Sen. Mitch McConnell feels the need to defend his record on mental health issues

By Richard K. Barry

Whatever one thinks of the secret taping of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) campaign strategy session, the words captured on tape have not helped him. The characterization of once potential Senate challenger Ashley Judd's mental health issues as a campaign opportunity has left some unimpressed.

Clearly, McConnell felt the need to do some damage control.

In response to those who have called him “insensitive to Americans suffering from depression or mental illness,” McConnell says in the op-ed, published in the Lexington Herald-Leader, that ”nothing could be further from the truth," citing his legislative record, including his support for a 2004 youth suicide prevention bill, the creation in 2000 of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network and a 2008 bill to improve mental health care for veterans, among others.

The Hill writes that "some critics have called for him to apologize to Judd and other sufferers of mental illness because he remained silent during the meeting as an aide outlined her battles with depression, as chronicled in her autobiography."

The Senate Minority Leader has consistently criticized "those 'far-left partisans,' accusing them of trying to tear him down through inappropriate tactics."

What is interesting here is not the substance of McConnell's defence, but the fact that he felt the need to respond at all. I can't defend the tactics of Progress Kentucky, the group that secretly taped the meeting, but McConnell is hoping voters will focus on how the comments were obtained instead of what the comments were.

McConnell's actions suggest he doesn't believe they will.

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Worst Democrat of the Day: Heidi Heitkamp, pro-NRA gun nut

By Michael J.W. Stickings

When it comes to elections to legislative bodies, partisans often just count the numbers: Do we have more they they do? In a way, that's all that matters.

And so it was for Democrats back in November. We wanted to keep the Senate, and perhaps even to pick up a seat or two, and that meant supporting Democrats who weren't exactly progressive. It was the party affiliation that mattered, just like it is for sports fans rooting for the jersey.

Heidi Heitkamp, running to keep retiring Byron Dorgan's North Dakota seat on our side of the ledger, was one of those Democrats. She won, and we cheered her victory if only because it meant another Democratic seat, and even if she wasn't all that great, at least the Republicans didn't take it.

Now, to be sure, you have to put up with less progressive Democrats, or even anti-progressive ones, if you want to win in solidly red states like North Dakota. And furthermore, Heitkamp was preferable by far to her Republican opponent, the far-right Rick Berg -- I suppose even a generally conservative Democrat like Heitkamp is (usually) better than a Republican.

But that really doesn't make it all okay, and her comments about, and against, gun control this morning only serve to prove the point that there are some awful Democrats out there.

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Idiot extraordinaire Louie Gohmert wants to stop gun violence with more guns

By Michael J.W. Stickings

He's often our "Craziest Republican of the Day," but today let's just call him out for being an idiot:

Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Republican from Texas, says he wishes Dawn Hochsprung, the principal of the Sandy Hook Elementary School, was armed with an M-4 assault rifle when she confronted Adam Lanza, the shooter who killed 20 children.

"I wish to God she had an M-4 in her office locked up so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out and she didn’t have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands but she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids," Gohmert said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

Yes, but she didn't, and arming school administrators to the teeth as the way to deal with the problem of gun violence is just idiotic. 

Yes, the way to deal with Ameria's gun-obsessed culture of violence is... more guns! This is how the gun nuts think, and why they must be politically obliterated.

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Guns cheap, mental health expensive

By Frank Moraes 

I've already written about how I think the primary lesson of the many recent mass shootings is that we need to do something about the easy availability of guns. But I still think much more needs to be said about mental health and anyway, I'm not sure that I have a lot to add on the gun situation. Go watch Up with Chris Hayes.

When Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he had a great idea to save the state money: close down most of the mental hospitals. This was a false economy, to say the least. I'm not sure what the correlation is exactly, but this decision happened shortly before California saw its ranks of homeless skyrocket.

This is not just a California problem, of course. Sy Mukherjee wrote an excellent article over at Think Progress yesterday, "It's Easier For Americans To Access Guns Than Mental Health Services." In it, he notes that for the poor, it is much cheaper to buy a gun than to buy mental health care. He has the data in the article. But I was really struck by this passage: 

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It's not about being "crazy." The Connecticut shooting did not happen in a mental-health vacuum.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well, here it comes... as we knew it would.

The connecticut school killer, Adam Lanza, was insane:

He was dark and disturbed, a deeply troubled boy from a wealthy family who unnerved his neighbors and classmates.

Mass murderer Adam Lanza, 20, was a ticking time bomb, people who knew him told the Daily News. 

"This was a deeply disturbed kid," a family insider told the Daily News. "He certainly had major issues. He was subject to outbursts from what I recall." 

Lanza, who friends and officials said suffered from Asperger's syndrome or a personality disorder, had a tortured mind.

This may all be true, but it's also the way America in general and right-wing gun nuts and their various supporters and enablers in particular refuse to take any responsibility for violent crime, especially gun crime.

It's not the guns, it's never the guns, it's the crazy guy -- this is the standard refrain. And if we all had guns, we'd be able to stop the crazy guys with guns -- this is what inevitably follows.

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Craziest Republican of the Day: Louie Gohmert

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Gohmert gets this award a lot (e.g., here and here). But there's just no denying it: he's fucking crazy. (And a fucking idiot; see, e.g., here and here.) Here's more proof:

The House voted on Wednesday to strike the word "lunatic" from all federal laws and only one lawmaker voted against the measure: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). 

It was unclear initially why the Tea Party favorite opposed the change, and a Gohmert spokeswoman did not return a request for comment. The point of the bill, which cleared the Senate in May with no opposition, is to strike language from current law that contributes to the stigmatization of mental health conditions.

But during a rant on the House floor later in the day, about the need for a flat tax, Gohmert shed some light on why the word needs to stay.

"To keep spending and not pay the price, that is immoral," Gohmert said. "That's why we shouldn't eliminate the word 'lunatic.' It really has application around this town."

Right, so it's okay to keep stigmatizing those with mental health problems with a word the medical community rejects. Louie doesn't give a shit. He's got a stupid political point to make, a point that has nothing to do with the matter at hand, and darn it he'll make it even if he has to stand against his own party, the craziest among the crazy, no small feat.

Congrats, Louie! You certainly have a way of distinguishing yourself.

Rendell, Giuliani call for "early detection system" for mental illness and guns

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Hill:

Two high-profile politicians [yesterday] called for sweeping reforms to the nation's mental health system that would prevent individuals deemed ill from legally purchasing firearms.

Had numerous concerns about alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner’s mental status placed him on a list restricting his ability to buy a gun, his Jan. 8 rampage might have been prevented, said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, and Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell, a Democrat.

During a "Face the Nation" appearance, Rendell called for an "early detection system" designed to keep mentally unstable individuals from buying guns. 

Basically, if you've attended more than one Tea Party event (because you could have attended one just by accident) or if you're a Tea Party-backed candidate for the GOP, you shouldn't be able to buy a gun. Period.

I'm kidding... of course. (Ahem.)

Actually, in a country that refuses to do anything about guns and gun violence, this was an admirable display of bipartisan support for a rational response to the Arizona shooting. Giuliani, once something of a moderate but now a Republican hard-liner, even talked about the country's "inability to deal with mental illness."

I would just note that while there does need to be a "rational debate" on gun control, as Rendell said, as well as a serious effort to address mental illness, the Arizona shooting -- an assassination attempt on a politician -- wasn't just about some lone crazy guy getting hold of a semi-automatic pistol with a high-capacity ammunition clip. It was also about the right's culture of violence, both in rhetoric and in ideology, and about the extent to which that culture has come to shape American politics and define conservatism.

As I wrote last week, while it certainly appears to be the case that the (alleged) killer, Jared Lee Loughner, is "deranged" (to use a loaded and hardly clinical term), as well as that he was not a card-carrying member of the Tea Party or GOP, it is wrong, I think to treat him as a detached loner who acted in a vacuum of his own derangement. To do that is to ignore context, to ignore the bigger picture, the "national climate."

In other words, there may be no direct connection between conservatism and the shooting, but that does not necessarily mean that what Loughner did (or, rather, is charged with doing) may be detached entirely from the broader, right-wing political context that may very well have informed his thinking, or his derangement, to some degree.

"You can't outsmart crazy"

By Edward Copeland

With those words, Jon Stewart gave another eloquent speech at the beginning of Monday night's Daily Show, dispensing with humor to address Saturday's horrific events in Tucson.

With each passing hour and day since alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner opened fire on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, critically injuring her, killing six and wounding 14 others, it becomes clearer that this 22-year-old man was not a political partisan but someone who was severely mentally ill. With Arizona government offices finally open Monday, The Washington Post finally was able to answer one simple question that's not open to debate: his voter registration. The answer turns out to be that he was a registered independent but was considered inactive because he hadn't bothered to vote in such a long time, including in November. Hardly indicative of a Tea Party participant.

I am guilty of jumping to conclusions. With the precursors without body counts such as smashed windows, threats, cut gas lines, it was an easy assumption to make. However, in my horror of the moment I forgot the old line about what happens when you assume: it makes an ass out of u and me. Subconsciously, there probably was part of me as there consciously was in many others who wanted this tragedy to turn out to be that way for political advantage. I may disagree with the Tea Party, believe them to be terribly misinformed and inflamed by the likes of Glenn Beck, but they aren't all homicidal lunatics.

When so many on the left criticized Jon Stewart's rally, claiming he was trying to make both sides equivalent, in the wake of Saturday's events, now he seems more right than ever. Keith Olbermann's Saturday special comment didn't say so explicitly, but if you read between the lines, it was a bit of a mea culpa for his own role. As Sarah Palin rushed to delete her graphic with the gunsight over Giffords' district, Daily Kos also had to delete a post where one of Giffords' constituents said that Giffords was "dead to me" because she voted against Nancy Pelosi for House minority leader.

Already, both sides are starting to revert to old habits. Because we on the left rushed to link the act of a madman to the politics of those we oppose, now those on the right revert to defensive mode and attack us. Hopefully, someone can stop this quickly. This is an opportunity for everyone to step back, take a breath and restore civility to the political process. I'm not saying compromise your principles, but it's long past time where both sides stop treating political opponents as the enemy. As it's been said many times, you can disagree without being disagreeable. The political climate probably didn't set Loughner off, but both parties need to look at themselves critically and seriously.

I hope that people take Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Clarence Gupnik to heart and start rejecting the Becks and Limbaughs, but the only way that happens is when they get hit where it really hurts: the wallet. Beck has shown those signs with the loss of lots of sponsors, being taken off a big New York radio station and even dropping numbers on Fox News. I wish their listeners realized they were in it for the money, but oh well.

What really needs to be addressed seriously is the fact that this country has a gun problem and it's had a gun problem for a long time. A man rejected by the military, kicked out of college and who worried others around him was still allowed to legally purchase his Glock and, more importantly, his high-volume ammunition clips. He had three clips which had 33 rounds each. These sorts of clips were illegal under the assault weapons ban which was allowed to expire during the Bush Administration. If that law were still in place, he could only have purchased clips that held 10 rounds, meaning he would have to reload more frequently and the bloodshed would have been less. I hope the NRA and their friends in Congress are proud. Right now, Arizona is considering allowing faculty and college students to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

We also have to improve our ability to treat the mentally ill. In a rare moment of a television newsperson saying something profound, Lester Holt did the other day when he said that in the end, the motive doesn't matter. Six people are still dead, including a 9-year-old student council president born on 9/11.

Summer raving

By Capt. Fogg

Those lazy, hazy, crazy conspiracy theories of Summer are still with us and not just in the deep South. Majikthise gives us a clip of Glenn Beck, Fox News' designated madman, discussing the prospect of Americorps being a cover for President Obama's own private army - a kind of American SS if you will. Just the kind of zombie troops he will need to disarm the Armed Retards of Texas and deliver our country into the hands of Sauropods from Saturn. Just like FDR did with the WPA.

Obama has given the job training and public service agency "half a trillion dollars" to turn them into an elite fighting force to use against Americans, presumably after the Pentagon balks and Blackwater opts out. The Pentagon would be jealous of all that funding - if there was a particle of truth in this seditious crock of Glennbeckery.

Now don't get me wrong, I do not reject conspiracy theories out of hand. There certainly were some involved in bringing on Bush's Second War and a number of less violent ones involving raiding the public treasury, but I say that because there is credible evidence for it. There never is for Beck's ravings. In fact the idea seems to be that total absence of evidentiary support is not only proof of conjecture, but a large screen upon which to project the ideas he comes up with by sticking his head in a paper bag full of aromatic hydrocarbons. Never mind the proof of his dishonesty, the folks who have been backed into a corner don't care about evidence. The people who hired him care nothing at all whether their viewers are human or subhuman or anti-human as long as they tune in, turn on and freak out.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Mental mayhem: McCain refers to Americans as "my fellow prisoners"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This is just bizarre -- and perhaps a glimpse into the messed up mind of McCain. At a rally in Pennsylvania today, McCain referred to his fellow Americans as "my fellow prisoners." Jed Lewison has the clip (note that Palin, who may or may not be paying attention, so enraptured is she by her own smug arrogance, isn't phased at all by it):



There really isn't much to say. McCain may seriously be losing it, as Josh Marshall suggests.

Melissa McEwan: "In all seriousness, I've genuinely never had doubts about his mental acuity until now. But that's Reaganesque in a way he doesn't intend -- the kind of mistake that's not easily attributable to exhaustion or the usual word aphasia that comes quite naturally with aging, where one might be tempted to stick in a sorta-not-quite-right word at a public event just because the right one is out of reach. It's…alarming."

Indeed it is.

Matt Stoller: "And today we find out that McCain is taking a supplement that is also used for Alzheimer's and dementia while saying 'my fellow prisoners' instead of 'my fellow Americans'. And then there's the question of anger and mental stability."

Kyle Moore: "Everyone makes mistakes, but that specific mistake is simply too pregnant with coincidence for the average person to ignore. Given that McCain’s reputation for temperament is already at risk, this isn't going to help him any."

Is it not time to talk seriously about McCain's health, both mental and physical?