49 Comments

Publish my name any time. Fearing Trump on the grounds of possible personal retribution seems unpatriotic to me. We stand up for freedom and justice or we don’t stand at all. Janet Vincent

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Me too. Kate King. Decatur, GA.

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I write again...as to the shooter in New York. Many people have had issues, small and large (though I have been fortunate) with insurance companies whether medical, life, homeowner or whatever. But anyone who says that this murderer in some way represents their frustration, no matter their level of issue past or present is 1000% wrong. Did Mr. Thompson's death fix any problems with insurance whether past or ongoing? I'd say no, but I might be cynical. I think I read that one of the companies changed some coverages on radiology, but I think that was started prior to the murder. Even if it cause some changes, is it worth killing a father and husband? No.

And for people who think the shooting was somehow cool, this wasn't a movie or TV show. Death by violence is ugly, not glamorous. Ask a police officer (I was one), firefighter, soldier, sailors, ER nurse or doctor. To find any joy or solace in this act diminishes anyone who thinks it was righteous.

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Superlative perspective on the assassination.

Makes it difficult to reconcile my feelings about a possible future for the orange clown.

Hope you and I end up in the same gulag, so we can compete to see who most effectively disses the wannabe fuehrer and torments the guards with our vulgar, disrespectful repartee.

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I agree with not altering my life not only in this situation but in many ways regarding letting outside influences like maga alter my way of thinking or acting. But these upcoming four years (and what I'm sure will follow unless the Dems get their heads out of their asses) have made me change. I don't fear him or his followers, especially him and his soon to be set up retribution tour. I served 3 years in the Army during Vietnam (though not IN Vietnam) and spent 26 years as a major city police officer. So if they want to get tough, bring it on.

After retiring, I remained in the union but recently quit because they endorsed trump. As a retiree I didn't get much benefit anyway, but I had wanted to support the men and women whom are serving. By quitting, did I alter my life? I liked seeing family stuff posted on social media but quit that too, again being influenced by outside forces, so to speak. This whole thing makes me sick. My name is Marty Gainer, and I endorse this message.

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Don Henley updated Woodie Guthrie's observation in the song "Gimmie What You Got":

You can arm yourself, alarm yourself

But there's nowhere you can run

'Cause a man with a briefcase

Can steal more money

Than any man with a gun

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I’ve said what I’ve said about politicians here and elsewhere, fascists and others. What I don’t want to ever do is rope in people or organizations who might be associated with me but have nothing to do with my rantings. Look what happened to Comet Ping Pong when a democrat placed a few orders there. I don’t want the uninvolved to get dragged in just because I’m willing to shoot my own mouth off.

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It seems like the rich people buying newspapers are kidding themselves. Doesn’t it take some really unique and special skills to the publisher of a successful newspaper? Not to mention a hard-core interest in the news business in general? Has anyone bought a newspaper as a side project and kept it successful?

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“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear."

― Mark Twain

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People used to steal our city-provided trash and recycling cans. After the city had to replace them 2 or 3 times, we put a camera in our alley to help us figure out who was doing it. And we spray painted our house number on our bins. The thefts stopped.

But one day someone had filled a bin with excessively smelly trash. After reviewing videos recorded by the camera, we could see which neighbor did it. He's an old man with city provided trash and recycling bins locked behind his wire fence adjacent to the alley.

We've lived in our current house for over thirty years. He was there before us.

So we dumped his crap next to his fence. He dragged it to a public trash bin on a nearby street corner, and left it on the ground next to the bin. He glares at our camera whenever he walks by our end of the alley. He has continued to dump his trash next to the public trash bin. There were two plastic garbage bags on the ground next to it when I walked to Metro this morning.

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Can you put a lock on the trash can lid up to when pickup is imminent?

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AND OPEN IT EVERY TIME I PUT TRASH IN THEN LOCK IT AGAIN?

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"AND OPEN IT EVERY TIME I PUT TRASH IN THEN LOCK IT AGAIN?" Yes -- and chuckling evilly to yourself every time you do it, imagining him trying and failing to open the lid. Hehehe.

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Know a fella who can rig a booby trap for you. But he draws the line at killing. Scaring you get for his basic fee. Scarring is extra.

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How many times per pickup cycle do you put out trash?

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I think you could hide in the trash can and spring out at him when he tries to dump garbage on you. Another idea... D.C. has a LOT of rats. Maybe trap a few, place them on your trash under the lid.

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I voted for “kept the ghost gun” because guns like that are notorious for failing even after a single use.

What shocked me most was that this domestic terrorist who tried to achieve a change in policy through violence had two engineering degrees. Engineers are disciplined and are to use their knowledge for the greater good.

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And would know better than to trust the reliability of a 3D-printed ghost gun.

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Do we know that it was, in fact, a printed weapon? Absent that, it could well be a kit, with far more reliability. That Thompson was shot in the back strikes me as perhaps significant since we're told that Mangione likely had/has back issues.

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True. Could even be an old fashioned zipgun. Though probably not because multiple rounds were fired and cartridges were ejected.

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Since the video seems to show him 'racking the slide' between shots, the evidence really doesn't prove anything about the firearm. Contrary to what we see 'in the movies', many excellent 'factory-built' firearms will not cycle (fire repeatedly) when suppressed.

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I’m no expert. I haven’t seen the video, I just know if somebody’s building a zip gun they’re unlikely to throw in a clip.

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“Might have” is interesting. So, um, should we have had someone take out the head of Ford when the company’s Pintos were exploding on contact? Cool? Boeing’s bosses today? Hire somebody to waste ‘im? All okay? You want to live in that country?

Well, no...but I wouldn't mind if someone took out the guy that came up with..."please hold, your call is important to us."

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If the imaginary perp has another bullet in the imaginary gun, please have the perp shoot the person who came up with, "Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed."

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Many, many, many more people have been negatively impacted by the American healthcare industry than by exploding Pintos or door-popping Boeings. I know it's anecdotal, but I know plenty of the former and NONE of the latter.

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And premeditation should be considered in murder by committee, just as in murder by individuals. The CEOs of Ford or Boeing made negligent decisions, they cut corners that they should have forseen would leave safety issues. Which is negligence. They took unacceptable risks, but some of that can only be lnown in hindsight. After all, had they known people would die, they would have known lawsuits would offset the savings from the cheaper manufacturing process.

But insurance policy? No, that is premeditated murder. There is a careful calculation of denying claims, knowing it will result in suffering and death, and still choosing to do so just to pad the board's bank accounts.

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Fact is, they all go through one form of risk analysis or another. Recent studies indicate that over half of all initial denials by private insurance companies are ultimately reversed and paid but --- and here's the rub --- after often protracted and costly appeals. For the patient, this can mean a period of limbo and thus the choice of ill-advised and even dangerous skipping or delaying of necessary follow-up care until the original bills are paid. So, the problem is not necessarily denied claims for specific procedures or care elements --- although what is "medically necessary" is very often a point of contention between a patient provider and an insurance company --- but more the whole process of resolving claims and the actuarial risk pool in which a patient finds themselves.

As for Ford and the infamous Pinto, the conventional wisdom (more or less confirmed subsequently by Lee Iacocca who was Ford president at the time of the Pinto) was that the company decided it would be cheaper to pay damages than make what would have been expensive safety modifications to the car. The issue with Boeing is not that it didn't have a rigorous --- and in fact, at one time, considered the industry's best --- risk management system to analyze, identify and mitigate potential hazards throughout the design, production, and operation of its aircraft. The problem was simply (and tragically) a matter of quality control over a period of time. So this sophisticated system was ultimately compromised by simple installation and materials issues, something the system presumably assumed just couldn't happen.

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How long should people have to wait before the Boeing executives who drove the fatal deficiencies in the design of the 737 MAX are sentenced to prison?

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I have some really old Boeing-branded USB flash drives I got from a trade show once. 2GB each (I said they were old.). Started having bad sector errors almost immediately. I should have seen them as harbingers.

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I'm proud to say I voted "other" because I figured out it was someone who saw himself as a hero. I hadn't gotten to the Kaczynski connection but I'm not surprised.

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Oh, and I believe he kept the ghost gun with him because he was planning some more. Wanted to be some sort of folk hero, killing the good guys and leaving bullets with notes on them behind.

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I meant killing the bad guys, of course. The curse of not having an edit function.

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Here's a story I learned about many years ago. I learned it from discovering the guy's loony pamphlet in a pile of trash at my university, and tucked inside was a New York Times article about the killing of a secretary at the American Physical Society, Eileen Fahey.

Something that has stuck with me for 30+ years is that the NYT felt compelled to describe her as having a "brief but blameless life", in which she had had only one single sweetheart (in the military at the time). I don't see how it would have justified her murder if she had been the skankiest of hoes. Now, if she had been an insurance executive, I might have felt differently... but of course, women were not employed in such positions in those days.

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/im-the-naughty-boy/

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Why do (rich) fools fall in love...with buying legacy media: newspapers, in particular? Certainly it amplifies their political power beyond merely buying off politicians. Thus has it ever been, going back at least a century. But perhaps just as importantly in this day of garden-variety billionaires, it lends them a modicum of prestige and reflected legitimacy even their money can't buy directly. Then, no doubt, there is the hubris or overweening self-confidence born of success elsewhere which leads them to believe they can change or improve the traditional business model just as successfully. And yes, buying a newspaper or other media outlet can even be viewed as a hedge or protection against being held (too) accountable. But what often happens, however, is self-defeating --- a lack of tolerance, perhaps unnecessary in their other business interests, leads to damaging or destroying the property --- greatly dissipating the very reasons for buying it in the first place. I think we can assume of all the possible motivations, altruism is likely not one of them.

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I love the Boston Globe, owned by John Henry and run by his wife, for its philanthropy. Dan Shaughnessy has editorial freedom to bludgeon the Red Sox, and obscure dance and regional travel are covered, unlike the WaPo.

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Agree. One of the few exceptions.

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I was at Penn, and lived in Maplewood! (Fake Id, real address). I read Marcinko, the progenitor of Seal Team 6, and he and Clancy gave tips to covering such an action. I think he would have known them. He kept his gun and the evidence because he wanted to die. Besides the injury to his back, he has mental illness.

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I dunno if he wanted to die, but yeah, he probably expected to and was a little stunned it hadn’t happened. Might be why he was toodling around in Altoona instead of taking actual steps to get away; he’d had no plan beyond the killing and was in a daze.

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Worthy of thought and discussion, we certainly don’t know. If he wanted to get caught, he could have, he didn’t need to escape. He kept the manifesto so his word would get out. Why did he keep the gun, he couldn’t have used it on another executive after this,they would be guarded too well. And they were all he had a beef with. He ended his episode meekly. But his gun lent nothing but evidence. With the implications to his family and possibly the pain he had, I think he had in reserve the idea to kill himself. He could have in a way where he wouldn’t have even been found.

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I hesitate to ascribe too much rational thought process to somebody messed up enough to think putting holes in a person is a good idea.

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Never said rational. But criminology is to determine the factors and try to prevent the next one.

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