December 15th, 2024
‘Reasonable people can and will disagree as to the merit of the charges filed by the Manhattan DA’s office, to the rightness of Penny’s intervention, and to his acquittal. Confined in the car with Neely and a bunch of frightened and vulnerable people, Penny can hardly be said to have gone in search of a proving ground that day. The question of whether he misapplied the choke that must have seemed like the least of all bad options was rightly a main focus of the trial.’

What shouldn’t be in dispute, however, is that the status quo regarding crime, mental health, and homelessness is intolerable… [P]eople suffering from severe mental illness are, in fact, more likely to commit violent crimes

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

Bring back involuntary commitment.

I understand that some varieties of this exist in some states. But look around. They are too lax, too complicated.

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

When I look at Goya’s picture of institutional life in 18th century Spain, I see human beings haunted by terrifying delusions, left to waste away in the dark, the dank, and the cold—but this resembles nothing so much as the current state of affairs in our subways, underpasses, and public parks. Contrary to the medical reality of Goya’s day, or the imagined setting of Cuckoo’s Nest, we do have the power to beat back severe mental illness in a patient’s brain, in an environment that is safe, clean, and calm. Not every patient will get better, but many will, and every single one deserves that chance. The bottom line is that inside of treatment, some of these people will get better. Outside of it, almost none will.

December 14th, 2024
Luigi Mangione’s Political Philosophy…

… rendered by Randy Newman.

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

If I had one wish
One dream I knew would come true
I’d want to speak to all the people of the world
I’d get up there, I’d get up there on that platform
First I’d sing a song or two you know I would
Then I’ll tell you what I’d do
I’d talk to the people and I’d say
“It’s a rough rough world, it’s a tough tough world
Well, you know
And things don’t always, things don’t always go the way we plan
But there’s one thing, one thing we all have in common
And it’s something everyone can understand
All over the world sing along

I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
I just want you to hurt like I do
Honest I do, honest I do, honest I do”

December 11th, 2024
Some McDonald’s breakfast…

... You may see a shooter
You may see a shooter
Across a crowded room
And somehow you know ...
You're watching with stealth ...
Hey this guy! He slaughtered
The head of U. Health!


Sat there with my buddies
Burghers of Altoona
Munching on McGriddles
Inside a crowded room
And then in a flash
As strange as it sounds
I looked at his eyebrows
My heart set to pound!

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons
Wise men never try.
Some McDonald's breakfast
When you find Mangione
Chewing on his hash browns
Across a crowded room
Then call 911
And capture your man
Or all through his life he
Will slaughter again

Once you have found him
Never let him go
Once you have found him
Never let him go!

December 10th, 2024
‘His social media profiles muddy the waters in regard to his personal politics and motive. His X account is full of posts about the future of AI, tech, altruism, and complaints about wokeism, and his header contains an image of the injury that may have possibly radicalized him. His Goodreads contains more left-leaning selections like The Lorax and Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry. He also reviewed the Unabomber’s book, writing that “when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”’

Muddy the waters is a nice way to put it. Y’all keep trying to parse this politically, but Mangione warnt even into his big boy pants before he killed a guy so stop flattering him. Could barely eke out three pages of ooh manifesto ooh and so far it sounds like Patty Hearst circa Symbionese Liberation Army. He is 26 years old, and his experience of the world encompasses private school, hikes in Hawaii, and computer games. When the police cornered him he reacted with the Moro Reflex. And minutes ago baby had a BIG tantrum.

I grant that he is radically handsome with the bright set of chompers you’d expect of his demographic, but killing someone in NYC (in itself a banality) and completing a pre-writing exercise falls short of Antonio Gramsci. Better to understand him with a typically bogus but let’s go with it anyway psychiatric diagnosis: Post-traumatic Embitterment Disorder. Onset was when he tried to take a surfing class but his bad back screwed it up. Since then his chronic pain has him gunning for the American health care industry.

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

 The writer and cultural historian Mark Harris, posting on Bluesky, described Mr. Mangione as “a very recognizable type of young male ideology tourist” — a “This Explains Everything addict” untethered to a coherent belief system. 

December 10th, 2024
Straight Outta Project 2025

[Mangione] called for the banning of “custom pornstar pocket pussies being sold in [Japanese] Don Quixote grocery stores.” He wanted the return of traditional Japanese culture, including karate, and an emphasis on athletics in school. In other posts he called for [American] porn to be regulated “no less than alcohol, cigarettes, and travel.”

A fine fascist in the making – read further in the little pisher’s writings – whose trajectory was interrupted only by his fateful entry into the Altoona Pennsylvania McDonald’s.

December 10th, 2024
He’s already batting a thousand.

Mangione verbally pushed back against two claims from prosecutors in court — first a claim that because Mangione was found with $8,000 in cash on him that he was trying to evade authorities.

The other claim was that because he had a Faraday bag on him, which blocks cell signal — this showed evidence of criminal sophistication. Mangione said to the first claim that he did not know where the money he had on him came from, saying maybe it was planted. On the second claim, he said that the bag was waterproof and he didn’t know about criminal sophistication.

December 9th, 2024
Aw. He just a baby.

 An officer asked him to pull down his mask and recognized him as the suspect from the New York shooting. When an officer asked Mangione if he had been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake.”

December 9th, 2024
The Mangiones – The Medicis of Trumpism

His grandfather owned a way-rightwing talk radio station; his cousin is the voice of Trump in the Maryland legislature. Luigi Mangione – the likely killer of the United Healthcare guy – has impeccable, historic, far-right, family credentials.

He seems to have peeled off from the family and acted from lefty motives, but ideologically it’s all a bit murky. Look what happened when les héritiers de Limbaugh attacked Mangione’s murderousness as clearly coming from/cheered on by the left.

[Ben] Shapiro and [Matt] Walsh harshly condemned liberals for cheering on the assassination in respective episodes of their eponymous podcasts, titled “The EVIL Revolutionary Left Cheers Murder!” and ” Why The Left Is Really Celebrating The Murder Of A CEO.”

But their followers disagreed with their criticisms and defended the left, arguing that they felt the same way about Thompson’s death …

“The fact that [M]att is trying to paint this as a left wing issue, when there’s clearly bipartisan celebrations going on, just goes to show how out of touch [wealthy] celebrities are, whether on the right or left, with regular everyday ordinary people,” one user said...

A third told Shapiro, “Just because ‘the left’ likes something doesn’t mean you have to instinctively hate it. Wake up and read the room bro.”

Disgustingly, portions of both left and right in this country seem pleased with what Mangione has done.

December 9th, 2024
‘[A]n employee at a local McDonald’s thought he looked suspicious and called police. Arriving officers noticed a fake ID so took him in for questioning.’

I believe the relevant cliche is unsung hero.

Luigi Mangione is in custody because a fast food employee in Altoona PA recognized his face from the pictures we’ve all been studying.

Once at the police station, the sources said, officers discovered Mangione had a gun similar to the one used in [Brian] Thompson’s killing, as well as a silencer and a fake New Jersey ID. The suspected gunman allegedly used a fake New Jersey ID when he checked into a Manhattan hostel last month.

Two senior law enforcement officials say Mangione had the name “Marc Rosario” on his fake NJ ID. Three sources familiar with the matter say the suspected gunman checked into the Upper West Side hostel using a fake NJ ID with the name “Marc Rosario.” Other fake IDs were found on Mangione Monday as well, investigators say.

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

Kaczynski with good looks.

[Mangione is] an anti-capitalist Ivy League grad who liked online quotes from “Unabomber’’ Ted Kaczynski — and seethed in a manifesto, “These parasites had it coming.”

Tech whiz Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md., apparently hated the medical community because of how it treated his sick relative, sources said.

… Mangione was valedictorian of his 2016 high school graduating class at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to online sites. High school tuition at the all-boys school is nearly $40,000 a year.

He said at the time of graduation that he planned to seek a degree in artificial intelligence, focused on the areas of computer science and cognitive science at the University of Pennsylvania, according to an interview with the Baltimore Fishbowl.

The tech hotshot graduated cum laude from the private Ivy League institution in Philadelphia with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE), Computer and Information Science in 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He also completed a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE), Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, his profile states.

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

Definitely the sort who thinks he can get away with murder.

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

His parents own two country clubs, one of which, Turf Valley, UD and her sister drove around not long ago, after lunch in the area. He seems to share a grandfather with this Maryland politician. Very wealthy family.

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

By the by: If you were his cousin – the politician – and you saw this all over the media —

wouldn’t you consider alerting the authorities? Did the guy’s enormous and apparently close-knit family cooperate?


December 7th, 2024
Says here they’ve identified…

… the shooter.

December 6th, 2024
What humor looks like when everyone has a gun.

Now the cops just need to narrow down their list of suspects to anyone in America who hates their health care plan and has access to guns… This guy [wrote on his bullet casings because] there’s so many bullet casings on the streets of New York … he wants to make sure we knew which ones were his.”

December 5th, 2024
The closer the authorities get to his identity…

… the closer Brian Thompson’s assassin possibly gets to suicide. Recall the very similar broad daylight ambush of Gianni Versace; his killer offed himself as the police zeroed in.

December 4th, 2024
The NYT is providing running updates.

It’s a big story when the CEO of the country’s largest, massively successful, health insurer (Les UDs have used it for years) is ambushed entering his New York hotel early in the morning and shot to death. Right there on the broad daylight streets of the big city, hit in the chest. Masked gunman at large.

So. What’s all this about? Let’s speculate.

For some reason, UD wants to go ahead and put it out there that this was personal. Not corporate villainy, not terrorism aimed at American capitalism, but one nut with a grudge against this guy. We’ll see.

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

Thompson had recently received several threats, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation. The police are still investigating the source and exact nature of those threats, the official said. Chief executive officers of health care companies often receive threats because the nature of their work.

October 7th, 2024
‘In the US, Rats could Soon have Better Birth-Control Access than Women’

Headline of the day.

August 18th, 2024
Headline of the Day

Trump Warns That if Kamala Harris Wins,

‘Everybody Gets Health Care’

Next Page »

Latest UD posts at IHE

Archives

Categories