with MSNBC, Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the gun group’s press conference a missed opportunity “to create another conversation at a higher level where the American people are right now.” He called LaPierre’s comments “very haunting and very disturbing.”

Interestingly I don’t think that the calls for a garrison state in our schools are the most troubling comments made by this NRA President.  What I find disturbing lies around here…

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame — from a national media machine that rewards them with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave–while provoking others to try to make their mark? A dozen more killers? A hundred? More? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

How do you take this seriously?  One giant pile of mentally illness, as though it’s one giant swarm to shift through and all the same and can be calibrated to us being on the verge of “hundreds”

Though I guess right now every city’s newspaper in America has a bullet point article culled away with the “vague rumor caused increased police surveillance” story.  (Literally one item in the Oregonian this weekend).  And you replete it with the Mayan Calendar coinciding… How can we possibly guess by simply numbering the numbers of mentally ill people out there (stigmatizing such by throwing them in one giant pile)?

And this does what?  I’m glad, I suppose, the NRA chieftain looks at the angle of mental health — but really the problem is the intersection of it with guns.  The shooter in Sandy Hook was a severely mentally ill 20 year old who, first thing’s first before we contemplate his treatment, should not have been around sharp objects (Assault rifles).  He was, thanks to his gun loving mom.  Nothing the NRA is willing to deal with.

NASA…

answering everyone’s questions about the Mayan Calendar.

…

Reminds me of this press conference back in the 90s where answers were delivered regarding the Roswell Crash.

…

won’t work to the skeptic skeptics…

…

neither will the fact that the world won’t end tomorrow.  Who’ll just slip into a phase shift, and credit all the Bad to this.

…

But this is what you have to do, I suppose, in an atmosphere where pseudo-science is thrown right and left…

…

and where there’s 3 people in space right now.

Every time there’s an interim temporary placement for a Massachusetts Senate seat (or… after Ted Kennedy died, and then after John Kerry was tapped for Secretary of State), speculation runs rampant that… maybe… maybe…

Senator Dukakis???

The idea bemuses.

Then, it seems, something always comes around and punctures that balloon.

“That’s a no,” said Dukakis in reference to a possible appointment by Gov. Deval Patrick to fill the seat until a special election can be held. Dukakis also said he had not been contacted by the governor’s office in regard to a possible appointment.

The last line is the crux of the issue here — words are not coming out of the governor’s office.  The “Senator Dukakis” boomlet is all hot air out of the political silly season — it sounds like a cool idea to your politicos, so they run with it.

And so ends Dukakis Mania.

We do have the spectacle of Scott Brown making a political comeback by winning another special election.  That’d be amusing too.

This is what happens in the Age of Facebook.
Early reports, citing Connecticut law enforcement sources, identified the shooter as a twentysomething from Newtown named Ryan Lanza. A Facebook profile fitting that description was easily accessible, and social media users—from professional reporters to online onlookers—immediately assumed they had discovered the Facebook profile of the gunman who had perpetrated the mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. News outlets including BuzzFeed, Mediaite, Gawker, and Fox News speculated that the account belonged to the shooter. Journalists from Slate, Huffington Post, CNN, and other news organizations tweeted links to the Facebook profile.
But it was the wrong guy. Press reports are now identifying the shooter as Adam Lanza. Ryan Lanza, identified as Adam’s brother, has reportedly been questioned by police. According to the Associated Press, “a law enforcement official mistakenly transposed the brothers’ first names.” The result was that, for a few brief hours in the middle of the day, based on press speculation about the suspect’s identity, social media users brought out the digital equivalent of pitchforks and torches, vilifying the alleged shooter’s brother and haranguing Ryan Lanzas all across the intertubes.
Political cartoonist Matt Bors, who was Facebook friends with Ryan Lanza but didn’t actually know him personally, was inundated with Facebook messages and friend requests as a result. “I was getting messages from people saying, why are you friends with a monster?” Bors says.

There’s a jump, skip, and thump to the front with the “latest” details in these news items.  We shouldn’t jump, skip, and jump to the front.  Better to have details come in than not… there are a lot of people with the same name out there.  We gain nothing from such rampant morbid curiosity.

In the case of the Connecticut shooting incident… the thing that gets me… the mom was a gun enthusiast.  “Survivalist“.  Okay, not my hobby and a recent skipping through a Gun magazine brought to my mind the “that’s a lot of creepy hostility”… The 20 year old shooter was an ill-functioning Asperger case — (important to qualify with “ill functioning”) and the “lacked nonverbal communication skills, demonstrated limited empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy” – and not able to fail pain (had to be careful of that when he was playing sports).  My thought here is that the mother, somewhere in the last 20 years with this person in custody, ought have gone to a different hobby.

So right now, we have the Lincoln biopic – Daniel Day-Lewis IS Abraham Lincoln.  And we have a Roosevelt movie — Bill Murray IS FDR.  Naturally, as I asked previously — when’s the Chester Arthur movie coming out?

Perceived as the puppet of Roscoe Conkling, and always at his right hand side, Chester Arthur was emboiled in scandal during the Rutherford Hayes Administration.  James Garfield selected him as his running mate to appease the Conkling led “Stalwart” faction of the Republican Party and win, by hook and by crook, the state of New York.

When the lone gunman proclaimed “I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts, and now Arthur is President”, Arthur immediately became perhaps the most despised figure in America, regularly blamed for the assassination of Garfield.  Former President Hayes recorded in his diary his view of what was to come with a Conkling lead Arthur administration — “The power behind the throne, superior to the throne!”  During the long agonizing turmoil full of medical blunders with regards to Garfield, Arthur kept himself out of public view and agonized over his fate.  And here we get something — he began a correspondence with a stranger, a 30 year old invalid named Julie Sand.  Who advised him and kept up his spirits, and told him what must be done.

And thus he came into power and threw Conkling under the bus.

Now we see plenty of room for drama in this story, and lots of dramatic speeches — President Arthur evolving in stature and eventually confronting his one time benefactor should come with a fine speech.  For the part of Julie Sands we can cheat — not a public figure.  To sex the story up we can add romantic relations between Arthur and Sand — why the Hell not?

But now we land at the crucial question:  Who plays the two antagonists?  WHO  is big enough to fill Chester Arthur’s muttonchops?

Paul McCartney the new Kurt Cobain.  Or, as he says, he finds himself in the middle of a Nirvana Reunion Show.

Looking about the comment, somewhat predictable, that pops out at me is … “Kurt Cobain would have hated this.”  The answer that is… maybe.  My guess is 27 year old Kurt Cobain would have, just as 27 year old David Grohl probably would have.  As they get older, 40-something year old Kurt Cobain might have found it amusing.  There’s a line bending here.  According to diaries that shouldn’t have been published but were, Kurt Cobain at age, oh, 15?… had some pedestrian 80s hard rock tastes in music that doesn’t jibe with his career stance.

And also again then again on 40-something year Kurt Cobain being fine with Paul McCartney… blah de blah… freeze rock stars in memorial at twenty seven… blah.

When I see this article… “Extinct Lizard named after Obama”… I have to try to figure out… what exactly bad and demeaning metaphor can be worked out by the denziens of Internet commenting and partisan crack joking from that story?

The David Icke-sphere gets us this
I told ya! Obama is one of the lizard-reptillians……
David dIcke right again!

That’s obvious.  If you have David Icke compartmentalized somewhere in your brain.

Other than photoshop whackery, we can don’t get anywhere else with this story.  There’s the “First Noble Peace Prize and supposedly undeserved other crap, now this” angle, replete with strained efforts at other sarcastic quips.  Nothing good, even though it seems like something good should come out of this.  Surely something can be done with the “artist’s rendition” on what the lizard eats and what eats it?