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Stand Your Ground (and Shoot to Kill) or Go to Jail.

28 May

Stand Your Ground or Take A Beatdown.


Marissa Alexander needed the supposed protection of Stand Your Ground if anyone ever has.

 Marissa Alexander was a 31-year-old, 5-ft. 2-in. mother of three, her baby just 9 days old, living in Jacksonville, Fla., a “Stand your ground” state. Her 36-year-old husband Rico Gray was arrested in 2009 for attacking her and sending her to the hospital, after which she got a restraining order against him.

In a 2010 deposition, Gray said, “We was staying together and I pushed her back and she fell in the bathtub and hit her head and that’s the time I went to jail.” In the same deposition, he admits that this was not his first incident of domestic violence against women, saying, “I got five baby mamas and I put my hand on every last one of them except one. The way I was with women, they was like they had to walk on eggshells around me. You know they never knew what I was thinking or what I might do. Hit them, push them.” He also admits that he and Alexander had “four or five” episodes of domestic violence leading up the August 2010 incident that landed Alexander in prison facing a 20-year sentence.

 Alexander retrieved a gun she had in her truck. She returned a fired a shot in the wall. Gray backed off and left. He ran to the police and Alexander was arrested. She claimed she was in fear of her life and cited Florida’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law. The same law that George Zimmerman may use to justify why he shot and killed Trayvon Martin and the same prosecutor, Angela Corey would try to put Alexander away.

Facing 20 years in jail, Alexander was offered a three-year sentence instead, but turned it down and why not? She thought she had defended herself from a man whom had previously beaten her and admitted he liked thumping on woman. She had a permit to carry a firearm. Rico Gray was threatening to kill her or have her killed. She tried to leave the premises by going out through the garage, but couldn’t open the door, something Gray admitted in his deposition that he knew she couldn’t get out that way.

Alexander thought she would go free and why not?  Since SYG became the law in Florida justifiable homicide from it had been cited as a defense in 93 cases involving 65 deaths and successfully most times.

Is Corey using Alexander to warm up for Zimmerman?

Marissa Alexander was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

Marissa Alexander, whose case brought allegations that Florida’s Stand Your Ground law is being unfairly applied, was sentenced to 20 years in prison Friday after being convicted of three counts of aggravated assault after firing a warning shot during a dispute with her husband.

The case sparked a confrontation between a congresswoman and the prosecutor after the sentencing in Jacksonville, Fla., WJXT-TV reported.

Alexander, 31, claimed she fired a shot from a handgun into the wall to protect herself during a confrontation with her husband, who she said had abused her, WJXT reported. Two children were with him when she fired a shot in his direction, and she was charged with three counts of aggravated assault.

Her attorneys claimed self-defense and cited the state’s Stand Your Ground law, which gives people some protection from prosecution for using potentially deadly force in cases in which they feel their life is threatened.

The law came under nationwide scrutiny during the Trayvon Martin case, when neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot an unarmed teen and authorities waited weeks before charging him.

But a jury agreed with prosecutors that the law didn’t apply because she left during the argument, got a gun and returned to confront him, WJXT reported.

Last week, State Attorney Angela Corey, who is also handling the Zimmerman case, said she personally met with Alexander and reviewed the evidence in the case, WJXT reported. She said she offered Alexander a three-year sentence before trial, despite the case qualifying for a 20-year minimum mandatory sentence.

This is what happens when a terrible law (Stand Your Ground) and an equally terrible practice (minimum-mandatory sentencing) catch up someone in a squeeze play. To the point if Florida is going to have this awful law, it either needs to be applied consistently or scrapped entirely.

Facing 20 years in jail, Alexander was offered a three-year sentence instead, but turned it down and why not? She thought she had defended herself from a man whom had previously beaten her and admitted he liked thumping on woman.

This is certainly not justice. No way is society a safer place with Marissa Alexander locked up until she’s 51 years old.

One can only hope Corey is as equally aggressive and successful in her prosecution of George Zimmerman who actually put a hole in a human being, not a wall, and killed Trayvon Martin.

Every picture tells a story, don’t it?

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Posted by on May 28, 2012 in News & Views

 

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Is Coming Out Gay Just Another Comic Book Stunt?

27 May

Astonishing Gay X-Men?

To be a man in your fifth decade and still reading comics is slightly embarrassing and that was reinforced when sitting next to my 13-year-old nephew at The Avengers and realizing I’ve forgotten more about every major character in the movie than he will ever know (or care) about.

I gave up comics this year.  I didn’t give up buying them every so often.  Old habits do die-hard.  I just took myself out of the never-ending cycle of 52 Wednesdays a year burning up gas and spending money to bring home another $20 to $40 worth of four-color funny books that after being read once or twice end up in filling storage bins in my basement.    Throw in the ridiculous cost ($3.99 for something that used to cost 12 cents) and giving comics up wasn’t a tough call.

I still read comic books.  Most of them are my brother’s “New 52″ line from DC Comics.   Last year, fueled by desperation as much as inspiration, DC zeroed out its existing universe and rebooted their line with  brand new Number One issues, new costumes for Superman and his other super-friends and in doing so generated a buzz that garnered a ton of favorable coverage from the mainstream media and the interest and excitement of fans.

That’s how you create a buzz about comics.  You come up with a stunt.  Kill Superman and bring him back.  Kill Captain America and bring him back.  Kill Batman and…are you starting to see a pattern here?

Anyway,  The New 52 worked great.   DC knocked industry leader Marvel on its backside and out of the top spot, which for as minimal comic books have on pop culture is like being the tallest pygmy.   Movies based on comic books are big business.  Comic books themselves struggle to sell 75,000 copies a month, but DC is owned by TimeWarner and Marvel by Disney and they could give a shit if Superman sells in the thousands or in the dozens.  What their comic book companies contribute to ledger sheets of  their corporate masters wouldn’t pay for a week’s worth of office supplies.

What Disney and TimeWarner care about are the comic book properties.  You think they give a toot in a tornado about a damn comic book when one Friday evening of The Avengers puts more cash in The Mouse House’s pocket than 40 years Avengers comic books.

“Dick, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?”

The New 52 was a great hook, but it wasn’t a revolutionary concept.  Many of the same artists and writers whose lousy stories ran the company into a ditch were now being tapped to pull it out.  Zeroing out their universe and starting from scratch liberated DC from decades of confusing and convoluted comic continuity .   Continuity is important to the educated in comics lore fan base, but their numbers are too small and the demographic too old for Hollywood to give a shit if a geek gets upset because Superman no longer wears his underwear on the outside.  The purpose of comic books are to provide concepts that can be mined by movie studios and turned into movie franchises. DC has failed to successfully follow Marvel in making the transition from comic book company to feeder system for million-dollar movies.

It no longer matters what happens in comics.  Not that it really ever did, but particularly not now.  Spider-Man, Batman and Iron Man generate millions in ticket sales and that second life on the silver screen means whatever happens to them in their paper and staples form don’t mean a thing.

What’s left for comic books?  Stunts.  Tricks.  Big cataclysmic events that shake up the status quo, shatter worlds, and change everything as we know.  Then six months later someone comes along and changes it all back.

The newest stunt:  Make someone gay everyone thought was straight or take a second or third-string hero and marry him off.   To his boyfriend.   HEY KIDS! GAY COMICS!

Marvel is allowing Northstar, their French-Canadian mutant speedster to marry his Black boyfriend.  Gay and interracial marriage?  Two taboos broken for the price of one.

DC’s response?  Follow the leader and announce a “major” character will come out the closet as a gay man.

Gay supporting characters and even gay heroes aren’t new.  Northstar has been out for years.  DC’s Wildstorm imprint featured a openly gay couple named Apollo and The Midnighter who were overt Superman/Batman stand-ins.   But their love affair ended when they were incorporated into the DC mainstream.  Odd that there weren’t many protests from the continuity-obsessed fans about that reboot.

Not Superman and Batman, but just like them.

Who will come out of the comic book closet?  It could be Batman.  It should be Batman.  But because it’s both so obvious and so perfect it won’t be Batman.  Batman is now on his third or fourth Robin.  He just keeps picking up young boys to be his “partner.”  What would you call a billionaire who’s never married, only uses women as props, enjoys dressing up head to toe in leather and prefers the company of athletic youths?

One of Bats current writers, Grant Morrison, fessed up in Playboy  the Dark Knight”s antenna isn’t picking up the wavelength of the opposite sex.

“He’s very plutonian in the sense that he’s wealthy and also in the sense that he’s sexually deviant,” Morrison said. “Gayness is built into Batman. I’m not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There’s just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he’s intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay.”

“I think that’s why people like it. All these women fancy him and they all wear fetish clothes and jump around rooftops to get to him. He doesn’t care — he’s more interested in hanging out with the old guy and the kid.”

As someone with no skin in the game, I’m all for gay fans of comics being represented with gay characters they can relate to   An openly homosexual hero isn’t going to corrupt a kid’s mind anymore than most of the other crap DC and Marvel poop out every Wednesday.

Just don’t stop there.  Let’s see what happens when a gay superhero faces discrimination from a straight superhero who doesn’t want to team up with him.  Instead of fighting alien invaders, let’s have the Justice League or Avengers take on a homophobic hate group.

There have always been gay themes in comics as long as there have been comics.  It was just nodded and winked at and never spoken of in a serious way.   This feels like the latest in a long line of contrived stunts the major companies engage in passing it off as being socially conscious.   We’ll see if DC and Marvel are as seriously committed to their “evolution” as gay couples are to getting married.

Don’t look for the happy couple in the next X-Men movie.

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Posted by on May 27, 2012 in Music. Movies. Media. More., News & Views

 

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Fake-Ass Black Militants and the White Conservatives That Love Them

23 May

Attention conservatives: THIS is what a brother who means business looks like.

Having never been White or a conservative I can’t begin to understand what it is about the Pseudo New Black Panthers Party that sets White conservatives into a frenzy.  As far as I know, the only one who takes these fake-ass Black radicals seriously are White conservatives.  The only reason I can figure they do is it plays into their paranoia that the Age of Obama is the harbinger for the upcoming race war or something.

When the small, but noisy, group of Black separatists issued a “manifesto” denouncing President Obama and speculated the choice in November would come down to the “ballot or the bullet” the conservative media and blogs freaked the hell out.   The conservative website, The Daily Caller breathlessly wrote:

In the Spring edition of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) newspaper — cover reading “The Ballot or The Bullet: which way for black people?” — NBPP Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz breaks down the presidential election, concluding the Democratic Party is the “institutional pimp of Black peoples and the Black Nation” and that Obama has “been a real disappointment.”

“Black peoples are the whores and prostitutes of the Democratic Party, and mistreated mistress that is courted in the late of night, but left hanging when it is time for real change in the light of the post election day,” Shabazz wrote, following a dissertation on the need to “Vote for Revolution.”

“Black peoples are the whores and prostitutes of the Democratic Party, and mistreated mistress that is courted in the late of night, but left hanging when it is time for real change in the light of the post election day,” he wrote, encouraging blacks to “vote for revolution.”

“Black America, you must decide who will best represent you in 2012. You must decide if you will choose the ballot as a means to change, or the bullet,” he wrote, adding that ““demanding change does come by any means necessary.”

The right-wing media does an excellent job of whipping their base into a mouth-foaming frenzy.  But they do a rotten job of doing even a little bit of historical research.  If they had they would have realized “the ballot or the bullet” were ripped off from a speech given by an assassinated Black leader some 48 years ago.

Whomever Malik Zulu Shabazz really is, he’s ripping off the far more articulate and infinitely more intelligent El-Hajj Malik El Shabazz, a.k.a. Malcolm X.   The phrases “the ballot or the bullet” and “by any means necessary” are instantly familiar to anyone who has listened to the deceased Black Muslim leader’s fiery and impassioned speeches.  That does not seem to include Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs and the idiots running Breitbrart.com.

Malcolm X gave a speech on March 29, 1964 entitled “The Ballot or the Bullet.” The Black Muslim leader was speaking about the need for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act and warning of what the dire consequences might be if it wasn’t.

“Look at us! We’re tough! We’re mean!. GRRR! You scared yet?”

If you’re interested in freedom, you need some judo, you need some karate–you need all the things that will help you fight for freedom. If we don’t resort to the bullet, then immediately we have to take steps to use the ballot. Equality of opportunity, if the constitution at the present time [doesn't offer it], then change it. Either it offers it, or it doesn’t offer it. If it offers it–good, then give it to us–if it doesn’t offer it, then change it. You don’t need a debate. You don’t need a filibuster. You need some action!

So what you and I have to do is get involved. You and I have to be right there breathing down their throats. Every time they look over their shoulders, we want them to see us.

We want to make them–we want to make them–pass the strongest civil-rights bill they ever passed, because we know that even after they pass it, they can’t enforce it.

In order to do this, we’re starting a voters’ registration drive. We have to get everybody in Harlem registered, not as Democrats or Republicans, but registered as Independents. We’re going to organize a corps of brothers and sisters who, after this city is mapped out, they won’t leave one apartment-house door not knocked on. There won’t be a door in Harlem that will not have been knocked on to see that whatever black face lives behind that door is registered to vote by a certain time this year. Nobody will have an excuse not to be registered. We’ll ask him to let us see your card. If you don’t have the sense of responsibility to get registered, we’ll move you out of town.

It’s going to be the ballot or the bullet…

The Pseudo New Black Panthers specialize in two things: dick-riding authentic Black leaders and pissing offf White conservatives. Why do I say White conservatives? Because those are their major constituents. The way they inflame fear and paranoia among the White right, you have to wonder if they are on the Koch Brothers payroll.

The Real Deal Black Steel

They know this kind of jive makes conservatives see red and double-check to make sure all their guns are loaded and ready for when the race war begins. Meanwhile, these fakes get all sorts of free pub. It’s a win-win!

All the Pseudo Panthers do is scare White folks that the big, bad Black militants are going to come to take their guns and rape their wives. It’s a crock. These clowns love to dress up, talk tough and do nothing. They never raised $10,000 for a bounty on George Zimmerman. They couldn’t raise $10 bucks if they passed the hat between themselves.

You can promise anything if you know you’re never going to deliver. Maybe the right-wing blogosphere and the people who get dumber by watching Fox News are putting bars on the doors and windows in fear of the Pseudo Panthers comin’ to get their mama, but this is karaoke Black militancy.

Malcolm X was a real Black militant. Huey Newton and the original-accept-no-substitutes Black Panthers were real Black militants.

This shit by the Pseudo Panthers isn’t militancy. It’s cabaret. It’s “Let’s scare the shit out of White folks” and it’s working.

I read Malcolm X. I listened to Malcolm X. I admired Malcolm X.  These fake-ass Negroes are no Malcolm X.

But they’re good enough for the White Right to use as the boogeymen of Scary Black People.  It’s great for creating paranoia, racial hatred, ratings and gun sales.  I really do not get what it is about the Pseudo-New Black Panthers that gets so many tighty whiteys in a wad. They talk a lot of mad shit. Oh GOD, how they love to talk about all their plans and what they’re going to do and how they’ve gonna fuck up White folks world.

And they don’t do diddly.  Who listens to the Pseudo Panthers?  Who hangs on their every word?  Who takes them seriously?  It’s White folks, not Black folks.

The only militants worth worrying about are the ones that don’t run off at the mouth, don’t announce their plans, don’t do media events and don’t bite off of dead Black Muslims and the carcass of the original real deal Black Panthers.

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Posted by on May 23, 2012 in News & Views, Rantology

 

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Another Day in the Death of Trayvon Martin

16 May

Who’s worse? The guy selling it or the guy buying it?

Remember when Trayvon Martin’s mother put her son’s name under copyright protection and was roundly criticized for doing so? Maybe now we can understand why.

Not a day goes by in America where some two-legged maggot isn’t trying to connive some way to make a buck off of the most tragic of situations.

This is one such day.

A person selling gun range targets modeled after slain Florida teen Trayvon Martin says that their “main motivation was to make money off the controversy.”

WKMG’s Mike DeForest reported on Friday that the unidentified seller told him that the targets “sold out in 2 days.”

“The response is overwhelming,” the seller said.

While the item appears to have been removed from GunBroker.com, a cached version of the page was still available at the time of publication.

Photos of the item, which was titled “10 Pack Trayvon Martin Targets,” showed crosshairs over a hoodie similar to the one Trayvon Martin was wearing when he was shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February. The figure has a bag of Skittle in his pocket and is holding what appears to be a can of iced tea, similar to what Martin had purchased before being gunned down. The pack of 10 targets was being sold for $8.

“Everyone knows the story of Zimmerman and Martin,” a description on the targets reads. “Obviously we support Zimmerman and believe he is innocent and that he shot a thug. Each target is printed on thick, high quality poster paper with a matte finish! The dimensions are 12″x18″ This is a Ten Pack of Targets.”

Let he or she who fears possible violence coming from Trayvon Martin’s supporters worry as much about the hatred coming from George Zimmerman’s supporters.

Now the relevant question is whether it is helpful or even desired support and Zimmerman’s attorney makes it pretty clear that he doesn’t want that kind of support for his client. Good for him, but even with his disclaimer there is no doubt Zimmerman has become a cause celebre for racist turds trying to make a dirty dollar off of a dead kid.

They are Zimmerman supporters too. The wrong kind, but there are always those types looking to slither out from under their rocks to exploit a bad situation and make it worse.

I can discern the difference between the bottom-feeders and those who earnestly believe Zimmerman is innocent and deserves his day in court, but let’s not be naive and think it’s only nice people backing this guy.

ABC News reports Zimmerman’s doctor says his patient was diagnosed with a “closed fracture” of his nose, a pair of black eyes, two lacerations to the back of his head and a minor back injury the day after he fatally shot Martin. Zimmerman’s defenders have seized upon this as evidence he was fighting for his life when he gunned down the unarmed teenager.

However, other aspects of the ABC News story seems to have been glossed over. The report also notes that Zimmerman had been prescribed mood medications Adderall and Temazepam before the shooting, ABC News reported. The doctor added that Zimmerman refused to go to the hospital the night of the shooting and added that it was “imperative” that he see his psychologist.

George’s little helper?

 

Some fun facts about Temazepam:

What should I avoid while taking temazepam?

Do not drink alcohol while you are taking temazepam. It can increase some of the side effects, and could possibly cause a fatal overdose. Temazepam can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert.

Temazepam side effects

  • weak or shallow breathing;
  • fast or pounding heartbeats;
  • confusion, slurred speech, unusual thoughts or behavior;
  • hallucinations, agitation, aggression;
  • thoughts of suicide or hurting yourself;
  • pale skin, easy bruising or bleeding, unusual weakness;
  • amnesia or forgetfulness;
  • muscle weakness, lack of balance or coordination;
  • headache, blurred vision, depressed mood;
  • feeling nervous, excited, or irritable;

Here are some more fun facts about Adderall:

Adderall is a central nervous system stimulant. It affects chemicals in the brain and nerves that contribute to hyperactivity and impulse control.

What should I avoid while taking Adderall?

Adderall may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you drive or do anything that requires you to be awake and alert.

Adderall Side Effects – for the Professional

Central Nervous System

Psychotic episodes at recommended doses, overstimulation, restlessness, dizziness, insomnia, euphoria, dyskinesia, dysphoria, depression, tremor, headache, exacerbation of motor and phonic tics and Tourette’s syndrome, seizures, stroke.

Zimmerman had been prescribed two powerful drugs with multiple side effects and clear warnings not to consume alcohol. However, the Sanford Police Department, whose work Zimmerman’s defenders say did not make a botch of the investigation,  did NOT test Zimmerman for drugs or alcohol (though they did test Trayvon’s corpse).

It might have been important to know if Trayvon’s killer was high as a kite when he stalked and shot the unarmed teenager. Thanks to the inept bungling of the idiot Sanford cops we never will.

“Let me help you with your bags of pills, Mr. Zimmerman.”

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Posted by on May 16, 2012 in News & Views

 

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Sedition, Anarchy, Revolution–and Cowardice?

10 May

J.t. Ready: ex-Marine. Neo-Nazi. Republican candidate. Murderer.

Tomorrow, I’ll get to President Obama coming out (finally) for gay marriage, but there are other things going on equally newsworthy.

Dissent is as American as apple pie. Then, there’s this…

ITEM: A monthly newsletter published by the Greene County Republican Committee in Virginia is raising eyebrows for including a column in its March edition that calls for an “armed revolution” if President Barack Obama is elected to a second term in November.

Among articles denouncing a University of Virginia initiative to implement a living wage for employees of the institution, questioning if Obama is “America’s Most Biblically-Hostile U. S. President?” and an op-ed slamming the GOP establishment with generous use of capital letters, RightWingWatch picks out a column from the newsletter’s editor, Ponch McPhee.

In it, McPhee urges readers to encourage other conservatives to vote in November. He goes on to warn that the consequences of not defeating Obama, a so-called “ideologue unlike anything world history has ever witnessed or recognized,” would be dire.

“[W]e shall not have any coarse [sic] but armed revolution should we fail with the power of the vote in November,” McPhee writes. “This Republic cannot survive for 4 more years underneath this political socialist ideologue.”

A disclaimer at the bottom of the publication apparently attempts to account for this type of rhetoric, noting that the contributors do “not reflect the opinion of the Republican Party whole or in part” and are only representative of the “individual” — in this case, the editor himself.

ITEM: Members of a white supremacist skinhead group called American Front trained with AK-47s, shotguns and explosives at a fortified compound in central Florida to prepare for what its reputed leader believed to be an “inevitable race war,” prosecutors said Tuesday.

According to court documents, members of American Front discussed acts of violence that included causing “a disturbance” at City Hall in Orlando, shooting at a house and attacking an anti-racist skinhead group.


At least 10 members of the group, which authorities described as a militia-styled, anti-Semitic domestic terrorist organization, have been arrested in Florida since the weekend, including at least three people on Tuesday.

The felony arrest charges include paramilitary training, attempting to shoot into an occupied dwelling, and evidence of prejudices while committing an offense. The last charge falls under Florida’s hate-crimes law.

According to a court statement from Orange County Sheriff’s Deputy Kelly Boaz filed in support of an arrest warrant, the group was led by Marcus Faella, 39, of St. Cloud, Fla. He and his wife, Patricia Faella, 36, were among those arrested over the weekend.

“Marcus Faella has been planning and preparing the AF for what he believes to be an inevitable race war. Faella has stated his intent during the race war to kill Jews, immigrants, and other minorities. Faella believes the race war will take place within the next few years based on current world events.”

Master Race misfits and morons.

Much of the information of the alleged plots came from an informant who infiltrated the group in mid-2010.

According to Boaz: Faella viewed himself and fellow members of the American Front as “protectors of the white race.” He regularly conducted firearms, explosives and military/tactical training at his rural property in Saint Cloud and in the swamps of a Florida wildlife management area.

Faella’s remote property was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by two pit bulls. It contained fortified entrenchments built from railroad timbers, cement piling and other materials.

Faella regularly held weapons training on his compound, where he also stored water, meals ready to eat and other survivalist-type supplies. During target practice he told participants to visualize the jugs of water they were shooting at as the heads of black people, which he referred to by the N-word.

ITEM: Investigators examining the bloody scene near Phoenix where an anti-immigrant neo-Nazi murdered four people, including a 15-month-old baby girl, turned up “chemicals and military grade munitions,” authorities just announced.

J.T. Ready, a 39-year-old former National Socialist Movement leader who formed the nativist, militia-like U.S. Border Guard, was the apparent shooter before taking his own life in the murder-suicide, Gilbert Police Sgt. Bill Balafas said in a statement released today.

“The evidence to this point, which will still be verified, is leading us to believe Jason Ready is responsible for killing the other four and subsequently taking his own life,” the police statement said.

Beside Ready, the dead were identified as his girlfriend, Lisa Lynn Mederos, 47; her daughter, Amber Nieve Mederos, 23; the daughter’s boyfriend, Jim Franklin Hiott, and Amber’s 15-month-old baby girl, Lilly Lynn Mederos.

“This horrific event began [Wednesday] at around 1 p.m. [MDT] when officers responded to a domestic fight call in the 500 block of west Tumbleweed in Gilbert,” the statement said.

“Upon arrival, officer located four deceased adults and one severely injured child,” it continued. “The child was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced deceased.”

“Investigators obtained a search warrant for the residence and located hazardous chemicals and military-style ammunitions,” the statement said without offering specifics.

Ready, an ex-Marine court-martialed twice for bad conduct, was a current candidate for Pinal County Sheriff, claiming he was the “common sense” choice to combat the “horrific reality of terrible violence associated with illegal immigration.”

He previously talked about placing landmines on the U.S.-Mexican border where he and other armed vigilantes – he called them “Minutemen on steroids” – conducted patrols to attempt to apprehend undocumented immigrants.

Before leaving the NSM and starting his vigilante border group, Ready marched in a parade with neo-Nazi flags and held a picture of Adolf Hitler, whom he called “a great white civil rights leader.” He called Jews “parasites.”

Ready also had been a long-time close associate of former Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, a now-recalled Republican politician. Pearce helped Ready join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and reportedly groomed him for a bid for political office.

ITEM: EUCLID, Ohio — Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney didn’t comment on a supporter’s assertion that President Barack Obama should be tried for treason at a town hall event here.

A woman in the audience expressed dismay that Obama was “operating outside the Constitution,” then said Obama should be tried for treason for violating separation of powers.

“I do believe he should be tried for treason,” she said to applause from the audience.

Romney replied that “I happen to believe that the Constitution was not just brilliant, but that it was inspired, and so was the Declaration of Independence,” avoiding the woman’s comment.

He then allowed her to clarify what specifically she thought Obama had violated, and the woman proceeded to spout references to Executive Orders, including one that she said involved the Secret Service restricting the rights of citizens to protest.

Romney, who is protected by a detail of Secret Service agents, said “I will be happy to look at what he has done about the Secret Service with respect to protests.”

It may seem strange to single out Mitt Romney for special attention, but his story is the one that bugs me the most.

Neo-Nazis, White supremacists, wannabee anarchists and that kind of lice bother me, but I know those guys are too far gone. Their cause means more to them than human life. They can’t be reached and they can’t live among decent, civilized folks. You regard them as threats and act accordingly.

 
These are not fake militants like the pseudo New Black Panthers who specialize in riling up Fox News viewers by talking smack and acting hardcore. These are serious people who are not simply skulking around in the bushes in military gear playing paintball on the weekend. They want a revolution and they’re willing to kill to bring it about.

This is the kind of domestic terrorism that bears watching. It doesn’t always have to be Islamofascists desiring to commit jihad against the infidels who need to kept under watch for when they decide to turn violent words into deeds.

The creep who says there may be a need for “armed revolution” if Obama is reelected is just a creep running his mouth. It’s the guys who don’t talk that are all in for practicing what they are preaching.

Then there’s Mitt. The man who would be president.

You don’t have to like the guy who has the job you want, but you should be able to summon enough courage to raise a hand and say, “Wait a minute, ma’am. I respect your right to your opinion, but President Obama hasn’t committed treason and that is nothing to applaud about. I think I can do a better job than him and I want to win, but the idea is beat the president on the issues, not destroy him and win at any cost.”

When John McCain told a supporter Obama wasn’t an Arab and that he was a decent man, it cost McCain nothing to do and say the right thing. Romney had his McCain moment and he blew it.

I can accept Romney as my president if he wins, but his refusal to stand up when it counts makes it impossible for me to ever respect him.

If you are so  terrified of offending a potential voter you are too afraid to correct one of your supporters engaging in a baseless lie, that is hardly a profile in courage.  When you get you right down to it, it’s simply the act of a coward.

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Posted by on May 10, 2012 in News & Views

 

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Dividing and Conquering Blacks and Gays in North Carolina

06 May

An event unlikely to be repeated in North Carolina.

The foes of same-sex marriage may be acting out of reactionary bigotry, but that doesn’t make them stupid.   They learned well the lessons of the Proposition 8 playbook written in California and are employing the same tactics in North Carolina.  Divide the Black and the LGBT communities and use one against the other.

Some background on how the National Organization for Marriage is working their hustle.  First comes theory:

When a light is shined into the dark corners of American politics, it’s never pleasant to see what scurries away. Last week, a federal judge in Maine unsealed memos from the National Organization for Marriage, one of the most prominent groups fighting against same-sex marriage.

They relate to a case filed over whether the group must disclose the donors that helped underwrite a 2009 ballot initiative that overturned the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage. The group uses its designation as a social welfare organization to avoid federal disclosure, but the memos dispel any notion that the claim has any legitimacy. National Organization for Marriage is a political group, through and through.

 The documents brag about its “crucial” role in passage of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage that was overturned by a federal appeals court. They describe the group’s use of “robo-calls” to scare residents in different states away from supporting marriage equality. They talk of a plan to “expose Obama as a social radical,” but the most appalling portions deal with the group’s racially and ethnically divisive strategies.

 “The strategic goal of the project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies,” the memo says, describing an initiative called the “Not a Civil Right Project.”

 The project’s goal, according to the memo, was to recruit blacks who opposed same-sex marriage to represent the group, and then “provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots.”

 Another stated aim is to manipulate Hispanic voters by making the exclusion of gay people from marriage “a key badge of Latino identity.”

Next comes practice:

As North Carolinians head to the polls next week to vote on the fate of a state constitutional amendment to bar gay marriage and civil unions, the controversial measure can already claim at least one clear winner: The National Organization for Marriage. Exposed in March as seeking to drive a wedge between African-Americans and gay rights groups, the conservative group has found North Carolina — which is 21 percent black — a fertile playing field for its divide and conquer tactics.

Armed with both NOM money and strategic know-how, state level groups such as Vote FOR Marriage NC have deftly deployed the race debate to court black clergy and voters in their attempt to ensure that North Carolina is no longer the only Southern state whose constitution does not bar same-sex marriage. Passed by the legislature in September 2011 as “An Act to Amend the Constitution to Provide That Marriage Between One Man and One Woman is the Only Domestic Legal Union That Shall Be Valid or Recognized in This State,” the measure goes before voters for ratification on May 8 as Amendment 1.

 ”Our efforts have certainly involved a broad coalition of individuals and organizations, including African-American pastors,” said Rachel Lee, a spokesperson for Vote FOR Marriage NC. Although pro-equality forces have mounted an aggressive fight against the amendment, NOM’s cynical blend of rhetoric and religion has successfully placed ethnicity — as much as equality — at the heart of the pro-Amendment 1 campaign.

 ”NOM has injected race into this conversation as an explicit strategy to drive a wedge between blacks and gays,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, the nation’s leading marriage equality advocacy group. “Anti-gay forces have deliberately funneled money into North Carolina [African-American] churches to enlist their leaders as messengers of their agenda.”

 Anchoring the push are pro-Amendment 1 black clerics from North Carolina and around the nation with strong ties to NOM, such as Maryland’s Bishop Harry R. Jackson, who’s also leading the effort to overturn his own state’s recent law granting gays the right to marry, and Philadelphia-based Rev. Herbert Lusk, who appears in one of NOM’s latest video campaigns, “Is Gay Marriage a Civil Right? African-American and Latino Leaders Speak Out.” In April, Rev. George D. McKinney of San Diego helped launched an initiative for NOM with the Coalition of African American Pastors to collect 100,000 signatures around the country on behalf of keeping marriage something restricted to opposite-sex couples in North Carolina.

Anybody want to take bets on how this money and manipulation plays out at the polls in conservative North Carolina?

The groups fighting the Right in N.C. are trying not to repeat the post-Proposition 8 blame game where gays slammed Black support for the ballot measure which only hardened divisions between the two communities.

Conservative groups have caught the most fire for fueling race-based animosity toward gay marriage, but progressive leaders have also played a role in stoking discord between the leaders of black and gay activist groups. The race question regarding same-sex marriage first cropped up in 2008, when California blacks — a mere 6 percent of state voters — were blamed by some gay leaders for the passage of Proposition 8 in the wake of reports in The Washington Post and CNN that exit polls showed seven in 10 black voters backing the measure barring marriage equality.

 Although subsequent analysis found black support for Proposition 8 was only 6 percent higher than on average — instead of nearly 20 percent — the specter of black homophobia has loomed over the marriage equality movement ever since. “I certainly think the black community got a bum rap following the Prop. 8 vote,” observed veteran activist Stuart Campbell, executive director of Equality North Carolina, the state’s leading pro-LGBT non-profit. “And we had no one to blame but ourselves for not more effectively conveying our message to communities across the state.”

What is also distressing is the clumsy response by some pro-gay marriage groups where they have artlessly appropriated the iconic imagery of the civil rights era in an ham-fisted attempt to equate the two struggles.

Nonetheless, an anti-Amendment1 ad campaign by the group Every1Against1 confrontationally compares the battle for gay rights to the one by African Americans for civil rights in the segregated South. With its stark images of a water fountain, a lunch counter, and the back of a bus, the campaign brazenly re-imagines central scenes in 1960s Civil Rights fight. Insensitive — if not downright offensive — messaging such as this, said Moodie-Mills, “shows just how disconnected some LGBT groups still are on the ground.” Last week’s television campaign from pro-equality group The Coalition to ALL Protect NC Families featuring solely white faces didn’t help much either to bridge the divide. Coalition Campaign Manager Jeremy Kennedy acknowledged the omission, but attributed it to “limited economic resources” rather than an intentional attempt to put a white face on gay rights.

Is this the right way to win Black support for gay marriage?

What same-sex marriage advocates have seemingly been slow to realize is their opponents have put together a superior sales job by doling out dollars to greedy Black ministers to carry their anti-gay message to their congregations whom are not the most naturally receptive audience for gay rights anyway.   The suspicion by Black churches that these are liberal White gays and lesbians pushing their social agenda on them is confirmed by ad campaigns that are as clueless as they are earnest.

Outreach is a one-on-one, face-to-face job and it can’t be dictated and directed from afar.  I can’t think of anyone less interested in advancing the rights of the LGBT community than a middle-aged Black Baptist in the South.  They already believe the same-sex activists are jock-riding the civil rights battles waged by Blacks and when they see the iconic images of segregation re-purposed on behalf of gay marriage, they aren’t going to be too thrilled by it.

These are people whom you have to look dead in the eye and show them, not tell them, why your fight is right and should be their fight as well.

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Posted by on May 6, 2012 in News & Views

 

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Burning Down the House (and the Senate Too)

02 May

“Wanna go steady and hunt commies together?”

One of my favorite war flicks is Patton and as portrayed by George C. Scott in an Oscar-winning performance, the old “blood n’ guts” general was tough, ruthless, focused like a laser beam on crushing his enemies and showing up his rivals.   The fact that he was egotistical, vain, and maybe a borderline sociopath doesn’t deflect from George S. Patton’s brilliance as a military leader.

I can’t imagine Patton being effective in anything less than wartime conditions.  What works on the battlefield would be disastrous anywhere else and particularly the “no retreat, no surrender” hardline stance.  This is why the Republican Party’s “take no prisoners and make no compromises” view of how politics should be played seems to be no Republican son-of-a-bitch can win by treating the Democratic son-of-a-bitch as an enemy to be obliterated.   Even though politics is said to be war without bloodshed, without the possibility of compromise it becomes every bit as brutal as war.

Two intellectuals, Thomas Mann and Norman J. Orenstein penned a very popular column for The Washington Post (which you might want to read before proceeding) and their central premise is our government is broken and if Republicans didn’t break it, they are vested in keeping it broken.

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization.

Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

An endangered species meets the president

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The essay (which has been “liked” and shared over 100,000 times on Facebook, tweeted more than 2,400 times and received up to 5000 replies before the WaPo website stopped counting) is taken from the authors book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. The popularity of the piece probably will sell a few more copies than a book with a clunky title normally would.

The idea that Washington has become a place where not much get done isn’t a new one. Post columnist Dana Milbank points out the House of Representatives has been in session only 41 out of 127 days in 2012 and will be on vacation for 17 of the remaining 34 weeks. On the rare occasions the House members are in town it’s only for three days.

Nice work if you want to call that work (to be fair, Milbank notes that over in the Democratic-run Senate…of the 87 votes, the majority were on just three bills: 25 on the highway bill, 16 on the postal bill and 13 on an insider-trading bill. Sixteen others were on confirmations.

What’s the problem with a Congress where nothing much gets done because one party considers “compromise” a dirty word (I see you over there Don)? If the GOP is successful in taking back the Senate and holding on to the House this fall you can bet you’ll see a lot more legislation than the 106 passed so far by the 112th Congress.

Even if President Obama wins reelection, if he finds he’s going to have to send congratulations to Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell he’s going to go through a lot of veto pens and Rolaids.

Even if you think a dysfunctional Congress that can’t pass anything but the most inoffensive and menial bills where its members regard the other side not simply as wrong on issues, but un-American isn’t a bad thing, there is no reason for anyone but the most blindly partisan to even run for office.

Why bother if you are a Democrat, you can’t reach across the aisle to your Republican colleague when he or she believes they were sent to Congress to spit in that hand. Allen West, whom Mann and Ornstein name-check has called his own Congressional representative, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, “vile” and “not a lady.” What the hell could they ever work together on to mutually benefit the people of Florida?

Let’s take the Republicans at their word the government really is the enemy. Is it really surprising they seemingly have no interest in assisting in the smooth functioning of an institution they don’t believe in? If a house divided against itself must fall how long before a bitterly rancorous House falls apart and brings the Senate tumbling down with it?

Lying liars telling lies.

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Posted by on May 2, 2012 in News & Views

 

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Could L.A’s Ugly Past Be Sanford’s Possible Future?

30 Apr

A whole new meaning to "fire sale."

I have never been to Los Angeles.  I don’t know anyone who lives in Los Angeles.  Everything I know about Los Angeles comes second-hand.   Yet it was 20 years ago my first gig as a paid freelancer came when I wrote about the 1992 L.A. riots after the acquittal of the police officers who beat motorist Rodney King.

I can’t read that article now without wincing.  It’s earnest and sincere, but it’s overwrought, poorly thought out and badly written.  It’s not that I regret what I said when I was in my mid-Thirties, and  I am not afraid of being angry, I’m not that angry young man anymore.

I’m gratified former Time magazine correspondent Sylvester Monroe who covered the uprising in L.A. wrote a remembrance of where he was 20 years ago and what has changed since then.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots were one of the biggest stories of my career and among the most personal. I wasn’t just a reporter covering the worst civil unrest in modern U.S. history. I was also an African-American man and father of an adolescent son ever mindful of close encounters of the worst kind with the police.

Reporting on the six days of deadly violence and vandalism following the acquittals of four white L.A. police officers tried for the brutal, videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King resonated with me even more than the trial itself. In nearly 10 years as a Los Angeles correspondent for Time magazine, I was never stopped by the LAPD. As a young teenager, my son, Jason, was ticketed once for jaywalking. We paid a $50 fine and that was the end of it. But we both were always wary.

Twenty years later, relations between the Los Angeles police and the city’s black citizens are light-years beyond the tinderbox atmosphere that once prevailed, thanks to extensive police reforms, including a much-touted commitment to community policing, increased external oversight and more enlightened department leadership. Many black Angelenos now believe there has been so much progress that what happened in 1992 could not happen again. At least not in the same way.

One reason is that despite some ongoing racial tension, the people of Los Angeles generally get along much better than they did at the time of King’s famously plaintive plea: “Can we all just get along?”

“I do not feel it could happen again because [the police] are now accountable to us and want to be,” says Lawrence Tolliver, also black, who owns a popular barbershop just blocks from the infamous intersection of Florence and Normandie Avenues where white truck driver Reginald Denny was dragged from his truck and almost beaten to death by young black men right after the King trial verdicts. “If something like [the King beating] did happen today, it would be a lot different than in 1992. They would investigate it, and the current police chief would not let it get to that point. We have a lot more impact on the department now.”

The answer is, "Maybe, but it's not going to be easy."

That may be true for L.A., but not for every city around the nation. As Los Angeles marks the 20th anniversary of its riotous past, national attention is now firmly fixed on yet another racially charged assault. In the Trayvon Martin case, the Sanford, Fla., police did not shoot the unarmed 17-year-old black teenager. But police handling or mishandling of the case and how it is resolved in court could make Trayvon this generation’s Rodney King. For what has not changed in two decades is continued excessive force against black males (and females) by law enforcement officers and others who claim they were afraid for their lives.

If George Zimmerman is exonerated and rioting does occur, that would be unjustified and unfortunate, but not wholly unexpected. When there is one standard of justice for Whites and a separate and unequal one for Blacks and it is shrugged off as no big thing it breeds the lack of respect for the American system of justice and all its representatives that is decried by its most ardent defenders. If peaceful civil disobedience is denigrated as rabble rousing and counter-productive, then once legitimate means of redress are choked off, violent reactions become inevitable.

Americans are not people who quietly suffer their lot in life with hand-wringing and hushed voices. They raise hell about everything from high taxation without representation, unjust wars, government that becomes too big, bloated and intrusive and for civil rights and equal protection under the law. Faith in, and compliance with the rules and laws of a civilized society can only be maintained as long as they are equally and fairly applied regardless of race, color, creed, orientation, power, influence or connection.

If no one should be considered above the law then no one should be considered below the law.   That includes Trayvon Martin as much as it does George Zimmerman.

King was everything Martin wasn’t.  A large Black man with a criminal record who was breaking the law and might have been stoned then.   King was a victim of police brutality while Martin faced off with an overzealous vigilante-slash-police-wannabee and.though King was a victim, he wasn’t entirely innocent.  .

No one else should be hurt or die due to what happened one night in Sanford, Florida. The hope is justice will prevail and everyone involved will be treated in a fair and equitable way. But if anyone believes what happened in 1992 can’t happen again they have not paid attention to the bitterly learned lessons of Los Angeles very well.

Rodney King was not innocent, but he was a victim.

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Posted by on April 30, 2012 in News & Views

 

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