January 14, 2011
— Gabriel Malor Following the elections, newly GOP-led states Ohio, Wisconsin, and Wyoming also asked permission to join. A decision from the district judge in the multistate suit is expected at any time. Virginia filed its own lawsuit and already saw success at the district court. Oklahoma just filed its own lawsuit against ObamaCare.
That brings the number of states suing the federal government to 26. As Ilya Somin writes, it shouldn't matter legally if one state sues or all of them. But it still helps to show widespread objection:
But in politically sensitive cases such as this one, legal arguments are not the only factors that matter. The Supreme Court is usually reluctant to strike down a major federal law that has strong support from the president and his party and is a big part of their political agenda. In this case, however, the law in question is unpopular with the general public. . . . And the statesÂ’ action is an indication that it is also disliked by a large part of the political elite. Widespread popular and elite opposition gives the Court the political cover that it would need to strike down the law. If the political winds continue to blow against the law, the justices can be confident that a decision to strike it down wonÂ’t create a dangerous backlash against the Court.
There is a bit of variation in the arguments raised in each lawsuit, as I discussed here, so it's still good that there's more than one on track. Appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, won't reach arguments raised for the first time on appeal. Having more than one lawsuit also gives various circuit courts of appeals a crack at it, providing a fuller record for the Supreme Court to ultimately consider. As I wrote before, sometimes it's strategically helpful to give the Supreme Court justices (ahem, Kennedy) some room to maneuver.
There's some psychology that individuals are more likely to respond positively if they have options. As far as result goes, it doesn't matter how ObamaCare gets knocked down, only that it gets knocked down. That's just a simple "yes or no" question. But sometimes you have to make the "yes or no" question more attractive. Psychologically you can do that by turning it into a multiple choice problem. Give the judge options A, B, and C, -- various reasons to knock down the law . . . say the Commerce Clause, Tax Clause, and General Welfare Clause arguments against ObamaCare. Option D is to uphold the healthcare law. The judge or justice faced with the multiple choice version has an opportunity to be clever (and you know how judges love to get "clever"), saying "no" to one or two of A, B, and C, while still ultimately finding the law unconstitutional.
I've seen this at work myself when I was clerking. A judge would get off track thinking about the options, when the real answer should have been a simple: "no way."
As far as Somin's "political cover" argument, there's some unfortunate truth to the idea that Supreme Court justices sometimes consider the legitimacy of the Court in the eyes of the public and not just the legitimacy of the legislation it is called on to review. In light of accelerated backlash against judges who issue unpopular decisions, it's no wonder.
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— Gabriel Malor It doesnÂ’t even have to be real. We can just get a box that says Ebola on it and chase him with the box!
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January 13, 2011
— Slublog In 1937, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer published a book called "The Cost of Discipleship." In that book, Bonhoeffer wrote about the dangers of what he called 'cheap grace,' which he defined as "the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession..." Bonhoeffer's point was that while forgiveness, baptism and Communion are a wonderful part of church life, they cannot be truly experienced without paying a cost.
Bonhoeffer's words came to mind when I read this story.
When President Obama comes to Capitol Hill in two weeks to deliver the State of the Union address, what are the chances that Republicans and Democrats in Congress will heed the call of Sen. Mark Udall, D-CO, to sit together, rather than divided by party?After spending days watching their base accuse Sarah Palin and the tea party of encouraging a murderer, while saying nothing to stop the slander, Senator Udall and his fellow Democrats think all of this ugliness can be whisked away by encouraging members of each party to sit next to each other during a speech. With this meaningless gesture, the Democrats are trying to enjoy the benefits of calling for unity without having to criticize fellow members of Congress or their base for the repulsive slanders of the past week. Why apologize for the behavior of one's party when you can just plant your butt next to a Republican for an hour-long speech and look good on camera while doing it?Simply put: unlikely.
Udall is asking other members of Congress to join him in signing a letter to House and Senate leadership proposing that both parties should scrap the tradition of sitting on separate sides of the House chamber during the Joint Session of Congress Jan. 25.
“I know that more unites us than divides us, and now – more than ever – we need to find ways to dial down the political rhetoric and set a positive example for all Americans,” Udall said in a statement Wednesday. “Our country has been talking about changing the way Washington works, and now it’s time to take action by crossing the aisle and sitting together.”
“It’s a simple step, but an important one that will go a long way in bridging our political divide,” Udall added.
This is not the first time Democrats have tried to atone for their ugly behavior on the cheap, but that doesn't make Udall's suggestion any less cowardly. Senator Udall, members of your party and your base have accused me and those who share my ideology of murder. If you want to show me that you're serious about unity, you have to be willing to offer more than empty symbolism.
You want unity? Prove it. Now's the time for your Sister Souljah moment. Name names.
Repudiate this. And this. And this, this, this, this, and this. The time for posturing is past - if civility is what you want, Senator, then first demand it of those who agree with you, donate to you and vote for you.
Last weekend, a member of Congress was seriously injured and six people who went to meet her died. Instead of acknowledging the tragedy and taking the time to mourn, the left shamelessly used the dead as weapons in their war against their political opponents. What should shame you the most, Senator Udall, is that they were able to assume the freedom to do so because their allies did not speak out against them when it mattered most.
It will take more than a seating chart to attain true unity, Senator Udall. Unity, like grace, is not cheap. Nor should it be.
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— Maetenloch Due to a confluence of work and personal business tonight's ONT is going to suck 18% more.
NO REFUNDS!
Attention Stalkers! There's A New Tool in Town
Encumbered by a unjustified restraining order? Don't have the cheddar to keep bribing the guy at the DMV for info?
Well fret not for there is a new website that will let your pursue your uh, passions from the comfort of your personal basement. It's Spokeo.com - a site that mines public databases for info on people and collates it for easy targeting. A lot of the info is free but you have to pay in order to see everything.
People I know who've looked themselves up have been astonished/scared at the amount of detail it has on them - address, phone number, age, family members, parent's addresses, house value, hobbies, social networks, etc. Chances are you're already in the system's maw. Your only option at this point is to fake your own death with a charred hobo carcass and flee to Mexico. See ya in Cancun!
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— Ace Oh boy. I saw commenters posting this but I didn't know where they'd gotten it from.
In the most bald-faced lie I have ever read in The New York Times -- which is saying something -- that paper implied Loughner is a pro-life zealot. This is the precise opposite of the truth.Only because numerous other news outlets, including ABC News and The Associated Press, reported the exact same shocking incident in much greater detail -- and with direct quotes -- do we know that the Times' rendition was complete bunk.
ABC News reported: "One Pima Community College student, who had a poetry class with Loughner later in his college career, said he would often act 'wildly inappropriate.'
"'One day (Loughner) started making comments about terrorism and laughing about killing the baby,' classmate Don Coorough told ABC News, referring to a discussion about abortions. 'The rest of us were looking at him in shock ... I thought this young man was troubled.'
"Another classmate, Lydian Ali, recalled the incident as well.
"'A girl had written a poem about an abortion. It was very emotional and she was teary eyed and he said something about strapping a bomb to the fetus and making a baby bomber,' Ali said."
Here's the Times' version: "After another student read a poem about getting an abortion, Mr. Loughner compared the young woman to a 'terrorist for killing the baby.'"
Ann Coulter found that. Have you heard of her? She's good.
Thanks to Nice Deb, who's covering a lot of the Loughner story that I never even heard about.
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— Ace Damn. He went to all that effort and then blew it.
He was good on the set-up: He had sex with a dead woman, claiming, straight-faced, he didn't realize she was dead.
But then, at his moment of glory, as the police come to arrest him, he tells them...
... that he tried to perform CPR and also called for an ambulance.
I don't get it. It's too subtle for me.
JOKE FAIL.
Thanks to Slublog.
More to the Story: Rocks either has a different article about this, or is making some (quite plausible) inferences; either way, seems like there's more to the tale.
According to him she was not dead when they started and they don't hold you on half a million bond for necrophilia. They think he killed her, probably during sex, but don't have the facts yet. So, they charged him with this instead to hold him till the forensics come in. Expect murder charges and a defense of rough sex.
Update: Apparently, he videotaped the liaison, then tried to hide the camera from cops.
So, he'll be released, obviously, as I'm certain that videotape will prove his story to the final detail.
The only thing that could make this story more unappetizing is if it turns out to involve this man and his dead sister or, maybe, Tom Sizemore and anyone else.
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— Ace Good news?
Uhhhh... Not in the sense that she's no longer subject to intraparty discipline.
That said, I don't expect her to suddenly become worse or anything. But she also doesn't have any particular reason to hew to right.
She actually dates the decision to 2006-- which just might be true, maybe. Some people do tire of the bloodsport of politics.
“I have known since 2006 that I wouldn’t seek another term,” the senator said in a telephone interview. “I wanted to announce it on my own terms and in my own way."
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— DrewM The repeal vote was scheduled for earlier this week but was postponed in order for the House to pass a resolution on the shootings in Arizona (they were against it, even Ron Paul who normally votes no or skips these kinds of ceremonial votes played along).
Now it's time to get back to work.
A Cantor spokeswoman confirmed the vote Thursday afternoon.“As the White House noted, it is important for Congress to get back to work, and to that end we will resume thoughtful consideration of the healthcare bill next week,” said Cantor spokeswoman Laena Fallon. “Americans have legitimate concerns about the cost of the new healthcare law and its effect on the ability to grow jobs in our country. It is our expectation that the debate will continue to focus on those substantive policy differences surrounding the new law.”
Naturally there's the whole "How can the GOP do this now?" thing out there and it will only get worse during the debate and after the vote.
Personally, I think they should have done it this week.
If the House wanted to take a few hours to say nice thing about their friend and colleague, fine. That's certainly understandable and appropriate. But the idea that all serious business gets put off indefinitely gives a nut like Loafnerd far too much credit and power.
I think a more appropriate tribute to the wounded Giffords would have been to continue on with the work at hand as soon as possible. It would have demonstrated that the Congress and the country is stronger than any one person and that neither will not be held hostage by the acts of a mentally defective and violent man.
Did the Ninth Circuit shut down because of the death of Judge Roll? No. The court house in Tuscon will be closed for a few hours tomorrow to allow people to attend the Judge's funeral but otherwise, the business of justice goes on.
Thankfully, there's no similar need for members of Congress to attend a funeral for one of their own.
Next week it's back to business and for all the nice talk about improving the discourse (which is all it is for liberals...talk), debate will be heated, lines will be drawn and votes will be taken. Just as it should be in a representative republic.
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— Ace Before getting to this -- stop getting on Drew for saying the speech was good. Apparently everyone agrees, pretty much. Blogs are supposed to be about the truth and honest reactions, not some Paul-Bot endless regurgitation of pre-scripted talking points so that the "right memes" are forever broadcast to the greater public.
There is really no "greater public." It's just us, by and large. There is no need to suppress honest opinions so that outsiders don't see them because there are no outsiders. It's pretty much just us insiders, so we can talk freely among ourselves.
If you ever think to yourself "Well, I don't mind that he said that, but I sure would have appreciated it if he said it privately, among friends," well, this is "privately, among friends." I/we are never quoted on CNN or even Fox (and Rush only quotes when he likes a point) so there is very little danger that somehow this site is going to influence the debate in the "wrong way."
Just a reminder. Let's keep some perspective. I am sadly aware of how limited this blog's actual influence is; trust me, Politico isn't shaping its predictable, set-in-stone Narratives by taking cues from me or the cobs.
Anyway: Here is what Obama actually said, at Hot Air.
And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, letÂ’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy [-- it did not --] but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.
Hot Air has "[-- it did not --]" in brackets because that wasn't part of the speech as written -- Obama apparently inserted it.
It's possible, likely I'd say, there was debate on the "It did not" line and at the last minute they took it out, as a pander to the left; but Obama did actually put it back in. So whatever his motives here -- doubt 'em as I do -- in the end he did say something important. "It did not."
That's a big reason that many right-leaning people are praising the speech, by the way. I didn't catch that (because I was looking at the transcript of the speech as prepared) when I said it was bad.
I sure would have liked a stronger statement.
Got that? Good. Now watch how the NYT quotes Obama.
This horrific event, he said, should be a turning point for everyone — “not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation.”
They delete the "It did not" entirely. Now, you may say, "Well they were going from the prepared remarks." Um, okay, but they did see the speech, did they not? It was on at 8:30 or so Eastern; it's not as if it aired too late for them to quote him accurately.
No, they deleted this because this hurts The Narrative. That's right, Obama himself wounded The Narrative, and not accidentally, either; but deliberately, because he knew The Narrative was false. And even though he didn't have the inclination to offer a longer repudiation of it, he did nevertheless offer up a brief, unscripted one.
And this was too much for the New York Times to take, because they have so much riding on The Narrative; they, along with their in-house mental patient Paul Krugman, have been pushing it the very hardest among all newspapers, even when other "lesser" newspapers have noticed it to be quite wrong.
They're not giving up the ghost, you see, and if that means editing Obama's actual words to keep The Narrative in better health, so be it.
They have now descended to changing the quotes of their own preferred President because now even Obama is too right-wing for them.
The other credit Obama is getting -- from the right -- is that while his speech was open to greater latitude of interpretation that I'd like -- and proof of that comes from the New York Times itself failing, spectacularly, to understand what their own dear leader just told them -- he did seem to caution the left against over-reading the tragedy and using it as a new "occasion" to demonize each other.
But what we canÂ’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations...
His words really only made sense in that way. In other words: Do not politicize this shooting.
I missed the import here the first time 'round, but that does seem to mean -- to me-- that those who are using this an occasion to turn on each other (that would be the unhinged left) should cool out.
Oh sure, the right should stop too, I'm sure he means; but I think it's obvious, even to him, who is acting defensively in this phase of turning on each other, and who is on the attack.
Allahpundit is goofing the New York Times for lapsing again into Loughnerian Conscience Dreaming -- in a speech directed at them, they see in it only new scorn for Palin. They willfully missed the message.
Now, actually, at this point we come to why most on the right liked the speech but many on the right still did not.
Those on the right who liked the speech are praising Obama for making these statements which, if you read them carefully enough, seem to caution the left about tearing itself into a red frenzy over this.
Those of us who like the speech less don't like it because the speech was elliptical enough, vague enough, ambiguous enough that the New York Times could miss the point if they tried hard enough, which in fact they did.
This is why I said last night he still seemed to be "pandering" to the left -- he was keeping their lunatic theory viable. He wasn't endorsing it, but he also wasn't clearly repudiating it.
Now, some might say "Well Good Lord man that is the best you could hope for, isn't it?" Yes, I suppose, given Obama, that is the best I could hope for. That he would not endorse their lunatic claims, and might even caution them away from making them if you read the speech closely enough and opened your mind to the possibility of "Hey, maybe he means me too."
But I could tell from the speech-as-prepared that there was a lot of interpretation left for the left to claim the speech meant what they wanted it to via their ably-demonstrated gift of Conscience Dreaming.
And you see here the Times demonstrating that gift. As they were permitted to do.
So while it might be the best I could hope for, it still isn't what I'd actually want, and if I'm going to say whether I like or didn't like it, ultimately I have to go by whether it was true and strong in its truth. Not mealy-mouthed and bashful about it.
So it's a glass half full/half empty thing. Yes, he said some good things. But he said them so cleverly-- so... artfully -- that the intended recipient of the message could miss it if they were inclined to miss it, and oh boy howdy! Are they inclined to miss it.
But it should also be noted he did make some ambiguous stabs and instructing the Loughner Left about some hard truths. I missed that the first time, and I have to give him some credit for that, even if (as I suspected) he permitted the left to indulge its fantasies still further.
Hah! Maybe more influence than thought. The NYT has now changed the quote to what Obama actually said.
Of course, they do not acknowledge the correction. Because they never acknowledge the embarrassing ones. They only acknowledge the understandable ones -- transposed digits in a number, misspelled names, etc. They make a grand spectacle of correcting these -- and ostentatiously noting the corrections -- so you will think all of their errors are prominently corrected.
In fact they're not -- they make great shows of minor league typo corrections in order to stealth-correct all the important stuff.
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— Ace Obvious, I think, but this kind of guy is looking for fame.
The other day I was misspelling the Idiot Killer's name. A commenter pointed it out, and I was about to correct (it had been inadvertent), but it did occur to me: Why not just misspell his name, as we famously did, to sadly no good effect, with Linza Muzzarelli? If this Idiot Killer wants his name remembered, why not try our best to deny him that?
But I did correct his name, anyway.
Then I went on to Jim Geraghty's site, and he pointed out he was writing the name as seldom as possible, and I thought, Gee, I'm a dick. I should have misspelled it after all.
But that's just symbolic, anyway; the name cannot be suppressed. Only a MiniTruth could suppress it, and thank God we don't have that.
That said, it's important to this kind of cat about how he's remembered. Calling him a monster is not an insult; he wants us to think of him as a monster. A failure in all aspects of his life, he decided, correctly, that the only possible way the world would ever know of him would be for him to commit a stupid, crude atrocity, a type easily achievable with minimal planning and strategy, because that is the most his borderline-retarded level of intellect and discipline could achieve.
Turned away from the most menial jobs as patently unqualified, shunned by women as 400-watt blazing-white loser, charmless, ugly, unskilled and weird, he set out to become The Bogeyman, the ugly monster, and succeeded at that (but what else was he capable of, except stupid lumbering destruction?).
So calling him a monster isn't an insult; he is so degraded and limited in his ambitious that "monster" is his highest ambition.
I think what we can do is tell the truth about him: He is borderline retarded. I do not say that to hurt anyone with mentally-challenged people in their families, but to hurt him, because he wants us all to believe that behind that ugly, bent-smile mask of psychotic horror there is something more to him, something interesting, something searching, that we should all pay attention to.
But there is not. His "philosophy," as it were, consists entirely of aping the most childishly-simplistic syllogisms of a logic class he obviously dropped out after two weeks; half of them are wrong in the first place, and the other half are along the lines of "Apples are red. This is an apple. Therefore this is red." His other Big Insight is to note that our dating conventions are in fact conventions, just like our naming conventions. Or our bridge-bidding conventions. Or... any convention.
I do not think he understands what the word "convention" means but if he bothered to look it up, and noticed that not only has all of this been noticed before but it's been noticed well enough that there's a specific word for it, it might have saved him a great deal of strain on his stunted, inadequate, deformed intellect.
People will be looking for "evil" in his writings. That is the wrong tactic. Evil, in its literary form, is interesting -- ask Dante -- whereas Jared Loughner is not. Evil, in, again, its literally form, is sexy -- ask Dracula -- whereas Jared Loughner appears to be a loaf of bad bread that didn't quite bake long enough in the oven.
Evil, in its genuine form, is almost always crude, stupid, and ugly. Like Jared Loughner.
But searching for evil in his writings would be to pay sympathy to the Devil, for that, to him, is his highest aspiration. But Jared Loughner is not the Devil, and I know this, because the Devil isn't pasty and paunchy. He's not a 115 pound loser encased in 45 comfort pounds of babyfat and couch-padding.
The more rewarding task is to search his leavings for stupidity, confusion, inadequacy, and ugliness, because in his shut-in, pathetic, socially-isolated life he left us a veritable treasure trove of full-spectrum failure.
Here's Ladies' Man Nephew Fester attempting, he thinks, a sexy come on to someone.
I bet your hungry....Because i know how to cut a body open and eat you for more then a week. ;-)
Don't focus on the grotesquerie of taking "eating out" somewhat more literally than usually intended; that is just this flabby dullard's ripping off of American Psycho and trying to be "weird" because "weird" is the closest thing he has to a personality.
No, focus on his pathetic attempts to rescue this obtuse flirtation with a winky-smiley-emoticon at the end. That is worse than insane; that is sad.
His full-spectrum failure with women -- an impressive debacle, given the fact that almost everyone hooks up or winds up married, no matter how disadvantaged they may be -- is a frequent complaint of Loughner's, who's such a colossal failure in this regard that he can't even hide his shame, as most people do.
Here he is, pathetically telling others of his failures, and, even worse, resorting to transparent fantasy of selective, protective recall of events even in doing so:
Its funny... when..they say lets go on a date about 3 times..and they dont....go...
That is funny. So funny, in fact, it doesn't happen. Women rarely ask men on dates, and I'm quite certain no one ever said "lets go on a date" to Jared Loughner. As evidence for this, I submit Exhibit A.
Further, if a woman is so interested in a man that she skips the social convention (look it up, Jared) and does ask a man on a date, guess what -- she goes on the date.
Obviously what we have here is Loughner begging women, multiple times, to go on dates with him, and them demurring in the vaguest, safest way possible because he's so crackling with weird, jangly, ugly energy they're a little too afraid to just say "No." Not sure how the scrawny and yet still quite chubby boy would handle it. And he is incapable of comprehending that he's been given a polite "no thank" you -- even after the third time 'round.
This leads, of course, to Loughner theorizing further on male-female interaction, again resorting to stupid, ugly fantasy to mask the terrible reality of his failure from himself.
Later that day, he posted a rant titled "Why Rape," which said women in college enjoyed being raped. "There are Rape victims that are under the influence of a substance. The drinking is leading them to rape. The loneliness will bring you to depression. Being alone for a very long time will inevitably lead you to rape."
So why didn't he rape? I don't know, but I doubt he could have overpowered a woman. He didn't lack the will or nastiness; he just lacked the upper-body strength. I suppose we have to be grateful for that.
Having solved the eternal puzzle of male/female interaction, the Idiot Killer Loughner tries to untangle further mysteries:
Would you hit a Handy Cap Child/Adult?This is a very interesting question...
Actually it's not terribly interesting to me, because Jared Laugher, who is himself a "Handy Cap," has provided me with a ready answer, and no question answered so immediately is truly "interesting." But let's follow the philosophical inquiry of the deformed boy-toad further:
There are mental retarded children.
Do tell.
They're possessing teachers that are typing for money.
Remember: Highest in Loughner's skill-set, per his own self-description, is his attentiveness to, and expertise regarding, the subject of English grammar.
What you just read, then, is Lougher firing on all his one cylinders. What you just read is as good as he gets.
This will never stopÂ….The drug addicts need to be weeded out to be more intelligent.
What can I say? The man makes a surpassingly good case.
The Principle of this is that them c— educators need to stop being pigs.
That sentence is a bit of a surprise, because despite being ungainly, ugly, and clumsy, it actually contains no actual mistakes of grammar.
Yes, read it again. It's actually spelled correctly, with no mistakes of punctuation (such as Loughner's bafflement about the correct usage of ellipses and his unsurprisingly-schizophrenic mind about how many periods are proper in an ellipsis).
Loughner's special genius at "grammar" is to deploy it so crudely and clumsily that it appears he's making mistakes and speaking in a third language even when he's managed, as a technical matter, to write one of his few instances of clean prose. Correction: Nope, I got so inured of his endless errors I missed one here. "Them." So his streak of grammatical failure is pretty much uninterrupted.
But he's not done philosophizing:
On April 28, Mr. Loughner wrote: "How many stars are in the universe?" Other posters responded with mathematical calculations. Later in the thread, Mr. Loughner shifted gears: "What do Chocolate cookies taste like?"
Neither of those questions is automatically stupid, but they are stupid in Loughner's case, as it's pretty plain he's just asking childishly-simple questions because he picked that up from the three paragraphs of a Zen primer he was able to manage before his headaches set in, and plainly has on interest in actually exploring the issues. These stupid questions are not intended to solicit information but rather convey information about Loughner, and that information, he hopes, is that he has wide-ranging mind full of deep inquiry.
In fact, he's a diagnosable moron in the old, medical sense of the term, who plainly has no Act II with regard to his "inquiries." He asks a simplistic question hoping people will perceive some depth behind it, but when it's time to demonstrate that depth, he's not up to the challenge and has to get out from being in over his head by asking what cookies taste like.
If someone had answered that, he just would have tried "Why rain?" or "What Monday?" or "Who America?" or some other crackerjack sophomorism.
He probably seized upon some Zen charlatan's observation that four-year-olds are the wisest among us for they question the most. Which heartened him, because that's about his speed.
By the way, I knew someone, briefly, who according to his friend's testimony had been nearly brain-damaged by constant pot use (my friend said, That's why I don't smoke every day), and this was the kind of childlike-stupid question he'd ask. Like, he turned to me as we were watching MTV, and asked, "How is it someone you never heard of suddenly get on every tv channel and radio station all at once?" I was a bit baffled by the question, because the answer seemed obvious: "You never heard of her, but her producer, record label, and marketing department did, and they've timed the advertising campaign and full-court press to get airplay for this moment," but he didn't seem to appreciate the answer. He seemed to think the answer should be more metaphysical, more mysterious.
Because, I note, he was stupid, but thought he was asking a very ethereal sort of question, and thought it should have a similarly ethereal answer. Having gotten a real answer, he went back to zoning out.
That's all Loughner's questions are. He, wrongly, thinks he's in the vanguard of asking such questions, so when he asks "How many stars in the universe?" he intends it to be a stunner for his audience. When his interlocutor gives him an answer -- with a formula and everything -- he's not interested, because it was never his intent to actually find an answer; it was his intent to be praised for asking the question, and he's disappointed that it turns out to be something a lot of people have already thought about and, in fact, pretty much answered.
He's disappointed to find out, over and over, that rather than being rather ahead of the game he's about eight to ten mental-years behind it (if not more).
But that's where he lives, isn't it?
On May 14, at 10:50 p.m., Mr. Loughner begins an online thread he called, "How many applications....is a lot?" It contained what appears to be a list of 21 retail outlets he had applied to or failed to get a job at, including Crate & Barrel, Wendy's and Domino's Pizza....
One gamer advised him that in order to get a job, he needed to provide potential employers such things as references and a list of jobs he had held previously. Mr. Loughner replied in a profanity-laced message that he knew that. "CANT HOLD TERMINATION AGAINST FUTURE EMPLOYEE !" He repeated that line 117 times.
I'm sorry to waste everyone's time "fisking" a mental defective; but I sort of think the exercise is useful, to deny him what he wants, and on a personal level, it's cathartic to vent hate at a truly hateful thing.
I'll just end with the Idiot Killer Loughner accidentally stumbling on to the answer to one of his insipid questions without realizing it:
"If you went to prison right now.....What would you be thinking?"
Two days earlier, whining again about his uninterrupted string of failure in trying to interest a woman in his meager "gifts," Loughner had answered himself, but he was too stupid to link the answer to the future question:
"Its funny when your 60 wondering......what happen at 21."
Odd that he didn't put 1 and 1 together. With a new record of six periods in his ellipsis, it certainly seemed as if some less-damaged part of his brain was trying to signal something big.
A message found after the shooting contained the words "Die, Bitch" in relation to Congressman Giffords. I note that it is not irony -- it is inevitability -- that this ragged mound of flop-sweat and failure could not even manage the trivially-easy task of killing an unarmed and unaware woman at pointblank range with a good pistol.
Even setting out to achieve an evil so simple his deformed brain could cope, he still failed.
Even setting his goals low enough that even he could, in theory, achieve them -- even in his brutishly-stupid aspiration to be a discount-rack off-brand factory-irregular damaged-packaging nothing of a minor assassin -- he is still the same abject failure he was at all other aspects of his life.
Jesus Christ All Mighty. This sick fuck is the biggest loser in the history of the earth.
Suprisingly... A lot of posters aren't on board with this mockery. I suppose because they themselves know mentally-incapable people and extending that empathy they've learned.
But, as Alex #11 said, my aim here is demystification. He wants mystification; I am doing my best to deny it to him. This is less about Loughner -- he's a nothing; he's a bug -- it's about the next Loughner.
As the Judge says sometime during The Wall: I sentence you to be Exposed...! Exposure is, for most, a scary thing.
All these vermin are the same, and they're uninteresting and unworthy in the same way. Their "brand differentiation," if you will, is their mystique of being "evil."
I'm saying no. No mystique. You are destructive, stupid, illiterate fat chubby loser. And you acted out like a piece of bad machinery did, with a lot of noise and confusion and some deaths; but we pay you no more mind than that machinery we now bury. You don't change our worldview.
You don't have that power. You're nothing.
Now, there are some killers who I suppose might be interesting in some morbid way but I'm telling the truth when I note this one is decidedly not. He's just a pathetic, angry retarded boy who didn't get the medication he needed.
Another commenter offers his snark on this loser:
Laughner is merely the Ralph Wiggum of evil.
Maybe that's too lighthearted for this project, but yeah, that's about right.
Loughner set out to teach the world something. All he taught us was what we already knew: subliterate losers get angry at their predicament and we need to crate them off to safe places before they explode like cretin-bombs.
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