29 March 2009
An unhappy redneck with guns strikes again
Victims nursing home patients this time, for Christ's sake
Categories:   Gun control

Eight killed in North Carolina nursing home rampage
 
Carthage, NC
March 29, 2009

(CNN) -- An armed man shot and killed seven patients and a nurse at a Carthage, North Carolina, nursing home Sunday morning before being wounded during a shootout with a police officer, authorities said.

Three other people, including the police officer and a visitor to the nursing home, were wounded in the attack, Carthage Police Chief Chris McKenzie said. The police officer was treated and released, McKenzie said.

The slain patients ranged in age from 78 to 98, Moore County District Attorney Maureen Krueger said. The man accused of carrying out the attack, 45-year-old Robert Stewart, was in custody, and his condition was unknown Sunday night, McKenzie said.

Stewart was not an employee of the nursing home -- the Pinelake Health and Rehab Center -- and he did not appear to have been related to any of the patients, she said.

"There is still more to be uncovered as far as his purpose in being there," she said.

A witness told CNN affiliate WRAL that Stewart was armed with a rifle, a shotgun and other weapons. The officer who stopped him, Justin Garner, "acted in nothing short of a heroic manner" and probably prevented the carnage from being worse, Krueger said.

Stewart faces eight counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony assault on a police officer, and other charges are pending, she said

Carthage is about 60 miles southwest of Raleigh.
 
Sunday's killings were the latest in a series of high-profile but apparently unrelated rampages in March, including the killings of 10 people by an Alabama man who was then killed by police. At a southern Illinois church, a man shot and killed the pastor and stabbed two parishioners...

In Carthage, crisis counselors were setting up in the town's First Baptist Church to aid survivors of the latest killings.

"I don't know the emotion entirely has set in," McKenzie said. "This is a small community built on faith, and faith will get us through."

____________________________________

And Robert Stewart of North Carolina, like other emotionally unstable American men who have murdered wantonly during the present month, had a constitutional 2nd Amendment right to all the firearms he wanted. 

Right?

Rush Limbaugh thinks so.

The late Charleton Heston thought so.

Following to its logical conclusion a favorite theme of you right wing nut cases--that the solution to the growing menace of enraged shooters in our society is for every man and woman to go armed at all times--should I assume the 98-year-old nursing home patient killed by Stewart should have whipped a Glock from under the covers and initiated a gun battle in the ward?

No, the solution is not more guns.  The solution is fewer guns. 

Every redneck in this nation does not have a right to an arsenal of rifles, pistols, and shotguns and hundreds or thousands of rounds of ammunition.

It is insanity.

Some of the guns have to go.

Gun laws must be tightened.

If Barack Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress are worth their salt, gun laws will be drastically altered before the 2010 midterm elections.

D. Grant Haynes
Posted by DGrantHaynes at 9:52 PM | Link | 0 comments
18 March 2009
Travis died for your sins
Chimpanzees are wild animals--not amusing little 'men' with large ears
Categories:   Animal rights

Chimp Shot Dead After Attacking Woman

HARTFORD, Conn., Feb. 17, 2009 (AP)

Travis the chimpanzee, a veteran of TV commercials, was the constant companion of a lonely Connecticut widow who fed him steak, lobster and ice cream. He could eat at the table, drink wine from a stemmed glass, use the toilet, and dress and bathe himself.

He brushed his teeth with a Water Pik, logged on to a computer to look at photos and channel-surfed television with the remote control.

But on Monday, the wild animal in him came out with a vengeance.

The 200-pound animal viciously mauled a friend of his owner before being shot to death by police... . 
____________________________

Chimpanzees have gotten too much bad press recently.

I'm here to defend these sad, misunderstood, maligned, and endangered creatures of the African bush.

We all read in horror the news story referenced above in which a 55-year-old Connecticut woman was severely mauled by a 15-year-old common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) named Travis. 

The unfortunate woman was visiting the animal's 70-year-old owner when the inexplicable attack occurred.

Travis was shot to death by a police officer that had been called to aid the victim of the savage attack.

And as if the Travis story didn't represent enough negative publicity for chimpanzees in a single month, several weeks after Travis was destroyed, animal behavior researchers in Sweden achieved great notoriety with a news story about Santino, a 30-year-old chimpanzee in a zoo there who had been seen gathering a cache of stones each day to hurl at zoo visitors.

Santino's behavior was said to offer the first proof that chimpanzees are capable of thinking ahead--of planning actions in advance and pursuing such plans when the time is right.

Uncaring and unthinking news editors dealt with Santino's story, like Travis', in a largely unsympathetic manner.

There were these dark, hairy, and funny looking "others" who were attacking innocent humans.

One of them--Santino in Sweden--actually had the temerity to devise a scheme for throwing stones at his tormentors when they visited the Furuvik Zoo where he is held.

How dare he!

In truth, Travis should not have been living as a quasi-human in the home of a human where he had to be kept in a secure steel cage the majority of the time.  Travis was not a human.  He was a wild animal native to equatorial Africa--one in whom instinctual behavior eventually overrode his unnatural and learned lifestyle as an almost-human creature in a Connecticut home.

Likewise, Santino, also a common chimpanzee, is a wild animal that should live on a warm African plain rather than in cold and damp Sweden.  Santino should not be imprisoned in a zoo where humans may point and giggle about his appearance and antics for the rest of his likely 50-plus-year life.

Nor should young chimpanzees that are forced by the advertising and entertainment industries to pose for "comical" but demeaning photos be so misused and abused.  Greeting cards, children's books, films, and ads featuring chimpanzees are in poor taste--an abomination to sensitive and compassionate persons everywhere.

Chimpanzees are highly intelligent creatures--man's closest relatives, genetically speaking.  Is it any wonder that they occasionally feel enough pain, chagrin, humiliation, and confusion while in captivity at the hands of humans to strike back?

Who could blame them?  One can only marvel that such instances of chimpanzee rage are not more common.

Man's fellow earth creatures are not here merely for man's pleasure, man's use, or man's abuse.  They are separate tribes entirely with an inherent right to live their lives in dignity--as free from pain, fear, humiliation, and angst as possible.

I disapprove of all wild animal captivity.  It is wrong and it is immoral.

D. Grant Haynes

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 4:11 PM | Link | 0 comments
12 March 2009
Mark Twain on human civilization
The species hasn't improved much since his time
Categories:   Musings from the edge

On the Damned Human Race

 by Mark Twain

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals (so-called), and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that the theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result...

Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl (if any) I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda's cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves, and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn't; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he has no use for, but the anaconda doesn't. This seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.

I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor servings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter's supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by chicane. In order to bolster up a tottering reputation the ant pretended to store up supplies, but I was not deceived. I know the ant. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals: he is avaricious and miserly; they are not.

In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals...

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity (these are strictly confined to man); he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is The Animal that Laughs. But so does the monkey, as Mr. Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No! Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it or has occasion to...

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns, he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man, with his mouth.

Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesars, he was at it in Mahomet's time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary's day... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. I consider that the strongest count against his intelligence is the fact that with that record back of him he blandly sets himself up as the head animal of the lot: whereas by his own standards he is the bottom one.

In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally, a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian from Aberdeen. Next a Turk from Constantinople; a Greek Christian from Crete; an Armenian; a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas; a Buddhist from China; a Brahman from Benares. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh, not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

One is obliged to concede that in true loftiness of character, Man cannot claim to approach even the meanest of the Higher Animals. It is plain that he is constitutionally incapable of approaching that altitude; that he is constitutionally afflicted with a Defect which must make such approach forever impossible, for it is manifest that this defect is permanent in him, indestructible, ineradicable...

And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor (some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perchance) insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of smirch less innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development (namable as the Human Being). Below us, nothing.
Posted by DGrantHaynes at 9:17 PM | Link | 0 comments
11 March 2009
A South Alabama Shootist
Assault rifles should be confiscated
Categories:   Gun control

Alabama shooting spree suspect Michael McLendon kills 10 and self in Kinston, Samson and Geneva

By Leo Standora
New York Daily News
 
March 11, 2009

An Alabama man with an assault weapon burned down his mother's house around her, shot his grandparents, aunt and uncle dead, then killed five other people Tuesday before turning the gun on himself, authorities said.

Coffee County coroner Robert Preachers identified the shooter as Michael McLendon and said he was in his 30s...

Authorities gave no motive for the rampage that claimed victims in several homes in the small towns of Kinston, Samson and Geneva and along the highway connecting them. Two of the dead were a sheriff deputy's wife and 3-month-old child... .
_______________________________

But according to redneck fools in this nation of idiots, the shooter had a 2nd Amendment right to an assault rifle--irregardless of his stability or lack thereof and irregardless of the fact that assault rifles are military weapons designed to kill as many humans as possible as quickly as possible.

Should Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress seek to reinstitute a ban on the sale of assault rifles, the hue and cry from "sportsmen" in Coffee County, Alabama, and a thousand other flyspecked sparrow fart locales will be overwhelming.

They will want Obama impeached or worse. They and lobbyists for the National Rifle Association will vow to destroy the career of every lawmaker supporting the assault rifle ban.

Assault rifles should not be in the hands of civilians. 

Period. 

Those presently held by civilians should be confiscated at once.

Oh, yes--it CAN be done.

Southerners said they would never again show fealty to the United States of America, but they did.

Segregationists said they would never accept blacks into their midst, but they have.

State and federal powers of coercion are tremendous. 

The old boys can be brought around.

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 3:19 AM | Link | 0 comments
02 March 2009
Poor Wall Street greed hound
He can't get the SUV he wanted
Categories:   George W. Bush and America's dark night of the soul

 

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal... ." -- Jesus   

 

He thought he could always make a buck by being savvy and "money wise"--by buying cheap and selling high--by taking ruthless advantage of the less skilled and less fortunate.

Now, his world has crashed on him and he is despondent. 

His God is money and he doesn't have enough of it to buy that 2009 SUV he wanted.

America and Americans were on a wrong track for a long time.  They are paying a price now. It is inevitable.  The laws of karmic adjustment are inexorable and unavoidable--for men and for nations.

 

 

 

Posted by DGrantHaynes at 7:23 PM | Link | 0 comments