Don’t Go Cold Turkey

One think I learned from friends who took anti-depressants, is that very bad thing happens when you go cold turkey and just quit.  You’re supposed to wean yourself from them.  Turns out the NIU gunman had stopped taking his:

“He had stopped taking medication and become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks,” Grady said, declining to name the drug or provide other details.

I’ve never known someone who went this crazy, but the friends I’ve known who have taken anti-depressants and stopped cold weren’t the same people while they were going through withdrawal.  These are drugs that are altering your brain chemistry.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that psychosis is a rare side effect of the withdrawal process.

We do find out which guns the killer used:

 Two of the weapons — the pump-action Remington shotgun and a Glock 9mm handgun — were purchased legally less than a week ago, on Feb. 9, authorities said. They were purchased in Champaign, where Kazmierczak was enrolled at the University of Illinois.

He apparently had an Illinois FID, though it doesn’t say that in this article, I read that elsewhere.   There’s really no way you can stop someone who has no criminal or mental history, which this guy didn’t.

Expect a lot of talk from the media about how the Glock is particularly deadly, rather than a common side arm.  No doubt there will also be calls to pass a magazine ban in Illinois in response to this, even though their licensing of gun owners provisions and various other controls did nothing to prevent this.

Obama’s Dour Optimism

Victor Davis Hanson has a pretty good read up here:

I was watching on television last week both Barack Obama and his wife Michelle speak about the supposedly depression-like conditions in the US, and a people strapped by students loans, near hungry, and without hope of betterment. Neither said anything of substance, though both were engaging, effective speakers. Still, never has so much talent been invested in saying so little.

If you were to believe them, we are in a sort of “It’s A Wonderful Life,” Frank Capra-era housing depression, not a boom-and-bust cycle where for the last five years, rival television shows proliferate on “flipping” houses (in which strapped investors and rookies borrow against rising equity to put in granite counters and stainless steel appliances for quick flip sales).

I am sincerely hoping that Americans begin to see through the flowery rhetoric soon, because the message Obama is pushing, very eloquently, is one of 1930s America.  It’s not a message for the 21st century, and I hope voters will soon see that.

Found via Instapundit.

UPDATE: Actually this was via Clayton Cramer.  I opened it up to blog, and forgot where I got it from, and somehow recalled it was Insty, I guess since he links VDH so often. Either way, it’s what happens when you have about 100 blogs on the RSS feed.

Northern Illinois School Shooting

I have very little to say about this myself, except one question to all the folks out there who keep suggesting we gun nuts are paranoid nuts for suggesting more guns are the problem:

If you were sitting in a school auditorium, you suddenly heard a loud “BANG!” followed by another, then another.  You turn around and see a ban walking down the aisle wielding a shotgun, taking aim and shooting at people along the way.  Unbeknown to you, the man next to you is a competitive pistol shooter, and has been shooting since he was a child.  He immediately grabs you, and pulls you down to cover.   At this point, would you prefer the man next to you be armed, and have the ability to end all this will a well placed shot?   Or would you prefer that the state has made him every bit as helpless as it has made you?

Of course, I know what the answer will be.  That if we allow people to carry guns, the man next to me is more likely to be an inbred yahoo who can’t hit the side of the barn, and will just kill more innocents.  Because clearly it’s those types of people who own and carry guns.  One day perhaps these people will surrender their predjuicial fantasies, but it seems an awful lot of people are willing to see an awful lot of other people cowering in the face of these monsters, rather than allow for the possibility that someone could do something about it.

Friday Through Saturday

Bitter and I will be doing our annual (well, I guess this makes two years in a row, so we can call it that) winter camping expedition in Northern Pennsylvania.  I’m told there’s eight inches of snow up there, and rising.  Sounds like a good time to me!

Needless to say, won’t be much posting over that time period.

Gun Control in Space

Apparently the Russians keep a firearm on the International Space Station, and with the gun, comes the gun haters:

Former NASA engineer Jim Oberg, who is an author and journalist, wrote about the gun on his Web site. He said the gun has no place in an environment where people are under such high stress.

“There have been cases of severe psychological strain on people in space, strain that they have taken out — that their shipmates worried about the ultimate actions,” Oberg said.Experts said the idea of an astronaut losing control was unthinkable until one year ago, when Lisa Nowak shattered the myth.

My opinion on the matter is if the Russkies have a gun, we should too.  We can not allow for a space station gun gap! But in all seriousness, having a firearm on board a return vessel that could get lost in the wilderness for a period isn’t a bad idea. Lisa Nowak is a sign that there’s something horribly wrong with NASA’s screening practices, not that the Russians need to keep dangerous objects out of the space station.  Crazy people in a space station is inherently dangerous, weapons or no.

Some of Obama’s Ideas

This bit about his tax proposal:

Senator Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not endorsed either Senator Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. But on Thursday, February 14, he is trying to rush Obama’s “Global Poverty Act” (S.2433) through his committee. The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.

Given that this is a GOP activist oriented site, I should link to the actual bill as well.  I’m not in favor at all of tying spending to GDP levels.  Spending on foreign aid should be geared toward our national and international interests.  I don’t see any reason to do something like this. The article also points out, this is part of the UN Millennium Development Goal, which also includes restricting small arms and light weapons.  This bill doesn’t implement that, but it does call into question what other parts of the UNMDG Obama likes.

Obama Wave Cresting?

I’m not as sure about that as this Wall Street Journal article, but the article brings up a lot of good points:

Whatever else, Barack Obama isn’t talking sunshine in America. He’s talking fast and furious. People not yet baptized into Obamamania may start to look past the dazzling theatrics to see a vision of the United States that is quite grim and could wear thin in the general election.

There may indeed be a Message B for the fall in the Obama drawer. This week’s speech, like a televangelist’s, may be designed to drive small contributions. The Web-site version ends with an appeal to donate to “this historic moment.” I suspect, though, that it is the core of the Obama campaign, now or later.

Odds are that he will ride it to the nomination among Democrats for whom America can never quite escape the Depression. Hillary Clinton can only offer what she’s got — a clear-eyed ambition to get, and use, Democratic power.

Everything in life has a top — stocks, football teams and political phenoms, as she well knows. Though down, Hillary ought to suck it up for Ohio and Texas and hope the Obama wave starts to break. On current course, it will.

Read the whole thing.

Via Instapundit