A Weekend of Severe Insanity

It has been a weekend of severe insanity on so many fronts there simply isn't time to go into each incident in full detail. Yes, given the deluge of deadly nonsense it is probably best to fall back on some corporate training from the days of yore. That's right, simply reduce the facts to their most basic in order to present them in what we used to call, ironically, bullet points.

Teens With Guns, Part I ---It is reported three people were wounded, two of them critically, Saturday evening at a Macy's store in a Pittsburgh suburb. 17 year old Tarod Thornhill was charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and reckless endangerment by the local police. According to the account one of those wounded was the actual target and the other two committed that most common  of modern mistakes--they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Teens With Guns, Part II--In Jeannette, PA,  16 year old Maxwell Marion Morton shot Ryan Mangan, who was also 16, in the face, killing him. Not wanting there to be any confusion over who pulled the trigger, young Maxwell took a selfie of himself along with the fresh corpse, then posted it on the phone app, Snapchat. A friend of his saved the photo before the application automatically deleted it and showed it to his mother. She took the pic to the cops who promptly tracked down not only Max Morton, but the murder weapon, a 9mm. handgun.

Crazy in Douglasville, GA--On Saturday an unidentified man shot six people, killing four, before doing everyone a favor by blowing his own brains out. It is reported one of the victims is his ex-wife and the others are children belonging to her family. A motive, other than the obvious one, has not been made public at this time.

Chipper Jones, Conspiracy Theorist--On Friday the former major league baseball star tweeted that the FBI had confirmed the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults, was a hoax. Jones also lamented, "Where is the outrage? What else are we being lied to about?" It is unclear at this time exactly who in the FBI "confirmed" the nightmare was a hoax, or when. Jones didn't go into those details of the Bureau's shocking announcement. He did, however, delete the post after some of the victims family members began to respond to it in ways we can all imagine. He also apologized to those, "...who were hurt, or offended." Which isn't the same as saying he suddenly had a change of opinion. No, you can make book that ol' Chipper, who apparently took one to many sliders to the noggin during his long career, still believes Adam Lanza was a scapegoat for the anti gun lobby, he's just not going to tweet about it any more.

Collateral Damage in Syria--After the Jordanian air force began pounding ISIS sites in response to the gruesome murder of one of its pilots the terrorist propaganda machine went into high gear. It announced bombing raids, cruelly conducted during afternoon prayers, failed to cause even a single casualty among their troops, although the last known American hostage being held by them was killed. Kayla Mueller, a 26 year old idealist and aid worker was kidnapped by Islamic State in August of 2013. The last time it was confirmed she was alive was May, 2014. It is uncertain if the IS public relations people realize their news release has all the credibility of the old North Korean report that Kim Jong-Il shot 11 hole in ones during his first round of golf, or not. Hopes that Ms. Mueller is still alive are probably in vain. The odds are she was murdered around the same time as three other American hostages, but ISIS couldn't come up with a way to package it, so they delayed the announcement until now in a feeble attempt to blame someone else.

One A in Mosul--It would appear ISIS needs a few good men. According to NBC, families in Mosul, Iraq with more than one son are being, "urged" to give up one of them for the cause. Witnesses say loudspeakers in mosques and at other spots around the city are carrying taped messages telling the citizens to send their sons into the fray. The same witnesses tell NBC there are fewer IS fighters roaming the streets as the war drains manpower. This begs the question, is it a real jihad if you have to use draftees to fight it? Given their astute PR powers the IS leadership will, no doubt, be able to convince themselves it is. After all, anything less would be rank defeatism, not to mention heresy.  

So there we have it. Another Sunday is in the books and too many people have become nothing but memories for all the wrong reasons.

Tragically, even in this new millennia, it is the nature of the beast and his weapons.

sic vita est

2-8-15