Another US school shooter - Portland, this time

[crazy canuck]

I thought Clapton's issue was people leaving the home, not people forcing their way into it.

Oh man, I dont think that is something to joke about.

[Razgovory]

Then I'd probably just change the locks, close the curtains and pretend I'm not in for a few days/weeks.

Yeah.  After a month or two I'd probably get the message.

[CountDeMoney]

I thought Clapton's issue was people leaving the home, not people forcing their way into it.

Oh man, I dont think that is something to joke about.

Don't gimme that, it's been 25 years.  As a celebrity child, chances are he'd have OD'd by now anyway.

[Ed Anger]

Or fell into Tommy Lee's pool.

[sbr]

I've long thought the worst result from 9/11 was not the event itself, but the ridiculous overreaction afterwards.  The standouts for me are the massive overreach by the federal government as far as online and phone information collection, the time wasting and mostly useless airport regulations, the massive amount of money spread around cities and states for "stopping terrorism" (of which the militarization of the police is part), increased secrecy for public utilities and government which is only going to lead to more corruption.  There were some reasonable changes that were probably a hundredth of the total amount spent (beefing up in aircraft security and training being the biggest) but other countries that didn't have this response aren't collapsing under a wave of terrorist attacks.  Perhaps we were a little too lax before 9/11, now we have the opposite problem.

What really sucks is that our reaction can be convincingly argued to be exactly what those who perpetrated the act would consider a victory for them.

If we really do believe that America is "special" in some fashion, then surely one of the key elements that makes us special is that which differentiates us from those who would commit such acts - our free, open, and transparent society founded on the basic premise of freedom of choice and a valuing of freedom over the control of the state. These stand in rather stark contrast to the values that those who form Al Quaeda value, which is strict conformity to an over-arching authority, and a totalitarian like moral and legal code that has no tolerance for, well, tolerance.

So our response to their act of terrorism was to show the world that yes, we are most certianly terrified, enough so that we are willing to abandon some of those very values that define us as different from those willing to do things like fly planes into buildings.

The best response we could have had to deter future acts would be to not change a god damned thing, at least not visibly.

[11B4V]

They do stone gays.