Shooting Rampage at Ft Lauderdale Airport

There was a mass shooting in Ft Lauderdale Airport today.  It's Estaban Santiago and he's 26 and apparently was wearing a Star Wars shirt.  He's a veteran of the Iraq War and apparently he had recently undergone mental health evaluation.   Apparently he even told the FBI he heard voices.  They were showing a lot of cell phone videos taken on the spot.  I heard about it this morning briefly and then heard more coverage on the Gary and Shannon show on KFI.  Since the shooting was in the baggage area now airports all over the country are stepping up their security procedures, and maybe there is too much “public area” that isn’t screened.  Then NBC had visual coverage from one to one thirty and then they went back to the soap opera.  The TV picture came right on today.  These shootings normally evoke a response from President Obama but according to Shawn Hannity,  the President and Rick Scott of Florida aren’t speaking to each other but Rick Scott went out of the say to say he was chummy with Donald Trump and Mike Pence.  There was this guy who is a Puerto Rican national.  He’s a legal American who was born in New Jersey.  His name is Estaban Santiago and they aren't officially calling this a "terrorist act" because he's not associated with ISIS (so the Republicans can't exploit that issue).  This morning he took a flight from Alaska (I can't help think of Sarah Palin being a gun nut) and flew first to Miniapolis and then to Ft Lauderdale.  There he took his gun that was legally in the storage section of the airplane and took it out of its hard shell locked case- - and went on a shooting rampage killing five people in wounding eight.  This was in the baggage section.  We don’t know his motive or his mental state but his web site says he was a devout Christian. 

Should the Supreme Court refer to its own past decisions as support of constitutional law?  Can’t congress of its own will void such questionable decisions under legislative power given to it by the Constitution.  “Court powers stripping” is specified in the constitution.   “The following cases are barred from citation as support for their own decisions”.   There is a provision in the US Constitution that stipulates that congress shall spell out the parameters of Supreme Court jouristiction.  Perhaps it's time they made use of that power.

There are 33,000 gun deaths per year in this country.  I thought it was a lot higher.  This one conservative gun afficianado on the Norman Goldman show says that a lot of those gun deaths are actually suicides.  We also have to wonder about the number of suicides that contribute to the war deaths in this country.  Norman does the deaths in service of the Empire for each week and there have been no military deaths in either December or the first week of this year.  Today’s airport rampage only highlights the need for new gun regulations. 

There is one rumor that the congressional budgeting office rules have been changed.  Now they are no longer to tell us the financial ramifications to any bill this Republican congress should pass.  Specifically if the bill will balloon the deficet they are forbidden to mention that.  Hartmann or someone brought up the "Two Santa Clause" theory of Jude Juanisky again that the Republicans will explode the deficet and then try and blame the democrats for it later.  Of course we already know that the government is forbidden to mention the psycholigical (or physical or sociological) damage done by gun proliferation.  

There is more news on this Facebook live streaming of a torture of a mentally disabeled eighteen year old white man by four Blacks.  There were two males and two females.  The eighteen year old was dropped off by his parents or something to spend the night on Newyears Eve or something with this supposed Black friend of his.  But instead things went bad and he was driven around a lot and tortured for several days and held hostage so to speak.  But FBI statistics according to Norman Goldman suggest that hate crimes of White on Black outnumber Black on White hate crimes by a ratio of three or four to one.  And I maintain that there is much more of a downright loonie element in the White race than there is in the Black race.  Legally Facebook is not liable because it’s technically a “Bulletin Board” and not any kind of an editor of what goes up on the site.  Facebook has taken this particular video down but they admit there is no way to control it because there is just so much “stuff” of many natures being posted.  

The unemployment numbers were out for December and I guess it’s good news.  The unemployment rate nation-wide is 4.7% and 156,000 jobs were added.  They were expecting 175,000 new jobs so the economy is showing some signs in slowing, particularly in manufacturing, which added the fewest jobs.  Yesterday there were massive store closings in Sears and K Mart and also Macy’s department stores.  I guess it’s because of the on-line sales competition.   Department store sales were town twelve percent but on-line sales were only up eleven percent so in general you could say this season’s sales figures were disappointing.  The biggest increases in the economy came from food services and health care.

The government issued their official report today about Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee.  I haven’t read all the details but they’re all pretty sure about it.  Unfortunately some people on the right keep mental “points” and all Trump has to do is make some bombastic statement like “I don’t believe anything our intelligence agencies say” and automatically that scores 85 points with those on the right “keeping score”.  And naturally their “score” is kept lopsided in Trump’s favor.  Norman Goldman has this theory, and he is probably correct.   Shawn Hannity in the segment of his show between two and three that I watch had two “experts” on talking about computer hacking and how it isn’t the Russians who did it.  Many on the right insist that many bright fourteen year olds could have done this hacking.  They said that Democratic security was deliberately lax in a “blame the victim” move.  They say it’s like leaving your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition.  But I need to read all the gory details of this government report.  It used to be that our several intelligence agencies garnered a little respect of the public because these people daily risk their lives to keep America safe.