Obviously, the psychiatric community would have preferred a living Lanza, thus they might have studied and probed his mind so that, in effect, they could become him. To assist in knowing why he did it. To develop more drugs to advertise on TV, couched right between the erectile dysfunction commercials and commercials promising to make your teenager behave and stop calling you terrible names (of course, in the modern world, your teenager will simply take so much of mom's rants and then just carve her up with a kitchen knife whilst she sleeps).
Instead, Lanza cheated them, thoroughly. He cheated the mainstream media, too, because now they'll have to return to reports about the British Royals, the Obama White House and brainless, yet photogenic, Hollywood twits. Orchestrated news all the way. Anything to avoid educating and informing people about subjects of importance.
However, there was one more little thing about Lanza: His computer. How many times do we read reports about people who are allegedly this or allegedly that, and local law enforcement personnel or the Feds rush in and grab the computers, file cabinets and documents of interest?
That didn't go so well this time. The 20-year-old took great care to destroy his hard drive, and so final was the damage that neither forensic experts, all the king's horses nor all the king's men could put electronic memory back together again. Potentially, a significant piece of Lanza the killer is gone forever. That's a very bad thing. But. . .
As somebody who, like so many others among the frustrated, has taken old hard drives of my own and friends, pried them apart with great effort and then hammered them into submission, a teeny tiny part of me said well done. Did Lanza destroy evidence by doing the same? Yes, of course, and he probably did a far better job of it than I, because when I destroy hard drives from computers destined for the recycling place I end up fatigued, yet still not satisfied with the result. Forget atom smashers -- how about hard drive smashers? Every neighborhood auto junkyard, heavy equipment company or mom-and-pop curio shop should advertise reasonable fees to crush hard drives into harmless spy-proof pieces of metal, right before our eyes, with machinery of enviable abilities. Trust me, the government, which values keeping things from us -- but not us from it -- knows how to destroy files, and all citizens deserve an equal footing.
The thing is, while Lanza's over at the house shooting his mom and ripping the computer apart, our government at observation levels I can't even imagine continues to hone its ability to know every little detail about us. No private phone calls, no truly destructible e-mails or other forms of electronic communication, and forget jumping in the car to get away from it all (or "them all") because your every mile is noted. Journalists privileged with private phone conversations or secret files? No way. Whistle blowers? Beware. By the time all of this is finished -- which is never -- and that biggie one-spy-fits-all complex out in Utah is ready to go for real, we all may wish we were dead, because our souls, hearts and minds probably will be.
Ideally, every computer should come equipped with an instant internal destruction device, but computers aren't made exclusively for us, you see.
Never forget that Hitler's Gestapo readily barged into homes to search every nook and cranny, and the standard greeting and excuse was, If you have nothing to hide, there's nothing to worry about.
And still, our government works through Congress, as if that makes it right, to gain even more access to our stuff.
So, to the memory of a person whom, for all time, will be known as the monster named Adam Lanza, I kinda want to say yes, among the horror and carnage and emotional devastation he caused, the fire in his throbbing brain did one thing that a lot of normal folks might applaud under different circumstances: This pathetic little nothing in a world full of them/us essentially middle-fingered officials, who possessed access to all the expensive high-tech resources in the world, that at least some tiny part of his life was none of their business. In a way, Lanza kept secrets from the same caliber -- no pun intended -- of people who believe it perfectly acceptable to keep secrets from the rest of us. Too bad, however, that his inner rage didn't stop with just keeping the government out of his secret head, instead of progressing to the murder of his mother and tiny innocents.
SORRY ABOUT MY LONG ABSENCE, but the snow and ice of global warming kept me busy with other things. If Al Gore had been more cognizant of global warming instead of selling out to Al-Jazeera (more on that way below), perhaps he might have prevented winter this year.
NO-FAULT ASSURANCE IN BENGHAZI: Well, this is a fine kettle of desert fish. First, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly gets a concussion, followed by a very dangerous alleged blood clot, and can't readily testify, and then as others do testify and all is made better when a handful of upper echelon people resign (likely to other government positions), we learn that essentially nobody specific is really all that much at fault. Of course, the Impeachment-In-Waiting-In-Chief wasn't called on the carpet specifically, likely because the media never hold him responsible for anything that goes awry. Four American deaths in Benghazi -- or was it just a dream after all?
FOREIGN ADOPTIONS: National radio talk show hosts, celebrities of all makes and just typical folk on the street do it, and they've been much in the news lately. We're talking about adopting children from other countries, of course, nations such as Russia and China -- and those hardly complete the list. Seems last time I looked there were plenty of kids in need of stable homes right here in the USA, so instead of foraging beyond our shores, why don't people adopt here? No, I don't want to hear about the hurdles and time and other excuses. I'm going out on a limb (as usual), but I suspect a lot of these foreign adoptions appeal to parents who long to brag about importing a child from some distant land, and I'm sure there are those among them who wish to hold up these foreign human acquisitions as if they qualify as prize poodles from a dog show. Oh, I know, the blanket explanation is that they adopted these children because they love kids or because their religion says. . .blah, blah, blah -- but, again, what about all the American kids who need a home? Adopt -- and shop -- American should be the goal. If people insist upon foreign adoptions, then for every foreign child brought to the USA, those who adopt should be required to purchase bus or plane tickets to deport one entire illegal alien family out of the U.S.
GUN LEGISLATION: Here we go again. Prepare the grandstands. The “never let a (good) crisis go to waste” bunch is back, wallowing in media-enhanced hysteria and political opportunity. The real problem is criminals and crazies on the loose, but it’s much easier for cowardly rulers to pursue and regulate law-abiding fish in a barrel. As always, this firearm nonsense emerges primarily from a cacophony (with emphasis on the phony) of liberal Democrats who live and breathe to chip away at our freedoms, with names such as Feinstein, Bloomberg, Cuomo, Schumer and others who routinely populate the ad nauseam list. Strangely, it's doubtful that any would give up either their armed bodyguards -- or permits to carry, where applicable among them. If the soldiers at Fort Hood hadn’t been deprived of the ability to carry their weapons under Obama, Major Hassan’s homicidal jihad would undoubtedly have experienced a quick end. The most dangerous people in government are always those who claim some unfathomable right to tell us what we can't do, in direct violation of U.S. Constitution rights which are all about freedom. Beware of folks who condemn the vast majority of the innocent for the crimes of a tiny minority of the guilty, and we're about to see that variety of vermin scratch and claw its way out of the woodwork, hoisting a torch of feigned patriotism, as dark political efforts and damned near treasonous legislative tyrants proceed to nudge us away from promises made by those who toiled and died for this country specifically so we could be free of such tyranny. The wise and cautious once elected to serve have become the monsters who rule us, responding to our demands at a distance with computer-generated form letters signed by auto-pens, and much of the electorate has lapsed so far into digitally enhanced and clueless unconsciousness that recovery may be impossible. I'm not a gun collector and I'm not a hunter, but I'm enough of an American to know these rats need to keep their hands off the people's guns. I see more fights before lower federal courts, and ultimately before the Supreme Court in the future over this issue. This Supreme Court? (Sigh. . .)
Incidentally, some find it convenient to forget that shootings aren't native to schools. Many offices and factories experience multi-victim violence due to domestic violence issues, and mass killings have been accomplished with far less hardware than so-called "assault" weapons.
YOU CAN CALL THEM AL: So everybody's favorite Democrat, multiple award-winning global warming champion and almost prez Al Gore, along with his partner Joel Hyatt, sold their seldom-viewed Current TV to Al-Jazeera -- and like every good wealthy Dem (there is a list out there of famous names), reportedly wished, probably unsuccessfully, to complete that sale before the end of the year so's Obama's tax-the-rich approach wouldn't affect the profit side. Talk about Democrat hypocrites! Since Al-J hates America and probably will until the international Caliphate takes form one day, how comforting is will be indeed to have this enemy (praised in the past by Hillary Clinton) of our country readily available -- in English -- to U.S. TV viewers. Um, didn't China kick them out because they stirred up trouble with radical Muslims there? It's particularly surprising to read that Gore and company wanted to sell their network to a concern in line with their own goals. Hmm. Then so it was. But -- this little maneuver is nothing less than a slap in the face to the memory of every U.S. military member who served, fought, and died in the Middle East. Shame on Gore, Hyatt, and every other name (including Sen. Feinstein's husband?) involved with this transaction from hell. I believe in freedom of speech, but allowing a front door entrance to an entity wishing death and destruction to the U.S. and Israel -- adept at twisting words, engineering images and making jihad sound like a day at the gym -- bears a second look. Especially when you make Osama bin Laden out to be like one's kindly old grandfather. FCC, where are you? Oh wait, it's Obama's FCC, and anything smacking of socialism or Marxism or the so-called religion of peace seems to get a pass. . .
TAXED TO HELL AND BEYOND: Soaking the wealthy for even more taxes may sound great to those believing themselves un-afflicted, but eventually what's left of the middle class will enjoy the same bank account thievery by the government. Meanwhile, Russia, China, Canada, Cuba and an increasing host of nations continue to grow economically, quickly, having given up the practice of taxing their citizens into oblivion (no inheritance taxes, either). If we didn't have a president with socialist tendencies (seemingly the only thing he knows, other than community organizing) -- and he's certainly no idiot -- and if Congress wasn't littered with such a plethora of clueless or self-centered dumb-asses (Republicans -- you are equally pathetic with the rest), somebody would open the valve and radically (one of the few times I like that word) decrease all taxes for everybody and every business in the country, whilst throwing out cumbersome regulations by the ton. I remember watching an episode of the old "Tomorrow" show with the late Tom Snyder on NBC, and the point was made during a conversation about economics that if the tax system was reformed into a simple low flat tax system, the free market result would assure so much tax money flowing into federal bank accounts that the money couldn't be spent quickly enough. Fast-forward to 2013 and what do we have? Obama and Congress as we've come to know them. The President obviously wants to assure his legacy -- but, as things usually work out, history records one's legacy a whole lot differently than one intends. I suspect this one will go down in history as a supreme disappointment whose nearly every major move caused harm to this country's future. Currently, we lack competent national leadership, and as far as I'm concerned most of the integrity and honor in the U.S. rests within the military. If the political parties are to save us (and they won't), far better it would be if both houses of Congress were composed primarily of fiscal conservative members and "blue dog" Democrats. Instead, we've tipped toward extremists elected by a growing population of the uninformed whose major source of news involves celebrities in rehab.
HOW TO PAY OFF THE DEFICIT: Didn't NASA detect a distant planet composed of diamonds months ago? Can't we just claim it as ours and use that? Surely, we would even get change back (no, CHANGE as in money, not hope and change).
AFGHANI-SCRAM: If our military personnel can't blast their way through everything and everybody in need of annihilation without tying their hands, get them all out now. The higher-ups who provide soldiers and Marines with handbooks instructing them in all the ways to avoid appearing insensitive to Muslim "friends" -- so's they won't kill our people in a rage -- are the very people contributing to U.S. servicemen being killed by our "friends" -- and suicides would be just as likely when one feels confronted by an Administration which prefers manual manners and niceties over self-defense measures.
THE CONNECTED, THE COZY, THE COMPROMISED: As never before, the unholy trinity of government, the press and entertainment industry comfortably share a bed having everything to do with pleasing one another and very little to do with serving the people's interests. Politicians searching for a quick vote fix, mainstream media representatives and organizations purposely avoiding any conflict which might remove them from the front of the hot Washington news line, and actors and singers endlessly looking for publicity to keep their irrelevance relevant join together and poison us all with the vast influence they can afford to perpetrate on the masses. Sounds crazy, doesn't it? Uh huh. The country I knew is changing quickly, not for the best, and if there's a solution at all it will lie in real education, not the radical re-education inflicted upon public schools and teachers over the decades. Good luck with that.
AN INCANDESCENT TRUTH? Now there's a new study released warning that those fluorescent bulbs politicians are hanging us with actually have the ability to do harm. Surprised? The ultraviolet radiation, we are told, may cause cancer (hello melanoma?) and age human skin prematurely. May I once again return to my old Air Force days in physical therapy when we "treated" patients with a variety of energy forms, including ultraviolet? Of all the instructions pounded into our heads in school, those regarding ultraviolet were probably the most crucial. It may be light, but it's dangerous -- and I wouldn't hang out near a tanning booth for any amount of money. Looks as though the old incandescent bulbs need to make a quick comeback and politicians on both sides of the aisle should get out of the way.
