AI
Monday, December 17, 2012 8:05:11 AM
Here are your parasites and terrorists, m*therf*ckers
Mourning the children—and the hero teachers who saved lives—at a makeshift memorial near Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
REUTERS
by VetGrl
Sat Dec 15, 2012 at 09:05 AM PST
To the cadre of soulless assholes who delight in condemning teachers and others dedicated to the public education of our nation's youngsters, with apologies for being utterly unable to be polite, I have one message:
FUCK YOU.
Fuck you, Michelle Malkin, for saying this [ http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2012/06/06/teachers_unions_earn_f_for_wisconsin_recall_abuse/page/full/ ] last June:
They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against GOP Gov. Scott Walker's budget and pension reforms. Students were the first and last casualties of the ruthless Big Labor war against fiscal discipline.
To kick off the yearlong protest festivities, the Wisconsin Education Association Council led a massive "sickout" of educators and other government school personnel ... When they weren't ditching their students, radical teachers steeped in the social justice ethos of National Education Association-approved community organizer Saul Alinsky were shamelessly using other people's children as their own political junior lobbyists and pawns.
Outside your Townhall bubble, this is the reality of the Sandy Hook teachers yesterday [ http://www.smh.com.au/world/class-heroes-save-lives-20121215-2bgec.html ]:
As a massacre unfolded, the teachers of Sandy Hook were the heroes of the hour.
They hid their small charges, remained calm, and quietly led them outside - instructing them to close their eyes so they would be shielded from the carnage.
One of the most damning aspects of this tragedy is that the teachers knew immediately what was unfolding: another school shooting.
Fuck you, random Free Republic douchebag [ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2929210/posts ], and your pissing and moaning about teachers making too much money -- and for the charming picture of teachers with photoshopped pig faces. Because preparing and training for sudden mass violence is now part of the fucking job [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323297104578179271453737596.html ]:
Schools nationwide have increased security measures since the shooting at Columbine. Many have installed metal detectors, developed detailed crisis plans, implemented policies to keep doors locked and accessible only by buzzer, and put teachers and staff through training on how to recognize and deal with threats.
Fuck you, Chris Christie, for threatening to freeze teacher pay [ http://www.northjersey.com/news/012210_Teacher_staff_salaries_may_be_frozen_Christie_says.html?page=all ], among other things. Does this teacher make too much [ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248357/Connecticut-shooting-Hero-music-teacher-saved-15-children-barricading-closet.html ]?
Maryrose Kristopik said she barricaded herself in to the closet with the nine and 10-year-olds while gunman Adam Lanza, 20, reportedly battered on the door screaming: ‘Let me in! Let me in!’
...
Asked about the incident itself, Mrs Kristopik said that you could ‘hear a lot’ of what was going on - and denied that she was a hero.
She said: ‘I called the police, I dialled 911 and they said they had reports of shots in the school, so that's when I had to tell the kids there was a bad person there because I didn't want them to talk.
‘I did what any other teacher would have done and I know there were others like me doing the same. They were doing whatever they could."
Fuck you, Rod Paige, for calling the NEA a "terrorist organization [ http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-23-paige-remarks_x.htm ]." Here is just one of the souls [ http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/14/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school/?hpt=us_c1 ] to whom you refer:
Janet Vollmer, a kindergarten teacher at the school, says she locked her classroom doors and – to keep her students calm – read them a story until the police came.
Vollmer, her 19 students and the adult helpers in her classroom were not injured.
"You could hear what sounded like pops, gunshots. Of course, I’m not going to tell that to 5-year-olds, so I said to them, ‘We’re going over in a safe area,'" Vollmer told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "And we read a story and we kept them calm, did a lockdown drill, closed the doors, locked (them), covered the windows, and kept the children with us.”
Fuck you, Katie Pavlich, and your snide remarks about Michigan teachers [ http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/12/11/teachers-bail-on-michigan-kids-who-cant-read-by-7th-grade-n1464588 ] just this week:
Many Michigan schools are closed today as hundreds of teachers converge on the Capitol in Lansing to protest Michigan right-to-work legislation which was just passed by Republicans and is headed to Governor Snyder's desk.
...
Remember: it's all about the kids.
Yea, it actually is all about the kids [ http://www.smh.com.au/world/class-heroes-save-lives-20121215-2bgec.html ].
Another quick-thinking member of staff was Kaitlin Roig whose ''happy'' morning meeting with her 14 students was suddenly interrupted by the unmistakable sound of rapid gunfire.
Ms Roig, 29, said she leapt up, closed her classroom door and then ushered the children, aged six and seven, into the adjacent bathroom. It was so tight some of the pupils had to be balanced on top of the toilet so they could all squeeze in. She then jammed a wheeled storage unit in front of the door and hoped for the best. ''We all got in there. I locked us in,'' she told America's ABC Network. ''I don't know if [the gunman] came in the room … I just told them we have to be absolutely quiet.
''If they started crying, I would take their face and tell them, 'It's going to be OK,''' Ms Roig said. ''I wanted that to be the last thing they heard, not the gunfire in the hall.''
And fuck you, Rush Limbaugh, always and forever, for calling teachers parasites [ http://motherjones.tumblr.com/post/3351260341/rush-limbaugh-calls-wisconsin-schoolteachers ] and doubling down with this [ http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/03/18/face_it_teachers_run_an_easy_money_scam_on_fellow_citizens ]:
Can we get rid of the myth once and for all that school teachers, anymore, are these average, ordinary (as Obama wants to say), next-door neighbors who are just doing everything they can to further the educational experience of your children?
That's not who they are. They are left-wing activists, active members of unions who are oriented first by a political agenda, second by their own well-being, and your kids come last.
Here are a few more of those self-serving parasites, demonstrating [ http://www.smh.com.au/world/class-heroes-save-lives-20121215-2bgec.html ] their selfishness, their utter disregard of the children entrusted to their care:
In the library, Yvonne Cech, a librarian, locked herself, an assistant and 18 fourth graders in a closet behind filing cabinets while the sound of gunfire thundered outside.
Diane Day, a school therapist, hailed the school's unnamed ''lead teacher'' as ''our hero'' after she was shot twice while barricading a lockless door with her body to keep Lanza out of a classroom occupied by staff who had been in a meeting before the shooting.
Ms Day told The Wall Street Journal that, after the school principal, Dawn Hochsprung [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/15/dawn-hochsprung-sandy-hook-elementary ], and school psychologist Mary Sherlach had run out of the room to see what was happening, the shooter arrived and tried to force entry. Lanza was thwarted by the teacher who was wounded in the leg and arm as he opened fire through the door.
Ms Hochsprung and Ms Sherlach did not return and were later confirmed dead.
The Stamford Advocate reports the brave principal had, crucially, managed to activate the school's public address system before she was killed. In alerting the rest of her school that a killer was on the rampage, the principal's last courageous act almost certainly prevented further bloodshed.
Fuck the whole lot of you. You don't deserve to breathe the same air as our public servants. Would you risk death to shield a child [ http://www.cnn.com/US/9803/28/funerals.wrap/ ]? No, if the security of your gated world failed you, you'd all be running for the door trying to save your own asses and pushing anyone who got in your way to the ground.
Let me conclude with a passage from an angry rant I posted directed to Rush Limbaugh after comments he made about Elizabeth Edwards' battle against breast cancer. That's a personal issue for me because I lost my own sister to breast cancer. I concluded the post with this with this:
Rush, I'll never get people like you. You don't understand suffering. You don't understand kindness. You don't understand love and support, whether between two people or among a community. You seem to understand nothing but your ego and your own ignorant sense of self importance.
But for as much as I don't get about you or your kind, there's one thing I'm pretty sure of: When you try to check in at the pearly gates, it'll be my sister who's going to kick your fat ass straight to hell.
Ditto, and that goes for the rest of the hate-mongering crowd.
Update: Via DisNoir36 in the comments:
This is Victoria Soto [ http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/523736_4820223498763_1934222138_n.jpg ],
and although I didn't know her, she is my hero. I don't know too much about her, but I know a lot of people who do know her and she's amazing. Victoria was a Stratford high graduate and only 27. She was killed today after she hid her first graders in closets and cabinets and told the shooter they were in the gym. He killed her and not one of her children were harmed. I have never been more proud to be from Stratford or to be a teacher. God bless Victoria, her family and friends, and all of those who were involved today in anyway. Victoria is a true hero.
© Kos Media, LLC (emphasis in original)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/15/1170268/-Here-are-your-parasites-and-terrorists-m-therf-ckers [with comments]
===
Children Were All Shot Multiple Times With a Semiautomatic, Officials Say
Graphic: The Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School [and listing of Mass Shootings in the U.S.]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/14/nyregion/The-shooting-at-the-Sandy-Hook-Elementary.html
Newtown Shootings | The Victims
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/15/nyregion/newtown-shooting-victims.html
By JAMES BARRON
Published: December 15, 2012
The gunman in the Connecticut shooting blasted his way into the elementary school and then sprayed the children with bullets, first from a distance and then at close range, hitting some of them as many as 11 times, as he fired a semiautomatic rifle loaded with ammunition designed for maximum damage, officials said Saturday.
The state’s chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, said all of the 20 children and 6 adults gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., had been struck more than once in the fusillade.
He said their wounds were “all over, all over.”
“This is a very devastating set of injuries,” he said at a briefing in Newtown. When he was asked if they had suffered after they were hit, he said, “Not for very long.”
The disclosures came as the police released the victims’ names. They ranged in age from 6 to 56.
The children — 12 girls and 8 boys — were all first-graders. One little girl had just turned 7 on Tuesday. All of the adults were women.
The White House announced that President Obama would visit Newtown on Sunday evening to meet with victims’ families and speak at an interfaith vigil.
On Saturday, as families began to claim the bodies of lost loved ones, some sought privacy. Others spoke out. Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, was among the dead, choked back tears as he described her as “bright, creative and very loving.”
But, he added, “as we move on from what happened here, what happened to so many people, let us not let it turn into something that defines us.”
On a day of anguish and mourning, other details emerged about how, but not why, the devastating attack had happened, turning a place where children were supposed to be safe into a national symbol of heartbreak and horror.
The Newtown school superintendent said the principal and the school psychologist had been shot as they tried to tackle the gunman in order to protect their students.
That was just one act of bravery during the maelstrom. There were others, said the superintendent, Janet Robinson. She said one teacher had helped children escape through a window. Another shoved students into a room with a kiln and held them there until the danger had passed.
It was not enough: First responders described a scene of carnage in the two classrooms where the children were killed, with no movement and no one left to save, everything perfectly still.
The gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, 20, had grown up in Newtown and had an uncle who had been a police officer in New Hampshire. The uncle, James M. Champion, issued a statement expressing “heartfelt sorrow,” adding that the family was struggling “to comprehend the tremendous loss we all share.”
A spokesman for the Connecticut State Police, Lt. J. Paul Vance, said investigators continued to press for information about Mr. Lanza, and had collected “some very good evidence.” He also said that the one survivor of the killings, a woman who was shot and wounded at the school, would be “instrumental” in piecing together what had happened.
But it was unclear why Mr. Lanza had gone on the attack. A law enforcement official said investigators had not found a suicide note or messages that spoke to the planning of such a deadly attack. And Ms. Robinson, the school superintendent, said they had found no connection between Mr. Lanza’s mother and the school, in contrast to accounts from authorities on Friday that said she had worked there.
Dr. Carver said it appeared that all of the children had been killed by a “long rifle” that Mr. Lanza was carrying; a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle was one of the several weapons police found in the school. The other guns were semiautomatic pistols, including a 10-millimeter Glock and a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer.
The bullets Mr. Lanza used were “designed in such a fashion the energy is deposited in the tissue so the bullet stays in,” resulting in deep damage, Dr. Carver said. As to how many bullets Mr. Lanza had fired, Dr. Carver said he did not have an exact count. “There were lots of them,” he said.
He said that parents had identified their children from photographs to spare them from seeing the gruesome results of the rampage. He said that 4 doctors and 10 technicians had done the autopsies and that he had personally performed seven, all on first-graders.
“This is probably the worst I have seen or the worst that I know of any of my colleagues having seen,” said Dr. Carver, who is 60 and has been Connecticut’s chief medical examiner since 1989.
He said that only Mr. Lanza and his first victim — his mother, Nancy Lanza — remained to be autopsied. He said he would do those post-mortems on Sunday.
Officials said the killing spree began early on Friday at the house where the Lanzas lived. There, Mr. Lanza shot his mother in the face, making her his first victim, the authorities said. Then, after taking three guns that belonged to her, they said, he climbed into her car for the short drive to the school.
Outfitted in combat gear, Mr. Lanza shot his way in, defeating a security system requiring visitors to be buzzed in. This contradicted earlier reports that he had been recognized and allowed to enter the one-story building. “He was not voluntarily let into the school at all,” Lieutenant Vance said. “He forced his way in.”
The lieutenant’s account was consistent with recordings of police dispatchers who answered call after call from adults at the school. “The front glass has been broken,” one dispatcher cautioned officers who were rushing there, repeating on the police radio what a 911 caller had said on the phone. “They are unsure why.”
The dispatchers kept up a running account of the drama at the school. “The individual I have on the phone indicates continuing to hear what he believes to be gunfire,” one dispatcher said.
Soon, another dispatcher reported that the “shooting appears to have stopped,” and the conversation on the official radios turned to making sure that help was available — enough help.
“What is the number of ambulances you will require?” a dispatcher asked.
The answer hinted at the unthinkable scope of the tragedy: “They are not giving us a number.”
Another radio transmission, apparently from someone at the school, underlined the desperation: “You might want to see if the surrounding towns can send E.M.S. personnel. We’re running out real quick, real fast.”
Inside the school, teachers and school staff members had scrambled to move children to safety as the massacre began. Maryann Jacob, a library clerk, said she initially herded students behind a bookcase against a wall “where they can’t be seen.” She said that spot had been chosen in practice drills for school lockdowns, but on Friday, she had to move the pupils to a storage room “because we discovered one of our doors didn’t lock.”
Ms. Jacob said the storage room had crayons and paper that they tore up for the children to color while they waited. “They were asking what was going on,” she said. “We said: ‘We don’t know. Our job is just to be quiet.’ ” But she said that she did know, because she had called the school office and learned that the school was under siege.
It was eerily silent in the school when police officers rushed in with their rifles drawn. There were the dead or dying in one section of the building, while elsewhere, those who had eluded the bullets were under orders from their teachers to remain quiet in their hiding places.
The officers discovered still more carnage: After gunning down the children and the school employees, the authorities said, Mr. Lanza had killed himself.
The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and the psychologist, Mary Sherlach, 56, were among the dead, as were the teachers Rachel Davino, 29; Anne Marie Murphy, 52; and Victoria Soto, 27. Lauren Rousseau, 30, had started as a full-time teacher in September after years of working as a substitute. “It was the best year of her life,” The News-Times quoted her mother [ http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Lauren-Rousseau-The-best-year-of-her-life-4120850.php ], Teresa, a copy editor at the newspaper, as saying.
Ms. Soto reportedly shooed her first graders into closets and cabinets when she heard the first shots, and then, by some accounts, told the gunman the youngsters were in the gym. Her cousin, James Willsie, told ABC News [ http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/tragedy-elementary-school-fallen-teachers-story-17980665 ] that she had “put herself between the gunman and the kids.”
“She lost her life protecting those little ones,” he said.
School officials have said there are no immediate plans to reopen Sandy Hook Elementary. Staff members will gather at the high school on Monday to discuss what happened, and students will be assigned to attend other schools by Wednesday.
Dorothy Werden, 49, lives across the street from Christopher and Lynn McDonnell, who lost their daughter Grace, 7, in the rampage. Ms. Werden remembered seeing Grace get on a bus Friday, as she did every morning at 8:45. Shortly afterward, she received a call that there had been a lockdown at the school — something that happens periodically, she said, because there is a prison nearby. It was only when she saw police cars from out of town speed past her that she knew something was seriously wrong.
Like the rest of the nation, she said, local residents were struggling with a single question: Why?
“Why did he have to go to the elementary school and kill all of those defenseless children?” Ms. Werden asked.
Reporting was contributed by Matt Flegenheimer, Thomas Kaplan and Ray Rivera from Connecticut, and Joseph Goldstein, N. R. Kleinfield, William K. Rashbaum, Marc Santora, Michael Schwirtz and Wendy Ruderman from New York and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington.
*
Related
In a Town of Traditions, Grief Engulfs Holiday Joy (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/for-newtown-horror-halts-a-season-of-celebration.html
A Mother, a Gun Enthusiast and the First Victim (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/friends-of-gunmans-mother-his-first-victim-recall-her-as-generous.html
Debate on Gun Control Is Revived, Amid a Trend Toward Fewer Restrictions (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/us/politics/connecticut-shooting-revives-gun-control-debate.html
Justice Dept. Shelved Ideas to Improve Gun Background Checks (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/us/politics/justice-dept-studied-and-shelved-ideas-to-bolster-gun-database.html
Times Topic: Newtown, Conn., School Shootings (School Shootings)
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/school_shootings/index.html
Related in Opinion
Nicholas D. Kristof: Do We Have the Courage to Stop This? (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html
Ross Douthat: The Loss of the Innocents (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/loss-of-the-innocents.html
*
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/gunman-kills-20-children-at-school-in-connecticut-28-dead-in-all.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/gunman-kills-20-children-at-school-in-connecticut-28-dead-in-all.html?pagewanted=all ] [with additional photos]
Mourning the children—and the hero teachers who saved lives—at a makeshift memorial near Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
REUTERS
by VetGrl
Sat Dec 15, 2012 at 09:05 AM PST
To the cadre of soulless assholes who delight in condemning teachers and others dedicated to the public education of our nation's youngsters, with apologies for being utterly unable to be polite, I have one message:
FUCK YOU.
Fuck you, Michelle Malkin, for saying this [ http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2012/06/06/teachers_unions_earn_f_for_wisconsin_recall_abuse/page/full/ ] last June:
They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against GOP Gov. Scott Walker's budget and pension reforms. Students were the first and last casualties of the ruthless Big Labor war against fiscal discipline.
To kick off the yearlong protest festivities, the Wisconsin Education Association Council led a massive "sickout" of educators and other government school personnel ... When they weren't ditching their students, radical teachers steeped in the social justice ethos of National Education Association-approved community organizer Saul Alinsky were shamelessly using other people's children as their own political junior lobbyists and pawns.
Outside your Townhall bubble, this is the reality of the Sandy Hook teachers yesterday [ http://www.smh.com.au/world/class-heroes-save-lives-20121215-2bgec.html ]:
As a massacre unfolded, the teachers of Sandy Hook were the heroes of the hour.
They hid their small charges, remained calm, and quietly led them outside - instructing them to close their eyes so they would be shielded from the carnage.
One of the most damning aspects of this tragedy is that the teachers knew immediately what was unfolding: another school shooting.
Fuck you, random Free Republic douchebag [ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2929210/posts ], and your pissing and moaning about teachers making too much money -- and for the charming picture of teachers with photoshopped pig faces. Because preparing and training for sudden mass violence is now part of the fucking job [ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323297104578179271453737596.html ]:
Schools nationwide have increased security measures since the shooting at Columbine. Many have installed metal detectors, developed detailed crisis plans, implemented policies to keep doors locked and accessible only by buzzer, and put teachers and staff through training on how to recognize and deal with threats.
Fuck you, Chris Christie, for threatening to freeze teacher pay [ http://www.northjersey.com/news/012210_Teacher_staff_salaries_may_be_frozen_Christie_says.html?page=all ], among other things. Does this teacher make too much [ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2248357/Connecticut-shooting-Hero-music-teacher-saved-15-children-barricading-closet.html ]?
Maryrose Kristopik said she barricaded herself in to the closet with the nine and 10-year-olds while gunman Adam Lanza, 20, reportedly battered on the door screaming: ‘Let me in! Let me in!’
...
Asked about the incident itself, Mrs Kristopik said that you could ‘hear a lot’ of what was going on - and denied that she was a hero.
She said: ‘I called the police, I dialled 911 and they said they had reports of shots in the school, so that's when I had to tell the kids there was a bad person there because I didn't want them to talk.
‘I did what any other teacher would have done and I know there were others like me doing the same. They were doing whatever they could."
Fuck you, Rod Paige, for calling the NEA a "terrorist organization [ http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-23-paige-remarks_x.htm ]." Here is just one of the souls [ http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/14/shooting-reported-at-connecticut-elementary-school/?hpt=us_c1 ] to whom you refer:
Janet Vollmer, a kindergarten teacher at the school, says she locked her classroom doors and – to keep her students calm – read them a story until the police came.
Vollmer, her 19 students and the adult helpers in her classroom were not injured.
"You could hear what sounded like pops, gunshots. Of course, I’m not going to tell that to 5-year-olds, so I said to them, ‘We’re going over in a safe area,'" Vollmer told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "And we read a story and we kept them calm, did a lockdown drill, closed the doors, locked (them), covered the windows, and kept the children with us.”
Fuck you, Katie Pavlich, and your snide remarks about Michigan teachers [ http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/12/11/teachers-bail-on-michigan-kids-who-cant-read-by-7th-grade-n1464588 ] just this week:
Many Michigan schools are closed today as hundreds of teachers converge on the Capitol in Lansing to protest Michigan right-to-work legislation which was just passed by Republicans and is headed to Governor Snyder's desk.
...
Remember: it's all about the kids.
Yea, it actually is all about the kids [ http://www.smh.com.au/world/class-heroes-save-lives-20121215-2bgec.html ].
Another quick-thinking member of staff was Kaitlin Roig whose ''happy'' morning meeting with her 14 students was suddenly interrupted by the unmistakable sound of rapid gunfire.
Ms Roig, 29, said she leapt up, closed her classroom door and then ushered the children, aged six and seven, into the adjacent bathroom. It was so tight some of the pupils had to be balanced on top of the toilet so they could all squeeze in. She then jammed a wheeled storage unit in front of the door and hoped for the best. ''We all got in there. I locked us in,'' she told America's ABC Network. ''I don't know if [the gunman] came in the room … I just told them we have to be absolutely quiet.
''If they started crying, I would take their face and tell them, 'It's going to be OK,''' Ms Roig said. ''I wanted that to be the last thing they heard, not the gunfire in the hall.''
And fuck you, Rush Limbaugh, always and forever, for calling teachers parasites [ http://motherjones.tumblr.com/post/3351260341/rush-limbaugh-calls-wisconsin-schoolteachers ] and doubling down with this [ http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/03/18/face_it_teachers_run_an_easy_money_scam_on_fellow_citizens ]:
Can we get rid of the myth once and for all that school teachers, anymore, are these average, ordinary (as Obama wants to say), next-door neighbors who are just doing everything they can to further the educational experience of your children?
That's not who they are. They are left-wing activists, active members of unions who are oriented first by a political agenda, second by their own well-being, and your kids come last.
Here are a few more of those self-serving parasites, demonstrating [ http://www.smh.com.au/world/class-heroes-save-lives-20121215-2bgec.html ] their selfishness, their utter disregard of the children entrusted to their care:
In the library, Yvonne Cech, a librarian, locked herself, an assistant and 18 fourth graders in a closet behind filing cabinets while the sound of gunfire thundered outside.
Diane Day, a school therapist, hailed the school's unnamed ''lead teacher'' as ''our hero'' after she was shot twice while barricading a lockless door with her body to keep Lanza out of a classroom occupied by staff who had been in a meeting before the shooting.
Ms Day told The Wall Street Journal that, after the school principal, Dawn Hochsprung [ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/15/dawn-hochsprung-sandy-hook-elementary ], and school psychologist Mary Sherlach had run out of the room to see what was happening, the shooter arrived and tried to force entry. Lanza was thwarted by the teacher who was wounded in the leg and arm as he opened fire through the door.
Ms Hochsprung and Ms Sherlach did not return and were later confirmed dead.
The Stamford Advocate reports the brave principal had, crucially, managed to activate the school's public address system before she was killed. In alerting the rest of her school that a killer was on the rampage, the principal's last courageous act almost certainly prevented further bloodshed.
Fuck the whole lot of you. You don't deserve to breathe the same air as our public servants. Would you risk death to shield a child [ http://www.cnn.com/US/9803/28/funerals.wrap/ ]? No, if the security of your gated world failed you, you'd all be running for the door trying to save your own asses and pushing anyone who got in your way to the ground.
Let me conclude with a passage from an angry rant I posted directed to Rush Limbaugh after comments he made about Elizabeth Edwards' battle against breast cancer. That's a personal issue for me because I lost my own sister to breast cancer. I concluded the post with this with this:
Rush, I'll never get people like you. You don't understand suffering. You don't understand kindness. You don't understand love and support, whether between two people or among a community. You seem to understand nothing but your ego and your own ignorant sense of self importance.
But for as much as I don't get about you or your kind, there's one thing I'm pretty sure of: When you try to check in at the pearly gates, it'll be my sister who's going to kick your fat ass straight to hell.
Ditto, and that goes for the rest of the hate-mongering crowd.
Update: Via DisNoir36 in the comments:
This is Victoria Soto [ http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/523736_4820223498763_1934222138_n.jpg ],
and although I didn't know her, she is my hero. I don't know too much about her, but I know a lot of people who do know her and she's amazing. Victoria was a Stratford high graduate and only 27. She was killed today after she hid her first graders in closets and cabinets and told the shooter they were in the gym. He killed her and not one of her children were harmed. I have never been more proud to be from Stratford or to be a teacher. God bless Victoria, her family and friends, and all of those who were involved today in anyway. Victoria is a true hero.
© Kos Media, LLC (emphasis in original)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/15/1170268/-Here-are-your-parasites-and-terrorists-m-therf-ckers [with comments]
===
Children Were All Shot Multiple Times With a Semiautomatic, Officials Say
Graphic: The Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School [and listing of Mass Shootings in the U.S.]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/14/nyregion/The-shooting-at-the-Sandy-Hook-Elementary.html
Newtown Shootings | The Victims
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/15/nyregion/newtown-shooting-victims.html
By JAMES BARRON
Published: December 15, 2012
The gunman in the Connecticut shooting blasted his way into the elementary school and then sprayed the children with bullets, first from a distance and then at close range, hitting some of them as many as 11 times, as he fired a semiautomatic rifle loaded with ammunition designed for maximum damage, officials said Saturday.
The state’s chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, said all of the 20 children and 6 adults gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., had been struck more than once in the fusillade.
He said their wounds were “all over, all over.”
“This is a very devastating set of injuries,” he said at a briefing in Newtown. When he was asked if they had suffered after they were hit, he said, “Not for very long.”
The disclosures came as the police released the victims’ names. They ranged in age from 6 to 56.
The children — 12 girls and 8 boys — were all first-graders. One little girl had just turned 7 on Tuesday. All of the adults were women.
The White House announced that President Obama would visit Newtown on Sunday evening to meet with victims’ families and speak at an interfaith vigil.
On Saturday, as families began to claim the bodies of lost loved ones, some sought privacy. Others spoke out. Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, was among the dead, choked back tears as he described her as “bright, creative and very loving.”
But, he added, “as we move on from what happened here, what happened to so many people, let us not let it turn into something that defines us.”
On a day of anguish and mourning, other details emerged about how, but not why, the devastating attack had happened, turning a place where children were supposed to be safe into a national symbol of heartbreak and horror.
The Newtown school superintendent said the principal and the school psychologist had been shot as they tried to tackle the gunman in order to protect their students.
That was just one act of bravery during the maelstrom. There were others, said the superintendent, Janet Robinson. She said one teacher had helped children escape through a window. Another shoved students into a room with a kiln and held them there until the danger had passed.
It was not enough: First responders described a scene of carnage in the two classrooms where the children were killed, with no movement and no one left to save, everything perfectly still.
The gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, 20, had grown up in Newtown and had an uncle who had been a police officer in New Hampshire. The uncle, James M. Champion, issued a statement expressing “heartfelt sorrow,” adding that the family was struggling “to comprehend the tremendous loss we all share.”
A spokesman for the Connecticut State Police, Lt. J. Paul Vance, said investigators continued to press for information about Mr. Lanza, and had collected “some very good evidence.” He also said that the one survivor of the killings, a woman who was shot and wounded at the school, would be “instrumental” in piecing together what had happened.
But it was unclear why Mr. Lanza had gone on the attack. A law enforcement official said investigators had not found a suicide note or messages that spoke to the planning of such a deadly attack. And Ms. Robinson, the school superintendent, said they had found no connection between Mr. Lanza’s mother and the school, in contrast to accounts from authorities on Friday that said she had worked there.
Dr. Carver said it appeared that all of the children had been killed by a “long rifle” that Mr. Lanza was carrying; a .223 Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle was one of the several weapons police found in the school. The other guns were semiautomatic pistols, including a 10-millimeter Glock and a 9-millimeter Sig Sauer.
The bullets Mr. Lanza used were “designed in such a fashion the energy is deposited in the tissue so the bullet stays in,” resulting in deep damage, Dr. Carver said. As to how many bullets Mr. Lanza had fired, Dr. Carver said he did not have an exact count. “There were lots of them,” he said.
He said that parents had identified their children from photographs to spare them from seeing the gruesome results of the rampage. He said that 4 doctors and 10 technicians had done the autopsies and that he had personally performed seven, all on first-graders.
“This is probably the worst I have seen or the worst that I know of any of my colleagues having seen,” said Dr. Carver, who is 60 and has been Connecticut’s chief medical examiner since 1989.
He said that only Mr. Lanza and his first victim — his mother, Nancy Lanza — remained to be autopsied. He said he would do those post-mortems on Sunday.
Officials said the killing spree began early on Friday at the house where the Lanzas lived. There, Mr. Lanza shot his mother in the face, making her his first victim, the authorities said. Then, after taking three guns that belonged to her, they said, he climbed into her car for the short drive to the school.
Outfitted in combat gear, Mr. Lanza shot his way in, defeating a security system requiring visitors to be buzzed in. This contradicted earlier reports that he had been recognized and allowed to enter the one-story building. “He was not voluntarily let into the school at all,” Lieutenant Vance said. “He forced his way in.”
The lieutenant’s account was consistent with recordings of police dispatchers who answered call after call from adults at the school. “The front glass has been broken,” one dispatcher cautioned officers who were rushing there, repeating on the police radio what a 911 caller had said on the phone. “They are unsure why.”
The dispatchers kept up a running account of the drama at the school. “The individual I have on the phone indicates continuing to hear what he believes to be gunfire,” one dispatcher said.
Soon, another dispatcher reported that the “shooting appears to have stopped,” and the conversation on the official radios turned to making sure that help was available — enough help.
“What is the number of ambulances you will require?” a dispatcher asked.
The answer hinted at the unthinkable scope of the tragedy: “They are not giving us a number.”
Another radio transmission, apparently from someone at the school, underlined the desperation: “You might want to see if the surrounding towns can send E.M.S. personnel. We’re running out real quick, real fast.”
Inside the school, teachers and school staff members had scrambled to move children to safety as the massacre began. Maryann Jacob, a library clerk, said she initially herded students behind a bookcase against a wall “where they can’t be seen.” She said that spot had been chosen in practice drills for school lockdowns, but on Friday, she had to move the pupils to a storage room “because we discovered one of our doors didn’t lock.”
Ms. Jacob said the storage room had crayons and paper that they tore up for the children to color while they waited. “They were asking what was going on,” she said. “We said: ‘We don’t know. Our job is just to be quiet.’ ” But she said that she did know, because she had called the school office and learned that the school was under siege.
It was eerily silent in the school when police officers rushed in with their rifles drawn. There were the dead or dying in one section of the building, while elsewhere, those who had eluded the bullets were under orders from their teachers to remain quiet in their hiding places.
The officers discovered still more carnage: After gunning down the children and the school employees, the authorities said, Mr. Lanza had killed himself.
The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and the psychologist, Mary Sherlach, 56, were among the dead, as were the teachers Rachel Davino, 29; Anne Marie Murphy, 52; and Victoria Soto, 27. Lauren Rousseau, 30, had started as a full-time teacher in September after years of working as a substitute. “It was the best year of her life,” The News-Times quoted her mother [ http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Lauren-Rousseau-The-best-year-of-her-life-4120850.php ], Teresa, a copy editor at the newspaper, as saying.
Ms. Soto reportedly shooed her first graders into closets and cabinets when she heard the first shots, and then, by some accounts, told the gunman the youngsters were in the gym. Her cousin, James Willsie, told ABC News [ http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/tragedy-elementary-school-fallen-teachers-story-17980665 ] that she had “put herself between the gunman and the kids.”
“She lost her life protecting those little ones,” he said.
School officials have said there are no immediate plans to reopen Sandy Hook Elementary. Staff members will gather at the high school on Monday to discuss what happened, and students will be assigned to attend other schools by Wednesday.
Dorothy Werden, 49, lives across the street from Christopher and Lynn McDonnell, who lost their daughter Grace, 7, in the rampage. Ms. Werden remembered seeing Grace get on a bus Friday, as she did every morning at 8:45. Shortly afterward, she received a call that there had been a lockdown at the school — something that happens periodically, she said, because there is a prison nearby. It was only when she saw police cars from out of town speed past her that she knew something was seriously wrong.
Like the rest of the nation, she said, local residents were struggling with a single question: Why?
“Why did he have to go to the elementary school and kill all of those defenseless children?” Ms. Werden asked.
Reporting was contributed by Matt Flegenheimer, Thomas Kaplan and Ray Rivera from Connecticut, and Joseph Goldstein, N. R. Kleinfield, William K. Rashbaum, Marc Santora, Michael Schwirtz and Wendy Ruderman from New York and Michael S. Schmidt from Washington.
*
Related
In a Town of Traditions, Grief Engulfs Holiday Joy (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/for-newtown-horror-halts-a-season-of-celebration.html
A Mother, a Gun Enthusiast and the First Victim (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/friends-of-gunmans-mother-his-first-victim-recall-her-as-generous.html
Debate on Gun Control Is Revived, Amid a Trend Toward Fewer Restrictions (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/us/politics/connecticut-shooting-revives-gun-control-debate.html
Justice Dept. Shelved Ideas to Improve Gun Background Checks (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/us/politics/justice-dept-studied-and-shelved-ideas-to-bolster-gun-database.html
Times Topic: Newtown, Conn., School Shootings (School Shootings)
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/school_shootings/index.html
Related in Opinion
Nicholas D. Kristof: Do We Have the Courage to Stop This? (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html
Ross Douthat: The Loss of the Innocents (December 16, 2012)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/loss-of-the-innocents.html
*
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/gunman-kills-20-children-at-school-in-connecticut-28-dead-in-all.html [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/gunman-kills-20-children-at-school-in-connecticut-28-dead-in-all.html?pagewanted=all ] [with additional photos]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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