It’s sad to have to post news like this, but it’s important to know the truth about what’s really happening down in the Gulf. I doubt that Americans really appreciate the amount of misery BP has caused. The oil conglomerate’s done a pretty professional job of keeping the bad press to a minimum, but that doesn’t do anything for the suffering of the people. It just keeps piling up:

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Coroner: Charter captain working oil spill killed himself; former co-worker ‘surprised something like this hasn’t already happened’
Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 4:07 PM
Guy Busby Press-Register

FORT MORGAN, Ala. — An Orange Beach, Ala., charter boat captain shot and killed himself this morning just before his vessel was scheduled to set out to take part in oil cleanup and protection efforts, investigators said.

William Allen “Rookie” Kruse, 55, was found dead on the flying bridge of his boat, The Rookie, at the dock at Fort Morgan Marina just before 7 a.m., Baldwin County Deputy Coroner Rod Steade said.

“He had just let his deckhands off the boat and sent them to get something,” Steade said. “He was going to meet them at the fuel dock. They heard a pop and when the boat didn’t come around, they went back and found him.” . .

Before the Deepwater Horizon sank, Kruse said he planned on retiring in a couple of years, said Jason Bell, who knew Kruse for 10 years and worked for him for 3 years, first as a deckhand and later as captain of the Rookie II . .

Bell added, however, that Kruse did like to know what was going on and was particularly frustrated with the lack of straight answers coming from BP about the Vessel of Opportunity program and particularly about how he was to be paid once his 2 boats were deployed.

“It’s a nightmare with just all of the paperwork and training and then waiting to get hired on top of the fact we’re all stressed about losing our entire season anyway,” Bell said. “I hate to say it, but I’m surprised something like this hasn’t already happened.”

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Tavis Smiley conducted an interview last night with Tony Kennon, the mayor of Orange Beach, who knew Allen Kruse. Tony provides a glimpse of what it’s like trying to survive in the midst of the BP nightmare:

Over at Tucker Carlson’s wingnut site, The Daily Caller, they picked up an article from the Charlotte Observer: “In North Carolina you can let your gun show”

With the Observer article ran a photo [below] of a man openly carrying a pistol: ‘Eric Shuford Jr., 67, of Cary typically keeps his Russian 9 mm Makarov sidearm with him from the time he wakes up . .’

But in Tucker’s online fishwrap, it came appended with a different image:

A shocking image, really, one to question the editor’s taste and sanity, to say nothing of his pro-gun activism. For that photo is maybe the most famous open-carry activist image of all time, burnished in our memories by violent history.

The woman there, Meleanie Hain, was an open-carry nut in Pennsylvania. She sued her local sheriff for a million bucks in part because of the emotional trauma she said she suffered when he revoked her permit to carry after the soccer game photos above became widely distributed. Another:

Most of the Hain brouhaha and 2nd amendment deification went down at the end of 2008. About a year later — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — in October of 2009, her unhinged husband came home and shot her dead. He then turned the beloved gun on himself, ending his life, too.

I remember it well. I wrote a post with my take on the paranoid psyches of the people involved: how the use of firepower as a crutch to lessen anxiety actually leaves you vulnerable. ‘If only Meleanie had seen that her paranoia was well-founded in the relationships she kept with paranoid gun nuts like her husband,’ one wonders. ‘If only she’d traded in her gun for some dignity and common sense . .’

Meanwhile, maybe the firearms freaks should leave her alone?

She was shot dead, Tucker.

New York Post reports a terrible act of likely mental illness in Goya, Argentina:

A seven-month-old girl miraculously survived alone for three days after one of her parents shot her in the chest – apparently as part of a bizarre murder-suicide pact blamed on global warming.

The baby was discovered with a bullet casing in her chest and covered with blood by police in the Argentinean city of Goya, near the bodies of her parents and 2-year-old brother, the Latin American Herald reported Saturday.

Police broke into the home after neighbors complained of a stench coming from the house. The boy was found with a gunshot wound in his back, while his parents died from gunshot wounds to the chest.

The parents, 56-year-old Francisco Lotero and 23-year-old Miriam Coletti, are believed to have been spurred by their fears about global climate change, London’s Telegraph reported.

He’s 56, she’s 23, and he convinced her to have his children and then to kill them all and herself over a slow-moving threat. That’s mental illness.

Gateway Pundit seizes the day, if not any English skills:

Baby Survives 3 Days With Shot in Chest After Parents Commit Global Warming Suicide

What’s that? Like buckshot? “. . With Shot in Chest . .”?

– “. . with bullet casing in chest . .”
– “. . after being shot in chest . .”
– “. . after shot to chest . .”
– “. . with gunshot wound to chest . .”

Anybody? And “Global Warming Suicide”? And just what is that? He’s got a list of flavors of suicide? If some Bear Stearns VP lost it all and jumped off a building, Pundit would call it “Debt Suicide”? “Financial Suicide”?

. . Bear Stearns Veep Doesn’t Survive With Gravity in Chest After He Commits Fiscal Suicide . .

That sounds about right. Of his 5 sentence GW-death post, here’s the finish:

Someone should sue Al Gore. He played on their fears and now a whole family is dead.

Damn, except for your headline.

Hanged Census Worker Staged Suicide in Apparent Insurance Scam

The part-time census worker found naked, bound and hanging from a tree had staged his suicide to make it appear like murder, authorities said today.

When the body of Bill Sparkman, 51, was found near a rural Kentucky cemetery in September, he was gagged, had duct tape over his eyes and neck, his hands and feet were bound with tape, and he had “fed” scrawled on his chest.

Authorities initially investigated whether Sparkman had been a victim of anti-government sentiment, but today they said in a statement that he died during an “intentional, self-inflicted act that was staged to appear as a homicide.”

Two life insurance plans had also been taken out by Sparkman, a single father, right before the time of his death, but payment for suicide was precluded, said police…

I got it wrong. I called it ‘murder’, though I didn’t guess that I knew by whom. I couldn’t imagine how he could have died in the manner he did, with his feet found on the ground and his hands in front of him, without a second person being there. The guy who found the body thought the same thing: “The scene left Weaver without a doubt how Sparkman died. ‘He was murdered,’ he said. ‘There’s no doubt.’”

I’ve never heard of a person managing to kill themselves in a manner like that, very strange. Almost an act of sheer will. The only thing I’ve heard that’d be remotely like it is auto-erotic asphyxiation, and, with that, the victim’s bodies and brains are pre-occupied with another goal. Hopefully I’ll do some better analysis next time, I continue to live and learn.

Sparkman was apparently a troubled man who was battling cancer, and he may have just gotten too depressed. Though I doubt he could have known just how big a story his ‘killing’ would become, it still was a lurid and shocking public suicide that intended to implicate others. As a result, quite a few people ended up looking sideways at Kentucky for a couple weeks, and that wasn’t fair. Sparkman made a huge mistake ending his life that way, accusing the people of Kentucky of murder, and now that’s what we’ll remember him for. And our obliging his scam.

Btw, I can live with my Sparkman ‘murder’ gaffe over, say, Roger Hedgecock’s, who guessed he was killed by ‘open borders‘ and Mexican druggies, or Dan Riehl’s, who guessed he was killed because he was a child molester. Knowing Dan, he’ll say that he got it right.

Lest anybody get carried away with b-movie plots as to why such a horrible event is newsworthy, I thought I’d put down my own take on this before it takes on the inevitable tabloid life of its own.

Not reasons why Hain’s murder was newsworthy:
–Not because it was some ‘live-and-die-by-the-sword’ thing. Although it’s generally true that carrying around firearms ups the potential for gun violence, I don’t see that as being what was going on.

–Not that she was ‘crazy’, a thrill-seeker, and that she took chances that ended up taking her life. She seems to have been a pretty down-to-Earth type.

–Not that gun nuts want to do gun violence, and that she surrounded herself with some itchy types who just gave in to their fantasy of shooting things. Although it sorta seems that way.

No–the reason it’s newsworthy is because it illustrates how gun nuts honestly feel they need guns. Just try to get into a discussion with them about how the world would probably be better off without all the millions of weapons we have around, and you’ll see how desperately they feel that need. The emotional tone goes right through the roof. For them, life itself seems impossible to fathom without weapons.

Why? I’ll tell you why. Because these folks labor with personal weaknesses that they feel can only be propped up by carrying around deadly force. They feel very vulnerable and can’t find any way to move forward in life without some serious firepower by their side. Can’t stand to go on without a better defense than they can strictly psychologically provide for themselves. So they turn to the quick fix of guns.

That’s the essential story. So the ‘weakness’ and the gun walk hand in hand together in perpetuity in American life, by the millions. And the gun nut never has to examine his mindset, and his ‘defender’, the gun, is passionately loved and obsessed over. That’s what was going on here, and that’s what’s frequently going on with the gun-loving Americans I’ve come to know.

But it’s no habit from another planet, right? Isn’t that exactly the case in our wars? Aren’t our soldiers taught to service and trust their guns? Isn’t then your gun just about your best friend?

Yes, it is. But, then, there, it’s understandable. Your ‘defect’ there is just your mortality. Your horrible, violent death is the avowed goal (as it was in the case of WWII) of perhaps millions of people. You’d better be well-armed and trained, and you’d better not sleep much.

But America is not a gun nut’s overseas war. America is their own hometowns, their own communities, not a foxhole behind enemy lines. The truth is that, here in America, one’s need for serious firepower in order to defend yourself is just above zero. Unless you live in one of those urban war zones or some awful place overrun with violent lunatics, you pretty much don’t need a gun. Argue whatever you like, but that’s the stone cold truth.

I live in a far more dangerous place than probably 95% of the current gun nuts live–Los Angeles. A guy was shot dead in my alley. The best friend of my roommate was intentionally run over and killed by an infuriated driver. But I absolutely do not need a gun to protect myself and go on surviving in the big city. I easily manage without it, day after day, year after year.

And yet, hundreds of thousands of other, less environmentally threatened Americans swear that they really, really have to have a gun. Especially a handgun, the easily concealed weapon best suited for shooting human beings in close quarters urban combat. They don’t feel right without one, and they freak out just considering living without it.

Clearly, the gun has become a psychological crutch for people to manage to go on. And I’m sure that’s why Meleanie Hain foolishly, openly carried a Glock to a soccer game for 5 year old girls. Annoyed parents called the Sheriff, the Sheriff thought it was inappropriate and yanked her concealed weapons permit, she filed with the local court, and she became a 2nd amendment hot celebrity when she got her CCW permit back.

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Apparently, husband shot her.

Gun-toting soccer mom is shot dead

Meleanie Hain, the pistol-carrying Lebanon mom who received national attention for taking a loaded gun to her daughter’s soccer game, was shot to death Wednesday night with her husband in an apparent murder-suicide, police said.

Hain, 31, and her husband, Scott, 33, were pronounced dead by Lebanon County Coroner Dr. Jeffrey Yocum shortly after 8:30 p.m. at their home at Second Avenue and East Grant Street, police said.

The couple’s three children were home at the time and were not injured, and are staying with relatives and friends, police said…

Meleanie Hain was thrust into the national spotlight when she took a gun, in plain view and holstered on her hip, to a soccer game Sept. 11, 2008, at Optimist Park in Lebanon.

Her permit to carry a gun was revoked by Lebanon County Sheriff Michael DeLeo on Sept. 20, 2008. DeLeo said Hain showed poor judgment in wearing her gun to the game.

Hain’s permit was reinstated by Lebanon County Judge Robert Eby on Oct. 14, 2008, but the judge asked her to conceal it when she goes to soccer games. Hain said she would continue to carry it openly under the Second Amendment.

Hain then filed a lawsuit against DeLeo for $1 million in U.S. Middle District Court seeking reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and costs, emotional distress and lost wages.

“She has been stigmatized unfairly,” her attorney, Matthew Weisberg said at the time.

Of the lawsuit:

LEBANON — The Lebanon woman who stirred controversy by openly carrying a handgun to her child’s soccer game filed a lawsuit in federal court today claiming that her rights were violated and seeking more than $1 million in damages.

Meleanie Hain’s concealed weapons permit was revoked Sept. 20 by Lebanon County Sheriff Michael DeLeo, who maintained she showed poor judgment wearing her gun to her daughter’s soccer game Sept. 11. The permit was reinstated Oct. 14 by Lebanon County Judge Robert Eby.

Judge Eby asked her to conceal the gun when she goes to soccer games. but Hain said she planned to continue to display the gun, asserting her right under the Second Amendment.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. Middle District Court on behalf of Hain and her husband, Scott Hain, names DeLeo, his office and Lebanon County. It claims the sheriff’s action violated her First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and 14th Amendment rights.

“My client has been harmed more than that court is empowered to adjudicate,” said Hain’s attorney, Matthew Weisberg, referring to the reinstatement of her permit in county court.

The suit seeks reimbursement of attorneys’ fees and costs and lost wages, since Hain’s baby-sitting business has suffered, Weisberg said. She also seeks compensation for emotional distress, punitive and statutory damages, and mandatory education for the sheriff’s department on Second Amendment issues.

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I’m not going to go through it because it’s so totally all-caps batshit, but here’s a taste:

TERRORISTS FREE TO KILL ONCE AGAIN AS THEY SLIP THE GRASP OF GITMO’S KID GLOVES

The Pentagon now confirms that at least 74 former Guantanamo detainees have resumed terror ist activities after claiming they weren’t terrorists.

This crap has been totally debunked already. First, the Pentagon itself admits they don’t actually know what ‘terrorism’ most of the former detainees have engaged in–they’re just suspicious of the them.

The Pentagon has provided no way of authenticating its 45 unnamed recidivists, and only a few of the 29 people identified by name can be independently verified as having engaged in terrorism since their release. Many of the 29 are simply described as associating with terrorists or training with terrorists, with almost no other details provided.

Secondly, the idea put forth here is that bad guys fooled the wussy Gitmo personnel so they could return to killing Americans. Critics haven’t admitted that being in Gitmo might have pissed off detainees enough to make them completely anti-American, to the point of radicalizing them. Oops. Even the New York Times realized the mistake:

…about one in seven of former Guantánamo prisoners had “returned to terrorism or other militant activity,” or as the headline put it, had “rejoined jihad.”

Those phrases accepted a premise of the report that all the former prisoners had been engaged in terrorism before their detention. Because that premise remains unproved, the day the article appeared in the newspaper, editors changed the headline and the first paragraph on the Times Web site to refer to prisoners the report said had engaged in terrorism or militant activity since their release.

If one of these guys has ‘returned’ to terrorism, then we’re idiots for releasing him. If one of these guys has now become a terrorist, we’re idiots for beating and torturing him. What’s your point–that ‘Gitmo’ is a brutal joke? And all of these mistakes would have been under the Bush Administration, but douche here isn’t going to point that out.

Such recidivism points up an alarming intelligence failure.

These dangerous prisoners should never have been cleared for release. Why did interrogators fail to find the cracks in their stories and alibis?

Why wasn’t more intelligence gathered to predict they’d rejoin al Qaeda or the Taliban?

In a word, politics. Gitmo interrogations have been emasculated to placate critics of waterboarding and other “torture,” say two senior officials there.

Even known terrorists are spared high-pressure techniques — tactics that have worked before in squeezing out information.

For that matter, Gitmo doesn’t even do “interrogations” anymore. They’re now called interviews, and they’re voluntary.

Many recidivists used the interviews as an opportunity to argue for release, spinning familiar excuses for why they were in Afghanistan after 9/11. They were freed after interrogators, many of them inexperienced, for the most part bought their sob stories and review boards judged them least likely to return to jihad.

“We have on numerous occasions gotten literally straight-from-the-schoolhouse interrogators who are being stuck in with these hardened jihadists,” a top security official at Gitmo told me. “And they essentially look at them and laugh.”

Guantanamo suicide attempts

On June 10, 2006 three prisoners held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camps committed suicide. The United States Department of Defense (DoD) stopped reporting Guantanamo suicide attempts in 2002.

Some prisoners started attempting to commit suicide almost immediately. In mid-2002 the DoD changed the way they classified suicide attempts, calling them “self-injurious behavior”. The DoD acknowledges 41 suicide attempts among 29 detainees. The June 10 2006 suicides were the first inmate deaths at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp.

On January 24, 2005 the U.S. military revealed that there were 350 incidents of self-harm in 2003. 120 of those incidents of self-harm were attempts by detainees to hang themselves. 23 detainees participated in a simultaneous mass-suicide attempt.

People who know him say he was not at all depressed. The fact that his genitals were bound and his hands were free sounds like he may have just made a mistake.

Carradine’s body to return home, while questions remain

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — David Carradine’s wife and his manager disputed suggestions that the actor’s death was a suicide, while rescue workers and police in Bangkok, Thailand, said the actor’s neck and genitals were found bound with rope.

David Carradine was the star of the 1970s TV series, “Kung Fu,” and appeared in more than 100 films.

After Carradine’s body arrives back to the United States this weekend, an autopsy ordered by Carradine’s family will be conducted, according to the actor’s co-manager.

“They’re doing everything possible to get to the bottom of what really happened,” said Carradine’s co-manager Tiffany Smith…

Bangkok police said Carradine was found hanging by a nylon rope in a Bangkok hotel room closet Thursday morning.

“Our preliminary assumption is that the cause of death was suffocation, because there was a rope tied to his neck,” said Bangkok police spokesman Somprasong Yenthuam…

A member of the emergency crew who was called to the hotel after a maid found Carradine told CNN that a yellow nylon rope was tied around the actor’s neck and a black rope was around his genitals. Police later confirmed that information.

The same emergency crew source said Carradine’s hands were not tied, contrary to some media reports. Smith, the co-manager, also said media reports quoting the actor’s management saying the hands were tied were untrue.

wiki: Deaths often occur when the loss of consciousness caused by partial asphyxia leads to loss of control over the means of strangulation, resulting in continued asphyxia and death. While often asphyxiophilia is incorporated into sex with a partner, others enjoy this behaviour by themselves, making it potentially more difficult to get out of dangerous situations[9]. Victims are often found to have rigged some sort of “rescue mechanism” that has not worked in the way they anticipated as they lost consciousness.

In some fatality cases, the body of the asphyxiophilic individual is discovered naked or with genitalia in hand, with pornographic magazines nearby, with dildos or other sex toys present, or with evidence of having orgasmed prior to death.[7] Bodies found at the scene of an accidental death often show evidence of other paraphilic activities,[10] such as fetishistic cross-dressing and masochism.[3] However, in many cases families of these victims may disturb these sites by “sanitizing” them, removing evidence of such paraphilic activities.[11]

It’s a dangerous practice, definitely. Though ruled a suicide, INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence’s death was almost surely by autoerotic asphyxiation.

All-around musician Kevin Gilbert died by it back in 1996. His manager came over to tell him he’d gotten an audition to replace Phil Collins in Genesis and found him dead.

The denial’s a joke, the front is keeling. Tasers flat kill people: the cops were suckered, were badly trained. The weapon is dangerous.

Taser victim Iman Morales’ kin file
$10 million suit against city, cops

The family of a Brooklyn man who died after police Tasered him is suing the city, a cop and the estate of another officer who killed himself for $10 million.

Relatives of Iman Morales, 35, want the money and a review of police protocols and training in the use of Tasers.

“He didn’t deserve any of this,” said Morales’ mother, Olga Negron, 55, who was at the scene when her mentally ill son was struck and then fell headfirst from a ledge onto the concrete 10 feet below. “It was horrible.”

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Authorities have been dealing with the mentally ill for centuries, don’t tell me that they were overwhelmed with the situation. They ran short of patience and pulled the Taser because it’s an intervention machine.