by Bob Walsh
I like guns. I own a fair number of them. More than I need but less than I want. I like Lugers (among others) and own three of them, all very common and relatively low on the expensive scale. There are a LOT of Luger variations. Some of which there is only one known in existence. Some of them are VERY valuable.
Back in about 1907 Luger made a half dozen Lugers for the U. S. Army in .45 ACP. They apparently made a few extra here and there after tooling up because serial number 22 is known to exist. There are a couple of them in private collections. Value is $1 million plus.
Enter Eugene Golubtsov, aka Lugerman. He has set up a CNC computerized production line to make brand new .45 ACP Lugers. For starters there will be three of them, a standard, a compact and a target variation. They will also be building a carbine version and one in 10MM. They are still in the process of tweaking the final design but there are samples out there, at least one of which has had over 7,000 rounds thru it.
Anyway if you would REALLY like one and have a spare $5,800 or so and live in a state where you can get them (i.e. not California) you may be able to have one. Check out Lugerman.com for further details.
By the way, this guy has been around for some time and does repair and restoration on Lugers and P-38 pistols so he is not a fly-by-night operation. Allegedly guns are currently available. Personally I would LOVE to have one in 10mm compact but since I have paid less money than that for cars I still own I am probably not going to get one, even if they could be sold in the People's Republic.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
OFF-DUTY COP SHOOTS HIMSELF DURING TRAFFIC STOP
by Bob Walsh
An off-duty SFPD officer was pulled over by the local constabulary in Richmond on Monday. It was about 0130 and it was a more-or-less routine traffic stop. As the Richmond cop walked up towards the car the driver, who was the only occupant of the car killed himself with a gunshot wound.
The dead guy is reported to be SFPD Officer Antonio Cacatian, a nine-year veteran of the force. He was allegedly under investigation for sexual involvement with a minor in Las Vegas.
An off-duty SFPD officer was pulled over by the local constabulary in Richmond on Monday. It was about 0130 and it was a more-or-less routine traffic stop. As the Richmond cop walked up towards the car the driver, who was the only occupant of the car killed himself with a gunshot wound.
The dead guy is reported to be SFPD Officer Antonio Cacatian, a nine-year veteran of the force. He was allegedly under investigation for sexual involvement with a minor in Las Vegas.
THE NEIGHBOR FROM HELL
by Bob Walsh
A couple of days ago I dropped in to my locan Barnes & Nobel to get a couple more E-Books for my Nook. On my way towards the door I noticed a small hardback book with 20 significant SCOTUS decisions. It was only $8 and a couple of them I was totally unfamiliar with so I bought it. On my way to the register I noticfed a current (12-15-17) copy of Newsweek. Generally speaking I regard Newsweek as a hopeless, left-wing fish wrapper, but the cover story seemed to be about the Gun Culture in the U. S. I thought it might be amusing to see their take on it so I bought it, even after I found out it cost $9 for 48 pages printed on second-rate paper. However, that isn't the real story here.
There was a really interesting book review in it. So I guess this is a review of a review. The book is called HITLER, MY NEIGHBOR: MEMORIES FROM A JEWISH CHILDHOOD and was written by Edgar Feuchtwanger, now 93. While he was a young man, up until about the age of 14, he lived across the street from Adolph Hitler. He may be the only person still living who had any significant direct, personal contact with Hitler.
Young Edgar was a Jew. His family were prominent in the publishing world. His dad was shipped to Dachau but was later released. (That did happen but was rare. That train ride was usually one way.) When Edgar was 14, in 1939, he was sent to England to live.
The review draws some interesting (and expected) parallels between Hitler and Trump. It goes into the idea that NOBODY thought Hitler could get elected, until he did. Nobody thought Trump could get elected, until he did. Hitler was scary to a lot of people. Trump is scary to a lot of people (though many of those people are snowflakes, idiots and assholes).
At any event if you are interested in the history of that time and place it may very well be worth the read. Not many people said HELLO to the devil face to face on the street and are still around to tell the tale.
A couple of days ago I dropped in to my locan Barnes & Nobel to get a couple more E-Books for my Nook. On my way towards the door I noticed a small hardback book with 20 significant SCOTUS decisions. It was only $8 and a couple of them I was totally unfamiliar with so I bought it. On my way to the register I noticfed a current (12-15-17) copy of Newsweek. Generally speaking I regard Newsweek as a hopeless, left-wing fish wrapper, but the cover story seemed to be about the Gun Culture in the U. S. I thought it might be amusing to see their take on it so I bought it, even after I found out it cost $9 for 48 pages printed on second-rate paper. However, that isn't the real story here.
There was a really interesting book review in it. So I guess this is a review of a review. The book is called HITLER, MY NEIGHBOR: MEMORIES FROM A JEWISH CHILDHOOD and was written by Edgar Feuchtwanger, now 93. While he was a young man, up until about the age of 14, he lived across the street from Adolph Hitler. He may be the only person still living who had any significant direct, personal contact with Hitler.
Young Edgar was a Jew. His family were prominent in the publishing world. His dad was shipped to Dachau but was later released. (That did happen but was rare. That train ride was usually one way.) When Edgar was 14, in 1939, he was sent to England to live.
The review draws some interesting (and expected) parallels between Hitler and Trump. It goes into the idea that NOBODY thought Hitler could get elected, until he did. Nobody thought Trump could get elected, until he did. Hitler was scary to a lot of people. Trump is scary to a lot of people (though many of those people are snowflakes, idiots and assholes).
At any event if you are interested in the history of that time and place it may very well be worth the read. Not many people said HELLO to the devil face to face on the street and are still around to tell the tale.
CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRANTS WALKING FROM SOUTHERN MEXICO HOPING TO REACH CANADA
The 'Trump of Oaxaca' cracks down on Central American migrants
By Levi Bridges
Public Radio International
December 27, 2017
The town of Chahuites, Oaxaca, is a sleepy little village surrounded by mango farms. A line of train tracks cuts through the southern edge of town.
Chahuites is in an isolated part of southern Oaxaca, about 170 miles north of the Guatemalan border. Migrants from Central America used to just pass through town riding on top of La Bestia, the train migrants traditionally traveled on across Mexico. But now immigration agents patrol the train, forcing migrants to walk northward along the railroad tracks.
“People wait by the railroad with machetes and guns to rob migrants,” said Juan Vicente, a migrant from El Salvador who works at a construction site in Chahuites, “then they steal whatever you got.”
It takes some migrants weeks of walking just to reach Chahuites. Migrants now spend more and more time in southern Mexico, in part because of an immigration enforcement strategy called the Southern Border Program. Mexico launched the program back in 2014 when thousands of Central American families and children fleeing danger back home arrived at the US-Mexico border. Washington called their arrival a “surge” and pressured Mexico to stop the flow of migrants. Mexico created the Southern Border Program in response, an initiative supported with millions of dollars in US funding, that sent more immigration agents to southern Mexico, increased surveillance of trains and built new highway checkpoints.
La Bestia, once loaded with migrants huddled on top of boxcars, is now largely empty when it passes through Chahuites.
In the years since the Southern Border Program began, the number of human rights abuses committed against migrants in southern Mexico has increased. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission reported that incidents of Mexican authorities abusing migrants have increased by 40 percent since the immigration crackdown. The number of crimes against migrants has also increased. Since the Southern Border Program began three years ago, the number of migrants who reported incidents of robbery and violent assault in the state of Oaxaca more than doubled.
“I didn’t even have any money,” said Juan Vicente, the construction worker from El Salvador, “so they tore off my shoes and ripped them open with a machete to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything.”
Migrants in Mexico aren’t the only ones who face an increased level of violence: 2017 is currently on track to become the most violent year in Mexico since the country started recording homicide data 20 years ago. Dead bodies have started regularly showing up in Chahuites, a small farming town with fewer than 10,000 residents. Many people here blame the rise in violent crime on the recent arrival of Central American migrants.
Leobardo Ramos burst onto the political scene in Chahuites last year with an ambitious plan to solve crime. He ran for municipal president promising to clean up Chahuites by getting migrants out of town. His campaign promises earned Ramos a new title: They’ve taken to calling him the Donald Trump of Oaxaca.
Ramos won his election in a landslide, garnering more than 50 percent of the vote. The president of Chahuites has said in interviews that — unlike Trump — he has nothing against undocumented immigrants. Ramos says he wants to kick migrants out of town because voters asked him to and, as a public servant, he has to do what the electorate asks of him.
In response to the number of migrants who began arriving on foot in Chahuites after the Southern Border Program took effect, a new migrant shelter opened in town. After Ramos became municipal president this year, locals pressured him to fulfill a campaign promise to shut down the shelter. Across Mexico, residents who believe Central Americans bring crime to their communities have also tried to shut down migrant shelters in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico City, Tapachula and Tultitlán.
“Unfortunately, Mexico has a big problem with xenophobia and racism against migrants,” said Jessica Cárdenas, a former volunteer at the Chahuites shelter.
Ramos was instrumental in closing down the migrant shelter in Chahuites last summer. He negotiated with staff members to relocate the shelter outside of town.
Today, the old migrant shelter sits abandoned behind a tall black gate on a dirt road just a short walk from the railroad tracks. Immigration agents now patrol Chahuites and the local prosecutor’s office has demanded bribes from migrants who try to report crimes that occurred on the nearby railroad tracks. Before the new municipal president was elected, Cárdenas described Chahuites as a sort of sanctuary city for migrants; now the Oaxacan Trump has put an end to that.
Even after the shelter’s closure, many locals in Chahuites are on edge. People who live on the dirt road near the old migrant shelter say they’ve gotten ferocious guard dogs or put stronger locks on their doors to protect themselves from migrants. María López, one of the neighbors who rallied to close the shelter, says migrants are nothing but trouble.
“I was afraid just to go to the bathroom,” López said, pointing to a small shack with a toilet outside her small house. “What if one of them gets inside our house while I’m in the bathroom, kills my husband and robs us?”
Advocates in Mexico say part of this reluctance to accept migrants comes from a lack of understanding about the violence and economic instability that often forces Central Americans to leave home. López, for her part, said she doesn’t understand how migrants could just up and leave their families behind — she believes Central America just sends its worst people to Mexico.
And yet, López also has a son who went north and lives as an undocumented immigrant in Texas. López says her son in Houston isn’t a criminal — he’s different from the Central American migrants in Mexico.
“I tell my son to keep his nose clean, to stay away from drinking and drugs and not to be like the migrants who come to Mexico,” López said.
Cárdenas, the former volunteer at the Chahuites shelter, says it’s easy for locals to blame Mexico’s problems on foreigners. But she sees attitudes toward migrants in this small Mexican town as part of a global phenomenon where competition and fear make people afraid of outsiders, similar to the arrival of Syrian refugees in Germany or Mexican immigrants to the United States.
“What happens in Chahuites is a little example of what happens to migrants all over the world,” Cárdenas said. “Here people say they take away jobs, they’re rapists, they’re delinquents. That’s exactly what Donald Trump says about Mexicans in the United States.”
Despite the local clampdown in Chahuites, it appears that even the Oaxacan Trump can’t totally stop migration. On a recent afternoon down by the train tracks, six guys from Honduras huddled in the shade near an old rail station with peeling yellow paint to escape the midday heat.
The young men were all deported from the US, leaving family and kids there. Now they’re trying to make it back to Houston, Miami and Phoenix — the cities they were forced to leave. Although they spent a week walking to Chahuites, sleeping on the ground and begging for food, they say lots of folks in Mexico have actually treated them really well. Many have even offered them food and rides in their cars.
“People just say, ‘yeah sure,’ whenever I ask them for some beans or a piece of cheese,” said Alan Spencer, 21. “Mexicans are good people.”
Migrants who pass through Chahuites often arrive with an equal number of stories about the good Samaritans and the thieves they encountered on their journey. That’s because many communities in Mexico are just as divided on immigration as the United States is right now.
Several of the young men standing by the tracks in Chahuites said they’re done with Mexico and the United States.
“It’s a lot easier to get asylum in Canada,” Spencer said.
But Canada is still thousands of miles and two international border crossings away.
From here, they’ll keep walking.
By Levi Bridges
Public Radio International
December 27, 2017
The town of Chahuites, Oaxaca, is a sleepy little village surrounded by mango farms. A line of train tracks cuts through the southern edge of town.
Chahuites is in an isolated part of southern Oaxaca, about 170 miles north of the Guatemalan border. Migrants from Central America used to just pass through town riding on top of La Bestia, the train migrants traditionally traveled on across Mexico. But now immigration agents patrol the train, forcing migrants to walk northward along the railroad tracks.
“People wait by the railroad with machetes and guns to rob migrants,” said Juan Vicente, a migrant from El Salvador who works at a construction site in Chahuites, “then they steal whatever you got.”
It takes some migrants weeks of walking just to reach Chahuites. Migrants now spend more and more time in southern Mexico, in part because of an immigration enforcement strategy called the Southern Border Program. Mexico launched the program back in 2014 when thousands of Central American families and children fleeing danger back home arrived at the US-Mexico border. Washington called their arrival a “surge” and pressured Mexico to stop the flow of migrants. Mexico created the Southern Border Program in response, an initiative supported with millions of dollars in US funding, that sent more immigration agents to southern Mexico, increased surveillance of trains and built new highway checkpoints.
La Bestia, once loaded with migrants huddled on top of boxcars, is now largely empty when it passes through Chahuites.
In the years since the Southern Border Program began, the number of human rights abuses committed against migrants in southern Mexico has increased. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission reported that incidents of Mexican authorities abusing migrants have increased by 40 percent since the immigration crackdown. The number of crimes against migrants has also increased. Since the Southern Border Program began three years ago, the number of migrants who reported incidents of robbery and violent assault in the state of Oaxaca more than doubled.
“I didn’t even have any money,” said Juan Vicente, the construction worker from El Salvador, “so they tore off my shoes and ripped them open with a machete to make sure I wasn’t hiding anything.”
Migrants in Mexico aren’t the only ones who face an increased level of violence: 2017 is currently on track to become the most violent year in Mexico since the country started recording homicide data 20 years ago. Dead bodies have started regularly showing up in Chahuites, a small farming town with fewer than 10,000 residents. Many people here blame the rise in violent crime on the recent arrival of Central American migrants.
Leobardo Ramos burst onto the political scene in Chahuites last year with an ambitious plan to solve crime. He ran for municipal president promising to clean up Chahuites by getting migrants out of town. His campaign promises earned Ramos a new title: They’ve taken to calling him the Donald Trump of Oaxaca.
Ramos won his election in a landslide, garnering more than 50 percent of the vote. The president of Chahuites has said in interviews that — unlike Trump — he has nothing against undocumented immigrants. Ramos says he wants to kick migrants out of town because voters asked him to and, as a public servant, he has to do what the electorate asks of him.
In response to the number of migrants who began arriving on foot in Chahuites after the Southern Border Program took effect, a new migrant shelter opened in town. After Ramos became municipal president this year, locals pressured him to fulfill a campaign promise to shut down the shelter. Across Mexico, residents who believe Central Americans bring crime to their communities have also tried to shut down migrant shelters in Coatzacoalcos, Mexico City, Tapachula and Tultitlán.
“Unfortunately, Mexico has a big problem with xenophobia and racism against migrants,” said Jessica Cárdenas, a former volunteer at the Chahuites shelter.
Ramos was instrumental in closing down the migrant shelter in Chahuites last summer. He negotiated with staff members to relocate the shelter outside of town.
Today, the old migrant shelter sits abandoned behind a tall black gate on a dirt road just a short walk from the railroad tracks. Immigration agents now patrol Chahuites and the local prosecutor’s office has demanded bribes from migrants who try to report crimes that occurred on the nearby railroad tracks. Before the new municipal president was elected, Cárdenas described Chahuites as a sort of sanctuary city for migrants; now the Oaxacan Trump has put an end to that.
Even after the shelter’s closure, many locals in Chahuites are on edge. People who live on the dirt road near the old migrant shelter say they’ve gotten ferocious guard dogs or put stronger locks on their doors to protect themselves from migrants. María López, one of the neighbors who rallied to close the shelter, says migrants are nothing but trouble.
“I was afraid just to go to the bathroom,” López said, pointing to a small shack with a toilet outside her small house. “What if one of them gets inside our house while I’m in the bathroom, kills my husband and robs us?”
Advocates in Mexico say part of this reluctance to accept migrants comes from a lack of understanding about the violence and economic instability that often forces Central Americans to leave home. López, for her part, said she doesn’t understand how migrants could just up and leave their families behind — she believes Central America just sends its worst people to Mexico.
And yet, López also has a son who went north and lives as an undocumented immigrant in Texas. López says her son in Houston isn’t a criminal — he’s different from the Central American migrants in Mexico.
“I tell my son to keep his nose clean, to stay away from drinking and drugs and not to be like the migrants who come to Mexico,” López said.
Cárdenas, the former volunteer at the Chahuites shelter, says it’s easy for locals to blame Mexico’s problems on foreigners. But she sees attitudes toward migrants in this small Mexican town as part of a global phenomenon where competition and fear make people afraid of outsiders, similar to the arrival of Syrian refugees in Germany or Mexican immigrants to the United States.
“What happens in Chahuites is a little example of what happens to migrants all over the world,” Cárdenas said. “Here people say they take away jobs, they’re rapists, they’re delinquents. That’s exactly what Donald Trump says about Mexicans in the United States.”
Despite the local clampdown in Chahuites, it appears that even the Oaxacan Trump can’t totally stop migration. On a recent afternoon down by the train tracks, six guys from Honduras huddled in the shade near an old rail station with peeling yellow paint to escape the midday heat.
The young men were all deported from the US, leaving family and kids there. Now they’re trying to make it back to Houston, Miami and Phoenix — the cities they were forced to leave. Although they spent a week walking to Chahuites, sleeping on the ground and begging for food, they say lots of folks in Mexico have actually treated them really well. Many have even offered them food and rides in their cars.
“People just say, ‘yeah sure,’ whenever I ask them for some beans or a piece of cheese,” said Alan Spencer, 21. “Mexicans are good people.”
Migrants who pass through Chahuites often arrive with an equal number of stories about the good Samaritans and the thieves they encountered on their journey. That’s because many communities in Mexico are just as divided on immigration as the United States is right now.
Several of the young men standing by the tracks in Chahuites said they’re done with Mexico and the United States.
“It’s a lot easier to get asylum in Canada,” Spencer said.
But Canada is still thousands of miles and two international border crossings away.
From here, they’ll keep walking.
THIS TIME ‘SWATTING’ PRANK LED TO DEADLY POLICE SHOOTING
Los Angeles man arrested in ‘swatting’ call that preceded fatal police shooting in Kansas
By Andrew Blankstein and Associated Press
NBC News
December 30, 2017
Los Angeles police arrested a 25-year-old man in a suspected "swatting" hoax 911 call in Kansas that ended in the fatal police shooting of an unarmed man.
The LAPD took Tyler Barriss of Los Angeles into custody in that city on Friday afternoon, on a fugitive warrant stemming from the Thursday evening incident in Kansas, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Police in Wichita fatally shot a man identified by family members as Andrew Finch, 28, after officers responded to a hoax 911 call, police in Kansas said.
Los Angeles police arrested a 25-year-old man in a suspected "swatting" hoax 911 call in Kansas that ended in the fatal police shooting of an unarmed man.
The LAPD took Tyler Barriss of Los Angeles into custody in that city on Friday afternoon, on a fugitive warrant stemming from the Thursday evening incident in Kansas, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Police in Wichita fatally shot a man identified by family members as Andrew Finch, 28, after officers responded to a hoax 911 call, police in Kansas said.
Barriss allegedly made the false report after getting into some kind of dispute with another person in connection with online gaming, and Barriss allegedly gave authorities the address that he believed that person lived at, multiple law enforcement sources told NBC News.
But instead the address was for the home of Finch, who was not involved in the dispute, the sources said.
The caller claimed his father had been shot in the head, and that he was holding his mother and a sibling at gunpoint, according to police audio played at a press conference in Wichita Friday.
Officers surrounded the home bracing for a hostage situation. When the man identified as Finch went to the door police told him to put his hands up, and an officer fired after the man moved his hand toward the area of his waistband, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston said.
Finch was unarmed, he said. "Due to the actions of a prankster we have an innocent victim," Livingston said.
The officer who fired the single shot, a seven-year veteran of the department, is on paid leave pending an investigation.
"We believe this incident is a case of 'swatting,'" Livingston said. He said the shooting was "a tragic and senseless act" and that "the incident is a nightmare for everyone involved, including the family and our police department."
The Finch family on Friday allowed reporters inside their home. Lisa Finch told them her son was not a gamer.
"What gives the cops the right to open fire?" she asked. "That cop murdered my son over a false report in the first place."
Dexerto, an online news service focused on gaming, reported that the series of events began with an online argument over a $1 or $2 wager in a "Call of Duty" game on UMG Gaming, which operates online tournaments including one involving "Call of Duty."
"We woke this morning to horrible news about an innocent man losing his life," Shannon Gerritzen, a UMG vice president, said in an email to The Associated Press. "Our hearts go out to his loved ones. We are doing everything we can to assist the authorities in this matter." She declined to disclose other details.
Barriss was taken into custody in South Los Angeles, and had been living at a transitional recovery center, sources said.
The FBI estimates that roughly 400 cases of swatting occur annually, with some using caller ID spoofing to disguise their number. An FBI supervisor in Kansas City, Missouri, which covers all of Kansas, said the agency joined in the investigation at the request of local police.
In 2012, LAPD Hollywood Division Detectives arrested a then-12-year-old boy in connection with so-called "swatting" calls that manipulated the 911 system to allege violent crimes in progress at the homes of celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher.
By Andrew Blankstein and Associated Press
NBC News
December 30, 2017
Los Angeles police arrested a 25-year-old man in a suspected "swatting" hoax 911 call in Kansas that ended in the fatal police shooting of an unarmed man.
The LAPD took Tyler Barriss of Los Angeles into custody in that city on Friday afternoon, on a fugitive warrant stemming from the Thursday evening incident in Kansas, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Police in Wichita fatally shot a man identified by family members as Andrew Finch, 28, after officers responded to a hoax 911 call, police in Kansas said.
Los Angeles police arrested a 25-year-old man in a suspected "swatting" hoax 911 call in Kansas that ended in the fatal police shooting of an unarmed man.
The LAPD took Tyler Barriss of Los Angeles into custody in that city on Friday afternoon, on a fugitive warrant stemming from the Thursday evening incident in Kansas, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said.
Police in Wichita fatally shot a man identified by family members as Andrew Finch, 28, after officers responded to a hoax 911 call, police in Kansas said.
Barriss allegedly made the false report after getting into some kind of dispute with another person in connection with online gaming, and Barriss allegedly gave authorities the address that he believed that person lived at, multiple law enforcement sources told NBC News.
But instead the address was for the home of Finch, who was not involved in the dispute, the sources said.
The caller claimed his father had been shot in the head, and that he was holding his mother and a sibling at gunpoint, according to police audio played at a press conference in Wichita Friday.
Officers surrounded the home bracing for a hostage situation. When the man identified as Finch went to the door police told him to put his hands up, and an officer fired after the man moved his hand toward the area of his waistband, Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston said.
Finch was unarmed, he said. "Due to the actions of a prankster we have an innocent victim," Livingston said.
The officer who fired the single shot, a seven-year veteran of the department, is on paid leave pending an investigation.
"We believe this incident is a case of 'swatting,'" Livingston said. He said the shooting was "a tragic and senseless act" and that "the incident is a nightmare for everyone involved, including the family and our police department."
The Finch family on Friday allowed reporters inside their home. Lisa Finch told them her son was not a gamer.
"What gives the cops the right to open fire?" she asked. "That cop murdered my son over a false report in the first place."
Dexerto, an online news service focused on gaming, reported that the series of events began with an online argument over a $1 or $2 wager in a "Call of Duty" game on UMG Gaming, which operates online tournaments including one involving "Call of Duty."
"We woke this morning to horrible news about an innocent man losing his life," Shannon Gerritzen, a UMG vice president, said in an email to The Associated Press. "Our hearts go out to his loved ones. We are doing everything we can to assist the authorities in this matter." She declined to disclose other details.
Barriss was taken into custody in South Los Angeles, and had been living at a transitional recovery center, sources said.
The FBI estimates that roughly 400 cases of swatting occur annually, with some using caller ID spoofing to disguise their number. An FBI supervisor in Kansas City, Missouri, which covers all of Kansas, said the agency joined in the investigation at the request of local police.
In 2012, LAPD Hollywood Division Detectives arrested a then-12-year-old boy in connection with so-called "swatting" calls that manipulated the 911 system to allege violent crimes in progress at the homes of celebrities such as Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher.
ONLY HIS 6-YEAR OLD TWIN DAUGHTERS HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO VISIT EL CHAPO
El Chapo’s attorney, who is not allowed any face-to-face visits with his client, files for a continuance needing additional time for trial prep
by Chivis Martinez
Borderland Beat
December 28, 2017
El Chapo shared a Christmas visit with his twin six year old twin daughters. His daughters were born in California in 2011, thereby are American citizens, as is their mother Emma Coronel Aispuro. The visit marks the fourth time Chapo has been allowed to see his twins.
Despite erroneous reports in the news, Emma did not visit Chapo on the 23rd with the twins, and has never been allowed a visit with her husband since extradited.
The Daily Mail, (U.K.Publication) ran the story of Emma visiting Chapo, and several media outlets republished their story. DM tells Borderland Beat, the story originated from Washington Post and they took the information from that story.
The judge presiding in Chapo’s case had placed severe restrictions on visits. Virtually none, except the twins and even his attorney Eduardo Balarezo has no contact and no private visits with his client.
On Christmas Eve Chapo’s attorney filed a request for continuance.
The filing stresses the encumbrance of reviewing discovery and the mountain of discovery, several hundreds of thousands pages, and hundreds of thousands of recordings. With the replacement of his defense with Balarezo, in effect the defense began preparation for trial on September 3rd of this year.
The reviewing of discovery would be a monumental task in the best of situations, however reviewing prosecution discovery, has been impeded by the restrictions of the legal team’s court ordered no contact visits. Add in the fact that Chapo’s reading skills and computer skills are very low.
Description below:
The room is approximately five feet by ten feet, divided in half by a cement wall and a mesh/Plexiglas window. On the attorney side of the room there is cement block measuring approximately two feet by two feet containing a metal drawer that slides into the inmate side of the visiting room. The drawer is meant to facilitate the passing of documents back and forth and was installed because the Court rejected contact visits with Mr. Guzmán.
The government/MCC also set up a computer screen on the attorney side for Mr. Guzmán to connect his government issued laptop to the monitor so as to allow both sides to view discovery on that one monitor. The monitor is approximately 15 inches across and of low resolution, making it almost impossible for Mr. Guzmán to view anything displayed on it from his side of the visiting room. As the defense pointed out to the government/MCC, this setup allowed Mr. Guzmán to control the reviewing of discovery, and since he is not facile with computers, the process of reviewing any one document took an unreasonable period of time.
The defense is asking for a continuance until August or September 2018.
by Chivis Martinez
Borderland Beat
December 28, 2017
El Chapo shared a Christmas visit with his twin six year old twin daughters. His daughters were born in California in 2011, thereby are American citizens, as is their mother Emma Coronel Aispuro. The visit marks the fourth time Chapo has been allowed to see his twins.
Despite erroneous reports in the news, Emma did not visit Chapo on the 23rd with the twins, and has never been allowed a visit with her husband since extradited.
The Daily Mail, (U.K.Publication) ran the story of Emma visiting Chapo, and several media outlets republished their story. DM tells Borderland Beat, the story originated from Washington Post and they took the information from that story.
The judge presiding in Chapo’s case had placed severe restrictions on visits. Virtually none, except the twins and even his attorney Eduardo Balarezo has no contact and no private visits with his client.
On Christmas Eve Chapo’s attorney filed a request for continuance.
The filing stresses the encumbrance of reviewing discovery and the mountain of discovery, several hundreds of thousands pages, and hundreds of thousands of recordings. With the replacement of his defense with Balarezo, in effect the defense began preparation for trial on September 3rd of this year.
The reviewing of discovery would be a monumental task in the best of situations, however reviewing prosecution discovery, has been impeded by the restrictions of the legal team’s court ordered no contact visits. Add in the fact that Chapo’s reading skills and computer skills are very low.
Description below:
The room is approximately five feet by ten feet, divided in half by a cement wall and a mesh/Plexiglas window. On the attorney side of the room there is cement block measuring approximately two feet by two feet containing a metal drawer that slides into the inmate side of the visiting room. The drawer is meant to facilitate the passing of documents back and forth and was installed because the Court rejected contact visits with Mr. Guzmán.
The government/MCC also set up a computer screen on the attorney side for Mr. Guzmán to connect his government issued laptop to the monitor so as to allow both sides to view discovery on that one monitor. The monitor is approximately 15 inches across and of low resolution, making it almost impossible for Mr. Guzmán to view anything displayed on it from his side of the visiting room. As the defense pointed out to the government/MCC, this setup allowed Mr. Guzmán to control the reviewing of discovery, and since he is not facile with computers, the process of reviewing any one document took an unreasonable period of time.
The defense is asking for a continuance until August or September 2018.
VAG STSHES ARE NOT UNCOMMON BUT OBJECTS STAHED INSID DICKS ….. OUCH!
Daily Mail
December 28, 2017
Top 16 things doctors found in vaginas in 2017
1. Scented soap
2. Deodorant cap
3. Bottle cap
4. Penis ring with spikes on
5. Silicon balls
6. A ball
7. Bike reflector
8. A sponge
9. Headphones
10. Hot towel
11. A phone and money
12. Clay
13. A candlestick
14. A lollipop
15. 15 stone balls - only found 14
16. Toy wand
Strange items doctors found in men's penises in 2017
1. A little screw
2. A sharp toy
3. four inch long metal sex toy
4. Plastic spoon
5. Piece of domino
6. Piece of plastic shampoo bottle
7. Paperclip
8. Coaxial cable
EDITOR’S NOTE: Narcotic officers often find large quantities of heroin, meth, cocaine and other drugs stashed in a suspect’s vagina, but I never heard of a dick stash. And then there are those kiester stashes.
December 28, 2017
Top 16 things doctors found in vaginas in 2017
1. Scented soap
2. Deodorant cap
3. Bottle cap
4. Penis ring with spikes on
5. Silicon balls
6. A ball
7. Bike reflector
8. A sponge
9. Headphones
10. Hot towel
11. A phone and money
12. Clay
13. A candlestick
14. A lollipop
15. 15 stone balls - only found 14
16. Toy wand
Strange items doctors found in men's penises in 2017
1. A little screw
2. A sharp toy
3. four inch long metal sex toy
4. Plastic spoon
5. Piece of domino
6. Piece of plastic shampoo bottle
7. Paperclip
8. Coaxial cable
EDITOR’S NOTE: Narcotic officers often find large quantities of heroin, meth, cocaine and other drugs stashed in a suspect’s vagina, but I never heard of a dick stash. And then there are those kiester stashes.
Saturday, December 30, 2017
NOT THE OFFICIAL CAR OF THE HOUSTON TEXANS
Hyundai prides itself in being “the official car of the Houston Texans.” And then there is BMW with “Your Houston area BMW centers are proud to be the Official Luxury Car of the Houston Texans.”
With one game left to go this season, The Houston Texans have won just four games while losing eleven. They have lost their last five games in a row.
The Houston Texans record is so bad that Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda and Kia have all started advertising, “Not the official car of the Houston Texans.”
And Mercedes-Benz is now advertising, “We are not the Official Luxury Car of the Houston Texans.”
Hyundai and BMW have asked the Texans for a refund of the money they paid for the right to advertise their automobiles as the official team cars. Bob McNair, owner of the Texans, angrily told Hyundai and BMW he was in no mood to be reminded of how disastrous this season has been and for them to “Go pound sand!”
With one game left to go this season, The Houston Texans have won just four games while losing eleven. They have lost their last five games in a row.
The Houston Texans record is so bad that Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda and Kia have all started advertising, “Not the official car of the Houston Texans.”
And Mercedes-Benz is now advertising, “We are not the Official Luxury Car of the Houston Texans.”
Hyundai and BMW have asked the Texans for a refund of the money they paid for the right to advertise their automobiles as the official team cars. Bob McNair, owner of the Texans, angrily told Hyundai and BMW he was in no mood to be reminded of how disastrous this season has been and for them to “Go pound sand!”
CA. SCHOOL DISTRICT REFUSES TO EDUCATE RACISTS ..... IF THEY ARE WHITE
by Bob Walsh
Elk Grove is an upscale bedroom community south of Sacramento. It is basically a nice place. A while back a SnapChat video was posted with two white high school girls on it. One of the two was on a racist rant, asserting among other things, "Black people are trash. They need to die." At no time did the rant express any intent or desire to engage in personal violence against Black people, or attempt to incite violence against them.
At any rate the Elk Grove school district has kicked them out of school, citing the safety of the student body as the reason.
It is probably narrow minded and reactionary of me but I wonder if they would have done the same thing had the shoe been on the other foot. It is not illegal to be a racist. It may be stupid and narrow-minded, but if we refused to educate all stupid and narrow-minded people in the state there would be a lot of uneducated assholes out there, more than there are now anyway.
I wonder if there is a branch of La Raza or BLM active on campus? Just curious.
Elk Grove is an upscale bedroom community south of Sacramento. It is basically a nice place. A while back a SnapChat video was posted with two white high school girls on it. One of the two was on a racist rant, asserting among other things, "Black people are trash. They need to die." At no time did the rant express any intent or desire to engage in personal violence against Black people, or attempt to incite violence against them.
At any rate the Elk Grove school district has kicked them out of school, citing the safety of the student body as the reason.
It is probably narrow minded and reactionary of me but I wonder if they would have done the same thing had the shoe been on the other foot. It is not illegal to be a racist. It may be stupid and narrow-minded, but if we refused to educate all stupid and narrow-minded people in the state there would be a lot of uneducated assholes out there, more than there are now anyway.
I wonder if there is a branch of La Raza or BLM active on campus? Just curious.
FEEL-GOOD STUPIDITY
by Bob Walsh
The formerly great state of California is considering moving forward on a program of divesting it's two huge retirements systems from ownership in the retail end of firearms sales. The reason stated is to help prevent another Las Vegas type massacre.
They have been a little fuzzy on how the CA retirement systems NOT owning stock is going to achieve that goal but, like good liberals, it does not matter what the actual RESULTS are. What is important is that you feel good about what you say and what you are seen to do in public.
The animals are loose and the clowns are running the circus.
The formerly great state of California is considering moving forward on a program of divesting it's two huge retirements systems from ownership in the retail end of firearms sales. The reason stated is to help prevent another Las Vegas type massacre.
They have been a little fuzzy on how the CA retirement systems NOT owning stock is going to achieve that goal but, like good liberals, it does not matter what the actual RESULTS are. What is important is that you feel good about what you say and what you are seen to do in public.
The animals are loose and the clowns are running the circus.
ELEPHANTS ARE SHIT OUTA LUCK .....SO FAR
by Bob Walsh
A judge in Connecticut has determined that, as a matter of law, elephants are not people. The issue came up when the Nonhuman Rights Project, a bunch of animal rights psychopaths, sued to declare that three petting zoo elephants are in fact "people" in the legal meaning of the word and they should be released from their involuntary servitude.
The judge called the lawsuit "wholly frivolous."
I am a relatively old guy now. I remember when being a homosexual was considered a mental illness or disease and engaging in homosexual activity could land you in the slammer. Now it is a valid alternative lifestyle with significant legal protection beyond what a mundane "straight" person might enjoy before the law. Don't count these psychos out. If they keep it up long enough some moron judge may bite.
A judge in Connecticut has determined that, as a matter of law, elephants are not people. The issue came up when the Nonhuman Rights Project, a bunch of animal rights psychopaths, sued to declare that three petting zoo elephants are in fact "people" in the legal meaning of the word and they should be released from their involuntary servitude.
The judge called the lawsuit "wholly frivolous."
I am a relatively old guy now. I remember when being a homosexual was considered a mental illness or disease and engaging in homosexual activity could land you in the slammer. Now it is a valid alternative lifestyle with significant legal protection beyond what a mundane "straight" person might enjoy before the law. Don't count these psychos out. If they keep it up long enough some moron judge may bite.
ANY WALK YOU CAN WALK AWAY FROM IS A GOOD WALK
by Bob Walsh
An unnamed 76-year old Redwood City, CA. man was talking his dog for a walk on Wednesday when things went sideways. The dog, a mastiff, decided for reasons unknown to attack it's owner and turned one of his lower legs into a chew toy. The owner did not like that, pulled a gun and shot and killed the dog. (The dog had previously come to the attention of authorities for aggressive behavior.)
The news article specified that the owner had not been arrested and the gun was seized as evidence so I am guessing the old guy did not have a permit for the gat. The police are seeking witnesses.
An unnamed 76-year old Redwood City, CA. man was talking his dog for a walk on Wednesday when things went sideways. The dog, a mastiff, decided for reasons unknown to attack it's owner and turned one of his lower legs into a chew toy. The owner did not like that, pulled a gun and shot and killed the dog. (The dog had previously come to the attention of authorities for aggressive behavior.)
The news article specified that the owner had not been arrested and the gun was seized as evidence so I am guessing the old guy did not have a permit for the gat. The police are seeking witnesses.
CA DMV GOES AFTER DEAD PEOPLE
by Bob Walsh
Actually, it isn't as wacked as it sounds. In some major metropolitan areas, especially the People's Republic of San Francisco, abuse of the Handicapped Parking Placards is rampant. They are stolen, counterfeited and not turned in when granny dies. It makes a major ding in available street parking.
A new state law, kicking in on 01-01, REQUIRES that DMV get its collective head out of it's collective butt and try to fix it. Right now there are over 25,000 people over the age of 100 with handicapped placards. That is statistically very unlikely to be correct. The actual number is about 8,000.
Among other things DMV will now cross-check with SSA and cancel the placards of people who are reported as being dead.
Last fiscal year the DMV issued over 1,600 placard abuse citations, more than triple the previous year. They actually have a dedicated group of people (probably a small group) who do nothing but that. A year or so back they nailed a lot of people in the immediate vicinity of the DMV headquarters building. More than a few were DMV staff.
Actually, it isn't as wacked as it sounds. In some major metropolitan areas, especially the People's Republic of San Francisco, abuse of the Handicapped Parking Placards is rampant. They are stolen, counterfeited and not turned in when granny dies. It makes a major ding in available street parking.
A new state law, kicking in on 01-01, REQUIRES that DMV get its collective head out of it's collective butt and try to fix it. Right now there are over 25,000 people over the age of 100 with handicapped placards. That is statistically very unlikely to be correct. The actual number is about 8,000.
Among other things DMV will now cross-check with SSA and cancel the placards of people who are reported as being dead.
Last fiscal year the DMV issued over 1,600 placard abuse citations, more than triple the previous year. They actually have a dedicated group of people (probably a small group) who do nothing but that. A year or so back they nailed a lot of people in the immediate vicinity of the DMV headquarters building. More than a few were DMV staff.
KUZNETSOV AND STOLYAROV SCORE AGAIN
Russian pranksters pretending to be Poland’s prime minister fool Nikki Haley in call about fake country
By Bob Fredericks
New York Post
December 28, 2017
A couple of Russian funnymen prank-called US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley by posing as a Polish government official.
Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov posted a video in which a woman who the cutups said was Haley thought she was speaking with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the [Charleston] Post and Courier reported.
“Let me start with very much thanking you for the support we received on the vote today. We will never forget it,” the gullible Haley told the phony PM.
Poland was one of 35 countries who abstained from voting on a UN resolution condemning President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The phony Morawiecki also asked Haley about the fictional island of Binomo in the South China Sea.
“You know Binomo?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” Haley replied.
“They had elections and we suppose Russians had its intervention,” the comic said.
“Yes, of course they did, absolutely. We’ve been watching that very closely, and I think we will continue to watch that as we deal with the issues that keep coming up about the South China Sea,” she answered.
He then asked Haley what the US was going to do about it.
“Let me find out exactly what our stance is on that, and what if anything the US is doing or thinks should be done, and I will report back to you on that as well,” she said.
Haley’s spokesman John Degory told the paper, “We have nothing to share on that at this time.”
By Bob Fredericks
New York Post
December 28, 2017
A couple of Russian funnymen prank-called US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley by posing as a Polish government official.
Vladimir Kuznetsov and Alexei Stolyarov posted a video in which a woman who the cutups said was Haley thought she was speaking with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the [Charleston] Post and Courier reported.
“Let me start with very much thanking you for the support we received on the vote today. We will never forget it,” the gullible Haley told the phony PM.
Poland was one of 35 countries who abstained from voting on a UN resolution condemning President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The phony Morawiecki also asked Haley about the fictional island of Binomo in the South China Sea.
“You know Binomo?” he asked.
“Yes, yes,” Haley replied.
“They had elections and we suppose Russians had its intervention,” the comic said.
“Yes, of course they did, absolutely. We’ve been watching that very closely, and I think we will continue to watch that as we deal with the issues that keep coming up about the South China Sea,” she answered.
He then asked Haley what the US was going to do about it.
“Let me find out exactly what our stance is on that, and what if anything the US is doing or thinks should be done, and I will report back to you on that as well,” she said.
Haley’s spokesman John Degory told the paper, “We have nothing to share on that at this time.”
CHICAGO COP BLAMES POOR TRAINING FOR FATAL SHOOTING OF MAN WITH BASEBALL BAT AND INNOCENT BYSTANDER
Civilian Office of Police Accountability Rules 2015 Chicago Police Shooting Was Unjustified
By Dan Hinkel
Chicago Tribune
December 29, 2017
CHICAGO — Chicago police disciplinary officials have ruled an officer was unjustified in the 2015 shooting and killing of a 19-year-old carrying a baseball bat and an innocent bystander standing nearby.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has ruled that Officer Robert Rialmo unjustifiably shot Quintonio LeGrier and 55-year-old Bettie Jones while responding to a domestic disturbance on the West Side on the day after Christmas two years ago, according to records obtained by the Chicago Tribune through an open records request. After LeGrier advanced on officers with an aluminum baseball bat, Rialmo shot the teen and accidentally hit Jones, a neighbor standing nearby.
The agency’s ruling, dated Dec. 22, turns on investigators’ determination that the evidence indicated that LeGrier did not swing the bat at Rialmo, as the officer has said. Investigators also found that the evidence — including shell casings, witness statements and forensic analysis — also suggested Rialmo was farther away from LeGrier when he opened fire than the officer has said. LeGrier fell in the vestibule, and Rialmo said he opened fire from the front porch, but investigators determined it was more likely the officer was between the bottom of the porch and the sidewalk in front of the home.
The agency concluded that a “reasonable officer” would not have believed he was in danger of death or serious injury.
Disciplinary authorities do not immediately disclose the recommendations for punishment they make to the Police Department alongside their rulings, but COPA typically calls for firing officers in unjustified shootings. Superintendent Eddie Johnson has up to three months after receiving a recommendation for punishment to decide what discipline, if any, he’ll seek. The Chicago Police Board rules on serious discipline for officers, though the board’s decisions can be appealed through the courts.
Rialmo’s attorney, Joel Brodsky, had not seen the COPA ruling Thursday afternoon but said the agency’s finding cast the evidence in a misleading light.
“This is a political decision, not one based on the evidence,” he said. “This has got nothing to do with facts.”
The disciplinary ruling could set up another battle in the aftermath of a shooting that has led to numerous lawsuits and multiple embarrassing missteps for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration.
Two weeks ago, lawyers for the city of Chicago introduced and then hours later withdrew a lawsuit that sought to shift blame and some financial liability for Jones’ death from the city onto LeGrier’s estate. After the Tribune reported on the lawsuit, the city’s lawyers dropped it and Emanuel apologized, saying he did not know of the litigation beforehand but found it “callous.”
The shooting has attracted wide attention because of the bystander’s death and because it was the first fatal police shooting after the court-mandated release of video of an officer shooting African-American teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. Upon its emergence in November 2015, the video unleashed a torrent of outrage among Chicagoans, many of them black, who aired decades-worth of objections about their treatment by police. Efforts to overhaul the department and curb unnecessary uses of force continue more than two years later.
About 4:30 a.m. on the day after Christmas 2015, Rialmo and his partner responded to 911 calls about a domestic disturbance at the apartment in the 4700 block of West Erie Street where LeGrier was staying with his father.
LeGrier had behaved strangely as a student at Northern Illinois University and had altercations with other students as well as run-ins with police, records show. LeGrier’s mental health has been a key issue in the litigation that followed his death, and the city’s aborted lawsuit said he failed to take medication to control an unspecified mental illness.
Jones, who lived downstairs, answered the door and pointed police to the second-floor. LeGrier then came down the stairs with a baseball bat, according to an analysis released in February by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office, which declined to bring criminal charges against Rialmo.
The officers started to move backward onto the front landing as LeGrier came at them with the bat, prosecutors wrote. As Rialmo backed down the stairs, he fired eight times, hitting LeGrier six times, according to prosecutors. Jones, who stood behind the teen during the incident, was shot once in the chest, prosecutors wrote.
Rialmo has stipulated in court that he knew Jones was standing close by when he fired, though Brodsky has said his client was nonetheless justified in firing in self-defense.
The shooting led to a crossfire of lawsuits between the various parties. The survivors of both LeGrier and Jones sued Rialmo and the city. Rialmo, meanwhile, took the unconventional step of suing the city, alleging in-part that he was inadequately trained. Rialmo is also suing LeGrier’s estate, blaming him for the shooting and contending it emotionally traumatized the officer. And the city, for less than 24 hours, was suing the LeGrier estate.
The Police Department’s handling of the shooting’s aftermath was also marked by error. Rialmo was supposed to be on indefinite desk duty following the shooting but the department redeployed him to the street during a particularly violent summer of 2016. Four months later, department officials returned Rialmo to desk duty, blamed an administrative oversight and reprimanded a district commander. Rialmo’s brief return to the street was particularly noteworthy given his lawsuit alleging he was poorly trained.
The case also had consequences at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, which suspended two 911 call-takers for failing to send police after the first two of LeGrier’s three calls. One was suspended without pay for three days, and the other for two days.
By Dan Hinkel
Chicago Tribune
December 29, 2017
CHICAGO — Chicago police disciplinary officials have ruled an officer was unjustified in the 2015 shooting and killing of a 19-year-old carrying a baseball bat and an innocent bystander standing nearby.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has ruled that Officer Robert Rialmo unjustifiably shot Quintonio LeGrier and 55-year-old Bettie Jones while responding to a domestic disturbance on the West Side on the day after Christmas two years ago, according to records obtained by the Chicago Tribune through an open records request. After LeGrier advanced on officers with an aluminum baseball bat, Rialmo shot the teen and accidentally hit Jones, a neighbor standing nearby.
The agency’s ruling, dated Dec. 22, turns on investigators’ determination that the evidence indicated that LeGrier did not swing the bat at Rialmo, as the officer has said. Investigators also found that the evidence — including shell casings, witness statements and forensic analysis — also suggested Rialmo was farther away from LeGrier when he opened fire than the officer has said. LeGrier fell in the vestibule, and Rialmo said he opened fire from the front porch, but investigators determined it was more likely the officer was between the bottom of the porch and the sidewalk in front of the home.
The agency concluded that a “reasonable officer” would not have believed he was in danger of death or serious injury.
Disciplinary authorities do not immediately disclose the recommendations for punishment they make to the Police Department alongside their rulings, but COPA typically calls for firing officers in unjustified shootings. Superintendent Eddie Johnson has up to three months after receiving a recommendation for punishment to decide what discipline, if any, he’ll seek. The Chicago Police Board rules on serious discipline for officers, though the board’s decisions can be appealed through the courts.
Rialmo’s attorney, Joel Brodsky, had not seen the COPA ruling Thursday afternoon but said the agency’s finding cast the evidence in a misleading light.
“This is a political decision, not one based on the evidence,” he said. “This has got nothing to do with facts.”
The disciplinary ruling could set up another battle in the aftermath of a shooting that has led to numerous lawsuits and multiple embarrassing missteps for Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration.
Two weeks ago, lawyers for the city of Chicago introduced and then hours later withdrew a lawsuit that sought to shift blame and some financial liability for Jones’ death from the city onto LeGrier’s estate. After the Tribune reported on the lawsuit, the city’s lawyers dropped it and Emanuel apologized, saying he did not know of the litigation beforehand but found it “callous.”
The shooting has attracted wide attention because of the bystander’s death and because it was the first fatal police shooting after the court-mandated release of video of an officer shooting African-American teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. Upon its emergence in November 2015, the video unleashed a torrent of outrage among Chicagoans, many of them black, who aired decades-worth of objections about their treatment by police. Efforts to overhaul the department and curb unnecessary uses of force continue more than two years later.
About 4:30 a.m. on the day after Christmas 2015, Rialmo and his partner responded to 911 calls about a domestic disturbance at the apartment in the 4700 block of West Erie Street where LeGrier was staying with his father.
LeGrier had behaved strangely as a student at Northern Illinois University and had altercations with other students as well as run-ins with police, records show. LeGrier’s mental health has been a key issue in the litigation that followed his death, and the city’s aborted lawsuit said he failed to take medication to control an unspecified mental illness.
Jones, who lived downstairs, answered the door and pointed police to the second-floor. LeGrier then came down the stairs with a baseball bat, according to an analysis released in February by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office, which declined to bring criminal charges against Rialmo.
The officers started to move backward onto the front landing as LeGrier came at them with the bat, prosecutors wrote. As Rialmo backed down the stairs, he fired eight times, hitting LeGrier six times, according to prosecutors. Jones, who stood behind the teen during the incident, was shot once in the chest, prosecutors wrote.
Rialmo has stipulated in court that he knew Jones was standing close by when he fired, though Brodsky has said his client was nonetheless justified in firing in self-defense.
The shooting led to a crossfire of lawsuits between the various parties. The survivors of both LeGrier and Jones sued Rialmo and the city. Rialmo, meanwhile, took the unconventional step of suing the city, alleging in-part that he was inadequately trained. Rialmo is also suing LeGrier’s estate, blaming him for the shooting and contending it emotionally traumatized the officer. And the city, for less than 24 hours, was suing the LeGrier estate.
The Police Department’s handling of the shooting’s aftermath was also marked by error. Rialmo was supposed to be on indefinite desk duty following the shooting but the department redeployed him to the street during a particularly violent summer of 2016. Four months later, department officials returned Rialmo to desk duty, blamed an administrative oversight and reprimanded a district commander. Rialmo’s brief return to the street was particularly noteworthy given his lawsuit alleging he was poorly trained.
The case also had consequences at the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, which suspended two 911 call-takers for failing to send police after the first two of LeGrier’s three calls. One was suspended without pay for three days, and the other for two days.
INSATIABLE DESIRE FOR DRUGS TAKING ITS TOLL ON AMERICANS
Soaring opioid drug deaths cause U.S. life expectancy to drop for 2nd year
CBS News
December 21, 2017
NEW YORK — U.S. deaths from drug overdoses skyrocketed 21 percent last year, and for the second straight year dragged down how long Americans are expected to live.
The government figures released Thursday put drug deaths at 63,600, up from about 52,000 in 2015. For the first time, the powerful painkiller fentanyl and its close opioid cousins played a bigger role in the deaths than any other legal or illegal drug, surpassing prescription pain pills and heroin.
"This is urgent and deadly," said Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The opioid epidemic "clearly has a huge impact on our entire society."
Two-thirds of last year's drug deaths — about 42,000 — involved opioids, a category that includes heroin, methadone, prescription pain pills like OxyContin, and fentanyl. Fatal overdoses that involved fentanyl and fentanyl-like drugs doubled in one year, to more than 19,000, mostly from illegally made pills or powder, which is often mixed with heroin or other drugs.
Heroin was tied to 15,500 deaths and prescription painkillers to 14,500 deaths. The balance of the overdose deaths involved sedatives, cocaine and methamphetamines. More than one drug is often involved in an overdose death.
The highest drug death rates were in ages 25 to 54.
The CDC reports the age-adjusted death rate from overdoses more than tripled from 1999 to 2016.
Preliminary 2017 figures show the rise in overdose deaths continuing.
A report out last month from the White House Council of Economic Advisers said the financial toll of the opioid drug crisis in the U.S. has been vastly underestimated, in large part because previous analyses did not fully account for the rising number of overdose deaths. The council said the opioid crisis cost the U.S. $504 billion, or 2.8 percent of the nation's GDP, in 2015 alone.
"This is over six times larger than the most recently estimated economic cost of the epidemic," the report stated.
In October, President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, calling it a "national shame" and a "human tragedy." But he stopped short of proclaiming a national emergency, which would have unlocked more money and resources to combat the problem.
The drug deaths weigh into CDC's annual calculation of the average time a person is expected to live. The life expectancy figure is based on the year of their birth, current death trends and other factors. For decades, it was on the upswing, rising a few months nearly every year. But last year marked the first time in more than a half century that U.S. life expectancy fell two consecutive years.
"If we don't get a handle on this," he said, "we could very well see a third year in a row. With no end in sight."
West Virginia continued to be the state with highest drug overdose death rate, with a rate of 52 deaths per 100,000 state residents in 2016. Ohio and New Hampshire were next, both at about 39 per 100,000.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Long ago and for a long time I kept saying that the only way to fight America’s drug epidemic was to focus law enforcement on the user rather than on the dealer. But because many drug users were from the middle and upper class, the great minds in charge considered that politically infeasible. So, here we are today.
CBS News
December 21, 2017
NEW YORK — U.S. deaths from drug overdoses skyrocketed 21 percent last year, and for the second straight year dragged down how long Americans are expected to live.
The government figures released Thursday put drug deaths at 63,600, up from about 52,000 in 2015. For the first time, the powerful painkiller fentanyl and its close opioid cousins played a bigger role in the deaths than any other legal or illegal drug, surpassing prescription pain pills and heroin.
"This is urgent and deadly," said Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The opioid epidemic "clearly has a huge impact on our entire society."
Two-thirds of last year's drug deaths — about 42,000 — involved opioids, a category that includes heroin, methadone, prescription pain pills like OxyContin, and fentanyl. Fatal overdoses that involved fentanyl and fentanyl-like drugs doubled in one year, to more than 19,000, mostly from illegally made pills or powder, which is often mixed with heroin or other drugs.
Heroin was tied to 15,500 deaths and prescription painkillers to 14,500 deaths. The balance of the overdose deaths involved sedatives, cocaine and methamphetamines. More than one drug is often involved in an overdose death.
The highest drug death rates were in ages 25 to 54.
The CDC reports the age-adjusted death rate from overdoses more than tripled from 1999 to 2016.
Preliminary 2017 figures show the rise in overdose deaths continuing.
A report out last month from the White House Council of Economic Advisers said the financial toll of the opioid drug crisis in the U.S. has been vastly underestimated, in large part because previous analyses did not fully account for the rising number of overdose deaths. The council said the opioid crisis cost the U.S. $504 billion, or 2.8 percent of the nation's GDP, in 2015 alone.
"This is over six times larger than the most recently estimated economic cost of the epidemic," the report stated.
In October, President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a public health emergency, calling it a "national shame" and a "human tragedy." But he stopped short of proclaiming a national emergency, which would have unlocked more money and resources to combat the problem.
The drug deaths weigh into CDC's annual calculation of the average time a person is expected to live. The life expectancy figure is based on the year of their birth, current death trends and other factors. For decades, it was on the upswing, rising a few months nearly every year. But last year marked the first time in more than a half century that U.S. life expectancy fell two consecutive years.
"If we don't get a handle on this," he said, "we could very well see a third year in a row. With no end in sight."
West Virginia continued to be the state with highest drug overdose death rate, with a rate of 52 deaths per 100,000 state residents in 2016. Ohio and New Hampshire were next, both at about 39 per 100,000.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Long ago and for a long time I kept saying that the only way to fight America’s drug epidemic was to focus law enforcement on the user rather than on the dealer. But because many drug users were from the middle and upper class, the great minds in charge considered that politically infeasible. So, here we are today.
CANDIDATE FOR ‘MOST STUPID CRIMINAL OF THE YEAR’
Parolee fleeing from police drives pickup off Astoria pier into frigid Columbia River
By Edward Stratton
The Daily Astorian
December 28, 2017
ASTORIA, Oregon -- A man fleeing from police had to be rescued Wednesday after driving his pickup off a pier at North Tongue Point and into a side channel of the Columbia River.
Timofey Erofeeff, 27, from Scotts Mills in Marion County, had been spotted trespassing on boats. Officers made contact with him about 10 a.m. as he was driving a red F-150, police said.
They decided to charge him with second-degree criminal trespass and were advised to take him into custody for a Deschutes County parole violation. He took off as they approached his truck to make the arrest, starting a short pursuit.
Officers did not follow Erofeeff when he drove onto a pier, but he continued and launched the pickup off the end into the Columbia before exiting the vehicle. He swam out a couple of hundred feet into the frigid river. The Coast Guard was called and prepared a helicopter to rescue him, but the mission was called off when he swam back.
The pier was too high for Erofeeff to be reached by responders, who passed him a life jacket and flotation ring. Fishermen on the nearby vessel Pacific Wind responded to rescue him. Employees from nearby shipwright WCT Marine & Construction Inc. pulled him out of the water into a skiff and brought him to shore.
All told, Erofeeff spent about 20 minutes in the icy water.
“I’m thankful the men from WCT Marine and fishing vessel (Pacific Wind) were there and willing to help,” said Deputy Astoria Police Chief Eric Halverson. “Mr. Erofeeff should be thankful too.”
Erofeeff was taken by Medix Ambulance Service to Columbia Memorial Hospital, treated for hypothermia and released to an officer.
He was eventually lodged in the Clatsop County Jail on charges of second-degree criminal trespass, parole violation, interfering with a police officer, attempt to elude a police officer, reckless driving and third-degree escape. He has previous arrests in Clackamas County for burglary and Deschutes County for theft.
A fuel sheen was visible where Erofeeff entered the water. The police have been in contact with the Coast Guard about retrieving the vehicle, but have not formulated a plan yet, Halverson said. Divers were attempting to locate the vehicle Thursday.
“It’s in the river for now,” Halverson said.
By Edward Stratton
The Daily Astorian
December 28, 2017
ASTORIA, Oregon -- A man fleeing from police had to be rescued Wednesday after driving his pickup off a pier at North Tongue Point and into a side channel of the Columbia River.
Timofey Erofeeff, 27, from Scotts Mills in Marion County, had been spotted trespassing on boats. Officers made contact with him about 10 a.m. as he was driving a red F-150, police said.
They decided to charge him with second-degree criminal trespass and were advised to take him into custody for a Deschutes County parole violation. He took off as they approached his truck to make the arrest, starting a short pursuit.
Officers did not follow Erofeeff when he drove onto a pier, but he continued and launched the pickup off the end into the Columbia before exiting the vehicle. He swam out a couple of hundred feet into the frigid river. The Coast Guard was called and prepared a helicopter to rescue him, but the mission was called off when he swam back.
The pier was too high for Erofeeff to be reached by responders, who passed him a life jacket and flotation ring. Fishermen on the nearby vessel Pacific Wind responded to rescue him. Employees from nearby shipwright WCT Marine & Construction Inc. pulled him out of the water into a skiff and brought him to shore.
All told, Erofeeff spent about 20 minutes in the icy water.
“I’m thankful the men from WCT Marine and fishing vessel (Pacific Wind) were there and willing to help,” said Deputy Astoria Police Chief Eric Halverson. “Mr. Erofeeff should be thankful too.”
Erofeeff was taken by Medix Ambulance Service to Columbia Memorial Hospital, treated for hypothermia and released to an officer.
He was eventually lodged in the Clatsop County Jail on charges of second-degree criminal trespass, parole violation, interfering with a police officer, attempt to elude a police officer, reckless driving and third-degree escape. He has previous arrests in Clackamas County for burglary and Deschutes County for theft.
A fuel sheen was visible where Erofeeff entered the water. The police have been in contact with the Coast Guard about retrieving the vehicle, but have not formulated a plan yet, Halverson said. Divers were attempting to locate the vehicle Thursday.
“It’s in the river for now,” Halverson said.
IN THE SPRIT OF A CANCUN CHRISTMAS SEVERED HEAD LEFT WITH DICK STUFFED IN ITS MOUTH
Cancun: Abandoned decapitated corpse with message to CJNG
Brutal crimen narco en Cancún: lo decapitaron y abandonaron en la calle junto a una advertencia. Decapitado, con la cabeza entre las piernas, el rostro desollado y el pene en la boca.
Borderkand Beat (translated from Infobae)
December 26, 2017
In the middle of the holiday season, a corpse was left abandoned in front of a public clinic next accompanies by a threatening message.
He was beheaded, with his head left between his legs, his face was flayed off and his penis was inserted in his mouth. This is how the authorities found the abandoned body of a man in Cancún, Quintana Roo, one of the most important tourist destinations in the country.
At the stroke of midnight, the authorities received a report regarding the finding at emergency number 911.
The body was abandoned leaning against a fence in front of a public service clinic of the IMSS the message saying:
“Víctor Manuel Olivas Jalisca, you are next! Keep fucking around and supporting the Jaliscos (CJNG) and you'll get fucked together with all those filthy 'putos'! They forget that dogs live here. This goes for all the assholes who continue to support the Jaliscas”.
The message refers to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel that entered Quintana Roo in order to dispute the plaza with groups linked to the Gulf Cartel, such as Los Taliban and Los Pelones. Also challenging a powerful local cartel headed by a former policewoman named Leticia Rodríguez Lara, known as "la 40", who operate with the support of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas Old School.
This dispute has already left 215 people dead in the state, according to local media. In previous years, in comparison, the average was around 50 people.
The National System of Public Security and the National Crime Semaphore locate Quintana Roo as one of the most violent entities in the Mexican southeast, with regard to murder statistics.
Brutal crimen narco en Cancún: lo decapitaron y abandonaron en la calle junto a una advertencia. Decapitado, con la cabeza entre las piernas, el rostro desollado y el pene en la boca.
Borderkand Beat (translated from Infobae)
December 26, 2017
In the middle of the holiday season, a corpse was left abandoned in front of a public clinic next accompanies by a threatening message.
He was beheaded, with his head left between his legs, his face was flayed off and his penis was inserted in his mouth. This is how the authorities found the abandoned body of a man in Cancún, Quintana Roo, one of the most important tourist destinations in the country.
At the stroke of midnight, the authorities received a report regarding the finding at emergency number 911.
The body was abandoned leaning against a fence in front of a public service clinic of the IMSS the message saying:
“Víctor Manuel Olivas Jalisca, you are next! Keep fucking around and supporting the Jaliscos (CJNG) and you'll get fucked together with all those filthy 'putos'! They forget that dogs live here. This goes for all the assholes who continue to support the Jaliscas”.
The message refers to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel that entered Quintana Roo in order to dispute the plaza with groups linked to the Gulf Cartel, such as Los Taliban and Los Pelones. Also challenging a powerful local cartel headed by a former policewoman named Leticia Rodríguez Lara, known as "la 40", who operate with the support of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Zetas Old School.
This dispute has already left 215 people dead in the state, according to local media. In previous years, in comparison, the average was around 50 people.
The National System of Public Security and the National Crime Semaphore locate Quintana Roo as one of the most violent entities in the Mexican southeast, with regard to murder statistics.
Friday, December 29, 2017
NO LONGER WELCOME IN THE WHITE HOUSE, HATE MONGER AL SHARPTON LASHES OUT AT TRUMP
Trump a 'Symbol of Northern Bigotry' Who Panders to 'Hateful' Americans, Says Rev. Al Sharpton
By Sam Schwarz
Newsweek
December 27, 2017
After holding out hope that President Donald Trump might grow during his time in office, Rev. Al Sharpton signaled that his patience has run out Wednesday morning when he went after the president on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
Trump is "a symbol of Northern bigotry," Sharpton said on a panel. "He has really prided himself in becoming something that plays to small segment of America that’s hateful, that’s trying to go to the past."
After holding out hope that President Donald Trump might grow during his time in office, Rev. Al Sharpton signaled that his patience has run out Wednesday morning when he went after the president on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
Trump is "a symbol of Northern bigotry," Sharpton said on a panel. "He has really prided himself in becoming something that plays to small segment of America that’s hateful, that’s trying to go to the past."
Sharpton remarked that during the first 11 months of this presidency, Trump has "done the opposite" of growing, adding that, "here's a man that has taken the presidency and reduced to name-calling and reduced to trying to exorcise his grudges and vengeance."
Sharpton's comments came on the heels of a bombshell report from The New York Times, which said that in June, Trump quipped that the 15,000 Haitians who had been granted green cards to come to America in 2017 "all have AIDS." The story also reports that Trump said the 40,000 Nigerians who had been granted green cards would never "go back to their huts" in Africa once they had seen the United States.
The issue of race played a significant part in Trump's 2016 election campaign, with Trump often saying that black people in America have it so badly that it can only get better. "What the hell do you have to lose?" Trump frequently remarked during his stump speeches across the country, while also adding that black people are "living in hell."
"The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs," Trump said about black America. "You buy a loaf of bread and end up getting shot."
Before the discussion on race, the panel also touched on former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's tweet comparing Trump to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. "Churchill was hated by his own party, opposition party, and press. Feared by King as reckless, and despised for his bluntness. But unlike Neville Chamberlain, he didn't retreat. We had a Chamberlain for 8 yrs; in @realDonaldTrump we have a Churchill," Huckabee tweeted Tuesday afternoon.
Sharpton scoffed at Huckabee's claim, which came after the former governor also tweeted that his followers should go out and see Darkest Hour, a new movie about Churchill.
"It's an insult to Churchill, and it's an insult to any of us that study history," Sharpton said about the comparison. "[Trump] really is not trying to grow and be a president and do something historic."
Huckabee's remark has been widely panned, with Twitter having a field day. One response stuck out, and was highlighted on MSNBC. Danish politician Kristian Tonning Riise responded by tweeting, "Sure. Churchill served his country 55 years in parliament, 31 years as a minister and 9 as pm. He was present in 15 battles and received 14 medals of bravery. He was one of historys most gifted orators and won the Nobel Literature Prize for his writing. Totally same thing..."
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lest we forget, while Obama was president, hatemongering race baiter Sharpton had an open invitation to visit the White House. It has been reported that Sharpton was at the White House more than 80 times and was one of Obama’s closest confidants.
And lest we forget, here are some of Sharpton’s more notable race baiting episodes:
The Tawana Brawley Hoax
In 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl, was found was found lying in a garbage sack in Wappinger, a town 70 miles north of NYC. She was smeared with shit, her clothes were torn and bujrned, and with racial slurs and obscenities written on her body with charcoal. She claimed she had been kidnapped and raped by six white men, one being a prosecutor and some being cops.
The Tawana Brawley case put a hitherto unknown Al Sharpton in the public limelight. Sharpton, along with two soon to be disbarred attorneys, took up the case. They accused Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones of being a racist and of raping Brawley. A grand jury spent seven months examining police and medical records before finding that the alleged kidnapping and rape was a hoax. Brawley had made the whole story and scenario up to keep her parents from finding out she had spent the night with a boyfriend. The boyfriend helped her stage the scene.
Sharpton and the two attorneys were sued by Pagones for defamation. He won his case and was awarded $345,000. Sharpton refused to pay his $66,000 share of the damages, but a group of black businessmen and attorney Johnnie Cochran paid it for him. To this day, Sharpton insists that the Tawana Brawley kidnapping and rape was not a hoax.
The Crown Heights Riots
In 1991, an orthodox Jew was part of a funeral procession led by an unmarked police car. As he drove through an intersection in the predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, he was struck by another car. He swerved onto a sidewalk killing a small black boy and injuring a small black girl. The crowd that had gathered became infuriated when a private ambulance whisked the Jewish driver away while leaving the boy pinned underneath his car. Actually a police officer had called for the ambulance because he feared the angry crowd would attack the Jewish driver.
Blacks rioted for four consecutive days, looting stores, beating up Jews wherever they could find them, and stabbing to death a Jewish seminary student from Australia as bystanders shouted "Kill the Jew", and "get the Jews out". Sharpton made his presence at the rioting, leading a protest of angry people shouting "Whose streets? Our streets!" and "No justice, no peace!" Sharpton himself shouted, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” Sharpton’s participation helped prolong the rioting.
And at the little boy’s funeral, Sharpton ranted against “Jewish ‘diamond merchants’ who bought their wares from apartheid South Africa, then ran down black kids in Brooklyn.”
Freddie's Fashion Mart
In 1995, the United House of Prayer, a black Pentecostal Church, owned some property in Harlem which it rented to Fred Harari, a Jewish merchant who operated Freddie’s Fashion Mart. Harari had a black subtenant who operated the Record Shack. The church told Harari to evict the black tenant. The eviction led to months of increasingly clamorous protests.
Sharpton had a radio talk show at the time. He often invited Morris Powell, head of the local vendor’s association and a well-known Jew-baiter, to appear on his show and he allowed Powell to make anti-Semitic rants. Sharpton and Powell showed up at the protests.
Sharpton shouted, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.”
Powell shouted, “We are not going to stand idly by and let a Jewish person come in black Harlem and methodically drive black people out of business up and down 125th St. If we stand for that, we will stand for anything.”
On December 8, Roland James Smith, Jr. walked into Freddie’s Fashion Mart and with gun in hand, ordered all the black customers to leave. He then doused several clothing bins with paint thinner and set them on fire. Eight people were burned to death. Smith also died in the fire.
There can be no doubt that Sharpton and Powell inflamed the protestors and led Smith to carry out his massacre.
By Sam Schwarz
Newsweek
December 27, 2017
After holding out hope that President Donald Trump might grow during his time in office, Rev. Al Sharpton signaled that his patience has run out Wednesday morning when he went after the president on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
Trump is "a symbol of Northern bigotry," Sharpton said on a panel. "He has really prided himself in becoming something that plays to small segment of America that’s hateful, that’s trying to go to the past."
After holding out hope that President Donald Trump might grow during his time in office, Rev. Al Sharpton signaled that his patience has run out Wednesday morning when he went after the president on MSNBC's Morning Joe.
Trump is "a symbol of Northern bigotry," Sharpton said on a panel. "He has really prided himself in becoming something that plays to small segment of America that’s hateful, that’s trying to go to the past."
Sharpton remarked that during the first 11 months of this presidency, Trump has "done the opposite" of growing, adding that, "here's a man that has taken the presidency and reduced to name-calling and reduced to trying to exorcise his grudges and vengeance."
Sharpton's comments came on the heels of a bombshell report from The New York Times, which said that in June, Trump quipped that the 15,000 Haitians who had been granted green cards to come to America in 2017 "all have AIDS." The story also reports that Trump said the 40,000 Nigerians who had been granted green cards would never "go back to their huts" in Africa once they had seen the United States.
The issue of race played a significant part in Trump's 2016 election campaign, with Trump often saying that black people in America have it so badly that it can only get better. "What the hell do you have to lose?" Trump frequently remarked during his stump speeches across the country, while also adding that black people are "living in hell."
"The violence. The death. The lack of education. No jobs," Trump said about black America. "You buy a loaf of bread and end up getting shot."
Before the discussion on race, the panel also touched on former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee's tweet comparing Trump to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. "Churchill was hated by his own party, opposition party, and press. Feared by King as reckless, and despised for his bluntness. But unlike Neville Chamberlain, he didn't retreat. We had a Chamberlain for 8 yrs; in @realDonaldTrump we have a Churchill," Huckabee tweeted Tuesday afternoon.
Sharpton scoffed at Huckabee's claim, which came after the former governor also tweeted that his followers should go out and see Darkest Hour, a new movie about Churchill.
"It's an insult to Churchill, and it's an insult to any of us that study history," Sharpton said about the comparison. "[Trump] really is not trying to grow and be a president and do something historic."
Huckabee's remark has been widely panned, with Twitter having a field day. One response stuck out, and was highlighted on MSNBC. Danish politician Kristian Tonning Riise responded by tweeting, "Sure. Churchill served his country 55 years in parliament, 31 years as a minister and 9 as pm. He was present in 15 battles and received 14 medals of bravery. He was one of historys most gifted orators and won the Nobel Literature Prize for his writing. Totally same thing..."
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lest we forget, while Obama was president, hatemongering race baiter Sharpton had an open invitation to visit the White House. It has been reported that Sharpton was at the White House more than 80 times and was one of Obama’s closest confidants.
And lest we forget, here are some of Sharpton’s more notable race baiting episodes:
The Tawana Brawley Hoax
In 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black girl, was found was found lying in a garbage sack in Wappinger, a town 70 miles north of NYC. She was smeared with shit, her clothes were torn and bujrned, and with racial slurs and obscenities written on her body with charcoal. She claimed she had been kidnapped and raped by six white men, one being a prosecutor and some being cops.
The Tawana Brawley case put a hitherto unknown Al Sharpton in the public limelight. Sharpton, along with two soon to be disbarred attorneys, took up the case. They accused Dutchess County prosecutor, Steven Pagones of being a racist and of raping Brawley. A grand jury spent seven months examining police and medical records before finding that the alleged kidnapping and rape was a hoax. Brawley had made the whole story and scenario up to keep her parents from finding out she had spent the night with a boyfriend. The boyfriend helped her stage the scene.
Sharpton and the two attorneys were sued by Pagones for defamation. He won his case and was awarded $345,000. Sharpton refused to pay his $66,000 share of the damages, but a group of black businessmen and attorney Johnnie Cochran paid it for him. To this day, Sharpton insists that the Tawana Brawley kidnapping and rape was not a hoax.
The Crown Heights Riots
In 1991, an orthodox Jew was part of a funeral procession led by an unmarked police car. As he drove through an intersection in the predominantly black Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, he was struck by another car. He swerved onto a sidewalk killing a small black boy and injuring a small black girl. The crowd that had gathered became infuriated when a private ambulance whisked the Jewish driver away while leaving the boy pinned underneath his car. Actually a police officer had called for the ambulance because he feared the angry crowd would attack the Jewish driver.
Blacks rioted for four consecutive days, looting stores, beating up Jews wherever they could find them, and stabbing to death a Jewish seminary student from Australia as bystanders shouted "Kill the Jew", and "get the Jews out". Sharpton made his presence at the rioting, leading a protest of angry people shouting "Whose streets? Our streets!" and "No justice, no peace!" Sharpton himself shouted, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” Sharpton’s participation helped prolong the rioting.
And at the little boy’s funeral, Sharpton ranted against “Jewish ‘diamond merchants’ who bought their wares from apartheid South Africa, then ran down black kids in Brooklyn.”
Freddie's Fashion Mart
In 1995, the United House of Prayer, a black Pentecostal Church, owned some property in Harlem which it rented to Fred Harari, a Jewish merchant who operated Freddie’s Fashion Mart. Harari had a black subtenant who operated the Record Shack. The church told Harari to evict the black tenant. The eviction led to months of increasingly clamorous protests.
Sharpton had a radio talk show at the time. He often invited Morris Powell, head of the local vendor’s association and a well-known Jew-baiter, to appear on his show and he allowed Powell to make anti-Semitic rants. Sharpton and Powell showed up at the protests.
Sharpton shouted, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.”
Powell shouted, “We are not going to stand idly by and let a Jewish person come in black Harlem and methodically drive black people out of business up and down 125th St. If we stand for that, we will stand for anything.”
On December 8, Roland James Smith, Jr. walked into Freddie’s Fashion Mart and with gun in hand, ordered all the black customers to leave. He then doused several clothing bins with paint thinner and set them on fire. Eight people were burned to death. Smith also died in the fire.
There can be no doubt that Sharpton and Powell inflamed the protestors and led Smith to carry out his massacre.
FELONY BAD HAIRCUT
by Bob Walsh
No, it does not concern Kim John Uhn. It does concern a barber-stylist, Khaled A. Shabari, 46, at Ruby's hair salon in Madison, WI. He is now under arrest for mayhem.
Allegedly his customer went in and asked for a #2 cut on the sides (not a boot haircut but close) and an inch or so off the top, with scissors. He left missing a piece of h8is ear and with a reverse Mohawk, a #1 or #0, right down the middle of his skull.
After calling the cops the victim went elsewhere and had his head shaved, having very little option in the matter other than looking like a complete idiot.
The barber is claiming that "nicking" the ear with the scissors was an accident and that the customer was "fidgety" during the haircut. Ruby's is now getting very bad reviews on Yelp. Life is hard.
No, it does not concern Kim John Uhn. It does concern a barber-stylist, Khaled A. Shabari, 46, at Ruby's hair salon in Madison, WI. He is now under arrest for mayhem.
Allegedly his customer went in and asked for a #2 cut on the sides (not a boot haircut but close) and an inch or so off the top, with scissors. He left missing a piece of h8is ear and with a reverse Mohawk, a #1 or #0, right down the middle of his skull.
After calling the cops the victim went elsewhere and had his head shaved, having very little option in the matter other than looking like a complete idiot.
The barber is claiming that "nicking" the ear with the scissors was an accident and that the customer was "fidgety" during the haircut. Ruby's is now getting very bad reviews on Yelp. Life is hard.
POUNDING HOLES IN TWO JAI WALLS HAD TO BE NOISY, BUT GEORGIA JAIL GUARDS WERE NOT AWARE OF ESCAPE
Inmate broke through two jail walls, squeezed through fence, then stole county work van to escape jail
By Minyvonne Burke
New York Daily News
December 27, 2017
A Georgia inmate authorities say is dangerous escaped jail by breaking through two walls and then squeezing through an opening in a fence surrounding the facility.
Police are searching for Christopher Nicholas Carroll, of South Carolina, after he escaped from a Lamar County jail shortly after midnight on Wednesday.
The Lamar County Sheriff's Office said Carroll broke through two walls inside the facility while officials thought he was taking a shower, according to KENS 5.
WSB-TV reports that the inmate used part of a table to bust through the walls and then squeezed through an opening in a small storage area to get outside before climbing through an opening in a fence.
Carroll then allegedly stole a county work van. The vehicle was found around 7:50 a.m. in Allendale County, South Carolina, about two hours from the jail, the sheriff's office said in a Facebook post.
Authorities have not yet located Carroll.
Lamar County Sheriff Brad White told KENS 5 that authorities in South Carolina are "very familiar with" Carroll.
He was being held in Lamar County following an October arrest for three counts of obstruction of an officer and theft by receiving stolen property.
White said he considers Carroll dangerous and is not sure if the inmate is armed.
By Minyvonne Burke
New York Daily News
December 27, 2017
A Georgia inmate authorities say is dangerous escaped jail by breaking through two walls and then squeezing through an opening in a fence surrounding the facility.
Police are searching for Christopher Nicholas Carroll, of South Carolina, after he escaped from a Lamar County jail shortly after midnight on Wednesday.
The Lamar County Sheriff's Office said Carroll broke through two walls inside the facility while officials thought he was taking a shower, according to KENS 5.
WSB-TV reports that the inmate used part of a table to bust through the walls and then squeezed through an opening in a small storage area to get outside before climbing through an opening in a fence.
Carroll then allegedly stole a county work van. The vehicle was found around 7:50 a.m. in Allendale County, South Carolina, about two hours from the jail, the sheriff's office said in a Facebook post.
Authorities have not yet located Carroll.
Lamar County Sheriff Brad White told KENS 5 that authorities in South Carolina are "very familiar with" Carroll.
He was being held in Lamar County following an October arrest for three counts of obstruction of an officer and theft by receiving stolen property.
White said he considers Carroll dangerous and is not sure if the inmate is armed.
ACCUSED ALABAMA PEDOPHILE FILES LAWSUIT CLAIMING VOTER FRAUD COST HIM THE ELECTION
Moore files suit to block Alabama election result
By Olivia Beavers
The Hill
December 28, 2017
Republican Roy Moore is challenging the results of the Alabama Senate special election after losing to Democrat Doug Jones, alleging potential voter fraud in a court filing.
“The purpose of the complaint is to preserve evidence of potential election fraud and to postpone the certification of Alabama’s Special Election by Secretary of State John Merrill until a thorough investigation of potential election fraud, that improperly altered the outcome of this election, is conducted,” Moore’s campaign said in a statement.
Moore submitted the election complaint late Wednesday, hours before state officials were set to certify the victory of Jones, the first Democrat in decades to win a Senate seat in the normally Republican state.
He is seeking to delay the state board meeting, which is scheduled on Thursday to stamp off on Jones’s win, in order to investigate claims of voting "irregularities" in the state that could've tipped the scales in the race.
“We call on Secretary of State Merrill to delay certification until there is a thorough investigation,” the statement continued while citing “three independent election experts” who say there was “election fraud sufficient to overturn the outcome of the election.”
Sam Coleman, a spokesman for Jones, described the court filing as a "desperate attempt" on behalf of Moore to challenge the election results.
"This desperate attempt by Roy Moore to subvert the will of the people will not succeed. The election is over, it's time to move on," Coleman said in a statement to The Hill.
Moore has refused to concede defeat to Jones after the Dec. 12 election, even after President Trump called on him to do so.
Moore’s campaign encouraged their supporters to call Merrill, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) and Attorney General Steve Marshall to delay the decision.
Merrill on Thursday told CNN that Jones would be certified as the election's winner.
Moore's campaign was dogged by sexual misconduct allegations, with a handful of women accusing Moore of pursuing relationships with them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One woman says she was 14 years old when Moore touched her sexually.
Moore has repeatedly denied the allegations of wrongdoing.
The former state Supreme Court chief justice also claimed he "successfully completed a polygraph test confirming the representations of misconduct made against him during the campaign are completely false."
Jones's win means Republicans will have a 51-49 majority in the Senate.
By Olivia Beavers
The Hill
December 28, 2017
Republican Roy Moore is challenging the results of the Alabama Senate special election after losing to Democrat Doug Jones, alleging potential voter fraud in a court filing.
“The purpose of the complaint is to preserve evidence of potential election fraud and to postpone the certification of Alabama’s Special Election by Secretary of State John Merrill until a thorough investigation of potential election fraud, that improperly altered the outcome of this election, is conducted,” Moore’s campaign said in a statement.
Moore submitted the election complaint late Wednesday, hours before state officials were set to certify the victory of Jones, the first Democrat in decades to win a Senate seat in the normally Republican state.
He is seeking to delay the state board meeting, which is scheduled on Thursday to stamp off on Jones’s win, in order to investigate claims of voting "irregularities" in the state that could've tipped the scales in the race.
“We call on Secretary of State Merrill to delay certification until there is a thorough investigation,” the statement continued while citing “three independent election experts” who say there was “election fraud sufficient to overturn the outcome of the election.”
Sam Coleman, a spokesman for Jones, described the court filing as a "desperate attempt" on behalf of Moore to challenge the election results.
"This desperate attempt by Roy Moore to subvert the will of the people will not succeed. The election is over, it's time to move on," Coleman said in a statement to The Hill.
Moore has refused to concede defeat to Jones after the Dec. 12 election, even after President Trump called on him to do so.
Moore’s campaign encouraged their supporters to call Merrill, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) and Attorney General Steve Marshall to delay the decision.
Merrill on Thursday told CNN that Jones would be certified as the election's winner.
Moore's campaign was dogged by sexual misconduct allegations, with a handful of women accusing Moore of pursuing relationships with them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One woman says she was 14 years old when Moore touched her sexually.
Moore has repeatedly denied the allegations of wrongdoing.
The former state Supreme Court chief justice also claimed he "successfully completed a polygraph test confirming the representations of misconduct made against him during the campaign are completely false."
Jones's win means Republicans will have a 51-49 majority in the Senate.
VERMONT PROSECUTOR’S ELDERLY PARENTS BUSTED WITH 60 POUNDS OF POT WORTH $336,000
Couple busted in Nebraska with marijuana 'Christmas gifts' ID'd as parents of Vermont prosecutor
By Greg Norman
Fox News
December 28, 2017
An elderly couple who were busted in Nebraska last week with 60 pounds of marijuana “Christmas presents” for relatives on the East Coast have been identified as the parents of a Vermont prosecutor who has handled some of the state’s most high-profile cases.
Patrick Jiron, 83, and Barbara, 70, of Clearlake Oaks, Calif., were arrested on Dec. 19 in York after police found weed in the back of their pickup truck. The Burlington Free Press later identified them as the parents of Justin Jiron, who is the Chittenden County chief deputy state’s attorney.
"Justin is in no way connected to this allegation other than by relation," Chittenden County State Attorney Sarah George, his boss, told the newspaper. "Justin is and has been a dedicated public servant for over 15 years, and I assure you he is as surprised and upset about these allegations as anyone."
Jiron has worked on some of Vermont’s most high-profile cases during his career, including the prosecution of a man who abducted, raped and murdered a University of Vermont senior and another man who went on a shooting spree in Essex that left two dead, according to the Burlington Free Press.
"Justin, of course, loves his parents and is concerned about their welfare," George added. "However, he is extremely disappointed in their behavior and actions as reported by media outlets."
George also said Justin will continue working at the office.
Lt. Paul Vrbka of the York County Sheriff’s Department told the York News-Times last week that Jiron’s parents said the “marijuana was for Christmas presents.”
Police found 60 pounds of pot and several containers of concentrated THC during the arrest, estimated to be worth more than $300,000 total. The names of the marijuana strains were written on each bag.
The pair were charged with possession of marijuana with the intent to deliver and no drug tax stamp.
John Campbell, the executive director of Vermont state’s attorney offices, said he has no information from Nebraska police as to whether or not the actions of Jiron’s parents have any direct connection to him.
"I don't think he knew anything about what his parents were bringing over or what they intended to do with it," Campbell told the Burlington Free Press. "From what I understand, this is as much as a shock to him and a surprise that it is to anyone else who has heard about it."
By Greg Norman
Fox News
December 28, 2017
An elderly couple who were busted in Nebraska last week with 60 pounds of marijuana “Christmas presents” for relatives on the East Coast have been identified as the parents of a Vermont prosecutor who has handled some of the state’s most high-profile cases.
Patrick Jiron, 83, and Barbara, 70, of Clearlake Oaks, Calif., were arrested on Dec. 19 in York after police found weed in the back of their pickup truck. The Burlington Free Press later identified them as the parents of Justin Jiron, who is the Chittenden County chief deputy state’s attorney.
"Justin is in no way connected to this allegation other than by relation," Chittenden County State Attorney Sarah George, his boss, told the newspaper. "Justin is and has been a dedicated public servant for over 15 years, and I assure you he is as surprised and upset about these allegations as anyone."
Jiron has worked on some of Vermont’s most high-profile cases during his career, including the prosecution of a man who abducted, raped and murdered a University of Vermont senior and another man who went on a shooting spree in Essex that left two dead, according to the Burlington Free Press.
"Justin, of course, loves his parents and is concerned about their welfare," George added. "However, he is extremely disappointed in their behavior and actions as reported by media outlets."
George also said Justin will continue working at the office.
Lt. Paul Vrbka of the York County Sheriff’s Department told the York News-Times last week that Jiron’s parents said the “marijuana was for Christmas presents.”
Police found 60 pounds of pot and several containers of concentrated THC during the arrest, estimated to be worth more than $300,000 total. The names of the marijuana strains were written on each bag.
The pair were charged with possession of marijuana with the intent to deliver and no drug tax stamp.
John Campbell, the executive director of Vermont state’s attorney offices, said he has no information from Nebraska police as to whether or not the actions of Jiron’s parents have any direct connection to him.
"I don't think he knew anything about what his parents were bringing over or what they intended to do with it," Campbell told the Burlington Free Press. "From what I understand, this is as much as a shock to him and a surprise that it is to anyone else who has heard about it."
GERMANY, WHICH SLAUGHTERED 6 MILLION JEWS, SIDES WITH AND AIDS THOSE WHO HAVE VOWED TO MAKE ISRAEL JUDENREIN
Germany wages a relentless struggle against Israel in both EU and U.N. institutions
By Eldad Beck
Israel Hayom
December 27, 2017
Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital served to reveal Germany's hypocrisy as far as concerns its ties with the Jewish state: Last week, Germany voted in favor of a U.N. resolution submitted by Turkey and Yemen that called U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital "null and void." Germany, along with the other great nations of the European Union, betrayed its alliance with the United States and Israel in order to align with the world's most unsavory regimes in negating the Jewish state's right to determine that its capital is in Jerusalem, the most sacred city to Jews.
The time has come to reveal the true face of Germany, a country that wages a relentless struggle against Israel in both EU and U.N. institutions at the same time that it claims Israel's existence and security are integral to its national interests. Germany is Europe's single largest donor to the Palestinian Authority, but it has never once thought to demand the Palestinians do something for peace in return for all the money it provides, like put an end to the violence and the anti-Semitic incitement. While this should be obvious given Germany's history, it seems it is not so crystal clear to Berlin. Germany prefers to put pressure on Israel only, by funding radical organizations that slander the Jewish state around the world.
Unfortunately, Germany is no friend of Israel. That is at least as long as its current policies remain in place.
By Eldad Beck
Israel Hayom
December 27, 2017
Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital served to reveal Germany's hypocrisy as far as concerns its ties with the Jewish state: Last week, Germany voted in favor of a U.N. resolution submitted by Turkey and Yemen that called U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital "null and void." Germany, along with the other great nations of the European Union, betrayed its alliance with the United States and Israel in order to align with the world's most unsavory regimes in negating the Jewish state's right to determine that its capital is in Jerusalem, the most sacred city to Jews.
The time has come to reveal the true face of Germany, a country that wages a relentless struggle against Israel in both EU and U.N. institutions at the same time that it claims Israel's existence and security are integral to its national interests. Germany is Europe's single largest donor to the Palestinian Authority, but it has never once thought to demand the Palestinians do something for peace in return for all the money it provides, like put an end to the violence and the anti-Semitic incitement. While this should be obvious given Germany's history, it seems it is not so crystal clear to Berlin. Germany prefers to put pressure on Israel only, by funding radical organizations that slander the Jewish state around the world.
Unfortunately, Germany is no friend of Israel. That is at least as long as its current policies remain in place.
NAZIS CONNED REDCROSS INTO BELIEVING A CONCENTRATION CAMP WAS A JUDENSTADT
'A modern Jewish settlement': How the Nazis tried to fool the world by turning a concentration camp into a fake town to convince Red Cross visitors the Holocaust was not happening
By Joseph Curtis
Daily Mail
December 26, 2017
t was a place of death and despair that was dressed up to look like a model town in a bid to fool others that one of the greatest atrocities in history did not happen.
Months before the true horrors of the Holocaust were revealed the Nazi regime went to great lengths to try to convince the world they were not running concentration camps.
And the Czech camp Theresienstadt became the location to try out the deception after representatives from the International Red Cross were invited to inspect it, with the cruel camp directors forcing the inmates to build fake homes and shops to con the delegation into thinking it was a town.
Theresienstadt was a fortress built near Prague in the Bohemia region of Czechoslovakia between 1780 and 1790, named after the mother of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II who ordered its construction as part of a series of fort defences.
By the 20th Century it had become obsolete and began being used as a jail for military and political prisoners.
But after Nazi Germany invaded it was taken over by the Gestapo in 1940 and turned into a ‘Jewish ghetto’, with a smaller fortress within the main building also used for political prisoners.
From 1942 onwards tens of thousands of Jews were imprisoned at Theresienstadt, with the camp serving as a transit stop before they were moved on to extermination camps, including Auschwitz.
To try to dispel rumours the camp was being used to exterminate prisoners, the Nazis presented it as a ‘model Jewish settlement’.
In order to prepare for the visit, the inmates were 'screened' and around 200 of the more 'socially prominent' were transferred to two-bed rooms to make it appear they lived in relative comfort.
On June 23, 1944, a delegation from the Danish and International Red Cross, including doctors and civil servants, was welcomed by an SS-appointed ‘mayor’ who gave them a tour of the ‘town’.
Many Jews had been deported to Auschwitz in preparation while remaining prisoners were ordered to clean up the area and build fake shops and cafes to imply those who lived there had access to everyday amenities.
The delegation stayed in freshly decorated rooms in the ‘prominent’ section of the camp for wealthy prisoners while they were also treated to a performance of a children’s opera written by an inmate.
They were given a tour of the facilities based on a pre-determined route.
Nazi officials asked questions to prisoners about their happiness along the way, with the inmates ordered to ignore any direct questions from the delegates.
Despite the overwhelming censorship, the delegation was said to have left with a ‘positive impression’ of Theresienstadt.
It gave the Nazis impetus to produce a propaganda film nicknamed ‘The Fuhrer Gives a Village to The Jews’, directed by an experienced Jewish actor Kurt Gerron, who was also a prisoner.
The shoot lasted 11 days in September 1944 but to ensure those who made it kept quiet, most of the cast were deported to Auschwitz while Gerron himself was executed in a gas chamber in October.
It was intended to be widely distributed as a means to quell the allegations against concentration camps but although a few screenings were staged, the end of the war prevented its full release.
Some of the footage survives today but it was mostly destroyed before the war’s conclusion.
In reality prisoners were shot and starved to death, while others succumbed to disease due to the abhorrent conditions, with around 60,000 people crammed into a barracks designed to fit 7,000 soldiers.
By 1944 the Nazis began deporting the prisoners en masse to death camps before it was liberated by Soviet troops in May 1945.
It has since been the subject of many plays, films and documentaries highlighting how it was used as a propaganda tool.
By Joseph Curtis
Daily Mail
December 26, 2017
t was a place of death and despair that was dressed up to look like a model town in a bid to fool others that one of the greatest atrocities in history did not happen.
Months before the true horrors of the Holocaust were revealed the Nazi regime went to great lengths to try to convince the world they were not running concentration camps.
And the Czech camp Theresienstadt became the location to try out the deception after representatives from the International Red Cross were invited to inspect it, with the cruel camp directors forcing the inmates to build fake homes and shops to con the delegation into thinking it was a town.
Theresienstadt was a fortress built near Prague in the Bohemia region of Czechoslovakia between 1780 and 1790, named after the mother of the Austrian Emperor Joseph II who ordered its construction as part of a series of fort defences.
By the 20th Century it had become obsolete and began being used as a jail for military and political prisoners.
But after Nazi Germany invaded it was taken over by the Gestapo in 1940 and turned into a ‘Jewish ghetto’, with a smaller fortress within the main building also used for political prisoners.
From 1942 onwards tens of thousands of Jews were imprisoned at Theresienstadt, with the camp serving as a transit stop before they were moved on to extermination camps, including Auschwitz.
To try to dispel rumours the camp was being used to exterminate prisoners, the Nazis presented it as a ‘model Jewish settlement’.
In order to prepare for the visit, the inmates were 'screened' and around 200 of the more 'socially prominent' were transferred to two-bed rooms to make it appear they lived in relative comfort.
On June 23, 1944, a delegation from the Danish and International Red Cross, including doctors and civil servants, was welcomed by an SS-appointed ‘mayor’ who gave them a tour of the ‘town’.
Many Jews had been deported to Auschwitz in preparation while remaining prisoners were ordered to clean up the area and build fake shops and cafes to imply those who lived there had access to everyday amenities.
The delegation stayed in freshly decorated rooms in the ‘prominent’ section of the camp for wealthy prisoners while they were also treated to a performance of a children’s opera written by an inmate.
They were given a tour of the facilities based on a pre-determined route.
Nazi officials asked questions to prisoners about their happiness along the way, with the inmates ordered to ignore any direct questions from the delegates.
Despite the overwhelming censorship, the delegation was said to have left with a ‘positive impression’ of Theresienstadt.
It gave the Nazis impetus to produce a propaganda film nicknamed ‘The Fuhrer Gives a Village to The Jews’, directed by an experienced Jewish actor Kurt Gerron, who was also a prisoner.
The shoot lasted 11 days in September 1944 but to ensure those who made it kept quiet, most of the cast were deported to Auschwitz while Gerron himself was executed in a gas chamber in October.
It was intended to be widely distributed as a means to quell the allegations against concentration camps but although a few screenings were staged, the end of the war prevented its full release.
Some of the footage survives today but it was mostly destroyed before the war’s conclusion.
In reality prisoners were shot and starved to death, while others succumbed to disease due to the abhorrent conditions, with around 60,000 people crammed into a barracks designed to fit 7,000 soldiers.
By 1944 the Nazis began deporting the prisoners en masse to death camps before it was liberated by Soviet troops in May 1945.
It has since been the subject of many plays, films and documentaries highlighting how it was used as a propaganda tool.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
THANK YOU, NIKKI HALEY
By Sarah N. Stern
Israel Hayom
December 26, 2017
The United Nations was founded on lofty principles in the wake of the atrocities of World War II. Sadly, with two votes last week – the first in the Security Council on Monday and the second in an emergency session of the General Assembly – we witnessed just how far the institution has fallen.
The U.S. is a sovereign, democratic nation that lives by the rule of law. One of those laws, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, was passed in 1995, by a solid, bipartisan majority of 93 to 5 in the Senate and 374 to 37 in the House. A sovereign nation has the right to choose where to place its embassies. And yet, on Dec. 6, when U.S. President Donald Trump called for the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the call was met with such hysteria in this venerable institution that one might think he had called for genocide.
These two U.N. votes, condemning Trump's recognition of Jerusalem, contradict the very foundations on which the U.N. was established. Article 2 (7) of the United Nations Charter specifically states that "nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." This, however, did not prevent the frenzy against the U.S. for supporting its one democratic ally in the Middle East.
Before Thursday's vote in the General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley valiantly said: "The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the U.N., and when other member nations ask Washington to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit."
There is nothing in the U.N. Charter that obligates the U.S. to be so generous with its taxpayer dollars. Nothing obligates one country out of 193 member nations to pay 22% of the U.N. budget – billions of dollars more than any other nation.
Judging from the reaction of the international community, one could mistake the world's nations for a bunch of babies. The largest tantrum came from the paragon of democracy, Turkey, whose president, Recep Tayipp Erdogan, expressed hope that "the United States will be taught a lesson."
"Mr. Trump, You cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with dollars. Our decision is clear. I call upon the whole world: Don't you dare sell your democratic struggle and your will for petty dollars," Erdogan added.
Erdogan has a very loose definition of the word "democracy." The Turkish president is a thug, who arbitrarily arrests opposition politicians, journalists, academics and anyone perceived as a threat to his iron rule. He has displaced approximately 400,000 Kurds from their homes. He has accepted billions of euros from the European Union to house Syrian refugees, but none of that money has reached actual refugees. Instead, it is lining his pockets and those of his cronies as he threatens to unleash these refugees and flood the EU with them.
Seeing as 20 of the 26 General Assembly votes in 2016 were directed against Israel – a full 77% – with only three on Syria, and one each on Iran, North Korea and Crimea, it came as no surprise that on Thursday, the General Assembly rejected Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital by an overwhelming majority of 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions and 21 no-shows.
The reason for this is the presence within the U.N. of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – the largest body inside the U.N. and a powerful force against Israel. It is beyond ironic that nations with the glorious human rights records of Syria, Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia are lecturing the United States on democracy.
Thank you, Nikki Haley for finally putting an end to the notion that nations can continue to insult the U.S. and its single democratic ally in the Middle East and then expect a free ride at the American taxpayers' expense.
Israel Hayom
December 26, 2017
The United Nations was founded on lofty principles in the wake of the atrocities of World War II. Sadly, with two votes last week – the first in the Security Council on Monday and the second in an emergency session of the General Assembly – we witnessed just how far the institution has fallen.
The U.S. is a sovereign, democratic nation that lives by the rule of law. One of those laws, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, was passed in 1995, by a solid, bipartisan majority of 93 to 5 in the Senate and 374 to 37 in the House. A sovereign nation has the right to choose where to place its embassies. And yet, on Dec. 6, when U.S. President Donald Trump called for the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the call was met with such hysteria in this venerable institution that one might think he had called for genocide.
These two U.N. votes, condemning Trump's recognition of Jerusalem, contradict the very foundations on which the U.N. was established. Article 2 (7) of the United Nations Charter specifically states that "nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." This, however, did not prevent the frenzy against the U.S. for supporting its one democratic ally in the Middle East.
Before Thursday's vote in the General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley valiantly said: "The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the U.N., and when other member nations ask Washington to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit."
There is nothing in the U.N. Charter that obligates the U.S. to be so generous with its taxpayer dollars. Nothing obligates one country out of 193 member nations to pay 22% of the U.N. budget – billions of dollars more than any other nation.
Judging from the reaction of the international community, one could mistake the world's nations for a bunch of babies. The largest tantrum came from the paragon of democracy, Turkey, whose president, Recep Tayipp Erdogan, expressed hope that "the United States will be taught a lesson."
"Mr. Trump, You cannot buy Turkey's democratic will with dollars. Our decision is clear. I call upon the whole world: Don't you dare sell your democratic struggle and your will for petty dollars," Erdogan added.
Erdogan has a very loose definition of the word "democracy." The Turkish president is a thug, who arbitrarily arrests opposition politicians, journalists, academics and anyone perceived as a threat to his iron rule. He has displaced approximately 400,000 Kurds from their homes. He has accepted billions of euros from the European Union to house Syrian refugees, but none of that money has reached actual refugees. Instead, it is lining his pockets and those of his cronies as he threatens to unleash these refugees and flood the EU with them.
Seeing as 20 of the 26 General Assembly votes in 2016 were directed against Israel – a full 77% – with only three on Syria, and one each on Iran, North Korea and Crimea, it came as no surprise that on Thursday, the General Assembly rejected Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital by an overwhelming majority of 128 to 9, with 35 abstentions and 21 no-shows.
The reason for this is the presence within the U.N. of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation – the largest body inside the U.N. and a powerful force against Israel. It is beyond ironic that nations with the glorious human rights records of Syria, Yemen, Iran and Saudi Arabia are lecturing the United States on democracy.
Thank you, Nikki Haley for finally putting an end to the notion that nations can continue to insult the U.S. and its single democratic ally in the Middle East and then expect a free ride at the American taxpayers' expense.
IS MICKEY MOUSE BECOMING A NOSEY MOUSE? ..... PROBABLY NOT
by Bob Walsh
Disney resorts have made a significant change in their program due specifically to the mass shooting in Dallas. They are taking away the DO NOT DISTURB signs in their hotel rooms and replacing them with ROOM OCCUPIED signs.
There is now a policy in place that requires an employee to enter each room at least once per day. They will try hard to be reasonable about this but you may now have far less control over when, or if, hotel employees enter your room, whether you are there or not.
I think it is unfortunate, but I can understand the Disney people's point of view. Shit happens. Things chance because shit happens. Deal with it, or stay someplace else.
Disney resorts have made a significant change in their program due specifically to the mass shooting in Dallas. They are taking away the DO NOT DISTURB signs in their hotel rooms and replacing them with ROOM OCCUPIED signs.
There is now a policy in place that requires an employee to enter each room at least once per day. They will try hard to be reasonable about this but you may now have far less control over when, or if, hotel employees enter your room, whether you are there or not.
I think it is unfortunate, but I can understand the Disney people's point of view. Shit happens. Things chance because shit happens. Deal with it, or stay someplace else.
ANOTHER CALIFORNIA SOCIALIST-DEMOCRAP BITES THE DUST
by Bob Walsh
California State Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas started feeding at the public trough pretty young. He came from a well-connected political family and was elected to the assembly at age 26. Not too shabby.
Sebastian has announced that he is leaving the assembly at the end of this year. The 30-year old asserts that the has had five surgeries within this calendar year and that his health issues and lengthy recuperation will leave the 54th District not properly represented.
He has not been accused of any sort of sexual misconduct, at least not publicly. The seat is considered a safe Democrap seat and will almost certainly elect any warm body with a D next to their name.
California State Assemblyman Sebastian Ridley-Thomas started feeding at the public trough pretty young. He came from a well-connected political family and was elected to the assembly at age 26. Not too shabby.
Sebastian has announced that he is leaving the assembly at the end of this year. The 30-year old asserts that the has had five surgeries within this calendar year and that his health issues and lengthy recuperation will leave the 54th District not properly represented.
He has not been accused of any sort of sexual misconduct, at least not publicly. The seat is considered a safe Democrap seat and will almost certainly elect any warm body with a D next to their name.
THOMAS FIRE MOSTLY UNDER CONTROL NOW
by Bob Walsh
The Thomas Fire in SoCal is now about 90% contained and they don't expect the outer lines to move significantly in the foreseeable future, though it may creep inward a bit. Right now it is sort of like a big, vicious donut. CalFire believes it will be fully extinguished a week or so after New Year. It has now burned right around 290,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 structures, many of them homes. Fortunately there have been only two deaths linked to the fire and the number of destroyed structures is fairly low considering the amount of acreage burned.
The Thomas Fire in SoCal is now about 90% contained and they don't expect the outer lines to move significantly in the foreseeable future, though it may creep inward a bit. Right now it is sort of like a big, vicious donut. CalFire believes it will be fully extinguished a week or so after New Year. It has now burned right around 290,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 structures, many of them homes. Fortunately there have been only two deaths linked to the fire and the number of destroyed structures is fairly low considering the amount of acreage burned.
I CONFESS I AM UNCLEAR ON HOW THIS IS SUPPOSED TO HELP
by Bob Walsh
Big cities often have a crime problem. Philadelphia is not different. That's why I find it hard to understand why it is now illegal to have bullet resistant glass around cashiers booths in stores in the city. The ordinance passed 14-3.
The ordinance states that the Dept. of Licenses and Inspections must "promulgate regulations to provide for the use or removal of any physical barrier" in stores that offer food and alcohol by not later than 01-01-21.
A whole lot of retail store owners and workers were pissed and expressed their unhappiness in a city council meeting. I am willing to bet that most members of the council do not have children working in 7-11s or fast foot outlets in the city.
Big cities often have a crime problem. Philadelphia is not different. That's why I find it hard to understand why it is now illegal to have bullet resistant glass around cashiers booths in stores in the city. The ordinance passed 14-3.
The ordinance states that the Dept. of Licenses and Inspections must "promulgate regulations to provide for the use or removal of any physical barrier" in stores that offer food and alcohol by not later than 01-01-21.
A whole lot of retail store owners and workers were pissed and expressed their unhappiness in a city council meeting. I am willing to bet that most members of the council do not have children working in 7-11s or fast foot outlets in the city.
LOTS OF WINNING SOUTH CAROLINA LOTTERY TICKETS THAT WEREN’T
South Carolina Lottery glitch blamed for false wins
NBC News
December 27, 2017
COLUMBIA, SC -- Some South Carolina residents are furious after a South Carolina Education Lottery glitch led them to believe they had a winning ticket, when they did not.
The line of people who thought they had won, stretched around the South Carolina Lottery headquarters.
When the lottery players got inside they were informed that they did not have winning tickets.
A programming glitch that lasted a few hours caused people who played a particular holiday “Tic-Tac-Toe” like game to win nearly every time they played.
The South Carolina Lottery says they will make a decision on exactly what to do by Friday, but most were not any happier with that response.
NBC News
December 27, 2017
COLUMBIA, SC -- Some South Carolina residents are furious after a South Carolina Education Lottery glitch led them to believe they had a winning ticket, when they did not.
The line of people who thought they had won, stretched around the South Carolina Lottery headquarters.
When the lottery players got inside they were informed that they did not have winning tickets.
A programming glitch that lasted a few hours caused people who played a particular holiday “Tic-Tac-Toe” like game to win nearly every time they played.
The South Carolina Lottery says they will make a decision on exactly what to do by Friday, but most were not any happier with that response.
EIGHT HOUR FLIGHT TO NOWHERE
4 hours into its flight to Tokyo, plane returns to LA because passenger was on wrong flight
Associated Press
December 27, 2017
LOS ANGELES – A Tokyo-bound flight returned to Los Angeles hours into the journey after the crew discovered that one of the passengers had boarded the wrong plane, All Nippon Airways said Wednesday.
The pilot of Flight 175 decided to return to the originating airport as part of the airline's security procedures, ANA said in statements that apologized to passengers but supported the decision.
The flight left Los Angeles International Airport at 11:36 a.m. Tuesday and returned at 7:33 p.m.
Model Chrissy Teigen and her singer husband, John Legend, were aboard and she live-tweeted the developments. She wondered on Twitter why the plane was turning around four hours into the 11-hour flight.
"Why did we all get punished for this one person's mistake? Why not just land in Tokyo and send the other person back? How is this the better idea, you ask? We all have the same questions," she wrote.
Teigen also tweeted photos, videos and updates as they waited to resume the trip.
"Taking off!!!" she finally tweeted early Wednesday.
ANA said it was trying to determine how the passenger boarded the wrong flight.
"At the time during the flight, the pilot in command was presented with information about the discrepancy in the passenger manifest. Based on the available information in flight, he made the correct decision to return to LAX," ANA said.
The airline said it supported the pilot's decision "out of the abundance of caution and safety for the passengers and crew."
"ANA would like to express its apologies to the passengers for the inconvenience," the airline said. "We take great pride providing exemplary customer service, and on this flight we failed to do so."
Associated Press
December 27, 2017
LOS ANGELES – A Tokyo-bound flight returned to Los Angeles hours into the journey after the crew discovered that one of the passengers had boarded the wrong plane, All Nippon Airways said Wednesday.
The pilot of Flight 175 decided to return to the originating airport as part of the airline's security procedures, ANA said in statements that apologized to passengers but supported the decision.
The flight left Los Angeles International Airport at 11:36 a.m. Tuesday and returned at 7:33 p.m.
Model Chrissy Teigen and her singer husband, John Legend, were aboard and she live-tweeted the developments. She wondered on Twitter why the plane was turning around four hours into the 11-hour flight.
"Why did we all get punished for this one person's mistake? Why not just land in Tokyo and send the other person back? How is this the better idea, you ask? We all have the same questions," she wrote.
Teigen also tweeted photos, videos and updates as they waited to resume the trip.
"Taking off!!!" she finally tweeted early Wednesday.
ANA said it was trying to determine how the passenger boarded the wrong flight.
"At the time during the flight, the pilot in command was presented with information about the discrepancy in the passenger manifest. Based on the available information in flight, he made the correct decision to return to LAX," ANA said.
The airline said it supported the pilot's decision "out of the abundance of caution and safety for the passengers and crew."
"ANA would like to express its apologies to the passengers for the inconvenience," the airline said. "We take great pride providing exemplary customer service, and on this flight we failed to do so."
ABBAS SHOULD HAVE READ THE GOSPEL BEFORE ASSERTING JESUS WAS A PALESTINIAN
Israel Must Again Remind Palestinian Leaders That Jesus Was Jewish
Israel Today
December 26, 2017
Yesterday was Christmas, which means that local Christians were once again treated to a rant by Palestinian leaders trying to appropriate Jesus as part of their cause against Israel.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas published a Christmas greeting that referred to Jesus as "a Palestinian messenger who would become a guiding light for millions around the world."
Abbas' predecessor and mentor, Yasser Arafat, began this shameful Christmas tradition decades ago.
As in other years, Israel's Foreign Ministry responded with scorn.
"He should have read the Gospel before uttering such offensive nonsense, but we will forgive him because he doesn’t know what he’s doing," ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the Times of Israel, as he echoed Jesus example of forgiving those who wrong you.
Abbas spent the rest of the letter blaming all of the Palestinians' ills on Israel and the so-called "occupation."
Palmor noted that despite being a "Christmas" greeting, the letter didn't at all fit the spirit of the season. "Maybe he needs a hug from Santa?" the Israeli asked facetiously.
One part of the letter that many Israelis did take particular offense over was Abbas' assertion that the bulk of the Palestinian Christian population had fled Bethlehem and its environs because of Israel.
As several officials noted, Christians lived quietly and prosperously in the region right up until Bethlehem was handed over to the Palestinian Authority. It was only then that they started emigrating en masse.
Israel Today
December 26, 2017
Yesterday was Christmas, which means that local Christians were once again treated to a rant by Palestinian leaders trying to appropriate Jesus as part of their cause against Israel.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas published a Christmas greeting that referred to Jesus as "a Palestinian messenger who would become a guiding light for millions around the world."
Abbas' predecessor and mentor, Yasser Arafat, began this shameful Christmas tradition decades ago.
As in other years, Israel's Foreign Ministry responded with scorn.
"He should have read the Gospel before uttering such offensive nonsense, but we will forgive him because he doesn’t know what he’s doing," ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the Times of Israel, as he echoed Jesus example of forgiving those who wrong you.
Abbas spent the rest of the letter blaming all of the Palestinians' ills on Israel and the so-called "occupation."
Palmor noted that despite being a "Christmas" greeting, the letter didn't at all fit the spirit of the season. "Maybe he needs a hug from Santa?" the Israeli asked facetiously.
One part of the letter that many Israelis did take particular offense over was Abbas' assertion that the bulk of the Palestinian Christian population had fled Bethlehem and its environs because of Israel.
As several officials noted, Christians lived quietly and prosperously in the region right up until Bethlehem was handed over to the Palestinian Authority. It was only then that they started emigrating en masse.
TRUMP HONORED BY ISRAEL
Israel Announces "Donald Trump Train Station" in Jerusalem
Israel Today
December 27, 2017
Israel Railways has decided to name the final stop on its soon-to-open high-speed Tel Aviv-Jerusalem line after US President Donald Trump, reported Yediot Ahronot.
The much-anticipated rail line was originally supposed to terminate at a new station being built adjacent to Jerusalem's Central Bus Station and the International Convention Center (known locally as Binyanei Haumah).
But an underground extension was added taking the train to the entrance of the Old City of Jerusalem. About a year ago, Transportation Minister Israel Katz proposed another extension, taking the train (again, underground) all the way to the Western Wall.
That final station near the Western Wall is the one Israel Railways intends to name "Donald John Trump Train Station."
That honor is being bestowed in recognition of Trump's decision to finally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as a matter of official US foreign policy.
Israel Today
December 27, 2017
Israel Railways has decided to name the final stop on its soon-to-open high-speed Tel Aviv-Jerusalem line after US President Donald Trump, reported Yediot Ahronot.
The much-anticipated rail line was originally supposed to terminate at a new station being built adjacent to Jerusalem's Central Bus Station and the International Convention Center (known locally as Binyanei Haumah).
But an underground extension was added taking the train to the entrance of the Old City of Jerusalem. About a year ago, Transportation Minister Israel Katz proposed another extension, taking the train (again, underground) all the way to the Western Wall.
That final station near the Western Wall is the one Israel Railways intends to name "Donald John Trump Train Station."
That honor is being bestowed in recognition of Trump's decision to finally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as a matter of official US foreign policy.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
AN EMBARASSMENT OF RICHES
by Bob Walsh
According to CDCr (California Dept. of Corrections and rehabilitation) four individuals have come forward to claim the carcass of Charlie Manson, all claiming to be his next-of-kin. So they are keeping Charlie in an ice box somewhere while the coroner sorts it out.
According to CDCr (California Dept. of Corrections and rehabilitation) four individuals have come forward to claim the carcass of Charlie Manson, all claiming to be his next-of-kin. So they are keeping Charlie in an ice box somewhere while the coroner sorts it out.
SOME SITUATIONS HAVE NO GOOD OUTCOMES
by Bob Walsh
In November 2008 it was a moderately common, grotty little family homicide in Flagstaff, Arizona. Except for one factor. The murderer was an eight-year old.
Vincent Romero, 29 and his friend Timothy Romans, 39, were both dead. The youngster shot and killed his dad with a single-shot .22 rifle, then called to Romans, telling him something was wrong When Romans approached the boy shot and killed him too.
In two days the youngster will be 18, and will walk away clean. No probation, no mandatory psych follow-up. Nothing. He did have some trouble with violation of his probation when he was 12, but has been 'clean" since then.
He has been housed in a foster home for some period of time. It is likely, though not mandatory, that he will continue to live there until he is 21 and likely but not mandatory he will continue psychiatric care of some sort. Apparently he was pissed off because his father chastised him for pulling the rifle out from under his bed without permission.
The kid, about to be a young adult, still has strong ties with his mother.
I wonder if legally there will be a prohibition against him owning or possessing firearms. The kid copped to negligent homicide, for deliberately killing two people. I guess he had a good lawyer.
In November 2008 it was a moderately common, grotty little family homicide in Flagstaff, Arizona. Except for one factor. The murderer was an eight-year old.
Vincent Romero, 29 and his friend Timothy Romans, 39, were both dead. The youngster shot and killed his dad with a single-shot .22 rifle, then called to Romans, telling him something was wrong When Romans approached the boy shot and killed him too.
In two days the youngster will be 18, and will walk away clean. No probation, no mandatory psych follow-up. Nothing. He did have some trouble with violation of his probation when he was 12, but has been 'clean" since then.
He has been housed in a foster home for some period of time. It is likely, though not mandatory, that he will continue to live there until he is 21 and likely but not mandatory he will continue psychiatric care of some sort. Apparently he was pissed off because his father chastised him for pulling the rifle out from under his bed without permission.
The kid, about to be a young adult, still has strong ties with his mother.
I wonder if legally there will be a prohibition against him owning or possessing firearms. The kid copped to negligent homicide, for deliberately killing two people. I guess he had a good lawyer.
CHP OFFICER KILLED BY STONER
by Bob Walsh
A California Highway Patrol officer was killed in a traffic incident on Christmas. The officer was tail-ended on the Nifty Nimitz in Hayward by a man who was both drunk and stoned on pot. I grant you the alcohol alone might have done the job, but still the whole "If it's legal to use it's OK to drive while using it" is not necessarily true. In fact (if I remember the law correctly) the new January 1 CA recreational marijuana law specifically exempts people from smoking while either a driver or passenger in a motor vehicle.
Since we all know stoners are clear-thinking and socially responsible it should all be OK, shouldn't it?
A California Highway Patrol officer was killed in a traffic incident on Christmas. The officer was tail-ended on the Nifty Nimitz in Hayward by a man who was both drunk and stoned on pot. I grant you the alcohol alone might have done the job, but still the whole "If it's legal to use it's OK to drive while using it" is not necessarily true. In fact (if I remember the law correctly) the new January 1 CA recreational marijuana law specifically exempts people from smoking while either a driver or passenger in a motor vehicle.
Since we all know stoners are clear-thinking and socially responsible it should all be OK, shouldn't it?
THROW THE KEY AWAY ON THESE FOUR OHIO TEEN MURDERERS AGED 13-15
Four Toledo teens charged with murder after sandbag tossed from overpass
By Ryan Dunn
The Toledo Blade
December 26, 2017
The loved ones of Marquise Byrd grieve his tragic killing as they prepare for a series of court cases to come.
But for now, they would still like a phone call.
“I would appreciate if [the boys' parents] could at least call my auntie and tell her they're sorry,” said Mr. Byrd's cousin, Shaveontae King.
Toledo police said Tuesday they filed murder charges against four teenagers — Pedro Salinas, 13; Sean Carter, 14; Demetrius Wimberly, 14, and William Parker, 15 -— accused of killing Mr. Byrd with a sandbag dropped onto I-75.
An autopsy found Mr. Byrd, 22, of Warren, Mich. suffered blunt-force trauma to the head and neck. He was pronounced dead 8:57 p.m. Friday at Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center, according to the Lucas County Coroner's Office.
Mr. Byrd was traveling to meet friends in Toledo. He was engaged and had a 1-year-old son, said Ms. King, 26, of Roseville, Mich.
“Young, energetic, outgoing, lovable. He had a bright smile,” Ms. King said while describing Mr. Byrd as like a brother to her.
Officers responded about 10:10 p.m. Dec. 19 to the Indiana Avenue bridge over I-75. A sandbag had smashed through a car’s windshield and hit Mr. Byrd in the passenger seat.
Police said the boys were tossing objects from the overpass, and officers saw the teenagers leaving the area after the incident. Each is charged with vehicular vandalism as well.
Ms. King said she has no sympathy for the teenagers. They know right from wrong, and should be charged as adults, she said.
This killing has devastated their family, Ms. King said. She recalled the October killing of a motorist in Genesee County, Michigan, who was struck by a large rock. At the time, Ms. King thought it would never happen to them.
“My auntie has to bury her son. He's gone. He's never coming back,” Ms. King said. “She's holding up the best she can.”
Lori Olender, deputy chief of the county prosecutor's juvenile division, said she is not seeking to transfer the teenagers' cases to adult jurisdiction. She said she did not wish to put Mr. Byrd’s family through the court case with no chance of success.
“These kids have almost no record,” Ms. Olender said.
Ms. Olender cited a December, 2016 case in which a 14-year-old Toledo girl was accused of fatally shooting her brother. It was a deliberate act, and she did not stand trial as an adult, Ms. Olender said.
Ohio law allows children as young as 14 to stand trial as adults, but those younger than 16 are discretionary transfers.
Judges in these cases must consider factors including whether the juveniles could rehabilitate by 21 years old, if they used firearms, and whether they are mature enough for the adult system.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lori Olender, deputy chief of the county prosecutor's juvenile division, should be ashamed of herself. How can she be sure that an adult court trial would have no chance of success?
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether these murderers could rehabilitate by age 21. Even the 13-year old one had to know tossing that sandbag from the overpass could result in one or more deaths. There have been too many of these deadly object overpass tossings. These four teens and other teens committing such crimes should serve as an example to other would be deadly object tossers that they will be shown no leniency, regardless of their age.
By Ryan Dunn
The Toledo Blade
December 26, 2017
The loved ones of Marquise Byrd grieve his tragic killing as they prepare for a series of court cases to come.
But for now, they would still like a phone call.
“I would appreciate if [the boys' parents] could at least call my auntie and tell her they're sorry,” said Mr. Byrd's cousin, Shaveontae King.
Toledo police said Tuesday they filed murder charges against four teenagers — Pedro Salinas, 13; Sean Carter, 14; Demetrius Wimberly, 14, and William Parker, 15 -— accused of killing Mr. Byrd with a sandbag dropped onto I-75.
An autopsy found Mr. Byrd, 22, of Warren, Mich. suffered blunt-force trauma to the head and neck. He was pronounced dead 8:57 p.m. Friday at Mercy Health St. Vincent Medical Center, according to the Lucas County Coroner's Office.
Mr. Byrd was traveling to meet friends in Toledo. He was engaged and had a 1-year-old son, said Ms. King, 26, of Roseville, Mich.
“Young, energetic, outgoing, lovable. He had a bright smile,” Ms. King said while describing Mr. Byrd as like a brother to her.
Officers responded about 10:10 p.m. Dec. 19 to the Indiana Avenue bridge over I-75. A sandbag had smashed through a car’s windshield and hit Mr. Byrd in the passenger seat.
Police said the boys were tossing objects from the overpass, and officers saw the teenagers leaving the area after the incident. Each is charged with vehicular vandalism as well.
Ms. King said she has no sympathy for the teenagers. They know right from wrong, and should be charged as adults, she said.
This killing has devastated their family, Ms. King said. She recalled the October killing of a motorist in Genesee County, Michigan, who was struck by a large rock. At the time, Ms. King thought it would never happen to them.
“My auntie has to bury her son. He's gone. He's never coming back,” Ms. King said. “She's holding up the best she can.”
Lori Olender, deputy chief of the county prosecutor's juvenile division, said she is not seeking to transfer the teenagers' cases to adult jurisdiction. She said she did not wish to put Mr. Byrd’s family through the court case with no chance of success.
“These kids have almost no record,” Ms. Olender said.
Ms. Olender cited a December, 2016 case in which a 14-year-old Toledo girl was accused of fatally shooting her brother. It was a deliberate act, and she did not stand trial as an adult, Ms. Olender said.
Ohio law allows children as young as 14 to stand trial as adults, but those younger than 16 are discretionary transfers.
Judges in these cases must consider factors including whether the juveniles could rehabilitate by 21 years old, if they used firearms, and whether they are mature enough for the adult system.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lori Olender, deputy chief of the county prosecutor's juvenile division, should be ashamed of herself. How can she be sure that an adult court trial would have no chance of success?
Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass whether these murderers could rehabilitate by age 21. Even the 13-year old one had to know tossing that sandbag from the overpass could result in one or more deaths. There have been too many of these deadly object overpass tossings. These four teens and other teens committing such crimes should serve as an example to other would be deadly object tossers that they will be shown no leniency, regardless of their age.
TRUMP MAKES GOOD ON THREAT TO SLASH UN FUNDS
US to make at least $285m cut to UN budget after vote on Jerusalem
By Edward Helmore and Associated Press
The Guardian
December 26, 2017
NEW YORK -- The US government has announced significant cuts in its United Nations budget obligations for 2018-2019 in what will be interpreted as a further ratcheting up of pressure from the Trump administration looking to bend decision-making at the international body to its will.
In a statement released over the holiday, the US Mission to the United Nations said next year’s budget would be slashed by over $285m and unspecified reductions would also be made to the UN’s management and support functions.
The announcement didn’t make clear the entire amount of the budget or specify what effect the cut would have on the US contribution.
“We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of,” US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in a statement. Haley added that the “inefficiency and overspending” of the organization is well-known.
Under the UN charter, the US is responsible for 22% of the the body’s annual operating budget, or around $1.2bn in 2017-2018, and 28.5% of the cost of peacekeeping operations, estimated at $6.8bn over the same period.
In her statement, Haley said she was pleased with the results of budget negotiations, and the US Mission would continue to “look at ways to increase the UN’s efficiency while protecting our interests”.
But the timing of the announcement sends a clear message. On Thursday, the General Assembly voted 128-9 in favor of a resolution condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
After the vote, Haley reminded the assembly that the US was “by far the single largest contributor to the UN” and would remember the vote “when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations, and we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit”.
Before the vote, the US president, Donald Trump had said at a cabinet meeting: “Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care. But this isn’t like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars ... We’re not going to be taken advantage of any longer.”
On Sunday, Guatemala became the first country to follow the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem. Guatemala’s president Jimmy Morales made the announcement via Facebook.
By Edward Helmore and Associated Press
The Guardian
December 26, 2017
NEW YORK -- The US government has announced significant cuts in its United Nations budget obligations for 2018-2019 in what will be interpreted as a further ratcheting up of pressure from the Trump administration looking to bend decision-making at the international body to its will.
In a statement released over the holiday, the US Mission to the United Nations said next year’s budget would be slashed by over $285m and unspecified reductions would also be made to the UN’s management and support functions.
The announcement didn’t make clear the entire amount of the budget or specify what effect the cut would have on the US contribution.
“We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of,” US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in a statement. Haley added that the “inefficiency and overspending” of the organization is well-known.
Under the UN charter, the US is responsible for 22% of the the body’s annual operating budget, or around $1.2bn in 2017-2018, and 28.5% of the cost of peacekeeping operations, estimated at $6.8bn over the same period.
In her statement, Haley said she was pleased with the results of budget negotiations, and the US Mission would continue to “look at ways to increase the UN’s efficiency while protecting our interests”.
But the timing of the announcement sends a clear message. On Thursday, the General Assembly voted 128-9 in favor of a resolution condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
After the vote, Haley reminded the assembly that the US was “by far the single largest contributor to the UN” and would remember the vote “when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations, and we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit”.
Before the vote, the US president, Donald Trump had said at a cabinet meeting: “Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care. But this isn’t like it used to be where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars ... We’re not going to be taken advantage of any longer.”
On Sunday, Guatemala became the first country to follow the US decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem. Guatemala’s president Jimmy Morales made the announcement via Facebook.
SHIT-FOR-BRAINS CALIFORNIA PSYCHOLOGIST SENT TREASURY SECRETARY A PACKAGE OF HORSE SHIT
Secret Service questions psychologist who sent horse manure to Treasury secretary
By Elina Shatkin
KPCC
December 26, 2017
Authorities say a gift-wrapped box of horse manure addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was found near his Los Angeles home — and the man who says he sent it told KPCC that it was a political act.
The package was found Saturday night in the tony Bel Air neighborhood after it was dropped off at a neighbor's house. The Los Angeles Police Department's bomb squad was called to the home and officers opened the box to find the manure.
Secret Service spokesman Cody Starken said Monday that the agency was contacted by Los Angeles police and interviewed a person who claimed responsibility. He declined to identify the person.
Robert Strong said in an interview with KPCC that he sent the manure to Mnuchin because he believed the recently passed tax plan was corrupt and "brazenly ripping off the American people."
"What I did, I would like to compare to what Jesus did when he went into the temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers, who were exploiting the people financially in the name of religion. I feel like that's what the GOP has done to the American people," he told KPCC.
Strong works as a psychologist for the L.A. Department of Mental Health and said he realized he might be putting his job at risk. In fact, he said he was surprised he hadn't been arrested. But, for him, the political is very personal.
Strong, who said he was an organizer for Occupy L.A., connects the "intense increase of homelessness" he has seen in the past few months with economic policies promoted by the Trump administration.
"In the long run, if we don't do stuff like this, what are we going to have left?" he told KPCC.
He also tweeted about his act.
Strong said he "borrowed" some manure from a friend who owns horses, put the manure in a box, gift-wrapped the box and wrote a card that read: "Dear Misters Trump and Mnuchin, we are returning your Christmas gift of the Republican tax plan because it's complete horse shit. Sincerely, the American people."
By Elina Shatkin
KPCC
December 26, 2017
Authorities say a gift-wrapped box of horse manure addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin was found near his Los Angeles home — and the man who says he sent it told KPCC that it was a political act.
The package was found Saturday night in the tony Bel Air neighborhood after it was dropped off at a neighbor's house. The Los Angeles Police Department's bomb squad was called to the home and officers opened the box to find the manure.
Secret Service spokesman Cody Starken said Monday that the agency was contacted by Los Angeles police and interviewed a person who claimed responsibility. He declined to identify the person.
Robert Strong said in an interview with KPCC that he sent the manure to Mnuchin because he believed the recently passed tax plan was corrupt and "brazenly ripping off the American people."
"What I did, I would like to compare to what Jesus did when he went into the temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers, who were exploiting the people financially in the name of religion. I feel like that's what the GOP has done to the American people," he told KPCC.
Strong works as a psychologist for the L.A. Department of Mental Health and said he realized he might be putting his job at risk. In fact, he said he was surprised he hadn't been arrested. But, for him, the political is very personal.
Strong, who said he was an organizer for Occupy L.A., connects the "intense increase of homelessness" he has seen in the past few months with economic policies promoted by the Trump administration.
"In the long run, if we don't do stuff like this, what are we going to have left?" he told KPCC.
He also tweeted about his act.
Strong said he "borrowed" some manure from a friend who owns horses, put the manure in a box, gift-wrapped the box and wrote a card that read: "Dear Misters Trump and Mnuchin, we are returning your Christmas gift of the Republican tax plan because it's complete horse shit. Sincerely, the American people."
SKY HIGH CALIFORNIA RENT ANDHOUSING PRICES LEAD MANY INTO HOMELESSNESS
California's hidden homeless: Teachers, chefs, nurses and other middle class workers living in cars in parking lots because of the state's crazy property prices
By Emily Crane
Daily Mail
December 26, 2017
The rising cost of rent and housing in California is forcing residents into alternative accommodation with middle class workers taking up residence in their cars and RVs by the side of the road to make ends meet.
Hundreds of people, including nurses and chefs, are sleeping in parking lots in affluent areas like Santa Barbara as they make the most of the only homes they can afford.
Marva Ericson, who works as a nursing assistant, has been sleeping in her Kia for the past three months. She wakes up before dawn each day, showers at the local YMCA and dresses in her hospital scrubs to head to work.
'I wake up and I say, 'Thank you God for keeping me safe last night, and thank you for the Safe Parking program',' the 48-year-old told the LA Times.
Like Ericson, most of the people sleeping rough in their cars are part of the area's Safe Parking program, which is run by the New Beginnings Counseling Center and aims to provide a secure area for the homeless to sleep in their vehicles.
The program has roughly 150 clients and 40 per cent of those are working but they just can't afford an apartment with the rising cost of housing.
About 35 per cent of those in the program are seniors and about 30 per cent are disabled. The majority are living out of their small cars with only 25 per cent sleeping in RVs.
Ericson ended up homeless after a series of medical set backs. She suffered a number of seizures that forced her to quit her job and was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumor.
She overcame the illness while caring for her dying mother and is now working two different jobs to make ends meet. Up until three months ago, Ericson was living in apartments for $1,000-1,600 a month but became homeless when she fell behind in rent.
Kathy, 65, and Phil, 74, have been living together in their old RV after losing their condo in 2013.
'I was always into December and making the house wonderfully warm and beautiful,' Kathy said of the holiday season. 'I've got some little lights on the ceiling of the RV and I got out my mom's old snow globe, with a music box on it.'
Santiago Geronimo, who is a chef at a high-end Santa Barbara restaurant, has been living in a Ford Explorer for three months with his girlfriend and her eighth-grade son Luis.
The Safe Parking program, which has been running for 12 years, allows clients to stay overnight in the parking lots of churches, not-for-profits and government offices.
Clients can park their cars after 7pm and need to be gone by the early morning.
In Santa Barbara alone, there are 23 parking lots currently used for the Safe Parking program.
There is also a waitlist of 40 people desperate to take part.
By Emily Crane
Daily Mail
December 26, 2017
The rising cost of rent and housing in California is forcing residents into alternative accommodation with middle class workers taking up residence in their cars and RVs by the side of the road to make ends meet.
Hundreds of people, including nurses and chefs, are sleeping in parking lots in affluent areas like Santa Barbara as they make the most of the only homes they can afford.
Marva Ericson, who works as a nursing assistant, has been sleeping in her Kia for the past three months. She wakes up before dawn each day, showers at the local YMCA and dresses in her hospital scrubs to head to work.
'I wake up and I say, 'Thank you God for keeping me safe last night, and thank you for the Safe Parking program',' the 48-year-old told the LA Times.
Like Ericson, most of the people sleeping rough in their cars are part of the area's Safe Parking program, which is run by the New Beginnings Counseling Center and aims to provide a secure area for the homeless to sleep in their vehicles.
The program has roughly 150 clients and 40 per cent of those are working but they just can't afford an apartment with the rising cost of housing.
About 35 per cent of those in the program are seniors and about 30 per cent are disabled. The majority are living out of their small cars with only 25 per cent sleeping in RVs.
Ericson ended up homeless after a series of medical set backs. She suffered a number of seizures that forced her to quit her job and was eventually diagnosed with a brain tumor.
She overcame the illness while caring for her dying mother and is now working two different jobs to make ends meet. Up until three months ago, Ericson was living in apartments for $1,000-1,600 a month but became homeless when she fell behind in rent.
Kathy, 65, and Phil, 74, have been living together in their old RV after losing their condo in 2013.
'I was always into December and making the house wonderfully warm and beautiful,' Kathy said of the holiday season. 'I've got some little lights on the ceiling of the RV and I got out my mom's old snow globe, with a music box on it.'
Santiago Geronimo, who is a chef at a high-end Santa Barbara restaurant, has been living in a Ford Explorer for three months with his girlfriend and her eighth-grade son Luis.
The Safe Parking program, which has been running for 12 years, allows clients to stay overnight in the parking lots of churches, not-for-profits and government offices.
Clients can park their cars after 7pm and need to be gone by the early morning.
In Santa Barbara alone, there are 23 parking lots currently used for the Safe Parking program.
There is also a waitlist of 40 people desperate to take part.
BODY PARTS DEALER SOLD DAMAGED GOODS ….. DISEASED BODY PARTS THAT IS
Federal agents found four preserved fetuses in their second trimester during Detroit raid of body broker's warehouse
By Reuters and Regina F. Graham
Daily Mail
December 26, 2017
Federal agents discovered four preserved fetuses in the Detroit warehouse of a man who sold human body parts, confidential photographs reviewed by Reuters show.
The fetuses were found during a December 2013 raid of businessman Arthur Rathburn´s warehouse. The fetuses, which appear to have been in their second trimester, were submerged in a liquid that included human brain tissue.
Rathburn, a former body broker, is accused of defrauding customers by sending them diseased body parts. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for January.
How Rathburn acquired the fetuses and what he intended to do with them is unclear. Rathburn´s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, and neither the indictment nor other documents made public in his case mention the fetuses.
'This needs to be reviewed,' said U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who recently chaired a special U.S. House committee on the use of fetal tissue.
Blackburn recoiled when a Reuters reporter showed her some of the photographs, taken by government officials involved in the raid.
In four of the photos, a crime scene investigator in a hazmat suit uses forceps to lift a different fetus from the brownish liquid. In three other photos, a marker that includes a government evidence identification number lies beside a fetus.
'The actions depicted in these photos are an insult to human dignity,' said U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
A Republican from Virginia, Goodlatte said that if individuals 'violate federal laws and traffic in body parts of unborn children for monetary gain,' they should be 'held accountable.'
Blackburn said the discoveries in Rathburn´s warehouse raise questions about the practices of body brokers across America.
Such brokers take cadavers donated to science, dismember them and sell them for parts, typically for use in medical research and education.
The multimillion-dollar industry has been built largely on the poor, who donate their bodies in return for a free cremation of leftover body parts.
The buying and selling of cadavers and other body parts - with the exception of organs used in transplants - is legal and virtually unregulated in America. But trading in fetal tissue violates U.S. law.
In most states, including Michigan, public health authorities are not required to regularly inspect body broker facilities. As a result, it´s impossible to know whether body brokers who deal in adult donors are acquiring and profiting from fetuses.
Blackburn´s call for action came in response to a Reuters series that exposed abuses in the human body trade and what Blackburn called 'lax oversight' and 'lax enforcement' of the industry.
Photos from inside Rathburn´s warehouse offered a stark example of government failures to police the industry.
They include images of rotting human heads, some floating face up in a plastic cooler. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has been investigating Rathburn and other body brokers, declined to comment.
Blackburn said she found other Reuters stories about the body trade disturbing.
As part of the news agency´s examination of the industry, for example, a Reuters reporter was able to purchase two human heads and a cervical spine from Restore Life USA, a broker based in Blackburn´s home state of Tennessee. The deals were struck after just a few emails, at a cost of $900 plus shipping.
'It is sickening' how easily Restore Life sold the parts to Reuters, Blackburn said.
Told of Blackburn's concerns, Restore Life owner James Byrd said his company has 'invited her to tour our facility and to review the policy and procedures we have in place.'
By Reuters and Regina F. Graham
Daily Mail
December 26, 2017
Federal agents discovered four preserved fetuses in the Detroit warehouse of a man who sold human body parts, confidential photographs reviewed by Reuters show.
The fetuses were found during a December 2013 raid of businessman Arthur Rathburn´s warehouse. The fetuses, which appear to have been in their second trimester, were submerged in a liquid that included human brain tissue.
Rathburn, a former body broker, is accused of defrauding customers by sending them diseased body parts. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is set for January.
How Rathburn acquired the fetuses and what he intended to do with them is unclear. Rathburn´s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment, and neither the indictment nor other documents made public in his case mention the fetuses.
'This needs to be reviewed,' said U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who recently chaired a special U.S. House committee on the use of fetal tissue.
Blackburn recoiled when a Reuters reporter showed her some of the photographs, taken by government officials involved in the raid.
In four of the photos, a crime scene investigator in a hazmat suit uses forceps to lift a different fetus from the brownish liquid. In three other photos, a marker that includes a government evidence identification number lies beside a fetus.
'The actions depicted in these photos are an insult to human dignity,' said U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
A Republican from Virginia, Goodlatte said that if individuals 'violate federal laws and traffic in body parts of unborn children for monetary gain,' they should be 'held accountable.'
Blackburn said the discoveries in Rathburn´s warehouse raise questions about the practices of body brokers across America.
Such brokers take cadavers donated to science, dismember them and sell them for parts, typically for use in medical research and education.
The multimillion-dollar industry has been built largely on the poor, who donate their bodies in return for a free cremation of leftover body parts.
The buying and selling of cadavers and other body parts - with the exception of organs used in transplants - is legal and virtually unregulated in America. But trading in fetal tissue violates U.S. law.
In most states, including Michigan, public health authorities are not required to regularly inspect body broker facilities. As a result, it´s impossible to know whether body brokers who deal in adult donors are acquiring and profiting from fetuses.
Blackburn´s call for action came in response to a Reuters series that exposed abuses in the human body trade and what Blackburn called 'lax oversight' and 'lax enforcement' of the industry.
Photos from inside Rathburn´s warehouse offered a stark example of government failures to police the industry.
They include images of rotting human heads, some floating face up in a plastic cooler. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has been investigating Rathburn and other body brokers, declined to comment.
Blackburn said she found other Reuters stories about the body trade disturbing.
As part of the news agency´s examination of the industry, for example, a Reuters reporter was able to purchase two human heads and a cervical spine from Restore Life USA, a broker based in Blackburn´s home state of Tennessee. The deals were struck after just a few emails, at a cost of $900 plus shipping.
'It is sickening' how easily Restore Life sold the parts to Reuters, Blackburn said.
Told of Blackburn's concerns, Restore Life owner James Byrd said his company has 'invited her to tour our facility and to review the policy and procedures we have in place.'
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
FAT ROSIE WANTS BEN SHAPIRO TO SUCK HER DICK ….. HUH, FATSO HAS A DICK?
Is this proof Twitter favors liberals? Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro slams the site for their 'double standards' after they cleared Rosie O'Donnell of harassing him with vulgar post saying 'suck my dick'
Daily Mail
December 24, 2017
Ben Shapiro has slammed Twitter for saying Rosie O'Donnell was not abusive when she 'harassed' him on the social media platform.
The conservative columnist and commentator reported the former The View host after she directed a vulgar comment at him.
O'Donnell told editor in chief of the Daily Wire Shapiro to 'suck my dick ben' in a tweet that she later deleted.
She then taunted him for looking like a 'high school junior' when he said the remark was sexual harassment.
Shapiro wrote in a tweet on Friday: 'Just reported @Rosie for targeted harassment, mainly to see if Twitter does indeed have a double standard. Everyone knows if Rosie were conservative, Twitter would suspend her in a hot second. So, Twitter, put your money where your mouth is.'
He then wrote: 'It's an attempt to clarify Twitter's standards. I don't actually want them to ban or suspend Rosie. I want them to stop applying their own rules inconsistently.'
Just a few hours later, Shapiro revealed to his followers that he had already got a response from Twitter.
Alongside a screenshot of the decision from Twitter, he wrote: 'Surprise of surprises. Twitter says that @Rosie's tweets were not in fact abusive in any way under their rules. Good to know.'
The feud between the pair started when Shapiro slammed the talk show host for saying she would give Senators Susan Collins and Jeff Flake $2million for voting against the Republican's tax reform.
Many critics, including Shapiro, said the payment would be a violation of federal law.
After Shapiro alerted his followers that he had reported O'Donnell, she simply replied, 'oh ben'.
He responded to her by saying: 'All victims deserve to be believed.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Saturday night, Twitter reversed its position and removed Rosie’s ‘suck my dick’ tweet. Twitter sent Shapiro the following notice:
“You have received two emails from us about your recent report. The first email stated that the Tweets were not in violation of our policies when in fact they are, based on our Twitter rules. We have required that the reported Tweets be deleted and they have since been removed.”
Daily Mail
December 24, 2017
Ben Shapiro has slammed Twitter for saying Rosie O'Donnell was not abusive when she 'harassed' him on the social media platform.
The conservative columnist and commentator reported the former The View host after she directed a vulgar comment at him.
O'Donnell told editor in chief of the Daily Wire Shapiro to 'suck my dick ben' in a tweet that she later deleted.
She then taunted him for looking like a 'high school junior' when he said the remark was sexual harassment.
Shapiro wrote in a tweet on Friday: 'Just reported @Rosie for targeted harassment, mainly to see if Twitter does indeed have a double standard. Everyone knows if Rosie were conservative, Twitter would suspend her in a hot second. So, Twitter, put your money where your mouth is.'
He then wrote: 'It's an attempt to clarify Twitter's standards. I don't actually want them to ban or suspend Rosie. I want them to stop applying their own rules inconsistently.'
Just a few hours later, Shapiro revealed to his followers that he had already got a response from Twitter.
Alongside a screenshot of the decision from Twitter, he wrote: 'Surprise of surprises. Twitter says that @Rosie's tweets were not in fact abusive in any way under their rules. Good to know.'
The feud between the pair started when Shapiro slammed the talk show host for saying she would give Senators Susan Collins and Jeff Flake $2million for voting against the Republican's tax reform.
Many critics, including Shapiro, said the payment would be a violation of federal law.
After Shapiro alerted his followers that he had reported O'Donnell, she simply replied, 'oh ben'.
He responded to her by saying: 'All victims deserve to be believed.'
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Saturday night, Twitter reversed its position and removed Rosie’s ‘suck my dick’ tweet. Twitter sent Shapiro the following notice:
“You have received two emails from us about your recent report. The first email stated that the Tweets were not in violation of our policies when in fact they are, based on our Twitter rules. We have required that the reported Tweets be deleted and they have since been removed.”
WHY DOES TEXAS NEED DPS TO WORK IN THE BIG CITIES?
BY Trey Rusk
Running Code 3
December 26, 2017
The Texas Legislature has asked Texas DPS to cut its budget.
The Texas DPS works state highways for traffic violations and car crashes. They also run a crime lab that accepts evidence from small and medium size agencies from across the state and processes the evidence for free. Oops. Now the Texas DPS has proposed charging for processing evidence and the state's Sheriff's and Chief's of Police are hopping mad.
Some of these small cities can't afford to pay a lab for evidence processing. This budget cutting suggestion may have just been reminding the state legislators about who runs what in Texas law enforcement because their phones started ringing immediately. Nobody has mentioned it in a while. Why, it's almost as bad as when Texas DPS decided to reduce the hours of eleven drivers license offices last June.
Citizens squealed like a pig stuck under a gate. They rescinded that order because they realized it was a burden on the people needing to renew or apply for a drivers license. I don't know how long it has been since you last had to visit a drivers license office but the lines for customers sometimes stretch out on to the sidewalk.
Now you would think that the last two budget cutting ideas that didn't work would ring a bell at Texas DPS headquarters. It didn't. Texas DPS may not see that they have a lot of manpower being wasted in urban areas. Can someone tell me why The Texas Highway Patrol is patrolling areas that already have multiple jurisdictions covering the same areas? I'm talking about Houston, San Antonio, Dallas/Ft. Worth and El Paso.
I would think the Texas DPS would limit its activities and expertise to the state highways connecting these cities and assist the smaller jurisdictions with iys expertise. These metropolitan areas do not need its crime lab or the Texas Rangers because they already have well trained investigators.
I would assign DPS cruisers between Katy and Seguin on I-10 or between Conroe and Ennis on I-45. These are the Texas Highways and Freeways. The Texas Rangers are needed for heinous crimes committed in rural cities and counties, but not really in urban areas. Now this is a real cost cutting idea.
How come the bean counters at Texas DPS can't see this? Because just maybe it's all about power. State troopers are just that, even in Houston.
Citizen tax payers remember this: We are the customers of the state's budget. As Henry Ford said:
"It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It’s the customer who pays the wages."
Running Code 3
December 26, 2017
The Texas Legislature has asked Texas DPS to cut its budget.
The Texas DPS works state highways for traffic violations and car crashes. They also run a crime lab that accepts evidence from small and medium size agencies from across the state and processes the evidence for free. Oops. Now the Texas DPS has proposed charging for processing evidence and the state's Sheriff's and Chief's of Police are hopping mad.
Some of these small cities can't afford to pay a lab for evidence processing. This budget cutting suggestion may have just been reminding the state legislators about who runs what in Texas law enforcement because their phones started ringing immediately. Nobody has mentioned it in a while. Why, it's almost as bad as when Texas DPS decided to reduce the hours of eleven drivers license offices last June.
Citizens squealed like a pig stuck under a gate. They rescinded that order because they realized it was a burden on the people needing to renew or apply for a drivers license. I don't know how long it has been since you last had to visit a drivers license office but the lines for customers sometimes stretch out on to the sidewalk.
Now you would think that the last two budget cutting ideas that didn't work would ring a bell at Texas DPS headquarters. It didn't. Texas DPS may not see that they have a lot of manpower being wasted in urban areas. Can someone tell me why The Texas Highway Patrol is patrolling areas that already have multiple jurisdictions covering the same areas? I'm talking about Houston, San Antonio, Dallas/Ft. Worth and El Paso.
I would think the Texas DPS would limit its activities and expertise to the state highways connecting these cities and assist the smaller jurisdictions with iys expertise. These metropolitan areas do not need its crime lab or the Texas Rangers because they already have well trained investigators.
I would assign DPS cruisers between Katy and Seguin on I-10 or between Conroe and Ennis on I-45. These are the Texas Highways and Freeways. The Texas Rangers are needed for heinous crimes committed in rural cities and counties, but not really in urban areas. Now this is a real cost cutting idea.
How come the bean counters at Texas DPS can't see this? Because just maybe it's all about power. State troopers are just that, even in Houston.
Citizen tax payers remember this: We are the customers of the state's budget. As Henry Ford said:
"It’s not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It’s the customer who pays the wages."
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