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The Worst Thing Today

Helen_Davis

Post by Helen_Davis » Mon December 17th, 2012, 12:06 am

[quote=""SonjaMarie""]I hear you! If I wasn't on my anti depressants I think I would be prostrated with grief, but it did trigger a migraine. It made Obama tear up in a news conference.

I hope the dead one is rotting in hell or where ever evil people go after death.

SM[/quote]

I'm glad they work for you, but most of theantidepressants I'm on made me worse.

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LoveHistory
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Post by LoveHistory » Mon December 17th, 2012, 1:06 am

The one that have hit me the hardest are the first grade teacher who hid all her students and was killed, but saved all of them, and the little girl names Emilie. I've seen pictures of that little girl whose eyes were the bluest I've ever seen, and it's just so wrong that she's gone. It's wrong that the others are too, but she gets to me more, probably because of my daughter who has the same name (and is very sick right now).

The right to bear arms has very little to do with this. Sure we can make guns illegal, but sick and evil people who are already breaking the law aren't going to bat an eye before stealing or buying something illegal. He broke the law 41 times as it is. You cannot stop these people, and that is a far more disturbing issue.

I'd like to clobber the media for their irresponsible reporting, which might be better termed making up facts as they go along. But then that's not really new. They aren't journalists anymore; their salesmen.

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Divia
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Post by Divia » Mon December 17th, 2012, 1:12 am

Its very tragic, and as a teacher I'd be lying if I said it doesnt freak me out a bit. We all know kids who would do this, and thats the problem. There is no place to put kids like this. Its always the right of the minority above the majority.

It sounds as if this kid has huge mental problems. And we have a kid who does the samething the shooter did. He has the same condition and carries a briefcase to school.
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MLE (Emily Cotton)
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Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Mon December 17th, 2012, 1:51 am

The media ARE more the problem than the guns. Every society has a certain percentage of unstable individuals. You can't curtail their freedom on the off chance that one of them will freak -- which statistically, sooner or later one of them will --without becoming worse than what you are trying to prevent.

The problem is that these unstable people are being given a new model of crime: the publicity stunt. I just finished The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker. He is the world's foremost expert on this kind of behavior, and he can present good evidence that media handling is what creates this kind of 'can you top this?' horror stunt.

But you can't get the media to stop inflating / aggrandizing the perpetrators with their spotlight, because, whatever they may say as individuals, as an aggregate, this kind of thing HELPS PAY THEIR SALARIES.

In a word, they make a living on disaster, not good news. They are like the farmers in Columbia who farm cocaine base. This puts bread on their table, and they aren't going to spend many tears on the misery, murder and mayhem that the drug causes down the road or in other places.
(Except unlike the media, those farmers have fewer choices.)

This is floating around the internet, and since apparently Morgan Freeman didn't say it, I don't know who did, but I agree completely:
The remark floating around online that was said to be from Freeman stated the following, "You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why. It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single victim of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody."
The falsely-attributed quote continued, "CNN's article says that if the body count 'holds up,' this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations*, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next. You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem."

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Arm the teachers?!

Post by annis » Wed December 19th, 2012, 3:43 am

Shakes head in disbelief at this response to the Newton School massacre, followed by a report of a six-year old taking a gun to school to protect himself from manic shooters. The mind boggles at the potential for mayhem. Could be the stuff of a black comedy - in fact, I'm irresistibly reminded of Roger McGough's satirical poem The Lesson, written back in the '60s. Never a truer word and all that .... Anyone else old enough to remember this?

Chaos ruled OK in the classroom
as bravely the teacher walked in
the hooligans ignored him
his voice was lost in the din

“The theme for today is violence
and homework will be set
I’m going to teach you a lesson
one that you’ll never forget”

Full text here:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-lesson/
Last edited by annis on Wed December 19th, 2012, 3:51 am, edited 2 times in total.

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LoveHistory
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Post by LoveHistory » Sat January 5th, 2013, 8:01 pm

One of my sisters and her husband have MRSA. She can't take the antibiotic that works best due to an allergy (he can and it's working well for him), and the first one they've tried hasn't worked. It's just on the skin so far. Not sure about brother-in-law but my sister's infection is on her face.

They think they picked it up on a recent visit to the ER.

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Post by fljustice » Sun January 6th, 2013, 7:13 pm

That's horrible! I hope they're both better soon.
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Divia
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Post by Divia » Sun January 6th, 2013, 11:21 pm

OMG thats horrible. Here's hoping they recover quickly.
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DianeL
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Post by DianeL » Sat February 9th, 2013, 2:05 am

My puppy, Penelope, ran away yesterday afternoon and has not returned. Counterintuitively, perhaps, I fear she's been taken in; the first time she ran away and was gone for some hours, she returned in the wee hours. It was very cold last night, so I feel like she must be WITH someone (I can't even contemplate alternatives, though I will be calling vets and animal hospitals next now) or she would have come home. I'm really worried.

Yesterday was my 45th birthday, and the 10th anniversary of my father's death. This was not a present I'd have looked for.

Oh and Gossamer crapped on my bed. So it was a fun time all around.
"To be the queen, she agreed to be the widow!"

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Madeleine
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Post by Madeleine » Sat February 9th, 2013, 11:44 am

Hope Penelope is home safe soon.
Currently reading "Mania" by L J Ross

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