More blood on the hands of Barack Obama

I used to think the guy was just stupid. That he had bad judgment. That he was too arrogant to listen to his adviser – or anyone. That he was an ignorant kid, an inexperienced politican, a Hawaiian-bred, radical-son egghead, a grad student who never left school. A man whose painful articulation masked a man who was hollow to the core. A wolf in peacenik clothing.

Now I realize he's more dangerous than I ever imagined. I should have listened to all those people in the press eight years ago who predicted Obama's downfall would be in foreign policy. Oh, why, did I applaud the election of King Barack?

And now the blood on his hands is a flood. The blood from conflicts all over the world that he has created and made worse. Now the blood on his hands is the blood of innocent Americans – of all kinds – in the worst slaughter in US history.

How many deaths is it now, King Barack? How many more will die because of your arrogance and stupidity? You have made America and the world more dangerous, more violenct, more racist than ever. Thank God your reign will be over in November. You are leaving messes of immeasurable size for the next adminstration to clean up. Leaving footprints in blood. Leaving blood on the tracks.

Surely no president has ever done so much damage to America.

Now we see the face of far-left radical political correctness. It is the face of every murderous dictator in history who thought he knew what was best for us -- all smiles, only the best intentions, right? To bring people together, right? Yes, to bring them together so that he could slaughter them.

I fear for my country. I'm ashamed to be an American.

Let the impeachment begin.

Holy cow, is this a joke?

The conservatives and the NRA will not allow President Obama or anyone else do anything about gun control. Yet is is somehow President Obama's fault that some idiot with a gun just went and shot up a bunch of people at a nightclub?

You really need to work on your logic skills.

>2 amysisson: Is it right to blame the drone, or PPP (pilotless pod person)?

I'm not blaming the gun (I think that's what you mean?). I'm blaming the all-guns-all-the-time folks who allowed this person to have an automatic weapon in the first place.

A "well-regulated militia" means that regulations are permitted.

I'm relatively sure the worst slaughter in American history is some shit like 9/11 or wounded knee. Tulsa race riots, maybe.This? Clean number with a low count.

>4 amysisson: That's not at all what I mean, sorry. The drone, or PPP, posted the OP. The writing you are responding to originates in some Tea Party cesspool and is disseminated thusly.

>5 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Yes, if you 'limit' it to gun slaughters at one place at one time there are quite a few from especially the 19th century that exceed this in number.

What's the casuity count for Vietnam? I think the US lost 60k or so.

>6 RickHarsch:

Sorry I misunderstood. Thanks for clarifying.

I looked at the profile first, to make sure it was a "real" LT member. Lots of books cataloged. Which surprised the heck out of me.

>1 barney67: Congress refuses to enact sensible gun safety laws. As long as US gun laws are promiscuous, there will be no end to gun violence.

>9 amysisson: Oh, is this your first exposure? Well then, you're in for a real treat.

>8 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Vietnam? I like to think of it as a year and a half of US highway deaths approximately, though it may be more like 15 months. For Vietnamese casualties you'd have to get closer to ten years of US highway deaths.

>11 .Monkey.:

Yes, my first encounter that I know of. Clearly I better stay away from the Pro and Con group! But the subject line caught my eye. I really should know better!

>13 amysisson: Lol I tend to stay out of here as well but I also just had to peek. I walked away spluttering.

>5 Jesse_wiedinmyer: But what about a single gunman situation? How many times in our history has a single shooter taken out 50+ civilians in one action?

>13 amysisson: This is a humorous group, actually.

>15 southernbooklady: But they're comparing it to San Bernardino where there were two shooters.

One of the most idiotic opening posts ever. Most everything that Obama is being accused of foreign policy wise here George W and Darth Vader Cheney started and yet no mention of them--so Tia is just partisan bullshit in my eyes.

Not to say that Obama hasn't been a huge failure because I think he has and not to say that his continuing bush's stupid shit doesn't make him culpable too.

The prior single shooter record was held by the mentally deranged Virginia Tech shooter who killed 32. This guy killed 49. He apparently according to his 911 call did the slaughter in the service of the Islamic State. He picked a gay bar because according to his own father he was anti-gay. If the Islamic state motivation is correct, then he did this because the USA is backing the forces that are taking on Isis in Syria and Iraq.

The Islamic State has encouraged its sympathizers in the USA to do this very thing. Isis has noted there are many soft targets in the USA and that it is ridiculously easy to obtain an assault rifle in the USA even if you are on the Terrorist Watch List and commit mayhem.

But whose to say that if he'd never heard of ISIS he might have done the same thing just because he hates gays.

I was simply wondering at the idea that casualty counts are a metric.

You'll note that the casualty count on Vietnam is over 1 million.

>21 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Well, I think part of that metric is the rising count one shooter is capable of killing. That's tied to things like access to automatic weapons that can shoot more people faster, and also to the kind of of disassociation that allows a shooter to target people in public, non-combat situations, along with an increased willingness to die during the act.

We like to tell ourselves that acts of war -- like Vietnam, or The Little Big Horn -- are governed by the rules of war, at least nominally. But acts of terrorism are apparently random, unpredictable, and impossible to defend against because the terrorist doesn't recognize rules, only targets.

I say "impossible to defend against" but of course there are no shortage opinions on solutions, from "ban all guns" to "arm every citizen." I still think my solution has merit: arm every woman, but don't let men own guns. :)

>15 southernbooklady: & >22 southernbooklady:

The people who study such things have generally come to the consensus that Columbine wasn't a "school shooting" so much as it was a "failed bombing."

If the improvised propane explosive devices in the cafeteria had functioned as they were intended, there were a very high likelihood of structural failure. Experts believe that the Harris' and Klebold's plan's failure saved at least 500 lives.

Columbine also exposed the flaw in micro-management. A flaw that police departments continue to practice.

Background: at Columbine, the first responders (some street officers) wanted to immediately charge into the school and deal with the situation. (Which is what we, as citizens, pay them to do.) However, their supervisor wanted them to wait until he was on the scene. By the time he was on the scene, the next rank up wanted to monitor the situation...and so on.

Police departments don't trust the street officers (the police that we see and deal with, generally) to make life-and-death decisions without established policy in place...or a supervisor riding herd on them. And if that takes valuable time to implement, so be it.

From what I understand, that wasn't "micro-management," so much as a generally considered "best practice" that has since been revised.

>22 southernbooklady:

^Shoot-out at lesbian knitting-circle* leaves three dead and sweater unfinished. Film at Eleven on Eleven.^

*
variations :
lesbian bikers' club
women's florist society
baking group
women's fiction-reading group
etc.

>27 Jesse_wiedinmyer: So really, maybe the answer is to require every person applying for a gun license show proof they have passed an anger management class.

>29 RickHarsch:

"Let me remind you of the Terms of Service. You are not allowed to call a member names. You can call a statement or idea a name, but not a person. You know this. Don't do it."

-- Tim Spalding

Ditto. Please read the cite above.
If your post #29 is there next time I check, I'll flag it as a TOS violation. Again, count on it

>28 southernbooklady:

Maybe the more productive answer would be to end the culture of "toxic masculinity".

>30 proximity1:

Are you trying to say there's something wrong with the mind of the average 50's male office worker? Or just his body?

>31 Jesse_wiedinmyer: I'm open to suggestions.

50 is the new 30.

And 58 is the new 28.

Wait. Nevermind. I am 56.

56 is the new 26.

>26 proximity1: Is that a joke?

>36 jjwilson61: No. If you've seen the things they normally say.... no.

Gun control for Muslims. No guns for Muslims.

If they are a religion of peace, then they don't need guns anyway, right?

And then maybe the IDIOTS in America will realize THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GUN CONTROL.

I don't know how so many people can be so stupid.

So 5th amendment rights only extend to people whose misogyny and homophobia you approve of Barney?

Where does that leave us on the freedom of religion thing?

>33 southernbooklady:

That makes two of us...

https://www.librarything.com/topic/224756

Oh! JJ! it's no less nor more seriously intended than SBL's recommendation to arm all the women.

A previous thought went: "Boyfriend and husband shoot each other with girlfriend's and wife's Glock 9 and SIG Sauer P938."

Yep. A joke.

>33 southernbooklady:

And it might be a somewhat orthogonal (or tangential) suggestion, but...

I just finished Sue Klebold's A Mother's Reckoning.

If you've neither read nor heard of it, I recommend checking it out. Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters. The book is her attempt to lay out her grief and sorrow for her son and his part in the massacre he planned and perpetrated.

I know that adjectives such as "wrenching" and "viscerally" and "stunning" and such are so overused as to be cliche, but I am (in a literal sense) amazed at the sheer physicality of my response to certain portions of this book.

Like mothers all over Littleton, I had been praying for my son's safety. But when I heard the newscaster pronounce twenty-five people dead, my prayers changed. If Dylan was involved in hurting or killing other people, he had to be stopped. As a mother, thus was the most difficult prayer I had ever spoken in the silence of my thoughts, but in that instant I knew the greatest mercy I could ask for was not my son's safety, but for his death.

It is by no means a perfect book. And I am not entirely sure it's a completely honest book.

I do believe it to be a sincere attempt at honesty, though.

Edit - touchstones don't seem to be working from my phone, so....

https://www.amazon.com/Mothers-Reckoning-Living-Aftermath-Tragedy/dp/1101902752