The Tucson Solution: 3 cups finely sifted white supremacy, 2 ethnocentric Tea Parties, One 2nd Amendment glock, extra magazine, liberal target...

... plus a gaggle of famous people to give it the wink and the nod it needs to settle. Neglect the psychiatric care of 1 or two citizens to mix, brew and serve to the "oppressor" of their choice. Scapegoat the servers when you catch them red-handed, execute them if you can - and the rest of us get off scott free. Repeat regularly for maximum fear of crazy people and national unity around insane policies.

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I think it's pathetic that Americans are really so selfish they would try to unravel the very health care protections that could have helped prevent Loughner from slipping through the cracks in the first place.

Loughner is more than just a little out there or eccentric, like the rest of us. I don't know how this man can be seen as being anything but seriously mentally ill when he prepared for and perpetrated these crimes...he belogned in a hospital well before he reached a point to where he could carry this out.

I hope the community handles this crisis in such a way that fellow residents are more, not less, inclined to get treatment if they start experiencing similar symptoms. This kind of event has the effect of scaring and shaming the people into silence who most need to develop insight and seek help with their thought or mood disorders. Any amount of compassion the public can show them now may avert another tragedy later.

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Here is Time's main page on the shootings. Below is just one of their articles...

If You Think Someone Is Mentally Ill: Loughner's Six Warning Signs

Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2011
By Kate Pickert and John Cloud
TIME

In retrospect, it's easy to see the evidence that Tucson, Ariz., shooter Jared Loughner was mentally unstable. In his community-college classes, he would laugh randomly and loudly at nonevents. He would clench his fists and regularly pose strange, nonsensical questions to teachers and fellow students. "A lot of people didn't feel safe around him," a former classmate told Fox News.

Given these facts and the horrific turn of events at a Safeway supermarket on Jan. 8 that left six dead and 14 others injured, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who remains in critical condition, could anything have been done to prevent the violence? What signs that trouble lay ahead were missed? What signs were observed but ignored? In short, what can be done to prevent a potentially ill or unstable person from harming others?

(See TIME's full coverage of the Tucson shooting.)

In most states, including Arizona, it's predictably difficult to detain someone involuntarily due to mental illness. If he is not deemed an imminent danger to himself or others, as determined by a judge, in almost all cases, treatment will not come without the person in question admitting that they are ill and need help. Even then, there is no guarantee that help will come readily or swiftly.

"What you have is an obvious need for more capacity in the mental-health system," says Dr. Ken Duckworth, a Harvard professor, psychiatrist and medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). A need for more capacity is certainly true in Arizona. According to a 2005 report from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit mental-health organization, the state had 5.9 publicly funded psychiatric beds per 100,000 people, compared with a national average of 17. In addition, NAMI gave the state's mental-health system a C in 2009, a step up from its D grade in 2006, but with vast room for improvement.

Part of Arizona's low marks stem from its large Native American and foreign-born populations, which are harder to reach and treat, as well as the state's rapid overall population growth and rural regions, which are underserved by medical professionals. Still, the state was not an outlier. In 2009, NAMI gave just six states B grades, while 18 got Cs, 21 got Ds and six got Fs. None received an A. (See pictures of Jared Lee Loughner's World.)

Regardless of resources available, however, the problem with someone like Jared Loughner is that, without a court order, he would not have received treatment without a self-referral. It appears that his community college, which kicked him out, rightly protected its own population — at least one student and one teacher told the New York Times they feared Loughner would bring a gun to class — but left the rest of the community vulnerable. It would have been up to Loughner to seek treatment, a move many psychiatrically ill people would never make.

"Most young people who develop a psychiatric illness — particularly a psychotic illness in which they've lost the ability to discern fantasy from reality — don't have a lot of insight into the fact that they are ill," says Duckworth. He points to a recent online NAMI survey that found that schizophrenics suffered an average of nine years between their onset of symptoms, which often first appear in the late teens and early 20s, and diagnosis.

Often, authorities can intervene only once the illness has taken a dramatic, if not criminal, turn. On the same weekend of the Giffords shooting, the FBI took John Troy Davis, 44, of Denver into custody for threatening the staff of Colorado Senator Michael Bennet. Davis had been a familiar voice to Bennet's office, often calling to complain about Social Security benefits. But on Jan. 6, he began to say things like, "I'm a schizophrenic and I need help," and "I'm just going to come down there and shoot you all." In a subsequent call, he claimed to have killed a woman to get the Senator's attention. He then said, "I may go terrorism." The FBI decided to move on the case.

Other than a public breakdown and a threat to order, however, institutions with some sense of guardianship over individuals, like schools, colleges and, perhaps, corporations, may be the only potential intervenors — though even then, their options are limited by law and by the efficiency of bureaucracies. "At an institution like a university, this [has become] an expected problem," Duckworth says of mental illness. He reports that mental-health professionals working in college settings are overwhelmed by the intensity of the illnesses they see and by the sheer numbers of students in need of treatment.

An investigation conducted after Cho Seung-Hui shot 32 people dead at his school, Virginia Tech, in 2007 found gaps in that state's mental-health system. Yet even proper execution of the state's existing laws might have prevented the tragedy, either by preventing Cho from buying a gun or by forcing him to receive outpatient treatment for his mental illness, which had been identified (in fact, Virginia Tech had him institutionalized briefly but did not follow up after his release). Officials fell down on both counts. "Even in states that have a more paternalistic leaning," says Duckworth, "it's frequently about not executing. There's a passive quality to [enforcement]." (Just this past December, the U.S. Department of Education issued a report saying Virginia Tech violated a federal law on the morning of the shooting by not doing more to warn students that a shooter was on the loose on campus. The university denies it acted improperly.) (See more about accused murdered Loughner appearing in court.)

In fact, Cho's case is closely analogous to Loughner's, and it is becoming clear that officials at Pima Community College could have noticed sooner that the student was dangerous and unstable. For at least 18 months prior to the Virginia Tech massacre, Cho had shown many disturbing signs: bizarre writings for classes that included revenge fantasies; the stalking of at least three women; near total silence, including with his roommates; and even involuntary commitment to a mental institution. Similarly, it seems that Pima Community College (and Loughner's classmates and instructors) didn't do enough to recognize at least six warning signs in Loughner:

1. For months, he showed a classic symptom of psychosis: disorganized thoughts and speech. He routinely made irrelevant and nonsensical comments in classes. On one test, according to the Washington Post, he wrote, "Eat + Sleep + Brush Teeth = Math." On another test, he wrote, "Mayhem Fest!!!" (See what motivated Gabrielle Giffords' shooter.)

2. He showed another symptom of psychosis, or at the very least, an inability to function in social situations. One example from the New York Times: he enthusiastically read a poem in class in which he discussed touching himself in the shower.

3. He showed signs of paranoia, telling a classmate that U.S. currency was worthless and that the government was seeking to control people through grammar. He also became interested in a concept he called "conscious dreaming" (a concept at the heart of the mind-bending thriller Inception). (See photos of the outpouring of support for the shooting victims.)

4. He regularly smoked marijuana, and while there is only a small correlation between having a mental illness and committing violence, that correlation becomes much more significant when mental illness is combined with drug use, according to John Monahan, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia School of Law.

5. Several classmates said Loughner scared them. One of them even wrote e-mails in June saying she was afraid he would bring a gun to class. A teacher worried every time he had his back to Loughner that the student would pull a gun on him.

6. Loughner had five contacts with campus police, although it is not clear what behavior led to those contacts.

Hindsight is perfect, of course, but all institutions need to monitor students and employees who are consistently acting strangely. There was arguably enough evidence for Pima authorities to go to a judge and have Loughner involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, as Virginia Tech did with Cho. At the very least, the college could have required Loughner to check in with a counselor on a daily or weekly basis.



* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2041733,00.html

---------------Below is a compilation of some of Jared's Youtube entries-----

Jared Loughner and The Deranged State of our State.

-----------From Democracy Now-----------

Jared Loughner, Mental Illness and How Budget Cuts Have Slashed Behavioral Health Services in Arizona

January 11, 2011

AMY GOODMAN: While federal investigators and the news media try to uncover the motivation behind the attack, the picture emerging of Jared Loughner is of a severely disturbed 22-year-old who was behaving in an increasingly erratic manner. YouTube videos and other internet postings under his name suggest an obsession with bizarre anti-government grievances, including ramblings about currency policies and language control through grammar. Acquaintances in Arizona said Loughner had distanced himself from friends and family members in recent years.

In September, he was suspended from Pima County Community College after five run-ins with campus police for disruptive behavior, being thrown out of class, students saying they were afraid, professors saying that they were afraid of him. College administrators told him he needed clearance from a mental health professional saying he would not present a danger to himself or others before he could return to classes. Pima County behavioral health officials have no record of Loughner seeking treatment in the public system overseen by the Arizona State Department of Health Services.

Saturday’s attack and Jared Loughner’s apparent mental health problems have shone a spotlight on issues surrounding mental health treatment in Arizona. The state made drastic budget cuts to behavioral health services in 2010. The unprecedented cuts slashed all support services for non-Medicaid behavioral health patients and took away coverage for most name-brand drugs. As many as 28,000 state residents were affected. Meanwhile, Arizona is facing even bigger budget cuts this year and is facing an estimated $1.4 billion deficit in 2012.

H. Clarke Romans is the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona. He’s joining us from Tucson.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about your response to what has taken place.

H. CLARKE ROMANS: Well, our response so far has just been to point out that the availability of services has diminished due to these budget cuts, and although there’s no direct link, it just makes it less likely that people would be able to get services, even if they overcome the stigma of admitting or acknowledging that they have these illnesses. It just makes the availability of services even more difficult to obtain.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen now, H. Clarke Romans?

H. CLARKE ROMANS: Well, I think that the legislature has taken a simplistic approach to solving the budget crisis, with respect to mental health services, at least. What we’re finding in the community is that the costs were not really eliminated; they were just pushed down to less visible areas in the community, and we’re responding to the difficulties with the most expensive form of services that the community has to offer to people. That’s emergency rooms, hospitalization, law enforcement intervention. So, the communities are spending the money, even though it appears that the lawmakers believe that they have actually cut the budget and saved money. It’s just coming out of a different pocket down at the community level. And I think that we need to acknowledge that it ultimately is less expensive in the community to offer necessary services. And this is all without respect to the devastating impact this has had on people’s lives.

AMY GOODMAN: What had been the effect of the budget cuts, specifically?

H. CLARKE ROMANS: Well, I can give a number of examples, but in particular, people who have a serious mental illness diagnosis beginning last July were denied any further coverage in a number of areas—case management, brand-name medications, access to support groups, transportation subsidies, and more recently, housing subsidies. So these individuals who have the most serious forms of mental illness were essentially, except for generic medications, were basically pushed out of the system. And these are individuals who have a serious illness, who, in many cases, were managing with a support network, are now being pushed to the point where they can’t manage. So they’re decompensating. There’s suicide attempts. There’s one woman that we know that’s very ill, but she’s been managing OK. She’s now been hospitalized for 36 days over the last six months.

AMY GOODMAN: These budget cuts under Jan Brewer—she, in particular, the Governor, must understand, with her son Ronald in a state mental facility for, what, 20 years after being convicted of sexually assaulting a woman, but was by reason of insanity, was the ultimate verdict. So she knows and was a mental health activist herself, the Governor.

H. CLARKE ROMANS: Yes, she was. And frankly, to my surprise and many other of my colleagues, I don’t think she put up a strong enough battle to, you know, at least protect or minimize the effect on mental health services. I think she succumbed to the—kind of the ideologues who were pushing a different agenda. And she did make some statements that she wanted to protect mental health services, but ultimately I think she succumbed to the other political pressures.

AMY GOODMAN: What about your own story, H. Clarke Romans, how you got involved with the Alliance on Mental Illness?

H. CLARKE ROMANS: Well, I’m a member of a club that no one wants to belong to. And people become members when things happen to them like happened to my family. My son Kenneth was a smart, athletic, good-looking, popular young man, when his behavior became a little unusual. And we didn’t know what was going on. And eventually—we were living in Belgium at the time—a school counselor at the International School of Brussels called us up and said, "Gee, I think maybe Ken should be out of school for a while." And we were like, "What?" So we went to the school. Ultimately we took Ken to the doctor, a psychiatrist. And the doctor told us Kenneth is suffering from the symptoms of schizophrenia.

Well, I’m a highly educated, intelligent man. I couldn’t spell "schizophrenia," let alone have any idea what a devastating effect that was going to have on Kenneth, on the family, and for the rest of his life. And so, even though my son was killed by a drunk driver here in Tucson on September 11th, 2001, I’m still involved, because I think the indignities that Kenneth suffered in his life were not right, and I don’t want to see that happen to other people.

AMY GOODMAN: What about schools reporting? I mean, the teacher who alerted you, that’s very important. But here was Jared Loughner in college. Every classroom, it seemed, the kids, the students, the professors were concerned. They were scared. He was very disruptive. What does it mean for a school to get involved? And why don’t they? I mean, in this case, Pima County Community College says they did. They kicked him out.

H. CLARKE ROMANS: Well, I think there are two levels here, and the rules of the game are very different. When students are in high school and they’re minors, the school and the parents have a little more control. I mean, a few articles that I’ve read so far in the local paper indicate that some of these behaviors were already manifesting themselves in the—in high school. I mean, I read some of his high school classmates reported, you know, unusual behavior.

The difficulty for secondary schools is that if the teachers bring things to the attention of the parents and the parents take it to heart, that the school becomes financially responsible for a lot of assistance that the student might get. And due to budget cuts, a lot of principals and teachers, more or less, are instructed: don’t get involved, because if you do, the school is going to be financially responsible. And the schools are under tremendous financial pressure. So I think that’s a negative influence on the teachers. Even though school counselors and teachers deal with these students every day, they’re under kind of physical constraints.

When you get to college, it’s a different story, because, you know, by that time, generally the students are considered adults. The parents really don’t have any specific legal authority to force the person to do any particular thing. And only if a person is petitioned into the hospital due to their persistent behavior, there’s no way to force them to get treatment. They can be persuaded, and the college and the parents, I believe, have a role, a potential role, in persuading an individual to get help. I don’t know if the college did anything other than react to the negative behavior.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Pima County Sheriff Dupnik, he made the comment about the hate-filled language coming out of TV, radio, the talk shows. You have Jesse Kelly, the opponent of Congressmember Giffords, who put out a slogan that said something about targeting, taking on Giffords and bringing your M16 to a rally for Kelly. H. Clarke Romans, what this kind of explosive language does?

H. CLARKE ROMANS: Well, I think that it doesn’t help, particularly people who may have thought disorders or mood disorders, the part of their brain that would exercise caution—I mean, anybody that hears that kind of language may react to it. But people who are suffering from these mental process disorders don’t necessarily have the part of their brain that would set the boundaries. The cautionary or the commonsense parts of their thinking are not functioning properly. So, this kind of language has a much greater impact on individuals who are in that situation than on the average person who has, you know, the control of their thought processes and has in place the normal cautionary and restraining parts of the thought process. Many of these individuals, that part of their brain is not functioning properly, with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. There’s all kinds of thoughts going on, and the normal constraints and rational thinking processes aren’t there. So when you pour gasoline onto a hot situation, the likelihood of a fire is a lot greater than if—you know, if things are not so, you know, combustible.

AMY GOODMAN: Just to be exact, what her opponent, the Tea Party-backed opponent of Congressmember Giffords—and let’s remember that Congressmember Giffords’ father said—walked into the hospital and said that the Tea Party was her enemy, that he blamed the Tea Party. But Tea Party-backed candidate, Jesse Kelly, said, "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."

H. Clarke Romans, I want to thank you for being with us, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Southern Arizona.

Frontier Violence: Ramses Barron Torres.

Thoughts on how violence in America is received and perceived from my friend at Chaparral Respects No Borders. Read there when you can.

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Tucson Shooting Overshadows Border Shooting

Before Congresswoman Gifford and others were shot in Tuscon, Arizona , 17 year old Ramses Barron Torres was shot and killed by a bullet originating in Nogales, Arizona. There have been no national moments of silence for the apparently unarmed teenager. No memes speculating on the sanity of the shooter(s) or if violent rhetoric played a role. That’s probably because Ramses Barron Torres is Mexican and was shot by U.S. Border Patrol.

These points, made by Maegan La Mala on VivirLatino recently are ones that didn't really occur to me, even though I try to be aware of these sorts inconsistencies on the part of the media as well as the left. The article explores some of the stories around the circumstances surrounding Torres' death. But even if Torres had been throwing rocks, even if he had been on the US side of the border, the shooting was still unjustified. Certainly violent rhetoric played a role in this shooting, as it did in the shooting in Arivaca a year and a half ago.

Border patrol agents, like cops, get away with shootings and other violence on a regular basis. Even Ramos and Compean who were sentenced to prison for shooting at a man on the border (he didn't die), got their sentence commuted by Bush. It will be interesting to see what comes of this shooting. Either way, though, the outcry (as it is reported by the media as well as how it is coming across on the part of activists) is not nearly what it is in response to this shooting in Tucson. Yes, it is different that it was so out of the ordinary and that it was several people who were shot at once, but just because immigrants already live in a state of fear for their lives does not mean it's any less painful or traumatic.

Posted by chaparral at 2:07 PM Tuesday, January 11, 2011