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Insanity, Mass Murder, and Suicide in my hometown

From my local paper: The Sacramento Bee — Suicides spur county jail re-examination

The six men who committed an unprecedented string of suicides at the Sacramento County jail in the last 10 months — five since January — had more in common than dying with a makeshift noose around their necks.

By the way, one of those six was Nikolay Soltys – who brutally killed his family (wife, unborn baby, aunt, uncle, two young cousins, and finally his toddler son) & put my town on the national news for a few weeks late last summer. This case inspired security guard Joseph Ferguson to try and ‘out-kill’ Soltys. What a wonderful town this is – California seems to bring out the inner psychopath. Something to do with being at the edge of the continent, I think – there’s nowhere left to go.

‘Liberal’ as an epithet

Why is it that so many self-identified ‘Conservative’ commentators confuse a broad ad hominem attack on a generic group they call ‘Liberals’ for actual intelligent commentary? George Will illustrates this tendency here, with this charming but useless assertion: Nothing more tellingly illuminates the contemporary liberal mind than the retreat from the defense of First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

I like George Will – anyone who loves baseball as much as he does can’t be all bad – but it’s a weak debater who characterizes some genericized enemy with such a broad, sneering stroke.

I would take his point more seriously if he merely spoke to his own position, rather than misdirecting attention with a vague notion of what ‘liberals’ think.

Yes, this happens in reverse, too. And it’s just as useless. Slinging mud just undermines the message. Or rather, the message becomes the mud.

That said, I don’t see nearly as much of that generic kneejerk anti-conservativism in the online news outlets, web-zines, or blogs I visit – why is that? So much for that ‘liberal media bias’ I’ve heard so much about.

I ::heart:: Frank Rich

How did I miss this column last week?

Anti-Semitism on the Rise in America

Thanks go to Glenn Reynolds for this link to the results of a new Anti-Defamation League poll

Turns out 17% of Americans surveyed are STRONGLY anti-Semitic.

What they didn’t report: 17% of Americans are slack-jawed inbred half-wits.

The Pledge-n-stuff

Strange Origins of the Pledge of Allegiance, from the ACLU website, have been making the rounds online this last week, thanks to the Ninth Circuit’s ruling. Yes, I’m behind the times (actually, been talking about this ruling elsewhere), but still good links!

Israel – The Wall (of isolation)

The New Republic Online: The Wall

Good stuff here. Some of my favorite quotes:

“The world hates us and always will,” a neighbor said to me on the stairs before wishing me a good day. “What more do you need than the Holocaust?”

In a recent interview, the liberal novelist Amos Oz confessed he’s haunted by his father’s observation that, before the Holocaust, European graffiti read, “JEWS TO PALESTINE,” only to be transformed in our time into, “JEWS OUT OF PALESTINE.” The message to Jews, noted Oz: “Don’t be here and don’t be there. That is, don’t be.”

Perhaps the Holocaust’s deepest long-term wound on the Jewish psyche isn’t the actions of the murderers but the passivity of the onlookers. Jews must continually resist the suspicion that even the enlightened world cares little for their survival.

But she needed a license to drive the car, didn’t she?

You need a license to drive a car, but any damned idiot can have a baby. And odds are, she will.

CNN.com – Police: Children die in hot car while mom at salon – June 29, 2002

This one probably had more training on how to pump gas than she did on how to cope with the practicalities of child rearing – even such seemingly obvious factoids as “Don’t leave your child alone in a car.” But she’s free to procreate at will.

I am not making light of this. At all. But frankly, I don’t know that Murder One is a legal charge in this case – the Chief of Police’s wishful thinking notwithstanding – since that usually requires some concept of premeditation. If this woman was capable of thinking that far in advance, she’d never have left her poor children in the car in the first place.

Argh?

I’m getting laid off. Well, actually I am laid off. Or something. I’m technically still employed through the end of August, and on severence after that, but I’ve been home for a week. They lay off because they can’t afford to maintain headcount – but they’re paying me to not work for 60 days? Whatever.

I don’t mind. I suppose I should – but I don’t. I don’t care for not knowing if I’ll have a steady paycheck come November, but I’m SO glad to leave a dying industry. All I felt the first couple of days was relief. Now, I’m heading into ‘I’m so bored, I must find something to do” territory. But I like being able to sleep in, so I’m content for now.

I had a minor crisis a couple of days ago – I started worrying about squandering this opportunity. Should I go ahead and just jump into trying to do something completely different, which I’ve always secretly wanted to try, but which I might fail miserably at, leaving me destitute? Or simply view this as an opportunity to get a better version of the job I’ve already done – serviceable but dull.

Ack. The pressure.

Possom Time!

Ah, Summertime, when young possums roam my backyard.

This summer, we’ve seen at least one every night, occasionally two – one night last week, I swear we had three back there at the same time.

They’ve been in this neighborhood longer than we have. When we first moved in (5 years ago), there was a small tree overgrown with ivy in the back corner of our yard that was an absolute haven for opossums (we suspect the first litter of babies we saw that summer was born amidst that ivy). I think we upset them when we pulled it out. But, unlike the neighbors, we don’t have a dog to chase them off, so I guess we’ve been forgiven. They’ve found other places to hide during the day.

Nightly ritual – get the cats all in by nightfall; ’cause night-time is Possum Time. Our cats leave them alone, but better safe than sorry (and why stress the possums by leaving an audience out there?).

The cherry tree dropped a lot of fruit, so they’ve been rustling around over on that side of the yard. And they like to check out the compost heap.

The little buggers are darned cute. And pretty fearless, for the most part. They ignore us if we’re out there. The baby possum scampers down the path & out under the gate if he sees us, but the adults don’t care.

We discovered last night that one of the adult possums has some kind of injury to his left rear leg. I pray it’s not broken – because that would mean certain death. Hubby thinks it’s not broken, since he can move it – he just keeps his weight off of it. He’s scruffling around in our yard (or was, a few hours ago) – and it appears he ’slept over’ yesterday beneath our deck. This is not the sort of thing we want to encourage (great, nesting opossums under the deck, yikes), however, if his leg is not broken and it starts healing up, he’ll move on quickly. I’m assuming, of course, that he’s only sleeping over because travel back to his usual area is made difficult & painful due to the hurt leg – he’d have to climb over the fence and all. Heaven forbid he tries to make his home down there!

So sad to see him limping around.