For those of you who choose not to pollute your brains with right-wing cranial fecal spray (cranial santorum?) that is regularly spewed from the cavernous depths of the National Review here is a quick rundown of the conservative columnist and newly squishy-soft liberal hippie girly-man Rich Lowry.
Rich Lowry is the editor of the National Review.
That's right. He's not a contributor. He's not an occasional columnist. He's not a blogger. He's the actual EDITOR of the National Review.
And apparently he's just turned all liberal and caring and stuff. I santorum you not!
More below the malformed carrot.
Okay, I'll clarify a bit here.
In case you haven't noticed, the National Review has really been hitting the skids when it comes to coping with the Newtown massacre. There is absolutely no way you can now oppose gun control without being utterly dismissive of the many deaths of children and adults.
Of course the National Review could employ its usual tactic when it comes to large news stories that offer massive, dramatic evidence that right-wing beliefs are wrong. The record-breaking drought that dominated the headlines of all major news outlets while parching two-thirds of the United States in 120 degree heat is a good example. Crops wilted and died, along with people, as the once fertile plains of our great nation turned to dusty desert.... and yet the National Review spared not one drop of ink on the story. The death of four people in Benghazi? NATIONAL TRAGEDY!!!! Over 60 deaths in the US this summer because of the heat wave? Crickets.
The massacre in Connecticut, however, was so dramatic that even the writers of the National Review couldn't hide under rocks forever. Reluctantly they crawled out to face the harsh glare of the reality of lax gun control. How can anyone pay condemnatory lip service to the horror of child killings while still protecting the right of kooky people to own semi-automatics? Well, there have been several sloppy efforts in this area, most infamously Charlotte Allen, conservative columnist and the crypt-keeper's ugly older sister who blamed the Newtown massacre on feminism and the many women who dominate our school systems. Even the far-right message board on the National Review's website were full of justified rage towards Ms. Allen. "Shame on you, Charlotte Allen!" Frankly, I'm surprised that the National Review hasn't taken down her column... but hey, this is the National Review! They have a long history of giving their tacit blessing to writers who spout bad facts and illegal slander..
Still, it does no magazine any good to continue to look like heartless bastards if even their to-the-right-of-Ann-Coulter board commentators are condemning their columnists. The conundrum remains: how do we express shock at the Newtown massacre, argue effectively for continued lax gun control and not look stupid/cruel in the process?
Rich Lowry has the answer: "Let's keep our guns, but totally reverse previously-held positions on taking care of mentally-ill patients!
Seriously, Lowry gets so squishy-soft towards the sick and insane that had Barack Obama said the same things during an Affordable Care Act speech the National Review would have seen it as proof positive of Obama's so-shuhlist ahjendah.
Listen to what this hippie douche has to say:
We may never know what the dynamic was in the Lanza home. For too many parents of the mentally ill, though, it goes something like this: Their child becomes withdrawn, delusional, and erratic. If they call the mental-health system, they are told to bring the child in for an appointment and the sick child won’t go. If the parents call the cops, the cops show up and say the child doesn’t appear to represent a threat to himself or others and they leave. If they take him to the hospital, he is quickly released back to the parents even if he is admitted. The choice might become living with a deteriorating child increasingly out of his mind or forcing him out of the home and into the streets.
Whoa, whoa, WHOA! Wait a sec Rich, are you saying we need MORE government interference in taking care of the mentally ill and giving them the help they need? Because, um, there are health care policies that have those measures in place. In face, some guy named Obama passed some bill called the Affordable Care Act that
does a few things to help expand medical care services for the mentally ill and their families. I think you might have heard of the Affordable Care Act though, right Mr. Lowry?
Didn't you say a few things about the Affordable Care Act, the Act that might have helped people like Mr. Lanza before they committed terrible crimes? Hmmm?
Alas, there’s no such place as the Big Rock Candy Mountain, where, as the hobo anthem has it, “the hens lay soft-boiled eggs” and “the handouts grow on bushes.”
Yeah, the Affordable Care Act was the mythical "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and the people who benefited from it were "hobos."
But NOW it's all, "Oh, let's keep our guns but help the mentally ill." Well hell Mr. Lowry, Mr. Obama's already done that for you! He's even cross the "t"'s, dotted the "i"'s, got it passed through Congress and had it blessed by the Supreme Court. It's gone and done and it's called the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare. So whaddaya say Mr. New Liberal? Are you gonna give a few mea culpas and say you were wrong... or are you going to continue to wear the "kind and caring" mantle without giving the president credit for doing EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE SAYING SHOULD BE DONE!!!
If we are going to have a rush to action, it shouldn’t be on guns. It should be on mental illness. It doesn’t make for high political drama or emotional cable chatter, but getting treatment for more of the most seriously mentally ill might actually prevent future shootings. Even if it doesn’t, it would improve the lives of sick and vulnerable people.
And that's exactly what the Affordable Care Act does.
When they are treated, the seriously mentally ill aren’t more violent than the general population. If untreated, though, they are. The evidence is in our ongoing roll call of horrors perpetrated by the deranged. We don’t know yet if Adam Lanza was mentally ill, or if a better system would have helped him. We do know that somewhere out there a young man is about to get very sick. He could become the next Jared Loughner or James Holmes — unless someone gets him treatment.
Again, that's what the Affordable Care Act does.
Yes, this is 21st-century America. Where we have better means to treat mental illness than ever before, but choose to let the insane people decide to get it or not. Where we supposedly deinstitutionalized the mentally ill by closing down psychiatric hospitals, and then reinstitutionalized them behind bars. The number of psychiatric beds on a per capita basis is back at 1850 levels, and there are three times as many seriously mentally ill people in jail or prison than in hospitals, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center. Where we let sick people sleep on the streets. About a third of homeless men and two-thirds of homeless women are seriously mentally ill. Imagine the national outrage if people with Alzheimer’s were permitted to wander around the streets uncared for. But, by some perverse logic, it’s considered okay for schizophrenics.
AMEN!!! Geez Laweez! Not only is Mr. Lowry now a liberal who tacitly endorses the Affordable Care Act, he's actually slamming GOP saint Ronald W Reagan, The Gipper, Good Ol' Ronnie. The fact is that
in 1967 then-governor of California Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act which had the causal effect of exploding the number of insane, homeless people in California cities. It was seen as a bold, conservative, cost-cutting move at the time. We were shutting down the state mental hospitals and kicking the moochers out to get jobs! No more sucking on the government teat and mucking about, pretending you're insane just so you can get excused from acting like an adult! Keeping sick people from getting the care they need will solve EVERYTHING!!!
Well, tragically, as Rich Lowry (!) so poignantly pointed out, the LPS Act that Reagan signed into law just made a bad situation worse. The sick, the insane, the schizophrenic, and the psychotic were left to starve or freeze on the streets of San Francisco (and Los Angeles, Pasadina, Santa Barbara, and.... everywhere else, really).
So Mr. Lowry, before you fold up your tent from the Occupy encampment, toss it into the trunk of your "Prius" with the "Coexist" bumper sticker and disappear in a cloud of patchouli fumes and legalized marijuana smoke, may I ask you one question?
Are you really going to do this?
Are you really, finally, after all the bloodshed and the eight years of George W. Bush and two years of deliberate congressional gridlock, FINALLY going to let just doing the right thing for Americans trump party politics? Are you actually, really, truly,.... just going to do what's best for the country? Is this the face of the newly chastened GOP? Has the Bland (very) Old Party finally learned its lesson and returned to sanity?
The federal government can act on this travesty only at the margins. It is largely up to the states. They can make a real difference by stopping the further closure of public-hospital psychiatric beds and making it easier to compel treatment.
Haha! Sike!
Naw, it's just the same old crap from the National Review. Yeah, something big and compassionate and vague needs to be done, but not by the federal government! That's so-shuhlist and way too efficient. Nah, just leave it up to the states. Leave it up to the Jan Brewers and Rick Scotts and Rick Perrys.... and frankly every other Republican named "Rick" in this world who are intent on throwing monkey wrenches into the machinery of getting sick people well again.
Yeah Rich Lowry, good luck trying to get Rick Perry to stop the closure of public hospital psychiatric beds in Texas. This is the same asshole who was willing to cut off ALL funding to women's health care and put the lives of 130,000 low-income on the chopping block rather than let Planned Parenthood get the few pennies it can muster from the gummint. Yeah, let's leave the health of mental health patients up to guys like him.
Haw! Rich Lowry is no liberal! He had you going for a while though, didn't he?