Chinese Man Attacks 22 Children, 1 Adult With Knife Outside Primary School

A Guangshan county hospital administrator said the man first attacked an elderly woman, then students, before being subdued by security guards who have been posted across China following a spate of school attacks in recent years. He said there were no deaths among the nine students admitted, although two badly injured children had been transferred to better-equipped hospitals outside the county.

The Age of Turboparalysis » the Spectator

More than half a decade has passed since the recession that triggered the financial panic and the Great Recession, but the condition of the world continues to be summed up by what I’ve called ‘turboparalysis’ — a prolonged condition of furious motion without movement in any particular direction, a situation in which the engine roars and the wheels spin but the vehicle refuses to move.

The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression might have been expected to produce revolutions in politics and the world of ideas alike. Outside of the Arab world, however, revolutions are hard to find. Mass unemployment and austerity policies have caused riots in Greece and Spain, but most developed nations are remarkably sedate. Scandal and sputtering economic growth appear unlikely to prevent another peaceful transition of power within the Communist party of China. And in the US, the re-election of President Obama and the strengthening of his Democratic party in the US Senate reflect long-term demographic changes in an increasingly non-white and secular American electorate, not the endorsement of a bold agenda for the future by the Democrats. They don’t have one.

In the realm of ideas, turboparalysis is even more striking. On both sides of the Atlantic, political and economic debate proceed as though the bursting of the global bubble economy did not discredit any school of thought. Right, left and centre, the players are the same and so are their familiar moves. Public debate is dominated by the same three groups — market fundamentalists, centrist neoliberals, and mildly reformist social democrats — who have been debating one another since the 1980s. Someone who went to sleep like Rip Van Winkle in the 1980s when Reagan and Thatcher were in power and awoke today would find nothing new in the way of economic theories or political doctrines.

By now one might have expected the emergence of innovative and taboo-breaking schools of thought seeking to account for and respond to the global crisis. But to date there is no insurgent political and intellectual left, nor a new right, for that matter. In the US, the militant Tea Party right, many of whose candidates went down to defeat in this year’s elections, represents the last gasp of the Goldwater-Reagan coalition, not something fresh. The American centre-left under Obama is intellectually exhausted and politically feeble, reduced to rebranding as ‘progressive’ policies like the individual mandate system (‘Obamacare’) and tax cuts for the middle class which originated on the moderate right a generation ago. In Britain, the manifestos of various ‘colour revolutions’ — Blue Labour, Red Tory and so on — have the feel of PR brochures promoting rival cliques of ambitious apparatchiks rather than the epochal thinking the times require.

Why has a global calamity produced so little political change and, at the same time, so little rethinking?

More…

It’s so quiet tonight,
I fight back a stray tear,
and wish beyond words,
that you were still here.

I sent you out this morning,
to grow and to learn,
it’s so hard to fathom,
that you’ll never return.

Amidst a throng of reporters,
and roving news vans,
all I wish I could feel
is the touch of your hands.

In this moment of weakness,
though I am filled with fright,
I know the choir of angels,
has new voices this night.

You were taken too early,
too young, too soon,
In my grief I now sing
a long sorrowful tune.

The weight is so heavy,
on this great loving heart,
Why, my little child,
did you have to depart?

To truly accept this,
is a most daunting task,
there are demons to face down,
and hard questions to ask.

Still I hope beyond hope,
as I see your empty bed,
that somehow, some way,
better days are ahead.

Gun massacres have happened many times in many countries, and in every other country, gun laws have been tightened to reflect the tragedy and the tragic knowledge of its citizens afterward. In every other country, gun massacres have subsequently become rare. In America alone, gun massacres, most often of children, happen with hideous regularity, and they happen with hideous regularity because guns are hideously and regularly available.
The people who fight and lobby and legislate to make guns regularly available are complicit in the murder of those children. They have made a clear moral choice: that the comfort and emotional reassurance they take from the possession of guns, placed in the balance even against the routine murder of innocent children, is of supreme value. Whatever satisfaction gun owners take from their guns—we know for certain that there is no prudential value in them—is more important than children’s lives. Give them credit: life is making moral choices, and that’s a moral choice, clearly made.

source

It turns out that Ryan Lanza, earlier misidentified as the Newtown school shooter, was actually the suspect Adam Lanza’s brother.

According to public records searches, Ryan and Adam Lanza have both lived at 36 Yogananda St. in Newtown. A Nancy Lanza is also listed at that address. News reports indicate that Nancy is the mother of Ryan and Adam, that she worked at Sandy Hook Elementary as a teacher, and that she is presumed dead. The Hartford Courant is reporting that, in addition to the 26 victims found at Sandy Hook Elementary School, “another person was found dead at 36 Yogananda St. in Newtown.” The Courant does not identify the person found dead at that address, but CBS News and CNN are now reporting that Lanza’s mother was found dead in her home.

Public records searches also show that the same Ryan Lanza who lived in Newtown has recently shared an address in Hoboken, N.J., with people named Jessica O’Brien and Michael Shapiro. The circulated screenshots of Ryan Lanza’s Facebook account show responses from a Jessica O’Brien and a Michael Shapiro. In response to Lanza posting “Everyone shut the fuck up it wasn’t me,” O’Brien wrote: “Do you need anything ready for when you get home? Can I set anything out for you to grab and go? Anything else I can do L”. In response to Lanza writing “Fuck you CNN it wasn’t me,” Shapiro wrote “this is batshit insane” and “how the fuck do they jump to such a conclusion with zero evidence.”

This makes sense in light of an earlier report that the shooter may have been carrying Ryan Lanza’s ID:

…Former Jersey Journal staff writer Brett Wilshe said he has spoken with Ryan Lanza of Hoboken, who told Wilshe the shooter may have had his identification.

It’s been a rough day today, especially for many families in Newtown, Conneticut. I thought it was a fitting song for today, for tomorrow, for this holiday season and for every holiday to come:

Bring on the derp:

Well that was quick. So much for “today’s not the day to discuss gun control”.
Never let a good crisis go to waste.

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I would like to hear them explain how the Mexi drug cartels got a hold of more than 2,000 guns as part of Barry and Eric’s Fast & Furious operation.  They ignore that, but exploit this. Satan is proud of his minions in the Obama Nation.

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Agreed.  Sadly, it’s hard to tell whether Obama’s otherwise appropriate words are sincere.  A bit too much display of emotion - doesn’t look quite real.  Brushing away crocodile tears so he can grab our guns?

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As long as the “totalitarian freaks” are in charge of the schools, that will never happen. My retired school teacher, Obamaton brother would have crapped his pants if he had to hold a gun let alone look at one…He actually told me that I needed to be absolutely sure that an intruder was going to harm me before I shot him in defense of my family and myself…
These people are crazy children. They can’t accept that people would do what they wouldn’t do. That’s where they get the ‘negotiate with terrorists’ meme and the Co-Exist! bumper stickers.
Was someone in the Obama camp instrumental here? I wouldn’t be surprised if they were. Notice that there isn’t much info on him…shades of the Batman Rising shooter—the guy who didn’t look like himself and didn’t act alone. That was all hushed up too.
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Gun control will lead to the next revolution which is brewing under the surface.

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Obama could be heard mumbling “Yessssssss!”  under his breath when he saw the headlines….Next thing out of his mouth was a pre-prepared treatise on gun control.

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To bad some adult there wasn’t carrying and trained in firearms. It may have prevented some of the deaths that occurred. As it was, there was no chance at all. Just none. Evil definitely exists as demonstrated today.

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Where is the Outrage from Obama for Democrats and Union Goons calling for Violence?
Democrats are on record stating that “There will be blood, there will be repercussions”
Union Members Thugs are on record calling for a Civil War in the United States of America.

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Obama, Obama, Obama …. Your willingness to use every gun-related incident (including the ones you are creating) to push your fascist agenda to DISMANTLE the Constitution and DISARM the People is going to backfire.  ~ I bet you worked on that ‘one tear’ show in the front of the mirror b4 taking the podium.
We see what you did with gun-running to Mexico and we now know that you are disarming our troops in the Middle East while arming others who would do them harm.

Enough is enough.  We the People do not support your policies and we want our representative government back.

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So a photo op of the slippery snake, wiping his crocodile tears with his middle finger, For all the world to see. Yes obama,  You are becoming transparant after all.

Breitbart’s Joel Pollack asks the question on the minds of wingnuts everywhere:

He wiped away a tear. I wept with him. And then… that.

How are we meant to interpret that statement?

Must we accept Obama’s preferred response—gun control—regardless of the merits of the policy?

Is this another serious crisis the Obama administration will refuse to waste?

Does every problem have a government solution?

“That” was this statement from President Obama:

“We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this regardless of the politics.”

Forehead, meet wall.

I hope everyone here was spared directly and indirectly by today’s horror. Sadly, in America, it will happen again because it happened in the past over and over and over again.

washingtonpost.com

If today’s shooting doesn’t prompt action on guns, then nothing ever will

Posted by Greg Sargent on December 14, 2012 at 4:23 pm

The news from Newtown is indescribably awful, unbearable. The Associated Press puts the death toll at 27, including 20 children. I have kids, and I can’t describe how horrible I feel for the parents of those who are going through the worst nightmare any of us can fathom, or even for those parents who endured initial spasms of terror, only to discover to their indescribable relief that their own children had been spared. ‘Spared,’ even though they, too, may end up deeply scarred.

After these massacres our public officials regularly vow that a ‘conversation’ — whatever that means — has to take place about guns. After which they throw up their hands and lament that ‘political reality’ dictates that no actual discussion about gun policy could possibly go anywhere. And nothing happens.

—>Continued