In a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA today, one student at a high school there has apparently stabbed 20 other students. A couple of them were injured bad enough to require surgery.
All of the victims are expected to make a full recovery.
This post is in: Crazification Factor, Open Threads, Fucked-up-edness, Green Balloons, WTF?
In a suburb of Pittsburgh, PA today, one student at a high school there has apparently stabbed 20 other students. A couple of them were injured bad enough to require surgery.
All of the victims are expected to make a full recovery.
Comments are closed.
D58826
Here we go again. So we add guns to the school but take away the knives and forks. Kids will eat lunch thru straws I guess.
Davis X. Machina
In Westmoreland Co. PA the fact that a gun wasn’t used is the news.
Poopyman
In before a couple dozen other Pennsylvanians, but that’s Pittsburgh with an “h”. This ain’t Kansas.
DougJ
If the other kids had been armed..
c u n d gulag
@Davis X. Machina:
BINGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
JPL
Four victims are critical but they are alive. If the student had guns rather than knives, how many would be dead?
Soonergrunt
@Poopyman: fixed.
Felonius Monk
@DougJ:
I’m sure the NKA (National Knife Association) and their like minded brethren in the NRA will get some new legislation pushed thru to arm teachers and janitors with bayonets on their Uzis and Glocks.
El Caganer
Oh, it’s already started – Charlie Pierce has some links to Wingnuttia up.
Elizabelle
I will be interested to learn why the kid was not able to access a firearm. Maybe we’ll hear a gun control success story.
That will be the truly scary part of this story for gun nutz.
Knives? Frightening, but those stabbed will live.
Davis X. Machina
@c u n d gulag: I’m pretty sure the Westmoreland county seal features a dead white-tail in the back of an F150 and the Latin motto Estne tibi cervus antehac? (Got ya deer yet?)
Belafon
A comment from me from two threads ago:
Here at my job in Texas, I’ve already heard the “see, it’s not just guns.” I had to ask “so, how many have died?”
beltane
@JPL: Probably dozens.
Comrade Dread
Slight difference. If the attacker had a gun, we’d be talking about 20 body bags instead of 20 trips to the doctor.
monkeyfister
If there had only been a “good guy with a gun,” we could have not only had multiple stabbing victims, but also plenty of accidental shooting victims, as well. (/gun groper)
Face
In an otherwise serious thread, this is just damn fucking funny.
scav
@Comrade Dread: Medicine is Socialist! Clearly need to arm kids properly so as to protect them from the dangerous embrace of ObamaCare!
Goblue72
After watching the latest episode of the Kevin Bacon show “The Following” last night, this story is just too creepy.
Poopyman
Where the hell were the cafeteria ladies to stop him with their knives?!?
(I recall a couple of my HS CLs who were mean enough MFs to do it, too.)
Anoniminous
Starting Sunday April 13, at 10pm EDT Showtime will air the first of an eight part series on Climate Change Years of Living Dangerously.
Trailer
Dream On
When you consider that extra verve that it takes to injure 20 with a knife… can you imagine the raised equivalent with a gun? We’d be looking at 15 dead, 20 wounded for sure
Little pink houses for you and me. Ain’t that America.
Villago Delenda Est
First, it’s good that this wasn’t a firearms incident, because then, yes, we’d be dealing in trips to the morgue, not trips to the doctor.
Second, is it just media saturation or are these incidents of violence to the point of life-threatening or ending injury becoming more common in this country nowadays? By media saturation I mean the need to put something on to fill air time that might not have happened in the past because it was “local” news and not national?
GregB
Let’s say we start an internet rumor about how this has prompted Democratic lawmakers to propose legislation mandating the outlawing of knives and the compulsory use of sporks.
How long before that becomes the latest wingnut viral e-mail that will be quoted on the floor of the House by Gohmert or Bachmann or Foxx?
Villago Delenda Est
@Anoniminous: Somehow, Red Dawn is treated as a near-documentary, while this will be dismissed as those damn Hollywood Jews pushing fantasy on everyone.
Karen in GA
It was faked so Obama could come for our cutlery. A guy on YouTube told me so. Wake up, sheeple!
/asshole
Richard Mayhew
@GregB: 27 minutes
SatanicPanic
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s a combination of media saturation and the few people who do want to commit these acts learning from the previous ones and getting higher body counts.
JPL
@Elizabelle: Except for MSNBC it won’t be mentioned. Fox will have whackos on discussing how knives kill people also.
Villago Delenda Est
@SatanicPanic: Yeah, I saw an interview with a psychologist who told the interviewer that the way to reduce “copy cat” incidents was not to give the perpetrators massive media coverage.
His advice was acknowledged with grave nods and then ignored in spectacular fashion.
lamh36
Candidate Says Race is Preventing Obama Impeachment
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2014/04/09/gop_candidate_says_race_is_preventing_obama_impeachment.html#.U0U8XlFJkuF.twitter
Elizabelle
@Villago Delenda Est:
The Washington Post hasn’t put anything up about the knife attack on its website.
I wonder if they’ve been hacked/technical issues this morning. No update to their front page in quite some time.
Elizabelle
@JPL:
How sad for the whackos on Fox that no one is dead. Yet.
This episode might be another wakeup call for expanded mental health coverage.
Thank YOU, Obamacare.
SatanicPanic
@Villago Delenda Est: Just think of the newsrooms that would have to work for a living actually investigating stuff, instead of just relying on local newsrooms and lazily flying out good looking people to harass victims’ families.
Chyron HR
@lamh36:
Sure, it’s because those lazy shiftless whites in the GOP can’t even repeal Obamacare, much less impeach Obama.
Elizabelle
In happier news, and OT: PBS has a wonderful program on Nature tonight.
Article on 3 good animal-related shows coming to TV and cable very soon.
Poopyman
Sketch of events so far, gleaned from Pgh TV via internet: Kid walks down crowded hallway in the science wing as everyone is heading to first period, and he’s slashing and stabbing as he goes, apparently at random. Somebody pulls the fire alarm and everybody starts heading out, although most don’t know why. A vice principal confronts the kid and somehow stops him without being injured himself. Kid (a sophomore) is handcuffed and held before police arrive.
Meanwhile, the wounded are being helped by their friends, at least one of which is credited with applying pressure on her friend’s wound that saved his life. A total of 20 injured, one (I think) in critical condition, everyone else fair to serious. All expected to live.
Roger Moore
@lamh36:
He’s just saying out loud what a lot of bigots in the GOP are thinking. It’s obnoxious when somebody spouts this kind of rubbish, but it’s probably better out in the open where it makes them look stupid than in private where it just stirs up anger.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est: When I was a kid, a non-student came into my school, came into my classroom, grabbed the kid sitting next to me and threatened to kill them while holding a weapon pointed at the kid. This person was clearly strung out on something with crazy eyes and demeanor. They yelled incoherently for a few seconds while everyone sat there stunned, then let the student go, turned and fled the room. Except for some shock and other emotional reactions, everyone was okay.
What happened other than that: we were herded into the hallway, the Assistant Principal came down, talked to the students, got the one who had been grabbed to talk to them more. After about five or ten minutes in the hallway we were all sent back to class. Class resumed as normal and the rest of the school day was normal.
No one was notified about this incident. My parents didn’t find out until I was an adult and mentioned it to them. The school wasn’t put on lockdown, other students were not told and the media certainly wasn’t alerted. Counselors were not brought in to help us process it. Just nothing. Everyone just went on like normal.
My experience makes me think that things have been happening for a long time but our attitude and reaction to them has changed.
bryan rasmussen
by not giving kids access to firearms we are raising a nation of weaklings who can’t even mass-murder properly.
JPL
I assume the suspect is white since the media informs us immediately if not. It’s sad but true.
also,too.. Maybe he has a foreign sounding name so Megyn Fox can let us know
Anoniminous
@Villago Delenda Est:
Need to start clawing back public support for amelioration. Rational argument hasn’t worked. Maybe this will.
Poopyman
@SatanicPanic: The not-ready-for-prime-time Pgh stations are going balls to the wall, and doing a decent job of it so far.
wtae.com
kdka.com
wpxi.com
PaulW
@JPL:
But then the NRA would say “if only there were more good guys with machetes on-campus…!” No, wait, my bad, that should read “good guys with guns GUNS GUNS OH YEAH FIREPOWER UP THE ASS OH GOD I’M CUMMMMIIIINNNNNGGGGGG”. Well, that’s what the NRA’s really saying…
Poopyman
@JPL: You betcha.
JPL
@Poopyman: Thanks.
WaterGirl
@Poopyman: Thanks for that update.
Tommy
@Violet: Kudos to the person that pulled the fire alarm. I am betting/wondering if the age we live in now the students are taught to do this. As others have said it is clearly easier to kill with a gun then a knife, but that is smart thinking on the part of at least one student/teacher.
Look I am not a gun owner, never would be one, but I often in the past have spoken up for guns as I know others have here. But my god the folks that are going to run out and say “hey knives can kill” and “only if a teacher had a gun” make me want to backtrack my support of safe, registered gun ownership, and just argue for the total ban of the darn things!
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh36: Well, that and a dearth of any evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors pretty much the size of the Grand Canyon.
chopper
@Anoniminous:
youtube link for an edited version of the first episode. it’s pretty good, outside of having the moustache of understanding innit.
chopper
@Belafon:
similar to when newtown happened, gun nuts kept pointing at the school attack the same week in china where some nut stabbed a bunch of people. of course, pointing out the massive difference in death toll was completely lost on them.
Belafon
@JPL: Speaking of Megan Fox, the subtitle of the new TMNT movie is:
Poopyman
@Villago Delenda Est: Didn’t stop them last time.
Villago Delenda Est
@PaulW: If you can get Meg Ryan to say that, I think that will make it perfection.
Tommy
I love the fact I live in a town where our schools have no police or security on duty. No metal detectors. No different in 2014 then when I went to the same schools in the late 70s and 80s. Heck until we built our new $60M high school a few years ago there were not even any badges or passes children had to wear. RFID chips in those badges now at the high school, but I guess in the grand scheme of things, being able to track a student on school grounds isn’t the worse thing in the world.
Poopyman
Press conference with Murraysville police chief, who is straight out of Central Casting, if you overlook the quintessential Pgh accent.
Villago Delenda Est
@SatanicPanic: I know, I’m so heartless. ZOMG, they’d have to actually do some work!
peach flavored shampoo
Says a man who’s never been sporked by an angry colleague. It’s dull spoons only this week, until everyone is soon requried to Fred Flintstone their salads and Mac ‘n Cheese.
eyelessgame
Well, you know the only thing that stops a bad teenager with a knife is a good teenager with a knife.
Tommy
@Poopyman: Listened to your link. Watched and listened to the press conferences of these mass things. I am always stunned by one thing, how a small town often seems to have a pretty intelligent person in charge. I think that is a happy thought to say the least. That you don’t have to be in LA or NYC to be competent.
Villago Delenda Est
@eyelessgame: It seems in this case it was a teenager smart enough to clear out the building by pulling a fire alarm, but of course that doesn’t fit the narrative, so we’ll just ignore that and move on.
Villago Delenda Est
@Tommy: Sometimes it really helps in the competence department NOT to be NY or LA.
? Martin
@Villago Delenda Est:
He only pulled the fire alarm because the fascistocrats wouldn’t let him pull the trigger as the Bible says is his right, save those other kids, and save us the expense of a trial.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
Do you really think the lack of anything to charge him with is stopping them? “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” means whatever Congress wants it to mean, so they could gin up charges against him any time they feel like it. I would guess the charges would look something like “Benghazi! Drones! NSA!” and that would be enough. The real thing that’s holding them back is the practical realization that they need to get 2/3 of the Senate to convict, and another failed impeachment would hurt them politically. The only people who are beating the drum for impeachment are too ignorant to know, too crazy to care, or too cynical to pass up an opportunity to throw red meat to the base.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Tommy:
Lived in a small San Gabriel Valley town and I worked as a civilian employee of the P.D. I had the opportunity to chat with the chief and found him to be one of the most sensible people I ever met. I asked him why the town had kept its own force rather than farming out enforcement to the L.A. County Sheriffs as so many other nearby communities had done. He said that people get the kind of policing that they want.
@Villago Delenda Est:
LA feels itself to be under siege. I imagine that NYC might feel the same. My guess is that packing so many people into such limited spaces may not be the best idea.
Villago Delenda Est
@? Martin: Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Comrade Mary
Bizarrely enough, we just saw a mass stabbing in an office building in the north end of Toronto. Because the weapon is identified as either a knife or scissors, expect to see a lot of our local troglodytes making weak-ass jokes about registering all scissors.
Villago Delenda Est
@Comrade Mary: Well, your mother as well as mine used to admonish us about running with scissors, so there you have it.
Anoniminous
@chopper:
Thank you. Work is piling on my desk so I’ll have to watch it tonight.
Clever of them to include the MoU.
Villago Delenda Est
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Yet, in Europe, they pack as many people into such limited spaces, and more, and don’t have nearly the problems that we seem to have in this country. Ditto, too, China, India, Japan, Indonesia…well, I could go on all day.
LA feels like it is under siege because LA WANTS to be under siege. That asshole Parker set up the paradigm, and they can’t escape it.
Ash Can
WHAT? What the hell kind of a namby-pamby, unmanly massacre is that? If only that school had done the patriotic thing and hired an armed guard from whom the kid could have stolen a gun or two, we wouldn’t be talking about recoveries; those kids woulda stayed dead.
cokane
GUNS DONT KILL PEOPLE …
Villago Delenda Est
@Ash Can: Nothing more annoying than kids who refuse to stay dead. Makes me want to reach for my revolver, it does.
Roger Moore
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
White LA feels itself to be under siege by black and brown LA, and LAPD is the thin blue like that keeps the dusky hordes at bay. I assume the same basic dynamic is at work with a lot of big city police departments that have a siege mentality. At the very least, that’s the way it used to be. Racial dynamics in LA are better than they were 20 years ago, though they still have a long way to go. I certainly get the impression that LAPD is a lot better run than it was in the days of Darryl Gates.
rikyrah
Thank goodness this mentally ill student didn’t have a gun.
? Martin
Here’s something encouraging.
Villago Delenda Est
OT, but it’s interesting that douchecanoe central, aka Noisemax, feels it still needs to launch harpoons into the listing side of the Outlaw Joisey Whale.
Quinnipiac Poll: Christie Isn’t Presidential Material
Ash Can
@Villago Delenda Est: Seriously, sometimes I wonder if, deep down, the gun-humpers get a kind of thrill out of stories of mass shootings, along the lines of “Ooh, behold the power of big guns! What if there were even more guns shooting in that situation?”
jeffreyw
cookie me
Tone in DC
@Poopyman:
You went to District of Columbia public schools?
Villago Delenda Est
@jeffreyw: Hmm…shouldn’t that be a link to something delicious?
Villago Delenda Est
@Ash Can: Oh, I think there’s something that many would define as sexual involved in all of this. The gun fetishists off course will deny it, but their denials only reinforce my feeling that they are wired in such a way that they do get an endorphin rush when a firearm is discharged near them, or they learn of a firearm discharge. Sort of like Tackleberry in the Police Academy movies. It’s a pleasurable experience for them and they want more, and the cost in lives and blood is irrelevant to that want.
JPL
@Poopyman: Once again thank you for the link. I finally had to turn it off but not before hearing that the suspect has a brother at the school. How sad for the community but I am pleased that the kid didn’t have a gun.
Cacti
O/T but I wonder if Kremlin Bob was leading this group:
Over the weekend, pro-Russian “protesters” accidentally storm Kharkiv opera house in eastern Ukraine, thinking it was the city hall.
I mean, if you’re going to use agent provocateurs, hire at least a couple of locals who know their way around town. Amateur hour move by Vlad.
Tone in DC
@Villago Delenda Est:
Somebody find Kurt Russell and his 25 year old eye patch.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
Could have been some vacationing Teahadis in the area. It’s certainly stupid enough that Teahadis could be involved.
Nah, that’s ridiculous. Nothing in the Ukraine would attract Teahadi tourists.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Being President while Black is not an impeachable offense. I am tired of these mofos in the MSM letting these asses talk about impeachment without demanding that they list the President’s crimes.
Belafon
@Villago Delenda Est: Maybe they thought it was Georgia, and well, turning Atlanta over to Putin probably sends a chill up their spines.
Elizabelle
@? Martin:
That is good news.
Although: it’s dispiriting that your average American voter and an Afghan citizen — under threat of physical violence by the Taliban — show up at the polls in the same percentage (58%).
Advantage: Afghans. Americans(*) should step up their game. (*) at least the well informed Americans
And the leading candidate sounds capable. Lot on his platter if and when he assumes office.
? Martin
Anyone worrying about the CA-Gov race, stop worrying.
Brown has a 59% approval rating, and 57% of likely voters plan to vote for him, which includes 35% of Republians. The leading Republican, Tim Donnelly, has support from 17% of voters. Donnelly is pure distilled teatard. He compared the undocumented situation to the greatest threat to America since the Civil War. He’s this idiot. (Colbert Difference Makers)
There’s a slim chance that the top two primary vote getters will be Democrats and we won’t have a Republican on the ticket at all this year.
Another Holocene Human
@Elizabelle: Don’t count out blood borne pathogens. The silent killer.
Another Holocene Human
@? Martin: What is up with these Irish American teahadis? For shame! Another one who forgot where he came from.
Another Holocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: Estne tibi cervus antehac? (Got ya deer yet?)
Iam tibi cervum autem? Got deer? (For you also a deer already?)
Amir Khalid
@rikyrah:
As I understand it, a US President may be impeached and convicted of “high crimes and misdemeanours” not defined in the constitution or by any law. If they have the numbers in the House and Senate, the Republicans can theoretically run the impeachment process against Obama, actual crimes or no. In the latter case it would of course be a wilful and blatant abuse of process, but the Republicans who want this to happen just don’t care.
Another Holocene Human
@Violet:
Ding ding ding.
Schools were far more violent in the 1950s than now. But people have smaller families so parents are much more protective in aggregate of their children, plus there’s much less trust in institutions. And fear of litigation. Or getting fired to solve a PR problem.
Personally think a lot of the “active shooter” and “dealing with a person with a knife” training is useless bullshit but that’s where society is right now.
You can teach someone to deescalate a confrontation but if that’s impossible, I don’t see how someone not trained in martial arts (if from street fighting if nothing else) is going to stop a knife attack or do anything but run for the exits when faced with an active shooter, and it’s kind of underhanded for managers to act like they’re doing something to provide such a bandaid of “training”.
WHY NOT FIX SOCIETY you fuckers so you don’t have angry people acting out?! Ever thought of that shit!?
Elizabelle
@Another Holocene Human:
Slightly OT: have you all been following the most recent Ebola outbreak?
It’s in Western Africa, in countries (Guinea, Liberia, maybe Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Mali too) which have not previously suffered from Ebola and don’t have the expertise other countries have gained through sad experience.
AND it looks like this Ebola outbreak is killing 80-90% of its victims at this juncture. With a 21-day incubation period.*
Scary stuff.
* WaPost story goes with that rate, but it is not borne out by the numbers they provide at top of blogpost: 101/157 dead in Guinea, 7/23 in Liberia. To be continued …
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: I do like that they don’t want weird people wandering onto campus today, even older kids. I mean, there’s trust, and then there’s naivite.
Though what is really naive is getting rid of the janitors because HOW DARE someone who cleans toilets and waxes floors have a pension. They forgot the part where those guys (they were guys back in the day) were also your school security. They knew everyone who was supposed to be in the building on sight. They also did maintenance and knew who the vandals were and prevented a lot of it. Some contractors who come in the middle of the night can’t do that.
A janitor could potentially be a creep, too… if you only hire them rarely you can do all the background checks and call the references; if you hire contractors you’re depending on a minimum wage outfit to check into who they’re hiring. Lolwut.
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid: Yeah, Amir, let’s test this theory. This is America, and we are a fractious people. Let a GOP Congress try that shit. Somebody’s going to get shot. Because we are a people who don’t deal with rage, pain, and grief well.
SatanicPanic
@Amir Khalid: I never got that phrase- “high crimes and misdemeanors”- does this mean a high crime plus something not that important? Is a high crime not enough? Or are there high misdemeanors? What would that be?
Another Holocene Human
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Fixed.
ETA: I don’t like citing this bozo, but he did bring it all together: cities do not cause crime to go up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature
? Martin
@Another Holocene Human: He came from a place full of white people. ‘Immigration’ is just an excuse to be racist.
Another Holocene Human
@SatanicPanic: Isn’t a misdemeanor a criminal offense that puts you in jail but doesn’t make you a felon or send you to prison? The sort of offense that can be bought off with a hefty fine and community service? Maybe they’re saying a President ought to be above reproach.
Curious what the conlaw experts have to say about this. In school we only learned that one president was impeached for political reasons and another resigned before he could be impeached for real crooked behavior. Then I watched a bunch of knuckleheads impeach Clinton for trying to conceal a consensual affair, although the action failed and he wasn’t removed from office.
Amir Khalid
@SatanicPanic:
Speaking as a lay person in the law and a foreigner, I suspect that in this context “high crimes and misdemeanours” means “anything at all, subject only to Congress’ discretion”.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est:
Didn’t LA pretty much innovate paramilitary policing as we know it today so that the lowtax freaks could attempt to get by with an inadequate police force? And it didn’t work?
Another Holocene Human
@Cacti: Hahahaha, sad, though, to see Ukraine so far unsuccessful at ridding their country of Russian government agents. They seem to have long had a policy of letting people in, which is good, but as we can see it only takes a few sociopaths….
Kinda depressing that all the lefties I know think Ukrainians are Nazis. Must be nice to be so knowledgable about places you’ve never been. They are cheering on the bullshit Putin is pulling in Eastern Ukraine. How can you be a lefty and love thuggish violence so much? This is why I call myself a liberal and a progressive and even a radical but never a leftist.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Another Holocene Human:
The violent criminals with whom I am acquainted are opportunists. The more opportunities the more crime. I would, in light of that, posit that low level crime has become an accepted part (Mugger money?) of big city life and so goes unreported.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est:
Calling democratically elected leaders Nazis seems pretty Teahadi to me. Really, though, I don’t think the Russians would have any use for them. These are people who film themselves doing rooftop parkour. Don’t think a hoverround is getting up there. Also, “dont be a p****”. I think that disqualifies our pants-pissers.
Frankensteinbeck
@Roger Moore:
Clinton was impeached as an insult. They knew it wasn’t going anywhere, they just wanted to thumb their noses at him. It ended up making the Republicans look like the spoiled children they are. Obama receives that kind of disgusting procedural insult every day, and actual obstruction at unprecedented levels. With impeachment, though, the Tea Party wing actually wants an impeachment that will remove Obama, and the rest don’t want to look like idiots again. If it weren’t for Boehner’s inferiority complex, maybe it would have gotten a vote, but he’s been made a fool of so much already I think he’s gun shy of what even he knows is an idiot, high profile stunt he can’t follow through.
SatanicPanic
@Amir Khalid: so far it’s been used that way.
PurpleGirl
@rikyrah: True and right. I don’t like that they can say anything and are never asked for specific examples.
Another Holocene Human
@? Martin: In a place where doors were shut to his forebears, just on account of their name. His prosperity now is because social attitudes changed and laws were passed making that shit illegal. How sharper than a serpent’s tooth.
SatanicPanic
@SatanicPanic: Though for the record I would have supported the impeachment of Johnson too. Sometimes you just have to chuck precedent.
Cacti
@Another Holocene Human:
They are cheering on the bullshit Putin is pulling in Eastern Ukraine. How can you be a lefty and love thuggish violence so much? This is why I call myself a liberal and a progressive and even a radical but never a leftist.
It’s bizarre to say the least. During the Soviet Union era, you could understand if not excuse their knee-jerk defensiveness toward the USSR because it was a nominally socialist republic (as opposed to the reality of being a totalitarian nightmare). But the current Russian federation isn’t socialist in any way shape or form. It’s capitalist, religious, and right-authoritarian.
Another Holocene Human
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I’m really shocked at you–have you been nymjacked? I shouldn’t even be answering this utter stupidity, but did it never occur to you that big cities provide more opportunity TO GET CAUGHT? And that the fear of getting caught and being punished is one of the biggest deterrents to anti-social behavior? And that big cities also provide more legit opportunities than rural places? And that the problem with our ghettos, “inner city” whatever you want to call it because it’s shifting to ex-urbs is that you have a concentrated population with NO opportunities?
It’s a lot easier to burgle suburban houses. It’s a lot easier to kill someone in the country and have them never be found. Your assertions about cities and crime are just completely contrafactual.
eyelessgame
@SatanicPanic: “High crimes and misdemeanors” has a specific legal meaning: a Democrat receiving a blowjob.
Frankensteinbeck
@Cacti:
I remember it back then as being rebellion against war mongering xenophobic anti-communist assholes rather than any actual love of the USSR. Why they’d support a war now that has little or nothing to do with our culture’s xenophobia I haven’t a clue.
Roger Moore
@? Martin:
I’m amazed he was willing to call the Civil War a threat to America rather than the War of Northern Aggression. Is our Republicans learning?
Cacti
@Roger Moore:
I’m amazed he was willing to call the Civil War a threat to America rather than the War of Northern Aggression. Is our Republicans learning?
He left off the part about “and if’n we don’t hurry, the bad guys will win again.”
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
It’s not obvious to me that this is true. I have not read all of the Framers’ writings, but my impression is that they expected impeachment to be used for political reasons and saw it as a better way of getting rid of people who were politically toxic than assassination. That view made sense with the original presidential election procedure, in which the second place candidate was made VP, but became less practical after the 12th Amendment essentially guaranteed that the VP would be of the same party as the President.
This actually brings up an interesting counterfactual/alternative history: what if the Republicans had succeeded in removing Clinton from office in 1998? Since Clinton’s misdeeds were at least theoretically personal rather than political, they shouldn’t have left Gore politically viable. In that case, he would have been the incumbent with a booming economy for the 2000 election and probably would have won. It’s a very interesting possibility.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: I felt that if Clinton had resigned, Gore would have been a shoo-in.
I still don’t know if Clinton was right about ‘not letting them win’. Because they did kind of win, in the end. Dunno.
Origuy
Wikipedia gives some background on “high crimes and misdemeanors“.
“High” modifies both “crimes” and “misdemeanors”.
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
My understanding is that it was at least initially a response to large-scale police corruption rather than an attempt at cost cutting. The theory was that the corruption was enabled by a large police force that spent most of its time walking a beat. It got the police close to the public where they had lots of opportunities for corruption and away from their superiors who might see what was happening. The response was a smaller, more mobile and more professional police force. They spent their time driving around a larger area, which reduced opportunities for corruption. The downside was that it made the force undermanned, out of touch, and reactive, all of which was exacerbated by changing demographics. I wouldn’t be surprised if cost cutting, especially after Prop 13, made things worse, though.
Waynski
@SatanicPanic: High crimes are for Republicans, misdemeanors are for Democrats, you know, like blow jobs.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
I see Boehner as sufficiently old school that he’s actually interested in getting stuff done rather than just posturing. He isn’t a strong enough leader to keep the teabagger caucus in line- I’m not sure if such an individual exists- but he is strong enough to quash some of their dumber ideas. He can’t stop them from talking about impeachment, but he can prevent the political damage from actually doing it.
Jamey
@Belafon: And if people at Fort Hood were armed, the gunman would never have gotten off the first round…
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
No, his assertions are largely correct. If you look at the statistics, crime rates actually are higher in cities than in rural areas, and that is true regardless of whether you use numbers reported to law enforcement or by crime victimization studies. The differences aren’t as big as people think, and medium sized cities away from the big metro areas are actually worse than the biggest cities are, but the available evidence suggests that there is less crime outside the city.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
It may be easier to burglarize houses in the suburbs than apartments in the city, but it’s way easier to find someone to mug in an urban area than it is in the suburbs. So I think the type of crime matters, too.
Avi
Fallows about a mass stabbing in China the same day as the mass shooting in Newtown:
True then and true now.
Luthe
@Another Holocene Human: One of the largest reasons for the decline of crime in cities *and* rural areas is the removal of lead contamination from the environment. In addition to retarding intelligence, lead heightens aggressive tendencies in humans, resulting in higher crime rates.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t even know if that’s true. The opportunities are different, but there are some potential advantages to burglarizing an apartment. If the entrance is inside off a hallway, you’re less visible than you would be going up to a house on the street. And people may be more used to seeing strangers wandering around doing unusual things in the city, which would give a burglar cover. There’s also a question of opportunity. Apparently, a lot of burglars don’t go far from home, and there are many more potential targets close to home in the city than in the suburbs.
You can speculate about this kind of stuff as much as you like, but the statistics show that both property and violent crime are higher in urban areas than suburban or rural areas. As I said, the difference is smaller than many people think, and it’s certainly small enough that one of the lower crime big cities is safer than an average suburb or rural area, but the common perception that cities have higher crime rates is supported by the available evidence.