James Holmes' Goofy Behavior Sign of Psychosis or Faking It, Expert Says

James Holmes' Goofy Behavior Sign
of Psychosis or Faking It, Expert
Says
Good Morning America - 4 hours ago
Accused movie theater gunman
James Holmes was not on drugs
when he appeared dazed in court,
but experts are looking for
explanations for his odd behavior
that included turning evidence bags
on his hands into puppets after his
arrest, sources told ABC News.
The loopy, seemingly unconcerned
actions by the former Ph.D student
accused of killing 12 people and
wounding 58 is seen by some as
signs of psychosis -- or that he's
faking it.
Sources tell ABC News that Holmes
was not on drugs or medication at
the time of the hearing, but Holmes
has demonstrated a pattern of
bizarre behavior since his arrest
outside an Aurora, Colo., movie
theater last Friday.
When Holmes was arrested he told
police he was the fictitious Batman
villain, The Joker. When police put
evidence bags over his hands to
preserve traces of gunpowder
residue, Holmes pretended the bags
were puppets, law enforcement
sources told ABC News.
Holmes has acted unfazed by his
arrest, police say. He has been
uncooperative since he was taken
into custody, giving investigators little
information, and yet disclosing his
apartment was booby trapped with
dozens of explosives.
His behavior in court Monday was
particularly strange. Unshaven, with a
shock of died orange hair, Holmes
alternated between staring wide-
eyed to closing his eyes and
appearing to nod off.
His lawyer even had to nudge him to
rise when the judge entered the
courtroom. He said nothing during
the proceedings, in which he was
held without bond.
Some observers wondered if Holmes
was on drugs or being medicated.
Sources told ABC News, he was not
on drugs, leading to expert theories
that he may have been in the grips of
"psychotic episode," exhausted from
stress or simply faking it.
"I think there are two possibilities
going on here," Marissa Randazzo,
former chief research psychologist
for the U.S. Secret Service and an
expert in mass shootings, told "Good
Morning America" today.
"One is that he is in the middle of a
psychotic episode which is quite
possible. We see him distracted at
multiple points, an almost sort of
'coming to' and trying to figure out
where he is and process what's
going on," she said.
"The other thing that we're seeing --
and we've seen some of this
behavior in the past couple months
-- might suggest mania. Meaning
hyperactivity, hyper energy, been
possibly up and not sleeping for
days. What we might be seeing here
is the post effects."
But Randazzo also said there was a
third possibility. He might simply be
faking it.
"It's possible," she said when asked if
Holmes' behavior could be all an act.
"It is possible. We'll leave that open,"
she said, adding that most people
who lie about that sort of behavior
are sociopaths and "What we've
heard about his history does not
suggest sociopath at all."
"Let's keep that in mind that he was
studying neuroscience. He was
studying exactly the type of brain
issues that we're going to be talking
about throughout this whole case,"
she said.

For all those who want to blame
Mom for taking her kid to a late
movie, we will forever have
freedom and live free, or we will
live safely in fear and give up our
freedom. I'll live free and
take my chances. If some nutcase
shoots me, that's life in the
big city. But until that day, I&#
39;ll go to the movies when I
choose, not when he chooses.
"He who gives up freedom
for safety deserves
neither."......Ben Franklin.
Cincinnati,Ohio,United States,US
15 seconds ago
It seems to me that everyone
loves to complain about how the
government wastes money on
these criminals but hardly
anyone ever DOES anything
about it. The internet is rife with
people demanding this guy to be
put to death (I agree with them)
either with current methods or
like in the old days. Here's
the problem as I see it....if
everyone that has been
screaming online banded
together and STOOD UP in a
manner that was both heard and
respected, then maybe, just
maybe, we COULD get some of
these criminals taken out and
free up the system and STOP
wasting our tax dollars. I see a
whole lot of talk and not a lot of
action! Personally I think the
good ole USA would begin to
right itself if parents actually
began disciplining their kids and
the judicial system actually
started to "Man Up"
and take the criminals out of
circulation. It all starts with the
children. Children these days
have NO consequences for their
actions! I'm in NO way
advocating child abuse...let me
make that very clear. However
kids these days have no respect
for others and most have no
consequences for their
actions....they grow into adults
people! These adults then go
through life killing, stealing,
feeling a sense of entitlement,
living off of the government with
no sense of responsibility etc.
These adults in turn have
children. The vicious cycle
continues. When will it stop?
When will it get better? When will
the US become a proud country
again?? When, and only when,
we realize as a whole that what
we are doing from the ground
up, isn't working! I know
it's going to happen so ....
have at me!
Rock Hill,South Carolina,United
States,US 17 seconds ago
He is prepared for death and he
is prepared for psychoanalysis,
however he is not prepared for
psycho-terror. Sometimes death
is the easiest way out. If you
want him to just go away, then
just execute or institutionalize
him. If you want him to regret the
day he did what he did against
humanity, get him where he
hides - torture his mind.
17 seconds ago
FAKING? Naaaaaahhhh....what is
this world coming too?
18 seconds ago
Black person killing a person -
Murderer Mexican person killing
a person - Murderer White
person killing a person - Mental
illness
19 seconds ago
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Poverty in America

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.

Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.

Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.

In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.

"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.

"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.

Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.

The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.

The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.

Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.

Demographers also say:

—Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels — 15 percent to 16 percent — will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.

—Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.

—Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.

—Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.

—Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.

Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.

"I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.

Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.

"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.

The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package.

An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.

Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce the budget deficit.

Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.

The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.

His unemployment aid has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.

Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where else I can go."

___

Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Lakewood, Colo., Ken Ritter and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami and AP Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

Batman Colorado shooting: James Holmes fixated by altered states of mind - Telegraph

On June 25 he applied to join a private
gun range, the $250 Lead Valley
Range, in Byers, Colorado. Glenn
Rotkovich, the owner, called to invite
him for an orientation and got
through to a "bizarre" voicemail
message. "Looking back, and if I'd
seen the movies, maybe I'd say it was
like the Joker," Mr Rotkovich said.
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