see that we have purpose, to help us understand right from wrong, and to imbue us with a sense of moral clarity that will hold us up during the desperate times we will all face.
Why would anyone be surprised that when we take away the foundational social structures that have allowed for the flourishing of humanity, bad things will happen? We all know very well what happens when more and more children grow up in single-parent homes. Increased suicide, drug use, drop out, teen pregnancy, and mental disorders.
We know what happens when communities deteriorate. Isolation, loneliness, and a decline in social norms. And when we destroy the church, the very institution that has been our bedrock of values, morality, and redemption for thousands of years? Despair, immorality, desperation, and evil.
Combine all three, and we know exactly what happens. An opioid epidemic so severe that it has literally reduced our average life expectancy. A suicide rate that continues to climb for almost all demographic groups. Mass shootings.
Destroy the family, abandon the community, raze the church to the ground. What could go wrong? Everything.
#1
We are desperate for life and the love of others. We need people and institutions to help us navigate the world, to help us see that we have purpose, to help us understand right from wrong, and to imbue us with a sense of moral clarity that will hold us up during the desperate times we will all face.
True, as long as it is up to the individual to choose with whom one wants to associate.
#2
Destroy the family, abandon the community, raze the church to the ground. What could go wrong?
The commies have been tearing down Western Civ ever since they gained any power. You'd think by their repeated failures they'd be held accountable as much if not more than Western Civ for all the imperfections and shortcomings.
#3
The churches have only contributed to this decline. If parents and teachers today look at evangelicals and parishes funny, it's because they were busy buying themselves summer homes and retreat centers with contributions and tithes of influential elites whom they then had to appease by preaching compromised doctrine. The result was a hybrid of christianity and utter hedonism, like the prosperity bullshit.
So many cults and leaders abused the trust of unwitting, gullible people and sullied the Name of God with their filth, teaching the sayings of men for the word of God. It is no surprise that a parent will not let you talk to their children about Christ, or the Bible. On the one hand the people have snake handling idiots with no teeth, and on the other they have a progressive faggot who needs a private jet for serving Gawd. There is just no real 'sound doctrine'.
The churches, pastors, the compromised 'Bible Scholars' are to blame for this loss of real religion. What can the people trust if the teachers hold the truth in unrighteousness ?
The churches have only contributed to this decline.
There have always been fake, self ingratiating men and women of the cloth, ever since the Temple Scribes and Pharisees crucified Christ and before.
Fortunately there are still preachers and congregations who are not corrupted.
When I see all of the corruption in religion, government and societies, I always remember two things, 1) "FEW will enter through the narrow gate." 2) God was the Beginning and He will be the End.".
[WSJ] Rising homelessness in California has spurred a rodent boom and resurgence of medieval disease. So naturally Democrats in the state Legislature want to ban rat poison.
Earlier this year a rat infestation in downtown Los Angeles near a homeless encampment led to an outbreak of typhus. CatsUSA Pest Control, which was hired to investigate, warned that "poor sanitary conditions" including human waste and hypodermic needles created a "harborage for rodents." In Los Angeles County cases of flea-borne typhus more than doubled since 2012, with 109 cases reported last year.
L.A. isn’t alone. There were so many rats scurrying around the California EPA office in Sacramento this summer that the agency had to close its outdoor playground to prevent children from getting sick. After California’s EPA applied rat poison, environmentalists howled that the pesticide could harm species that prey on rats.
Democrats in Sacramento are now moving legislation to ban "second-generation" rodenticides that are more potent than earlier poisons against which rats have developed immunity. "Predatory species, such as raptors, bobcats, and foxes, regularly consume rodents as part of their diet. Poisoned rodents also become more lethargic and exhibit abnormal behavior," a bill analysis notes. But "data are less conclusive in pointing to [anticoagulant rodenticides] as the specific cause of death in necropsied animals."
In other words, it’s not clear rodent poison is killing predator species. But it is clear that rodents carry diseases that are making Californians seriously ill.
The bill, sponsored by Santa Monica Assemblyman Richard Bloom, would exempt food factories, breweries and wineries from the ban. No doubt Napa Valley vintners and their customers will be grateful. While liberals say the solution is better sanitation, they also protest whenever government officials try to clean up homeless camps or propose building shelters in their neighborhoods.
Low-income folks who live near homeless populations as usual will suffer the greatest harm from the rat-poison ban. If only there were an antidote to California’s toxic progressive politics.
"Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats..."
David Bowie, Suffragette City
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
08/09/2019 11:26 Comments ||
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#10
Let's look at this from an ecological perspective. Generally, when you have an over-population of plants or animals in an ecosystem, the best solution is for someone to eat them.
Here, we have a surplus of both rats and homeless. The obvious answer is for them to eat each other. And while Rats vs Homeless is a natural division, there is no reason not to discourage cannibalism on either side. Like that commie guy said, if you want to make an omelette, sometimes you have to chop some meat.
#12
Rats have been delicacies about the 2nd or 3rd month of a siege. Usually after the horses. Given that most modern urban areas lack large horse populations, the timeline may be a bit accelerated.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.