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I've heard this theme several times after a mass shooter has acted out. One, two, maybe three news sources blame the shootings on drugs - but the media doesn't really pick up on it. Well, I've just heard it again, in regards to Cruz, the Florida shooter. Drugs are to blame. Hmmmmm . . . let me search for SOME kind of source, I can't just take a radio DJ's word for it, right?

http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/media-ignoring-1-crucial-factor-in-florida-school-shooting/ Yep, depression. All the other conduct I've seen attributed to Cruz ranges from normal, to weird, to maybe a little crazy. But, he WAS being treated over several year's time for depression. Interesting . . .

Paddock, the Vegas shooter - likewise. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/the-strip/las-vegas-strip-shooter-prescribed-anti-anxiety-drug-in-june/

Adam Lanza, of Newtown, ditto. https://ssristories.org/the-antipsychotic-prescribed-to-adam-lanza-has-a-troubled-history-all-its-own-business-insider/

Ok, I'll try to be fair here - and honest. Those links aren't exactly "mainstream", and they may or may not be "credible". I don't place a helluva lot of credibility in any of the media, to be honest.

But, how about psychologytoday? Is it credible? Unlike some Soylentils, I'm not a part time psychoanalyst. I have no degree in pretending to understand people. I see the title, and hope that it is more credible than say . . . The National Enquirer. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/obsessively-yours/201212/newtown-shootings-caution-about-violence-and-ssris

Newtown Shootings: A Caution About Violence and SSRIs
SSRIs rank high in the top ten drugs that cause violence
Posted Dec 20, 2012

As the debate moves forward about how to keep events like the shooting in Newtown from happening, the inevitable topic that comes up is how to best detect and treat young people with mental illness.

Many of our politicians have opined on this subject, sometimes as a way of deflecting from the issue of gun control. While it is obvious that better screening and treatment of troubled adolescents can be of enormous benefit, we also have to exercise caution.

The reason for the note of caution is that when a typical young person is diagnosed with depression and/or a host of anti-social conditions, the standard treatment offered is SSRI’s [Selective Serotonin Uptake Inhibitors] also known as Prozac-like drugs. There has recently been a great deal of debate about the effectiveness of such medications.

But more relevant to the discussion, is that these very drugs we hope can treat mental illness are at the same time drugs that cause violent behavior including suicide and aggression toward others. In fact, SSRI’s are the leading drugs in a recent list compiled of the Top Ten Drugs that cause violent behavior.

It’s been well known that adolescents and young people have an increased risk of suicide when they begin to take SSRIs. But what we may forget is that suicide is an impulsive behavior that is turned against oneself. But impulses, particularly violent ones, can be turned against others.

An accompanying effect of SSRI’s is the dulling of feelings that cause depression—and one of the main feelings in this line is empathy. If empathy is dulled and violent impulses increase when young people are on SSRI’s, then certainly that is a recipe for causing harm to others.

With every shooting, the hoplophobes resume screeching and squawking about the need for gun control laws. We never hear them even ASK about psychotropic drugs.

As I say, I've heard this question asked, several times, over the years. Aren't the psychotropics suspect? Maybe they're to blame? But, I've never really looked at it. Call it some naive faith that if the drugs were to blame, then someone is working to expose that fact. Except - that is a terribly naive thing to believe. Big Pharma is in the business of making money - even when it creates an opium addiction crisis.

So, what about those shooters? Are they picking up their guns because the guns removed all their natural(?) inhibitions?

Can anyone find an account of a shooter who WAS NOT on anti-depressants or some other psychotropic?

This really is worrisome. The shrinks tell us that one in four, or one in five, or one in seven Americans have mental health issues. Let me find something on that . . . Newsweek claims one in five - that is, 20% of all Americans are nuts, to some degree or another - http://www.newsweek.com/nearly-1-5-americans-suffer-mental-illness-each-year-230608 (no, of course they don't use the word "nuts" - I can paraphrase them however the hell I like)

So, the shrinks claim that 1/5 of all the people you meet are nuts. FFS, are they really nuts, or are the shrinks the ones who are nuts?

Seemingly, people who are NOT vititing shrinks, don't shoot people at random. While, seemingly, people who routinely see shrinks, and take the drugs offered them, are far more likely to pick up a weapon, and start spraying everyone in sight.

So, WTF is going on here? Ideas? Opinion? Should we stop demonizing guns, and start demonizing drugs and Big Pharma?

What is the possibility that the drugs actually MAKE people crazy? From my experience with friends and family who are prescribed drugs for ADD/ADHD, hyperactivity, and other "problems" - they often turn zombie-like. Once close acquaintance described feeling "angry" whenever he was on his drugs. As the drugs wore off, he was much less angry. Of course, that is just one example - one person who felt free to talk to me about his experience.

Are shrinks what is wrong with America today?

Yesterday was a great day for me, and for America -- I always, always put America First. Because I held what I call a Listening Session. People don't know what that is, it's something new. Where I sit down with the American people and LISTEN to what they say. I had 44 predecessors, none of them ever did that. So simple, but none of them ever thought of that. But I'm listening, I listened to some of our students & parents. With cameras rolling. And I brought @VP Pence and Secretary @BetsyDeVos. So they could listen too.

And I heard some beautiful, and very smart things. Jonathan Blank, he's one of the students from Parkland, said, "Thank you for everything. You’ve done a great job, and I like the direction that you’re going in. Thank you."

And Ariana Klein, she's another student from Parkland, beautiful student, said, "I would just like to say thank you for leading this country. You’re a great leader, and I appreciate the direction that the country is going in."

Julia Cordover, she's the president of the students -- of the ones that are left -- there in Parkland. Nice looking girl, and very grateful. She told me, "I’m confident that you’ll do the right thing, and I appreciate you looking at the bump stocks yesterday."

Fred Abt, he's a parent from Parkland, he told me about something @BetsyDeVos said at lunch, he said she said "have people in the school -- teachers, administrators -- who have volunteered to have a firearm safely locked in the classroom, who are given training throughout the year."

Let me tell you, I've been thinking about that for a long time. Because she said it a long time ago. And I knew it was a very smart thing to do, but I said we'd better leave that up to the states. Leave it to our great states. Today I met with our wonderful law enforcement officers, our Governors and so many more to talk about school safety, very important talk. pic.twitter.com/WhC2AxgWXO

But maybe, probably, we need to move more strongly. That would be, certainly, a situation that is being discussed a lot by a lot of people. You’d have a lot people that’d be armed. People of talent. Teachers who are adept at firearms, a lot of people with that. They’d be ready. They’re professionals. They may be Marines that left the Marines, left the Army, left the Air Force. And they’re very adept at doing that. You’d have a lot of them, and they’d be spread evenly throughout the school.

And you would no longer have a gun-free zone. Our schools have been gun-free zones for too long. Much too long. A gun-free zone, to a maniac -- because they’re all COWARDS -- a gun-free zone is, let’s go in and let’s attack, because bullets aren’t coming back at us.

We need to do what we call CONCEALED CARRY, very important. Hunter Pollack, one of the parents, he said to me, "If a teacher or a security guard has a concealed license and the firearm on their waist, they’re able to easily stop the situation, or the bad guy -- I’ll put it that way -- would not even go near the school knowing that someone can fight back against them." Concealed carry, if you don't know, it's a secret firearm, a hidden firearm. So nobody knows, is this teacher armed? Or not armed? Nobody knows, nobody can tell which teachers or guards -- principals, nurses, everybody -- who's armed and who's not. Very smart!

And we're going to be doing many things, we're going to do a lot. We're going to look into the background checks. And into the mental illness, we have so many mentally ill people now, how did that happen? I'll tell you, years ago, we had mental hospitals -- mental institutions. We had a lot of them, and a lot of them have closed. They’ve closed. And we have so many NUT JOBS on our streets. Seriously degrading some of our finest and most luxurious shopping districts. It's a very deplorable situation. Some people thought it was a stigma. Some people thought, frankly, it was a -- the legislators thought it was too expensive. youtu.be/vKblXAikzEc

In case you haven't heard, FreeBSD has a new code of conduct that's seemingly pulled straight from the shit-spewing face of a blue-haired intersectional feminist.

Me, I refuse to contribute to any coding project with a code of conduct designed to protect people of one political ideology from those who disagree with them. They're of course welcome to do what they like but they'll be doing it without my help in any way.

Folks, today is a VERY SPECIAL day. Because it's President's Day. When we honor the greatest President in history. And George Washington. Is it George Washington's birthday? Big debate about that one! Enjoy! 🇺🇸 whitehouse.gov/articles/great-debate-presidents-day-washingtons-birthday

Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, LONG before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong -- NO COLLUSION!!!! 🇺🇸👱🚫💕👱🇷🇺

I got curious about how many comments my "The Difference Time Makes" journal entry had last night after replying to what seemed like the millionth comment on it, so I checked. It had ninety comments even. That seemed like a lot to me and got me wondering how it stood in relation to other journal entries, so I checked. It turns out I had just tied for the most commented journal entry of all time on the site. When I checked again this morning I was ahead. Thus the title of this entry.

Now I'm by far not winning in most entries in the top ten but you take your victories where you find them. Without further ado, here's the top ten list for most commented journal entries of all time:

+-------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------+
| Count | User               | Entry                                          |
+-------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------+
|    98 | The Mighty Buzzard | The Difference Time Makes                      |
|    90 | aristarchus        | It's over.                                     |
|    87 | aristarchus        | Should I stay, or should I go?                 |
|    84 | aristarchus        | Ethics for Soylentils                          |
|    79 | The Mighty Buzzard | Fun For the Whole Family                       |
|    75 | Open4D             | Proto-submissions                              |
|    69 | aristarchus        | Breaking Frontpage!                            |
|    69 | aristarchus        | SuckOylent!                                    |
|    68 | DeathMonkey        | Before and After:  Movies                      |
|    59 | takyon             | Sex Harassment and the Office Christmas* Party |
+-------+--------------------+------------------------------------------------+

Folks, this month is very special. Because I've proclaimed what I call National African American History Month.

Let me tell you, last February I toured our National Museum of African-American History and Culture. And they had a stone there. The slaves would stand on it. And get auctioned off. And I said to myself, "boy, that is just not good, that is not good.” They had little metal things, like handcuffs, that they put on the little slave children. And I said to myself, "that is really bad!" Sometimes handcuffs are fun. Trust me, it's not fun to put them on children. It's very sick, or bad.

So now I'm saying to all Americans, let's COME TOGETHER. 💕 As One Team, One People, One American Family! To celebrate the extraordinary contributions of African-Americans to our nation. Let's turn our thoughts to the heroes of the civil rights movement whose courage and sacrifice have inspired us all. Frederick Douglass, he's done an amazing job. Rev. King is being recognized more and more. We've got so many great people. Proclamation: 45.wh.gov/c9Gvt9 pic.twitter.com/Nx0AEKZy5p

I've been thinking about time this morning. How just a little of it can make a world of difference.

When I was a wee little kid, David Allen Coe put out a song called If That Ain't Country. The song's got nothing to do with race but somewhere in it there's the phrase "workin' like a nigger for my room and board". That phrase, and the change in its meaning over the years, is a particularly interesting example.

The song was released in 1977, so forty years and change ago. Back when it was released, there was no question in anyone's minds that "workin' like a nigger" meant working your entire ass off. Say precisely the same words today and (aside from getting screeched at by social justice types, physically attacked by any black folks in earshot, and receiving disgusted looks and head shakes by pretty much everyone else) it's going to convey the exact opposite sentiment. I find that intriguing. And, frankly, quite depressing.

Depressing because of the way the change in meaning came about. Let's talk about that for a bit.

An adult black man black in 1977 expected to have to work his entire ass off if he wanted anything other than ghetto life for his family. Make note of that entire sentence there; every word and clause of it is extremely important.

Essentially not one bit of that applies to an average adult black man in 2018.

The prevailing wisdom in the black community in 2018 is that no matter how hard you work, "institutional racism" will keep you from ever getting ahead in life if you follow the rules. The quotes around that phrase are there because, while it is said on a remarkably frequent basis, it is a fundamentally disingenuous concept. "Institutional <type of discrimination>" essentially means "we need something to blame for <group>'s lack of success but lack any proof of actual <type of discrimination>, so we're going to call it institutional and eliminate the need to back up our claim".

Why do they believe that? Because it's all they've been told since MLK was murdered. Anyone claiming to support the black community and spouting anything except "oppression, oppression, oppression" has been vilified and cast out. Non-black people not toeing the party line are called racists and black people who dare disagree are called Uncle Toms. After several decades of this, the black community has almost entirely lost what MLK was essentially the last one to be allowed to preach: Hope.

Let's be real clear on this, no group or individual is ever going to succeed at anything in life without hope. If you do not have hope, you will not even try, which guarantees that you are not going to succeed. Making no effort to succeed does not go unnoticed by those around you either, thus the change in assumption regarding the work ethic of a generic black man.

Thus also my utter contempt for those who profess the loudest to support the black community while nothing but doom and hopelessness passes their lips when speaking to said community. They have robbed entire generations of a race of the hope of a better life that should be their birthright as Americans. And they've done it while lining their own pockets.

Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware of a large group of, let's call them fools for kindness's sake, who genuinely believe the black man is oppressed to the point of hopelessness. I have nothing to say to them, because trying to convince a fool that they are foolish is itself foolish. I really wish they could be made to see that taking someone's hope away absolutely ensures their failure though.

That's pretty much all I have to say about the changes in conventional wisdom on their work ethic but do you remember that sentence I told you to remember? I'd like to address another part of it while I'm at it. Specifically the bit that said "if he wanted anything other than ghetto life for his family".

Unfortunately, that desire no longer exists on average. Primarily because it is based on the assumption that he has or even desires a family. This is not in fact the case anymore. Of the black babies that dodge Planned Parenthood's stated anti-black eugenics agenda long enough to be born (and in NYC one year this decade (I forget which and can't be arsed to look it up), that was less than half of them) , over three quarters of them are abandoned by their fathers.

Being raised in a single parent household is the single largest predictor of future poverty in the US. So, unlike imagined oppression, this actually does put future generations of black children at a factual and serious disadvantage in life.

And, no, the absent black fathers are not all victims of the justice system and in prison. Factual, verifiable numbers call you an idiot for even thinking that.

Now, I don't know precisely why most black fathers are not living in a traditional nuclear family with their children and children's mother. I believe that a good chunk of it is their self-destructive culture but I can't honestly say how much. I can say it's a fucking tragedy regardless of why it's occurring though.

What does all of the above boil down to? That the black man was objectively better off when he was actively, openly, and legally discriminated against than he is now. And that there are a whole lot of people in this world that are in desperate need of a good ass-whooping.

Google found this hilarious forum thread where Paypal users are trying to get answers (none were forthcoming) about the legitimacy of some emails purporting to be from Paypal but containing links to a suspicious domain. https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Access-and-security/xxxxx/td-p/1164823?profile.language=en-gb

I started getting these emails at some point, but I've just been ignoring them. Account statement? What account statement? What's the point of it? I never clicked the links in the email, and could never find any "account statement" when I was logged-on to their website. I don't even know what it looks like.

It's funny just how well I was ignoring them. Today I saw the email, saw the mismatched domain name, and googled it to see what it was all about. I never did that before. Or at least I don't remember doing it. I probably suspected that it was phishing, but never took the first step of looking into it. If someone had asked me how long I'd been getting these emails, I wouldn't have been able to answer. After looking in my email archives, I see that they've been coming for at least four years! So every month for four years I've been getting an email about my paypal account and due to the uncertainty of its legitimacy or usefulness, I simply ignored and forgot about it. It reminds me of those times that an old forum thread gets resurrected and I read through some really interesting post, only to realize that it was written by me. This is what can happen when you start getting old, folks!

Thoughts and prayers with the families of the 71 Saratov Airlines passengers & crew who died. ✈️💥 No survivors.⚰️⚰️⚰️

And with the survivors, and the families of the victims, of the firey helicopter crash in the Grand Canyon. 🚁🔥

Very sad for me personally. Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. So there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record. 2018, not so great. We must work much harder and get very, very tough on the airlines. Jimmy Carter, President Carter, was a DISASTER for our airlines! Our airlines have been in the shitter since he signed the Airline Deregulation Act.🚽 pic.twitter.com/y8vikN1akP