Ho, ditty, hum, ditty…why am I not surprised at this?
A man who opened fire inside a church, killing two people with a shotgun hidden in a guitar case, was frustrated at being unable to find a job and blamed liberals and gays, police said on Monday.
“It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred of the liberal movement,” Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen told reporters of Sunday’s incident at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.
Suspect Jim Adkisson, 58, who was being held on $1 million bond, had previously worked as a mechanical engineer in several states. He described his violent plans in a four-page letter found at his home, which also explained that his age and “liberals and gays” taking jobs had worked against him.
Another recent setback was that Adkisson’s allotment of government-issued food stamps had been reduced, Owen said.
The church outside Knoxville, Tennessee, where some 200 people were watching a children’s play at the time, had been in the news recently for its “liberal stance,” Owen said.
Or this?
The government charged an oil trading firm Thursday with manipulating oil prices in the first complaint to be announced since the regulators began a new investigation into wrongdoings in the energy markets.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Optiver Holding, two of its subsidiaries and three employees with manipulation and attempted manipulation of crude oil, heating oil and gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
“Optiver traders amassed large trading positions, then conducted trades in such a way to bully and hammer the markets,” CFTC Acting Chairman Walt Lukken said at a press conference. “These charges go to the heart of the CFTC’s core mission of detecting and rooting out illegal manipulation of the markets.”
In May, under the backdrop of record oil prices and calls from legislators to crack down on speculative oil trading and market manipulation, the CFTC announced a wide-ranging probe into oil price manipulation. The agency says it has dozens of investigations ongoing.
The complaint filed Thursday names Bastiaan van Kempen, chief executive; Christopher Dowson, a head trader; and Randal Meijer, head of trading at an Optiver subsidiary.
The CFTC said the firm attempted to “bang the close” by amassing large positions just before markets closed – forcing prices up – then selling them quickly to drive prices down and pocketing the difference.
The alleged manipulation was attempted 19 times on 11 days in March 2007, the agency said. In at least five of those 19 times, traders succeeded in driving prices higher twice and lower three times, according to the CFTC.
Wall St. greedheads manipulating oil prices don’t surprise me; nor do deranged conservatives shooting up anything that they falsely blame for their own bad luck. But you know what WOULD surprise me? If a deranged shooter would for once put two and two together, realize that the speculators were the real cause of all his joblessness and woes, and barged into a brokerage house and shot that up instead.
Honestly, when will they learn that it’s not blacks, or women, or gays, or liberals that are to blame for their troubles, but a bunch of very conservative white guys in pinstripes and suspenders, chuckling over martinis and contraband cigars?
