[TTAG] It’s possible Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz
...pre-attack diagnoses of autism, anxiety, depression and significant psychological problems, described as a troubled kid obsessed with guns — the police frequently went to the family home to deal with him. Mr. Cruz was adopted at birth, then his adoptive father died when he was young, followed into the grave by his adoptive mother a few months before he ran amok. So really he was a classic school shooter. Interestingly, his biological sister Danielle Woodard, a decade older, is classified as a habitual violent offender...
talked himself into a death sentence.
Prosecutors played video last week at Cruz’s penalty trial of jailhouse interviews he did this year with two of their mental health experts. In frank and sometimes graphic detail, he answered their questions about his massacre of 17 people at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018 — his planning, his motivation, the shootings.
While it can’t be known what the 12 jurors are thinking, if any are wavering between voting for death or life without parole, his statements to Dr. Charles Scott, a forensic psychiatrist, and Robert Denney, a neuropsychologist, didn’t help his cause.
"All of this made Cruz himself perhaps one of the state’s best witnesses," said David S. Weinstein, a Miami defense attorney and former prosecutor who has been monitoring the trial.
The jury will likely decide Cruz’s fate this week. For the 24-year-old to get a death sentence, the jury must be unanimous on at least one victim. But if all 17 counts come back with at least one vote in favor of life in prison, then that would be his sentence. Closing arguments are scheduled Tuesday, with deliberations beginning Wednesday.
Horrifying interview quotes at the link. It sounds very unhappy in his head.
[FoxNews] This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
World Mental Health Day is reminder to ‘check in’ on our mental health, experts say — and if we're struggling, we must reach out.
World Mental Health Day is Monday, Oct. 10, 2022 — an opportunity to take stock of our mental well-being especially in light of the mental health crisis worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
[Dawn] THE regime in Afghanistan may have inked a few economic and trade agreements with its neighbours, but it has yet to secure formal recognition for its government from any side. The Taliban ...Arabic for students... clearly understand why the international community remains reluctant to recognise them, yet their top administration insists on internal and external legitimacy on its own terms.
As its frustration grows, Pakistain has become the primary focus of the Taliban’s growing anger, and they have started to openly criticise the country. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif warned the international community at the United Nations
Continued on Page 49
[Federalist] The West is experiencing its third energy crisis. The first, in 1973, was caused by the near-quintupling of the price of crude oil by Gulf oil producers in response to America’s support for Israel in the Yom Kippur war. Their action brought an end to what the French call the trente glorieuses — the unprecedented post—World War II economic expansion.
The second occurred at the end of the 1970s, when Iran’s Islamic revolution led to a more than doubling of oil prices. This again inflicted great economic hardship, but the policy response was far better. Inflation was purged at the cost of deep recession. Energy markets were permitted to function. High oil prices induced substitution effects, particularly in the power sector, and stimulated increased supply.
In the space of nine months, the oil price cratered from $30 a barrel in November 1985 to $10 a barrel in July 1986. It’s no wonder that the economic expansion that started under Ronald Reagan had such long legs.
This time is different. The third energy crisis was not sparked by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies or by Iranian ayatollahs. It was self-inflicted, a foreseeable outcome of policy choices made by the West: Germany’s disastrous Energiewende that empowered Vladimir Putin to launch an energy war against Europe; Britain’s self-regarding and self-destructive policy of "powering past coal" and its decision to ban fracking; and, as Joseph Toomey shows in a recent powerful essay, President Biden’s war on the American oil and gas industry.
Hostilities were declared during Joe Biden’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. "I guarantee you. We’re going to end fossil fuel," candidate Biden told a climate activist in September 2019, words that the White House surely hopes get lost down a memory hole. Toomey’s paper has all the receipts, so there’s no danger of that.
As he observes, Biden’s position in 2022 resembles Barack Obama’s in 2012, when rising gas prices threatened to sink his reelection. Obama responded with a ruthlessness that his erstwhile running mate lacks. He simply stopped talking about climate and switched to an all-of-the-above energy policy, shamelessly claiming credit for the fracking revolution that his own Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tried to strangle at birth.
Passage of the comically mistitled Inflation Reduction Act places this option beyond Biden’s reach, even if he were so inclined. Democrats are hardly going to take a vow of climate omertà when they’ve achieved a political triumph of pushing through Congress what they regard as the most significant climate legislation to date.
Although the price of oil has slipped back from recent highs, the factors behind high gasoline prices remain in place. Foremost among these is the steep decline in U.S. oil refinery capacity triggered when Covid lockdowns crushed demand but continued after the economy reopened. There has never been such a large fall in operable refinery capacity. Moreover, Gulf Coast refineries were operating at 97 percent of their operating capacity in June 2022. As Toomey remarks, "There isn’t any more blood to be squeezed out of this turnip."
#2
It's no coincidence that the environmental movement, especially in Europe, is funded and pushed by the Russians. Before that it was the anti-nuclear campaigners.
[Red State] We talk about the crushing weight of inflation, and how the prices are at 40-year highs. At this point, we’ve probably done a ton of stories and thrown out all kinds of numbers on it.
But nothing quite puts it in focus as much as how it is affecting all of us every time we have to go to the grocery store to buy food and we see the prices keep going up and up for necessities.
A local bakery must have felt the necessity to explain to customers why they were raising prices by posting about how much their costs had gone up since January 2021 (when Joe Biden came in). The Wall Street Silver account that has posted a lot of interesting things about inflation posted the bakery’s whiteboard explanation and it’s pretty jarring when you look at just how much it has increased.
Recessions and depressions are how Adam Smith’s dead hand employs Darwin to ensure the fittest survive.
tl;dr: Stupid finance games are stupid.
In 2020, American corporate debt hit a new, all-time high relative to GDP. It’s fallen a bit since then… but the trouble is just beginning.
As inflation continues to send interest rates higher, the debt of corporate America is going to cause serious problems. Credit analysts predict that up to 40% of the lowest-rated corporate borrowers will default. But all companies, even investment-grade credits, will suffer.
A particular concern during the last decade has been companies using debt to “fake” growth.
Declining businesses that can’t grow their revenues and earnings have been adding large amounts of debt to their balance sheets. Then, they use the money to buy back their own stock (which reduces share count, and artificially boosts earnings per share).
It seems obvious to us that buying your own stock won’t help you market your products or services, invent new or better products, or lead you to innovative breakthroughs… in other words, the things that companies should be doing to grow.
Instead, these new, higher debt loads will ultimately send these dying companies to their graves.
A HOG ON THE EDGE
Consider the case of iconic American motorcycle manufacturer, Harley Davidson (NYSE: HOG, $35.80). The company’s earnings peaked at just over $1 billion back in 2006 – and since then have dropped by 35% to $650 million last year. But you wouldn’t know it from just looking at earnings per share – which hit a new record high in 2022.
That’s because the management of Harley Davidson has attempted to mask the decline of the core business with debt. Starting in 2005, just as earnings were peaking, management shifted their focus from engineering motorcycles, to engineering Harley’s share price.
Starting with a previously pristine net cash position in 2004, the company subsequently accumulated over $5 billion in net new borrowings. That debt went into repurchasing stock, cutting Harley’s outstanding share count from 294 million in 2004 to 144 million today. The chart below shows the result of this financial maneuvering, effectively swapping debt for equity on Harley’s balance sheet:
Now, the company finds itself leveraged up with net debt exceeding 5 times annual operating income. And over the next three years, the company faces nearly $3 billion in debt maturities, including nearly $1 billion next year alone.
Refinancing those bonds – at much higher rates – will spike the company’s interest costs. Meanwhile, factor in a potential hit to demand from a recession… and this HOG could get taken out to pasture.
And Harley is just one of countless examples. The last decade of rock-bottom financing costs spawned a horde of “zombie companies” – the walking dead of corporate America. Now, these companies face the potentially lethal combination of sharply rising financing costs and a coming hit to consumer demand, that could push them over the edge.
#1
...Harley's been coasting on a reputation that effectively ended long ago. Add to that their insistence on developing an E-Hog and they might as well pull a sheet over their face and clasp a lily in their hands.
[HOT AIR] I’m not a TV news watcher because...well, it drives me nuts. The signal-to-noise ratio is too low, and my blood pressure can’t take it. And, of course, I like to keep up my reading skills which otherwise would atrophy in the 21st century.
So I didn’t see this live, but man, did Tulsi Gabbard make it worthwhile to catch it in the repeats.
Watters had just done a segment on the blockbuster news that the FBI has more than enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with multiple felonies—something that surprises precisely nobody who reads the news. The man is a train wreck who has sold out our country about 40 times over and literally spent the proceeds on hookers and blow.
Tulsi Gabbard took this as an opportunity to point out something that the MSM would of course like to cover up: Joe Biden likely would not have been president had the FBI not warned Facebook that a boatload of misinformation was about to be released onto their platform and that they should suppress it, and had not the whole intelligence community lied to the world and declared the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation.
Together they suppressed the story until well after the election, thus enabling Joe Biden to skate by without having to face hard questions about his role as the "Big Guy" in selling America down the river.
#3
Biden likely would not have been president had the FBI not warned Facebook that a boatload of misinformation was about to be released onto their platform and that they should suppress it, and had not the whole intelligence community lied to the world and declared the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation.
The biggest election fraud. 19% of Biden voters polled said they would not have voted for the vegetable had they known about his and his son’s corruption.
[via TTAG] Back in those days, there were no cellphones in the "sovereign, secular, socialist, democratic republic" as India called itself. Guns had been severely restricted a few years earlier in 1984 by the socialist regime, and only those who had been issued licenses before that owned any. Any comments from our local expert?i
#2
India has always been a class graded society. Before the mid 80s infact, some communities had well armed militias and Arsenal's full of WW2 hardware. SMLEs, 98Ks, M1891s, Webleys and Mausers. These were all martial clans that had either fought in the war or fought the Brits or crazily... both. And they were the dominant communities, the leadership representative of mostly their will. Moslems, non-mainstream tribal groups, outliers and those designated even by the Brits as 'criminal communities' had almost no representation in law enforcement, judiciary or legislation.
Until the late 80s. The insanely apologist riff raff loving regime saw the tightening of the socialist noose, with 'reservation' and affirmative action and other apologist type policies. The martial communities and erstwhile royals had been gradually dis-empowered already, now India began to be groomed and cajoled into the socialist ideal of being 'good obedient cirizens'. And then began the great social re-engineering as jurists and babus had been taught by Marxist professors who had themselves studied in Moscow in the 70s. They were full of ideas about taking away self-defense and equalizing everyone for the coercive power if the State, redistributing affluence by reserving government jobs for 'the minorities'.
True gun control didn't kick in until the mid 90s when the bureaucracy came to be flooded with appeasement appointees from classes of people who has been shot, lynched and beaten for being public nuisances earlier. And they brought their class angst to the job believe me. From licensing to permits and tighter controls, the new bureaucracy saw to it that not even defending yourself or your family was ever clearly justifiable. I think there's a lesson there, of course it's too late. A society, if it has successfully subdued its sub-societies for hundreds of years must never give in to self-righteous hoopla and sign on to become 'equal'. I know it sounds very mean and fascist but it keeps your own families safe. And survival is the highest ideal in nature. Everything else is noise.
In my household, which was a mish mash of cultures but essentially very martial, ridiculously machismo worshiping patriarchs hunted not just quail and boar but the occasional tribal, the moslem reportedly stealing cattle, the brigand funding his personal 'revolution' by robbing weddings. There were a thousand rifles in my house alone. Mostly Lee Enfield 303s. My grandpa used to shoot tins off my head at 100-150 yards. Then make me do the same. I was beaten if I purposely shot too far off to avoid killing him. 😁 That was growing up with guns in India for me.
#4
I remember the first ping I heard, supposed to be a great celebration but my heart was going thud thud thud. It was some .223 varmint thingy. And I shot a soup can off a poor servant's head. He could see the fear in my eyes, I could see it in his. While grandpa sat drunk in a chair. It was much less than 100 yards surely. I drew the line at animals. I never went hunting. Old man would say I'll grow up a fag of some sort. 😋
[Jpost] Since the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians began to brew it over 5,000 years ago, beer was always meant to go with food. See what interesting combinations you can come up with, and chag sameach!
#2
That's all well and good for storing it but what about reading it. The cave paintings mentioned are a good example. All it takes are your eyes and imagination to interpret. DNA needs a special device to read and how can we be sure it will be available in the future.
#4
"Using lasers to etch the interior of crystals...
Laser-etched with a 3D map of our nearby stars, our 3” crystal Star Map cube covers 5 parsecs - in all directions. A key is included describing every featured star and symbol. Sol is at the center and its boundaries stretch all the way to Altair. Whether you are an astronaut or a dreamer, we don’t suggest leaving Earth without it." Star Map – Laser Etched Crystal
Use something inert like borosilicate glass and watch the eons pass as it sits there untouched (except for the cosmic rays)...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[HOT AIR] I’m not a TV news watcher because...well, it drives me nuts. The signal-to-noise ratio is too low, and my blood pressure can’t take it. And, of course, I like to keep up my reading skills which otherwise would atrophy in the 21st century.
[Jpost] Since the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians began to brew it over 5,000 years ago, beer was always meant to go with food. See what interesting combinations you can come up with, and chag sameach!
