The Way It Had To End

And in the end...it appears to have ended the only way..it could have possibly ended...With more death! More tragic , senseless death...What was going on in Christopher Dorner's troubled mind?? What drove him to this?

Was this really going out in a "Blaze of Glory"?? or just being burned to death in a blaze??  Whatever, the strange events that led to all of this began this way...

Supposedly at sometime on Tuesday afternoon,a mother-daughter team startled Christopher Dorner in his mountainside hideout..When the pair arrived to tidy a rental cabin not far from a police command post, they allegedly found Christopher Dorner holed up inside ,.and he might have had a chance to flee the Big Bear ski resort area where scores of police had conducted a door-to-door search for him – except one of the women got free, called 911 and alerted cops that a man who looked like Dorner was on the run, the officials said.

That call set in motion a dramatic and tragic tragic chain of events in which one sheriff’s deputy was killed in a gun battle outside a second cabin where the suspect’s charred body would be found before the day’s end.

“It was like a war zone and our deputies continued to go in to that area,” San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “The rounds kept coming, but our deputies didn’t give up."

There have been several conflicting stories...Police have not officially determined that the corpse found in the burned-out county was in fact, Christopher Dorner, who kept southern California in fear for a week as, authorities say, he carried out a murderous campaign of revenge against the LAPD. They are waiting for forensics.

The San Bernardino Sheriff’s office has said they don’t believe the gunman who barricaded himself inside the cabin escaped before it erupted in flames.

“We believe that this investigation is over at this point and we’ll need to move on from here,” said Sheriff John McMahon.

Sheriff John McMahon said police did not intentionally set the cabin ablaze, but the pyrotechnic tear gas canisters — commonly referred to as “burners,” he said — generate a high level of heat.
It was when police began using the pyrotechnic canisters to flush out the suspect that the fire began.Hmmmmm!  I'm just saying!

The LAPD, which had been under a series of tactical alerts while Dorner was on the lam has returned to normal operations on Wednesday, although a dozen people on hit list remained under guard, said Lt. Andy Neiman.

"Thanks to the brave men and women of the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department, it looks like we have our man," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" early Wednesday.

Investigators had been combing the ski resort area since Thursday, when Christopher Dorner’s burned out Nissan truck was found there hours after he allegedly ambushed cops in two cities, killing Officer Michael Crain.

Days earlier, police believe,Christopher  Dorner executed the daughter of a retired police captain and her fiancé in Irvine to kick off a killing spree that sowed fear across the region and in the ranks of law-enforcement.

After the man believed to be  Christopher Dorner fled the cabin where he had encountered the two women, wardens from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the purple Nissan and gave chase.


Chris Dorner lost them and, it appears, he also ditched the Nissan and carjacked a white pickup.
Rick Heltebrake, 61, told TODAY on Wednesday that he was driving near the Boy Scout camp he operates when a heavily armed man he recognized as Christopher  Dorner, 33, crawled out of the woods, pointing a rifle at him.

He said the hulking former Navy reservist was wearing camouflage and a ballistics vest and told Heltebrake, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“He was dressed for action,” Heltebrake said.

Chris Dorner commandeered the pickup, but let the man and his dog go. Shortly after Chris Dorner sped off, Heltebrake said that he heard gunshots.

That may have been the brief exchange of fire between  Chris Dorner and another game warden who spotted the pickup and pursued it. The warden’s truck was riddled with bullets, but he was not hurt, officials said.

Chris Dorner then “fled into the forest and barricaded himself inside a cabin,” the San Bernardino Sheriff’s office said. “A short time later there was an exchange of gunfire between law enforcement and the suspect.”

As you might expect, TV commentator, (and lawyer) Nancy Grace has been having a field day as well as a ratings bananza with this....She ridiculed Chris Dorner's manifesto and all of the usual "pop psych experts have been on CNN and surprisingly MSNBC giving their spin on the state of this man's mind...

He's been reffered to as an "Urban Terrorist", while The Batman shooter in Aurora was a"troubled young man"...Okay......

I think his manifesto should be read and some of the charges looked into....It's not a far stretch to say that there probably is the racism he talked about within the LAPD and probably within any law enforcement agency in any metropolis...

But I digress...Two deputies were shot and taken to Loma Linda University Hospital, where officials later confirmed sheriff’s deputy Jeremiah MacKay had died and another had surgery but was expected to survive.

MacKay, 35, joined the department in 1998 and was father to a 7-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.
“Our department is grieving from this event,” said  Sherrif McMahon.

No further shots were fired from the Angelus Oaks cabin before police began to storm the building, according to a sheriff’s spokesman.

Deputies smashed the cabin’s windows, fired in tear gas, and tore through the structure’s walls using an armored personnel carrier, a source close to the probe told NBCLosAngeles.com. A single gunshot then rang out, according to a source, and flames and smoke began to emerge from the remains of the building.
It was hours before police were able to enter the cabin and find the body they believe to be Christopher Dorner.

 Investigators continued to scour the crime scene yesterday as other police gathered in Riverside for the funeral of Officer Crain.

Neiman said it was difficult to celebrate the apparent end to the rampage given the loss of four lives, two of them lawmen.

“This has been a very trying time,” he said. “To hear those words ‘officer down’ is the most gut-wrenching experience you can have as a police officer,” Neiman said.

I am not one of these misguided people who has turned Christopher Dorner into some type of hero...He is not..He has killed people, innocent people and I can't condone that or UNDERSTAND!  as some misguided folks who want to worship this guy as some kind of cult figure are doing....

Still I feel for him somehow...Racism can beat you down, can stress you and can take you to your breaking point...Especially when you lose your job behind it...That's another blog post for another day though...And it's not an excuse to go on a killing spree...

  I keep thinking about the final scene in the movie "Ragtime" and in the movie "Set it Off"....and also a snowball fight I had with my friends once where they all turned against me...and it was just me...I was in a situation that day..If it hadn't started raining...I would have been cooked that day...

I keep wishing that whatever grievences he had against the LAPD , real or imagined ...He could have found another way...a better way to address them or have them addressed...I'm just sorry that had to end like this...But maybe they left him no choice...Maybe this is the only way it could end!

State Of The Union 2013

It was a long night...I was following the coverage of the Christopher Dorner situation...The rogue cop in Los Angelas who killed four people in an atteempt to bring attention to racism and corruption in the LAPD and his own personal demons.... I didn't agree with the way he went about it and I knew it was only going to end one way...The way it did...With his death...

The other news I followed last night was the President's state of the Union Address...This was supposed to be the big story....The Prez kind of got upstaged a little bit...for awhile anyway.


President Barack Obama challenged Republicans on major tax and entitlement proposals in Tuesday's State of the Union address, unveiling sweeping new initiatives to boost the middle class while taking aim at GOP recalcitrance.

The president traveled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for the annual speech, where he pressed Republicans to allow his proposals on issues ranging from taxes and entitlements to guns and immigration to move forward. While Obama seemed determined to advance his ambitious agenda, he must race against a window of opportunity that often closes quickly on president in their second terms.

Moreover, the president's plans will have to survive the brier patch of Capitol Hill, where Republicans have strenuously opposed much of President Obama’s agenda and are girding for a major springtime showdown on budgets and the swift, automatic spending cuts known as the sequester. Nothing new about that!

“Let's be clear: deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan,” said President Obama, who argued that his second term priorities did not represent “bigger government,” but rather, “smarter government.”

President Obama spent much of the first half of his speech challenging Republicans on that central issue after two years of legislating in Washington that saw the government lurch from the brink of a shut down to the brink of a debt-limit default to the brink of automatic tax hikes.

“Let’s agree, right here, right now, to keep the people’s government open, pay our bills on time, and always uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America,” the president said.
The assertive rhetoric from President Obama recalled the themes on which he successfully campaigned for re-election last fall. Tuesday’s speech mostly lived up to its billing by the White House as a coda to the liberal call-to-arms in  President Obama's second inaugural address on issues ranging from government spending to gay rights and immigration reform.

One issue on which President Obama did not campaign -- stricter gun controls -- featured more poignantly in Tuesday's speech. Gun violence has unwittingly become a cornerstone of President Obama's second term agenda following the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. last December.

Gun control is an issue on which President Obama faces stiffer Republican resistance, and the president took a much more personal tack in pressing lawmakers to take up his proposals. He turned victims of high-profile shootings in attendance at Tuesday’s speech in urging lawmakers to, at the very least, allow his gun proposals a vote.

"Gabby Giffords deserves a vote," he said, referring to the critically injured former Arizona congresswoman in the House chamber. "The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence – they deserve a simple vote."

President Obama’s speech on Tuesday was delivered in the same vein; the president embraced proposals that might encounter resistance in this Congress, such as new legislation to address climate change. But, in a reflection of  President Obama’s new found feistiness in a second term, the president vowed to take executive action if Congress would not act.I loved it...Some Republicans in attendance looked like they wanted to slit the presidents throat.

President Obama made other proposals. He said would bolster the middle class. Among  President Obama’s proposals were: Universal access to preschool for all four-year-olds, increasing the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour by the end of 2015, $50 billion in infrastructure spending, and partnerships to promote cleaner energy and improved manufacturing.
Those initiatives, the president pledged, should not increase the deficit “by a single dime.”
To help finance those initiatives, President Obama called for broad individual and corporate tax reforms, as well as savings from entitlement programs like Medicare – changes to which have been a lightning rod in recent election cycles. Those proposals carefully track with President Obama's previous demands to close loopholes and deductions to raise new revenue in tax reform.

But Republicans have argued that the matter of new revenue is “settled” following a fiscal cliff deal that saw the GOP relent to higher taxes on household income above $450,000. To that end, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, in the official Republican response, called on the President to “abandon his obsession with raising taxes and instead work with us to achieve real growth in our economy.”

President Obama’s ambitious plans come as he’s asking lawmakers to approve two other major proposals: comprehensive immigration reform that gives undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, and a series of tighter controls on firearms as part of a broader effort to curb gun violence.

On immigration, the president lauded a bipartisan Senate group’s work on immigration.

“As we speak, bipartisan groups in both chambers are working diligently to draft a bill, and I applaud their efforts,” he said. “Now let’s get this done. Send me a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the next few months, and I will sign it right away."

But for as much as fiscal matters and economic policy have dominated discussion in Washington, President Obama devoted a good part of his State of the Union speech to foreign policy – highlighting in particular the planned withdrawal of 34,000 American troops from Afghanistan in the next year, a tangible symbol of how that war is winding to its end.

President  Obama also used his speech to address some of the emergent national security issues. He condemned North Korea’s nuclear test on Tuesday and pledged to work with Congress to develop rules for the use of unmanned aerial drones in targeting terrorists for assassination. The administration has faced new scrutiny on that latter issue amid the revelation of a new White House memo arguing that the president has wide latitude to target Americans for assassination if they’re deemed to be assisting terrorist actors.


The President additionally announced a new executive order to inoculate U.S. infrastructure from a cyber-attack, by enabling greater information-sharing between the government and its partners and calling for the development of a National Infrastructure Protection Plan within 240 days.

The event, as always, was filled with Washington pomp and circumstance, including lawmakers to arrived hours earlier to reserve prime seats for themselves. Also, in keeping with tradition, outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu was kept spirited away from the Capitol to ensure continuity of government in case of a security incident.

It was indeed a very long and interesting night...

This Isn't Going To End Good

Christopher Dorner, the rogue Black ex-LAPD officer ,alleged to have killed four people, two police officers and a young engaged couple has been in the news for a week now...I admit..I hadn't wanted to write about him until the entire story was over....but as current events are breaking...that may be soon...

As I write this , he is surrounded by police and in a cabin....A shootout and standoff began after police received a report around 12:22 p.m. that someone fitting Dorner’s description had stolen a car from a home near the ski resort area of Big Bear, police said.


A ground and air search ensued, and authorities located the pickup on Highway 38.
A spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game said one of its wardens was the “very first person to spot Mr. Dorner … They both got out of the vehicles and exchanged gunfire.”

The warden was not hurt and Christopher Dorner, who was already wanted for three slayings linked to a revenge-fueled rampage, was not captured, agency spokesman Andrew Hughan told NBC LosAngeles.com.

“The suspect fled into the forest and barricaded himself inside a cabin,” said a statement from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s office.


“A short time later there was an exchange of gunfire between law enforcement and the suspect ... Two law enforcement officers are being airlifted to a local hospital with unknown injuries.”
The wounded officers were taken to Loma Linda University Medical Center. Law enforcement officials confirmed one died.

Meanwhile the suspect – identified as Christopher Dorner by high-ranking LAPD sources – remained holed up in the cabin with heavily armed cops surrounding the area.

Hundreds of investigators have spent a week searching for Christopher Dorner – who is accused of killing a retired captain’s daughter and her fiancé on Feb. 3 and a police officer on Feb. 7 while allegedly carrying out a twisted revenge plot.

Christopher Dorner’s burned-out truck, a Nissan Titan, was found in Big Bear last week and scores of officers have been combing the mountain, going door-to-door to see if they could find signs of forced entry.
At an afternoon press conference, LAPD commander Andy Smith wouldn't confirm the ex-LAPD officer was holed-up in the cabin, but said he had a message for Dorner: “Enough is enough. It’s time to turn yourself in.”

“Everyone is very hopeful that this thing ends without any further bloodshed,” Smith said. “The best thing for him now would be to surrender…and he can face the criminal justice system.”

LAPD officers rushed to the scene to assist San Bernardino deputies and were also sifting through hundreds of clues about Dorner’s activities in recent days.

“Until this guy is in handcuffs … none of the people in our department are going to rest,” Smith said.

I don't wish to speculate too early...but I wonder if the LAPD really wants to take him alive?  I don't know..call it the old radical conspiracy theorist in me, but I feel as though this man was wounded psychologically by the LAPD and his claims in his manifesto last week of rampant racism in the department..
(No real shock or surprise there!) and his subsequent dismisal.

I wish he had gone about this in a different way, without killing innocents....I wish he wasn't surrounded by law enforcement who might say he is too dangerous to be taken alive, who have already labeled him a ''Domestic Terrorist"  and who might kill him as soon as they get a clear shot...

I wish it didn't have to be this way...I for one would like to see him have his day in court and hear what he has to say....The conspiracy theorist in me is saying that the LAPD doesn't want his story told...

I wish they would prove me wrong...I'd love to be wrong on this one.

POST SCRIPT-

At 10;26 PM, It has been reported that Christopher Dorner's body was removed from a burning cabin...
He's dead....This is just the way I thought this was going to end!

Time To Die!

I was riding the Elevated train recenty..(No, I don't drive everywhere! Occasionally I do take public transportation.)

There was a teenaged girl begging a young man not to resort to violence in a situation with another young man he apparently had beef with. (Why are young people so loud? They never know who is listening to their conversation!!)

Anyway this young girl was begging this young man to reconsider...He told her.. "Nah ,I'm gone handle this...Aint nobody gonna fight...People don't fight no more...They go for they guns...I aint got no time to be fist fightin nobody." he said.

The young lady replied... "But you got time to die though.."

And there it was... A voice of reason...I wanted to applaud her...She had said it all in a nut shell...Plenty of time to die... It has occurred to me that our young people and our adults are so desensitized to violence..and violence is such a part of our culture that they just don't understand the consequences of violence.

Temple University , here in Philadelphia is trying to do something about that....

In a darkened classroom, 15 eighth graders gasped as a photograph appeared on the screen in front of them. It showed a dead man whose jaw had been destroyed by a shotgun blast, leaving the lower half of his face a shapeless, bloody mess.

Next came a picture of the bullet-perforated legs of someone who had been shot with an AK-47 assault rifle, and then one of the bloated abdomen of a gunshot victim with internal injuries so grievous that the patient had to be fitted with a colostomy bag to replace intestines that can no longer function normally. 

These are among about 500 gunshot victims who are treated each year at Temple University Hospital, an institution in the heart of impoverished, crime-ridden North Philadelphia. While President Obama and Congressional leaders debate legislation intended to prevent mass killings like the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the hospital is trying to slow the rate of street killings by helping teenagers understand the realities of gun violence. 

The unusual program, called Cradle to Grave, brings in youths from across Philadelphia in the hope that an unflinching look at the effects that guns have in their community will deter young people from reaching for a gun to settle personal scores, and will help them recognize that gun violence is not the glamorous business sometimes depicted in television shows and rap music. 

The program is open to all schools in the city, but about two-thirds of the participants were referred by officials from the juvenile justice system. Children younger than 13 are not normally admitted. So far, about 7,000 teenagers have participated since it began in 2006, and despite the graphic content, no parent has ever complained, said Scott P. Charles, the hospital’s trauma outreach coordinator. 

“In seven and a half years, I have never had a parent say, ‘I can’t believe what you just showed my child,’ ” Mr. Charles said.

On a recent day the eighth graders, students from nearby Kenderton School, gathered around Mr. Charles at the start of a two-hour visit. Most said they knew someone who had been shot.

“Our goal here isn’t to scare you straight,” Mr. Charles told them. “We’re just trying to give you an education.” 

According to police statistics, 331 people were killed in the city in 2012, equaling the highest total since 2008, and the fourth consecutive year of increase. Eighty-six percent of them were killed by firearms, the police say. 

Still, the number of killings in the city of about 1.5 million residents has dropped from a high of 406 in 2006, when national news media started calling the city Killadelphia. 

In a 2010 paper published in the medical journal Injury, Dr. Amy J. Goldberg, the hospital’s chief of trauma and surgical critical care, and others cited data showing that students’ inclination toward violence decreased after participating in the Cradle to Grave program, especially among those classified as having an “aggressive response to shame.”

“These results suggest that hospitals offer a unique opportunity to address the public health crisis posed by inner-city firearm violence,” the study said.

The program starts with a visit to the hospital’s trauma bay, the first stop for gunshot victims — half of them under 25 — who are brought to the hospital from North Philadelphia’s streets at an average rate of more than one a day.

As the 13- and 14-year-olds gathered around a gurney on a recent visit, Mr. Charles told the story of Lamont Adams, 16, who died at the hospital after being shot 14 times by another boy who believed Lamont had snitched about a street dice game that was broken up by police officers.

Lamont arrived in the trauma bay with 24 gunshot wounds, 10 more than the 14 rounds that had been emptied into him, because some of the shots had also exited his body, in some cases leaving indentations in the sidewalk, Mr. Charles told the students. 

In case his verbal description was not sufficiently vivid, Mr. Charles asked Justin Robinson, 13, to play the part of Lamont. The boy lay down on an empty body bag. Mr. Charles attached 24 circular red stickers to Justin’s clothing to represent the wounds in Lamont’s body. 

Mr. Charles told the students that the wounds he finds most moving were those in the boy’s hands. “He holds up his hands and begs the boy to stop shooting,” Mr. Charles said. “He had not prepared himself for how terrible this would be.” 

The narrative was then taken up by Dr. Goldberg, who told the children that by the time Lamont arrived in the trauma bay, he was not breathing, so surgeons — without the use of anesthetics — quickly inserted a breathing tube into his windpipe.

Neither did he have a pulse but that did not stop the doctors from inserting a tube into his groin to replace the blood he was losing, and then to open his chest in the hope of restarting his heart — which turned out to have three or four holes in it, Dr. Goldberg said. She held up a stainless steel rib-spreader. 

As the details of Lamont’s story unfolded, one girl struggled to keep her composure. Another hid her face in her friend’s shoulder. Lamont died about 15 minutes after arriving at the hospital, underscoring that prevention of gun violence is a lot better than trying to cure its effects, Dr. Goldberg concluded.

“Who do you think has the best chance of saving your life?” she asked the students. “You do.” 

Despite the grisly images, most of the students said afterward that people should still be allowed to own guns for self-defense, although not assault weapons. Mahogany Johnson, 14, said she is in favor of a street ban on semiautomatic weapons like AK-47 assault rifles, which she said should be used “only in the woods.” Jabriel Steward, 14, said, “Everybody should be allowed to have one gun for protection, for self-defense.”

But Feliciana Asada, 14, said more students should be given the opportunity to participate in Cradle to Grave. “Programs like this need to be installed in schools,” she said. 

 Kudos to Temple U. for this program...If it can disuade a few kids from violence, if it saves a few lives, it has been a major success..

TIME FOR SENSIBLE GUN LAWS NOW!

Keith's Favorite Quotations

And Soooo The Hood Comes Off!

It turns out....The Ku Klux Klansman that I saw in center city Philadelphia on Thursday was not a Kluxer at all, but a Black man trying to make a point about Black on black crime...

This Philadelphia man caused a bit of a stir on Tuesday morning and through out the week when he posed in the middle of a busy Philadelphia intersection in a KKK robe and holding a sign saying: “The KKK KILLED 3,446 Blacks in 88 years. Black on black murders surpass that number every 6 months.” The man,known only as  Sixx King (shown above), is the director of a documentary titled “Mothers of No Tomorrow.”


The film follows three women who have lost their sons to gang violence. When asked why he stood at a busy section dressed as a member of the KKK, King said “I’m protesting black-on-black murder. I’m making a stance that the number of African Americans killed have surpassed the number of victims in the Iraq and Afghanistan war.” He added: ”And African Americans have killed more of their own people than the KKK.”

A valid point indeed....I'm not mad at him at all....In fact ,I admire his guts...I sure wouldn't have and couldn't have done what he did....Sheeeesh...People will do anything to be on Television....LOL...I'm just kidding of course....

Point Taken!

Weekend Humor

A lonely woman, aged 70, decided that it was time to get married.

She put an ad in the local paper that read: HUSBAND WANTED! MUST BE IN MY AGE GROUP (70's), MUST NOT BEAT ME, MUST NOT RUN AROUND ON ME, AND MUST STILL BE GOOD IN BED! ALL APPLICANTS PLEASE APPLY IN PERSON. 


 On the second day she heard the doorbell. Much to her dismay, she opened the door to see a gray- haired gentleman with no arms or legs sitting in a wheelchair.


The old woman said, "You're not really asking me to consider you, are you? Just look at you ... you have no legs!"

The old man smiled, "Therefore I cannot run around on you!"


She snorted. "You don't have any hands either!"

Again the old man smiled, "Nor can I beat you!"

She raised an eyebrow and gazed intently. "Are you still good in bed?" With that, the old gentleman leaned back, beamed a big broad smile and said, "I rang the doorbell, didn't I?"

Enjoy your weekend everybody!

A Funny Thing Happened In Downtown Philly Yesterday!

A funny thing happened in downtown Philadelphia yesterday... Philadelphia Pa. mind you... The North...A city that is 49% African-American, with a huge Latino and Asian population to boot... A Lone Ku Klux Klansmen stood on the corner with a placard!

That's right...A Kluxer!  There was a guy dressed in full Ku Klux Klan garb standing on the corner of 16th and Market Streets today at lunch...He was holding a poster that said.."The KKK killed 3649 Blacks over 86 years..(I'm still unsure of his count) Black on Black violence has killed far more than that in a period of months." The majority of the people snapping photos of this guy were ironically enough Black people... Amazingly...No one got lynched, no one got sucker punched and not one insult was hurled... Truly amazing...Now if that's not proof that there is indeed a GOD , I don't know what is!

I gotta hand it to whoever was under that hood for pure chutzpah...guts!!  He could have been killed.. Surrounded by THAT many Blacks and dressed like that.. The true irony was that his sign raised a valid point..

In the inner cities of Philly, Chicago,Los Angelas, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis,Miami ,Atlanta...young black men are killing other young Black men at a more alarming rate than the amount of young black men, lynched from 1900 until the sixties...It's a gun problem that is even more serious than the mass murders at Aurora and Newtown... Those don't happen everyday....But everyday...somebody gets shot in Chicago......or hell, right here in Philly!

And in Washington, D.C.  where urban gun violence is also very prevalent..House Democrats will unveil 15 gun control proposals, a package that resembles President Barack Obama’s plans and will include a ban on assault weapons.

People familiar with the proposal described the plan Wednesday, a day before House Democratic leaders planned to release it. These people were not authorized to discuss the plan publicly.


The plan was written by a dozen House Democrats led by California Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson.
Two-thirds of group had to back an item for it to be recommended. That means there could be Democratic dissenters for some proposals.

Among the task force’s members are Rep. John Dingell, the Michigan Democrat and the House’s longest serving member. Dingell has been a strong ally of the National Rifle Association, though he has clashed with them on some issues.

While we wait on a new round of laws to be passed to ease up the gun problem...Let's remember that that is only the surface of the issue...The pathology  that exists in Black and poor communities and in America in general...This glorification of violence and guns et al has to be dealt with...You can't legislate every single problem...

We've got to deal with issues such as self hatred, poverty, lack of opportunites, the psychosis of hopelessness that prevail amongst too many people, regardless of race...There is no easy answer...No easy solution....

Sad, but that Ku Klux Klansman was right!  So Sad!

A Year!

Yesterday, Trayvonn Martin would have turned 18 years old...Last year this time...He was still alive...Didn't know he only had days to live...It was right after last years Super Bowl...A Super Bowl he didn't finish viewing...See he was killed during half time when he ventured out to get an Ice Tea and some Skittles....and had the misfortune of running into George Zimmerman...

Hard to believe it's been a year!  A lot of us have forgotten...I haven't forgot!

A judge in the case of  former neighborhood watch leader, George Zimmerman accused of shooting  Black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin denied a request by his defense attorneys to delay the trial Tuesday.

George Zimmerman's attorneys presented a motion Tuesday asking Judge Debra Nelson to push the trial from mid-June back to November because they say the prosecutor has been slow to turn over needed evidence. The state attorney has denied the accusation.

Judge Nelson denied the motion and said the trial will begin on June 10. She noted that Zimmerman's lead attorney has been on the case for nearly a year and a half and said the problems he's having getting evidence are not insurmountable.

It's insurmountable if there is no evidence to get! 

Goerge Zimmerman's attorney, Mark O'Mara, said he wants to try the case in June but also wants to do it the right way.

"I will call my wife as an expert witness that I want this case tried in June," O'Mara said Tuesday. "There is no benefit to the defense team, there is certainly no benefit to Mr. Zimmerman and there is no benefit to the Martin family to keep this case going. I am very sensitive to that, but the reality is we have to try it once."

Prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda argued that the amount of preparation for the case is the result of Zimmerman's attorneys.

"I have never had a case, at least here in central Florida, as a normal thing where the defense creates their own website, creates their own Facebook , creates their own Twitter and just publishes stuff out there, encourages discussion among various groups," de la Rionda said. "I find it ironic that the defense complains they are now having to address all these issues, that with all due respect to the defense, they helped create." 

As I said in the very first paragraph ..Yesterday  happens to be what would have been Trayvonn Martin's 18th birthday, and his parents plan to celebrate the occasion with events throughout the week.

Community leaders and college students said a prayer and sang "Happy Birthday" before Tuesday's hearing in Sanford, and community leaders will be holding a "Banding Together for Peace" event later in the day.

On Saturday, Martin's parents will hold a "Peace Walk" at 10 a.m. at Ives Estate Park in Miami. On Sunday, they will hold a "remembrance Dinner" at 5 p.m. at the DoubleTree Miami Airport Hotel. All of the proceeds for the event will go to the Trayvon Martin Foundation.

George Zimmerman is claiming he acted in self-defense in shooting Martin last year and has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.

Hard to believe it's been a year! A lot of us have forgotten...I haven't forgot!

Butt.....

Usually I don't react or comment on every racist and stupid remark being made about the President, The first lady, Blacks, Latinos,Arabs, any non-whites period...and If it were not a slow news day I would not be writing about this...but this takes the damn cake..

In Alabama....Alabama high school psychology teacher Bob Grisham has been suspended for 10 days without pay for a rant that included calling the first lady “fat butt Michelle Obama." A student in Grisham’s class made an audio recording of the remarks, which also included derogatory comments about gays.

Bob Grisham's suspension from Lauderdale County High School begins on Tuesday, and he has been barred from teaching his class for the rest of the school year and ordered to attend sensitivity training. Also the school's head football coach, he will be assigned "other academic duties'' for the rest of the year in place of teaching his class, according to Lauderdale County Superintendent Jennifer Gray.

Bob Grisham will also have to meet monthly with Mark Butler, the school system's personnel director, to make sure he is meeting his requirements. Grisham's coaching job was not addressed at the Board of Education meeting on Monday night that decided his punishment for the remarks, Butler told TODAY.com.

During a debate-type discussion about current affairs in his class on Jan. 27, Grisham blamed the school’s low-calorie lunch offerings on “fat butt Michelle Obama.’’ He also added, “Look at her. She looks like she weighs 185 or 190. She’s overweight.’’
In that same class, he also voiced his disdain for homosexuals.
“I don’t believe in queers,’’ he said. “I don’t like queers. I don’t hate them as a person, but what they do is wrong and an abomination against God.’’

And this guy is teaching children?  Amazing...With the possible exception of Hillary Clinton, I have never seen such vitriol, such blatant dis-respect directed at a first lady of these United States..Deplorable...

Personally...I like the first lady's butt, but that's just me!

I'm sure the first lady ignores this crap and just takes it in stride...this being the nature of the beast that is some people in America.

Bob Grisham told Florence, Alabama's Times Daily last week that he misspoke during the debate in his class. Of course he did.

“We are profoundly disappointed in the actions and statements of Mr. Grisham,’’ Gray said in a statement. “The Board has taken actions specifically calculated to prevent such actions and statements from being made again. The Board hopes that this will serve as learning opportunity that all can move forward in a positive and productive manner.’’

Grisham’s comments about the First Lady’s posterior are the latest in a string of negative mentions. Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, has called her Michelle “My Butt’’ Obama, and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) was heard saying “she lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself.’’

The Atlantic also ran a story in December 2011 titled, “Why Fat Conservatives Love Calling Michelle Obama Fat” in which it labeled calling the First Lady fat one of the right wing’s “top political memes.’’

They could have also ran the same article and called it "Why Fat Conservatives have nothing better to do than pick on the first lady and Gays also...Same thing...

Bunch of idiots...

What I've Learned

1. Be very careful how you treat people...You never know who you might need one day!

2.They ignore you now, but they'll need you later!

3.Don't look back unless it's a great view.

4.Charlie Chaplin said -"Nothing is permanent in this wicked world..Not even our troubles." He was right!

5.The Trick is to enjoy your life and not waste it away wishing for better days!

6.Maturity comes when we start understanding the little things that people otherwise take for granted.

7.People that talk about you behind your back obviously belong behind you.

8.You can't reach for tomorrow's new things if you're still holding on to yesterday's junk.

9.I've learned to listen more than I talk...as a result...I'm learning a lot!

10.The more I write, the better I get at it.

Peace!

Weekend Humor

What is next for Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck now that both are off Fox Entertainment News?

Anybody got any odd jobs around your house You need done?

They could always pick up a shovel and help with the Hurricane Sandy cleanup?  I'm just sayin...


Have a great weekend everybody!