‘Family members have described a home life defined by abuse, neglect, drug use, and deadly access to a cache of weapons. At least two of Colt’s family members were aware of the boy’s allegedly abusive living situation and troubled home life.’

‘[Another family member] said that Colt “was begging for help from everybody around him.”’

Nancy Lanza, Deja Taylor, the Crumbleys, Colin Gray – the crazed, gun-obsessed parents of America’s littlest mass killers/mass killers in waiting — what are we to say about them? Is there anything we can do?

There are so many of them by now. The list of four highlights only the most depraved/pitiable progenitors of the sickest of the shooters; but it’s easy to recall plenty more child/preteen/teen predators with a smaller body count, or with a higher age of slaughter-onset. These are America’s version of Africa’s child soldiers, automata we glance at in court and quickly look away from because we are totally not interested in taking on board just how grotesque a gun culture we have now achieved, how the AR-15 revolution is actively eating its children, how generational gun insanity is upon us. Crazy people with guns produce crazy children with guns; and families and neighbors watch it happen and think none of my business or hey maybe weaponizing this troubled kid will help him.

Gun laws in this country will only become more lax. No point looking there. The only thing that might make a difference is vigilance — people in the orbit of graphically fucked up and highly armed families finding the guts to call the authorities. It take guts cuz duh these are nutty violent people with twenty guns.

And then the authorities must do whatever they can do — remove the guns, take the killer-to-be out of the classroom, detain the parents for other shit they have going on (drugs, illegal weapons, child abuse, disturbing the peace, whatever) — to begin neutralizing America’s emergent children’s army.

Idaho: Big Whoop

“We think of ourselves as in the same basket as the top ten worst health care states, like Mississippi and Alabama,” says Strom Courtland, member of the Idaho House, and chair of its Health and Welfare Committee. “As of now, we’re ranked something like 26th worst, but aspirationally we see ourselves much higher than that. The current list is dominated by the deep south, yet with our high rates of vaccination refusal, hatred of all forms of local and federal government presence, anti-abortion laws so strict our docs are leaving and we can’t get any to replace them (plus of course several of our hospitals have closed their labor and delivery units!), and, finally, with a statewide disbelief in empirical science, our ranking can’t go anywhere but up.

And I’m particularly proud to announce today that, because so many of us don’t vaccinate our children, rates of WHOOPING COUGH – yes, you read that right, a painful protracted children’s disease eradicated in the nineteenth century! – have exploded in our state! Like KAAAPOWWWW!!!! Sit tight, Idaho, and watch all our babies cough up blood!

“Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials.”

FROM THE OFFICE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN EASTMAN

SUBJECT: DONOR #9,180,454: MARGARET SOLTAN, AKA Margaret Rapp, AKA Margaret Rapoport

EXHIBIT A:

EXHIBIT B see attached donation records in the amount of $500

Notes: As Margaret Rapp, daughter of CAREER FEDERAL SCIENTIST Herbert J Rapp born CHAIM RAPOPORT (source: Tucker Carlson), she performed at George McGovern candidate concert, Garrett Park, MD, August 1972. Married to Karol Edward Soltan, paid agent of G. Soros as codirector of Summer School in Political Science, Warsaw, Poland (mid ‘nineties), and uncle of Andrzej Soltan, currently employed in Warsaw, Poland as language instructor to Ukrainian refugees.

Liz Cheney: “This is my diplomatic way of…

… saying it: They’re misogynistic pigs.

Today at the Kansas State Fair: Best Apple Pie; Best…

Drunk Brandishing a Gun.

There goes his reelection bid.

’14-year-olds don’t need AR-15s.’

La Kid, chic as usual…

… in Takoma Park, Md., on this absolutely beautiful day.

WHEEHOOOO Saturday Night in Kentucky!

 ‘Kentucky has some of the weakest gun laws in the country, […] while having one of the nation’s highest gun violence rates.

But that’s just words, babe. That’s just words! Here’s what it’s like on the ground. On the road.

Looks like a whole bunch of people were shot down Saturday night on Interstate 75 by a dude arrested not long ago for Terroristic Threatening but you know still out there fully armed. It’s Kentucky!

He’s still at large, still fully armed, so, you know, WATCH YOURSELF.

“When our first two units got to the scene there, they said it was a madhouse: people on the sides of the road, emergency flashers going, bullet holes, windows shot out, nine vehicles shot. Can you imagine that? Just chaotic.”  This sheriff dept spokesman is so silly! Don’t sound like much more than your typical UK tailgate… And it’s so stupid because as Wayne LaPierre says  The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun so where was he? Kentucky needs more people to carry more guns so next time there’s a mass shooting on an interstate people can grab a Glock in their glove compartment and shoot right back and neutralize the bad guy. Piece of cake. Clean as a whistle.

Meanwhile yeah thoughts and prayers for the mass casualties for real!

Update: They found the AR-15 but not the shooter. Maybe he killed himself with one of his other 25 or so guns.

Nother: Says he’ll kill himself after he feels he has finished his work.

Pitch for Episode One, Rejected TV Pilot.

Opening scene begins with an evangelical preacher, who looks like David Bowie at the nadir of his drug addiction, boarding his private jet; his luggage consists of multiple machine guns and large quantities of fentanyl, of which he is a user. He has flown from North Carolina to Las Vegas to find his daughter, who lives in one of the city’s flood control tunnels.

Police arrive at his hotel room; they assume the guns are part of a mass shooting/terror plot and arrest him.

The preacher himself has called the police to his room to report something of his stolen. It has not occurred to him that his appearance/situation may arouse the suspicion of the police, who begin to ask about weapons. “I have a gun in my guitar case,” he tells them. The police discover the other weapons, which include an AR-15 with a scope. He also tells them about his fentanyl.

The preacher fails to appear for his probable cause hearing.

It’s schooling again in America.

‘Richard Aspinwall, a math teacher, heard commotion outside his classroom and entered the hallway to see what was going on. When he did, he was shot in the chest by the 14-year-old suspect, according to family friend Julie Woodson, who cited accounts by Aspinwall’s students.

“We had to watch our teacher come back in the classroom holding himself like he’s been shot, and fell to the floor,” 17-year-old Malasia Mitchell said. “And as he kept going, my teacher was shot again.”

Students in the class say they pulled Aspinwall back into the classroom and used the shirts off their backs to try and stop their teacher’s bleeding, according to Woodson.

Meanwhile, the students closed the door and protected themselves with desks and chairs, Mitchell said.

Woodson said Aspinwall “died as a hero trying to save his students’ lives.”’

Sing it.

Tucker has only got one ball,
Donald has two but very small,
JD’s are just a weewee
But poor old Hawley ain’t bally at all.

Baby with a Bushmaster

Learning how to kill students and teachers.

More babies w/ Bushmasters:

Christmas card from a guy who might spend next Christmas in jail.

‘One needn’t engage in endless debates about the nature of fascism to recognize corporatist Austrofascism [as defended by Adrian Vermeule and others] as a political vision that treated individuals as parts of a societal collective, assigned the state responsibility for directing the pursuit of happiness, and had the audacity to equate its repressive regulation of people’s lives with human flourishing. That such a vision is deeply inimical to America’s Constitutional tradition should be self-evident to every honest legal scholar.’

It’s The Audacity of Mope:

Lashing out against a world in which they are unhappy, [JD Vance, Patrick Deneen, and Adrian Vermeule] seek the sources of their discontent in an amorphous and carelessly defined liberalism.

************************

Hungary under raving illiberal V. Orban is really the only place acid haters of liberalism can thrive.

I mean, they can analyze the sources of their gnawing misery forever; but at some point, shouldn’t they stop whining and act? Shouldn’t they want to model for their children a happy parent, who lives in alignment with his deepest values?

If you had a choice between moping about in a free liberal democracy or frolicking in fascism, wouldn’t you frolic?

No one caring all that much about it, plus twenty or so guns all over everyone’s house, will produce this result.

Fatal Crashes, Killings And Suicides

“Through The Roof” In Natrona County

Yes, yes, booze and cowboyitis also play their part; but Wyoming keeps its First in the Nation suicide designation largely cuz of all them guns. You’re drunk and low and a little scraped up by life and… thar she blows! off your head.

Um. And you DIDN’T call child protective services?

Lauren Vickers, a neighbor, told the New York Post that the family had been trouble ever since moving into the neighborhood in 2022 and the kids were clearly not being taken care of.

‘There were nights where the mom would lock him and his sister out the house. And they would be banging on the back door, just screaming like ‘Mom! mom! mom!’ and crying. It was absolutely devastating,’ she said. 

She added that Marcee was often clearly intoxicated, even when driving her children [ … ] to school. 

‘I would find her in the driveway, passed out, with the car running and blaring music early in the morning,’ Vickers added.

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte