Setting the agenda on race.

   Black folks are not feeling much love for ABC News these days. (Sorry D.L. it's not only FOX VIEWS that likes to clown us.) Apparently the town hall meeting n race hosted by the network last night was somewhat of a sham. Just another prime time spectacle to capitalize on our current racial climate and drive up their ratings and their profits.

"Thursday’s ABC town hall with President Barack Obama was anticipated with bated breath.
Many were looking forward to an honest conversation about race, and the current tensions between the black community and police officers in the aftermath of the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and the attack in Dallas that left five officers dead.

Unfortunately, many activists left disappointed, even angry, at what they witnessed and heard.
Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner who was choked to death by New York City police in 2014, stormed out of the taping of the town hall, saying she had been “railroaded” by the network, denied the opportunity to ask the president a question, something she said she had been promised.
Garner said she felt that she had been “used for ratings,” and a few activists in the room agreed that the event seemed to be manipulative.

“It felt manipulative and disingenuous, and if we’re really trying to have a town hall about race in this country, it’s going to have to look much more like a truth-and-reconciliation process. It can’t be an hour and 15 minutes with the president taking up the most space, with people asking what he thinks of things instead of demanding that he do things,” Patrisse Kahn-Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Network, told The Root Friday.

“The town hall was clearly a curated event for ABC to quell protesters and organizers. It had nothing to do with actual future for black, people and I think that for us, we want to push POTUS in his last few months as the president to take executive action, to defund law-enforcement agencies that have consistently violated the civil and human rights of black people,” she added." [Source]

President Obama was the featured speaker, and he tried to calm their anger and fears with his usual platitudes.

The thing is, though, these kids out here are not trying to hear it. They think they see a set-up, and  they are going to let their voices herd no matter what. 

*Pic from cnn.com

Not "Everybody's All- American."

James Blake is an All American guy. He grew up in a solid middle class family in Connecticut, attended Harvard University, and spent much of his formative years in the very suburban town of Fairfield. Most important of all, though, he was a world class tennis player. He reached as high as number four on the tour and earned over seven million dollars in prize money.

James speaks "really well", looks very neat and "clean", and carries himself like a true gentleman. 
He is the kind of Negro that Joe Biden would gush over.

So imagine how poor James Blake felt when he was treated like just another Mike Brown or Eric Garner on the streets of New York recently.

"Five white undercover cops slammed retired black tennis star James Blake to the ground outside his midtown hotel Wednesday in a violent case of mistaken identity.

The 35-year-old Blake, once ranked No. 4 in the world, suffered a cut to his left elbow and bruises to his left leg as the law enforcement quintet handcuffed and held him for 15 minutes outside the Grand Hyatt.

"It was definitely scary and definitely crazy," said Blake, adding that none of the men initially identified themselves as a police officer. His right eye appeared a bit red hours later at the hotel.

The cops were investigating a credit card fraud operation when they took Blake to the ground around noon."

Five undercover cops for a credit card fraud case?! My goodness, no wonder crime is on the rise in New York. You would think that they would find better way to utilize the NYPD's manpower.

Poor Mrs. Blake must have been beside herself. What? How dare they? He is not like those other blacks. He married me for crying out loud! Let me stop.

Anyway, fortunately someone recognized the former tennis star and the police reluctantly let him go.

As is to be expected, poor James was not feeling very All American after the incident.

“In my mind there's probably a race factor involved, but no matter what there's no reason for anybody to do that to anybody,” Blake said. “You'd think they could say, 'Hey, we want to talk to you. We are looking into something.’ I was just standing there. I wasn't running. It's not even close (to be okay). It's blatantly unnecessary.”

Now now James, don't go playing the "race card', America has been very good to you.

"A police source said Blake was misidentified as a suspect wanted for buying a cellphone with a bogus credit card. A man who was standing near Blake was arrested in connection with the scam, police said.

“Once Blake was properly identified and found to have no connection to the investigation, he was released from police custody immediately,” the NYPD said in a statement." [Source]

Well James, look at the bright side. You could have been some poor unknown black man minding his business in New York City, when New York's finest decided to act on their all black men look alike conditioning. Trust me when I tell you, your experience would have been a whole lot different.

Now go and enjoy the rest of the US Open with your friends.  Maybe your buddy John Mayer will write a song about the incident.

*Pic from Wikipedia.













 

Fear of a black movement.

The Field Negro education series continues.

Tonight I cut and paste an excellent article from Huffington Post.

"Why has the Black Lives Matter movement not been classified as a hate group? Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Fox and Friends

Bill O'Reilly, in another conversation, answered this question in the affirmative and swore he would "shut them down." But how does one shut down the legitimate, organic forces of social change? In a modern democracy is the goal really silent, hands- folded conformity? Is this not a vision straight out of some futuristic, dystopian novel like Brave New World?

After all, racism in not a relic of the past to be found in a museum, gawked at and then largely forgotten in one's race to the cafeteria to enjoy a latte, as Fox news tries to peddle.
Racism still thrives. For example, between 2002 and 2014, consistently about 90% of people stopped and frisked in New York City by police were black or Latino, according to data by the New York Civil Liberties Union gleaned from police reports themselves.
 
Even white felons are more trusted by employers than blacks with no criminal record. According to a recent study that attempted to measure racial discrimination in hiring practices: "Among those with no criminal record, white applicants were more than twice as likely to receive a callback relative to equally qualified black applicants. Even more troubling, whites with a felony conviction fared just as well, if not better, than a black applicant with a clean background."

Obviously, contemporary racism takes more insidious and subtler forms than its virulent predecessors. In the South in the 1950's, black people could not vote because of literacy tests, poll taxes, and threats of violence. Today Republicans cloak the denial of the right to vote in the subterfuge of countering voting fraud, even if it is so rare that it is virtually non-existent. For example, one can vote in Texas with a gun permit, but not with a college identification. A party that wants to deny people the right to vote is a moribund political party.

Therefore, movements, such as Black Lives Matter, besides being integral to developing the next generation of political leaders fighting for racial justice, are an extension of the civil right's struggle rooted in the 1960's. Now, today's activists may be angrier than the iconic civil rights leaders of the '60's, but this anger can not be dismissed as illegitimate; for doing so would be a direct denial of the black experience in America, as the data on "stop and frisk" patterns suggests.

In a recent march in St. Paul, Minnesota, Black Lives Matters leaders shouted in unison "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" one day after a policeman was gunned down in cold blood in Houston. Such demonstrations of questionable behavior will draw animus even from whites and others of good will. But shouting irresponsible, juvenile refrains is not the same as cold blooded murder of a police officer and trying to connect the two, like O'Reilly does, is largely the work of someone who has not looked in his own heart to pry himself free of racial bigotries.

If the realities Black Lives Matters activists did not exist or were imagined, then Eric Garner would still be alive and not killed by a police officer in Staten Island who put him in an illegal chokehold for the shocking crime of selling loose cigarettes. With his dying breath, he repeated "I can't breath" eleven times before succumbing.

When Fox news sycophants deny racism and condemn Black Live's Matters they are disrespecting the death of Eric Garner and many others who died in police custody for no apparent reason. They are throwing dirt on the grave of Trayvon Martin who was killed for walking down the street eating Skittles by a man-child who readily used as a defense the wide latitude given by Stand Your Ground laws to justify cold-blooded murder.
 
The white hegemony that conservatives are trying to protect no longer exists and they are the only ones who can't see it. No, the vision that O'Reilly and other conservatives have is largely one very reminiscent of a 1950's television drama where blacks were largely seen, but not heard. It is an anachronism as dated as any Norman Rockwell portrayal of Americana.

Whether it is Black Lives Matter who demand to be heard or others, Fox News will attempt to shout down the movement to protect their cherished vision of a monochrome America, instead of the messy, rigidly stratified America that so many face." [Source]

I am glad I am not the only one to see it.

*Pic from newscorpse.com

First they came for the Negroes....

I will start with those provocative words from Pastor Martin Niemöller :

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

I know that some of my fiends in the majority population (and others) believe that  bad police behavior only impacts those pesky Negroes. And, more importantly, that you don't have to speak out because you are not a Negro.

But I have a couple of stories for you that might make you want to reconsider your position.

"Some are calling Robert Minjarez Jr. the Latino Eric Garner. Sadly, the comparison is uncanny—including the failure of the system to indict the officers who killed Minjarez.

For about five minutes, the report said, Minjarez is heard on dashcam audio screaming, "Help! Help! Help me! Get off! You're going to kill me!" The report also quotes him as saying "You're going to suffocate..." and "I can't breathe" three times. He cried and screamed, his voice becoming "increasingly muffled, hoarse and strained" while repeating "I can't breathe," the report added.  

About five minutes after he was restrained, the report said, Minjarez groaned and gurgled, and an officer said, "You got 265 pounds on your back, you're not going anywhere." The suspect groaned "and no more sounds are heard from him," the report said.

The report from the Lafayette, Louisiana, coroner lists the cause of death as "compressional asphyxia due to face-down physical restraint by law enforcement officers."

As was the case with the officers who killed Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, the grand jury proceedings in this case are sealed and prosecutors are not obligated to say a single word.
According to a local newspaper:

Minjarez was taken to the hospital by ambulance and EMS reported he "had blue ears and was not breathing initially." He remained in intensive care until declared brain dead and was declared dead on March 7, 2014." [Source]

And there is this sad story out of Iowa.

"A Des Moines police officer fired her service weapon through the rolled-up window of her patrol car on Tuesday night, fatally shooting an unarmed man said to be charging at her car, according to police.

Ryan Keith Bolinger, 28, of West Des Moines, died at the scene from a single gunshot to the torso. Police and witnesses said he led two officers on a slow chase through northwestern Des Moines Tuesday evening that ended with Bolinger exiting his vehicle and coming toward the squad car.

"He was walking with a purpose," Sgt. Jason Halifax of Des Moines Police said following a press conference Wednesday on the shooting.

Senior Police Officer Vanessa Miller, a seven-year veteran, fired the round that killed Bolinger. Miller was assisting Senior Police Officer Ian Lawler, also a seven-year veteran, in the pursuit of Bolinger's vehicle after a bizarre confrontation involving an unrelated vehicle stop that Bolinger interrupted.

Both officers are on administrative leave until the investigation, is completed, per the department policy. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation will assist in the investigation." [Source]

Wait a minute! "Walking with a purpose"? What the hell does that even mean?! Since when did "walking with a person" become a death sentence?

They called the officer that killed Mr. Bolinger a "Senior Police Officer". I would hate to see how a new police officer conducts him (or herself) in the field.

Say it with me people: These police officers need better training out here.

 

The strange case of Brandon Tate Brown, and another mass murder in middle America.

I have been watching the case of Tate Brown  here in Philly for awhile now.

This case, unlike other cases of police brutality, did not make national headlines.

I think I know why.

I also did not jump into the fray, because, quite frankly, I did not see an Eric Garner, or even a Michael Brown type scenario playing itself out here.

The truth is I represent a lot of people like Tate Brown. They are not angels or choir boys, and, if what is alleged is true, like Tate Brown, they make their living in the streets.    

So when I heard about the shooting death of Tate Brown on a street in Frankford section of Philadelphia, I gave the police officer (or officers) who shot him to death the benefit of the doubt. Although my instincts tell me that as a person of color I should have known better.
 

Now, sadly, there is a genuine issue as to whether Tate Brown was executed or he was shot to death by police officers following proper police procedures.

 

There has been no social media outcry or no calls for marches on a national scale, because Tate Brown had a gun in his car, and he had an extensive criminal record.

 

But does all of this matter? If he was not threatening the lives of the police officers who were arresting him, did he deserve to die?

 

Now the powers that be are giving us yet another story about what happened that night.

 

"THEY SAY the devil is in the details. And the details of Brandon Tate-Brown's December death at police hands are getting more devilishly contradictory daily, the lawyer representing the dead man's family said yesterday.

Meanwhile, the head of the Police Advisory Commission yesterday viewed videos pertaining to the incident and provided an account of what they show.

Initially, police said that the officer who shot Tate-Brown during a routine car stop on Dec. 15 in Frankford did so because he lunged for a handgun hidden in the console of his 2014 Dodge Charger as he struggled with two cops outside.

But now, they're saying Tate-Brown also "reached for his waistband" in the skirmish, according to a narrative of the incident police posted on their website.

A police spokesman attributed the discrepancies to the preliminary report issued to the public, which contained information that has since been updated as a result of further investigation.

 

Attorney Brian Mildenberg said Tate-Brown's autopsy report shows that cops gave the Medical Examiner's Office different details than what police officials have released publicly.

Specifically, police told the Medical Examiner that the officers asked Tate-Brown, 26, to step out of his car because they ran his plates and found they were registered to a different car-rental agency than where Tate-Brown told them he'd gotten the car.

One of the officers noticed the gun, the medical examiner's report notes, after he and his partner approached the car a second time - not upon their initial approach, as police officials have repeatedly said.

Police officials have maintained that the officers pulled Tate-Brown over on Frankford Avenue near Magee because his car headlights were out. However, the police statement made no mention of license-plate discrepancies. Meanwhile, the medical examiner's report makes no mention of the headlights. Instead, investigator Natalie Young notes only the license-plate issue.

Kelvyn Anderson, the executive director of the Police Advisory Commission, viewed footage from the incident yesterday at the behest of Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey.

He also reviewed statements from four witnesses at the scene, as well as other evidence." [Source]

Finally, another mass killing in America and another collective yawn from the citizens of our fine country.

Maybe if the killer had chosen to wear a dress with controversial colors he would have gotten our attention. 

 

 

 

 

 

The bread-lady and her family had some help.

 Man I wish I could stop talking about the bread-shoe lady, but, like Sarah Palin before her, this

republican matron has some issues.

The bread-shoe lady declared that her family was poor and had to pull themselves up. They weren't like those urban dwellers who depend on the government and refuse to work. No sir, the bread-shoe lady and her family were hard workers who had nothing handed to them.

But then....

"Joni Ernst, the new Republican senator from Iowa who delivered the GOP response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night, called in her address for cuts in government spending and described how her views grew out of her own “simple” upbringing, one in which her family diligently watched ever scarce penny, to the point where she owned only one pair of shoes.

But an investigation of public records by the Washington D.C.-based District Sentinel online news site showed that between 1995 and 2009, Ernst’s family received nearly a half-million dollars in government handouts, payments targeted toward subsidizing farms with taxpayer funds.

“I had only one good pair of shoes. So on rainy school days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them to keep them dry,” Ernst described in her State of the Union rebuttal Tuesday.

“But I was never embarrassed. Because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet. Our parents may not have had much, but they worked hard for what they did have.”

The address sounded many of the same themes used by Ernst in her election campaign in 2014, one which featured an advertisement depicting Ernst castrating a pig, as she declared that because her family learned to “live within our means,” the federal government should “do the same.”

But the District Sentinel investigation showed that Ernst’s own father, Richard Culver, received $38,395 in taxpayer handouts, almost all of which went to corn subsidies. The Iowa senator’s uncle, Dallas Culver, made out even better, soaking up almost $370,000 in federal agriculture subsidies.
The total subsidies enjoyed by members of Joni Ersnt’s family came in upwards of $460,000.

Ernst failed to mention her own family’s reliance on government assistance in her speech touting the virtues of self-reliance. According to Media Matters for America, no major media outlets that covered her speech made note of her family’s willingness to benefit from government spending, at the same time that Ersnt called for the new, Republican congress to “cut wasteful spending.”

CNN, for example, highlighted Ernst’s “hardscrabble upbringing,” while NBC News told how the 44-year-old Joni Ernst “brushed aside the president’s call for higher taxes on the wealthy, vowing that Republicans would cut wasteful spending and propose meaningful tax reforms.”

The Wall Street Journal even criticized Joni Ernst for not calling for enough cuts to “wasteful spending,” noting that her outspoken opposition to “federal government subsidies” was a big factor in earning her election to the Senate." [Source]

I am not surprised that our cowardly press didn't call out the bread-lady, but what is surprising is just how shameless she is.

Her family got almost half a million dollars from the government and she sits there on her high horse and tells us stories about how hard they had to work.

The truth is that while she is calling for cuts in the safety net, she was using government subsidies to get where she is.

Finally, I am glad that president Obama is acknowledging that there are sill biases in our society while discussing the relationship between police departments and minorities.

"YouTuber GloZell asked President Obama about police and minorities today, and the president said it’s important to admit “there are still biases in our society” and sometimes cops might target young black males just by the virtue of what they look like.

GloZell told Obama she cut all of her husband’s hoodies off because she’s worried about what could happen to him. Obama assured that the “overwhelmingly majority of police officers” do a good job and do it well.

That being said, the president said statistics show black males are seen as more threatening. Obama argued the solution is to improve training, citing the way he fought against racial profiling when he was in the Illinois state legislature." [Source]

Some of you Negroes wanted him to spend more time talking about Eric Garner and Ferguson in his SOTU address, but that was not going to happen. The fact that he mentioned them at all was noteworthy.

Although when you see stories like this and this taking place in America, you have to wonder if he didn't need to say more.

Misplaced blame.

My thoughts go out to the family of the two police officers who were assassinated by that lunatic who posted what he was going to do on social media in the name of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.


Before he got to New York the shooter shot his girlfriend and put her in critical condition.


Anyway, as is to be expected, some of the inmates in this asylum called America have declared that these police officers were shot to death because of the protest movement against police brutality and leaders such as Barack Obama and Al Sharpton.


If the former mayor of New York did not also make such an idiotic declaration, it would not even be worth commenting on. Sadly, though, what Rudy Giuliani said was indicative of the mindset of quite a few people who take the simplistic approach of placing blame for the actions of one lunatic on a just and needed movement.


What Giuliani and the other inmates don't understand, is that by trying to clean up the act of those in law enforcement we can prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future. He blames the actions of Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley on the leaders of the protest movement and the protesters themselves, but what he fails to realize is that if Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo did not act they way they did, this lunatic might just have taken himself out without trying to make a political statement in the process.


But hey, as that Doobie Brothers song says, "what a fool believes he sees."






     

The killing of Jack.

So have you all heard about the tragic shooting of a beloved family pet in Questa Verde, California?


It seems that while the family was inside the home, a police officer was investigating a burglary call. He went into the backyard of the home, and the poor dog, who always played with the mailman, suddenly charged him. (The officer's uniform must have fooled him.)


Sadly, officer William Moreland fired three bullets into the family dog killing him instantly.


Now the people of Questa Verde are outraged. The seven year old Welsh corgi named Jack did not have do die this way. Officer Moreland has been placed on paid administrative leave pending a further investigation of the incident.


PETA and various other groups have been picketing the police station and calling for the officer to resign. It is reported that the family is in seclusion and are devastated.


OK, so I just made up that entire story to make a point. Unless you believe that the movie Poltergeist was not based on fiction, you will understand that there is no town called Questa Verde, California. And the last time I checked, detective William Moreland was Wendell Pierce's character in The Wire. Jack? Well I think that was the name of the scruffy little dog on Little House On The Prairie.


But here is the thing, had it all been true, more people in the majority population would be up in arms about the shooting death of Jack the Welsh corgi than they would the shooting death of Tamir Rice , or the choking death of Eric Garner.


No matter how egregious the actions of the police officers were in these cases, we learn that poll after poll shows that most people in the majority population just do not see it that way. To them, their local police are fair to black people.


Again, had the story above been true, I suspect that polls taken about the actions of Officer Moreland would have had a different result than they do about the actions of the police officers in these latest high profile cases where black men were killed. White folks take it to a whole different level when it comes to their pets. When it comes to the lives of young black men, on the other hand, not so much.


The president has dogs. Why isn't he on television saying if he had a Welsh corgi he would look like Jack?  It's an outrage!


*As far as I know the dog in the pic's name is not Jack and he is doing just fine.

"I can't breathe".

Those were Eric Garner's last words.


I wonder how many of the  right- wing nuts and their apologists (I see you Charles Barkley) will say that Eric Garner was a "thug" as they did with Michael Brown.


My man was selling cigarettes and trying to get his hustle on to feed his family and he ended up dead.


I am curious as to what good body cameras on police officers will do when we all watched Eric Garner being choked to death by an overzealous police officer in live and living color. (Pun intended.)


Although I suppose that if the event was not filmed we would be hearing, as we did with Darren Wilson, that this evil terrifying black monster had to be taken down before he killed all the police officers at the scene.


Now, understandably, black folks and people of conscience are upset at this latest instance of injustice in these divided states of America. I mean isn't it ironic that the man who filmed the killing of Eric Garner was indicted but his actual killer was not?


On the other side of the divide are people like the United States congressman who declared that Mr. Garner caused his own death because he is "obese." This kind of reaction is typical of certain people here in America. It's never the fault of the police officer when it involves a black defendant. Because, well, we know how those blacks are. Even when they are being killed by police officers who are unfit to do their jobs.


"Earlier, Garner’s visibly upset stepfather, Benjamin Carr, said the grand jury decision “don’t make no sense.”


“'I mean, I don't understand it,' he said. 'They lock a man up for a damn dog fight. They don't lock this son-of-a-bitch up for killing somebody.”'


Well Mr. Carr, one is a black man and the other is a dog. If you understand the pecking order of lives in America it makes a lot of sense.














 










 


 

Officer- involved killing.

If you happen to be a man of color in America these days, you might want to be very careful when you come in contact with members of the law enforcement community.


It's as if there is a secret shooting game circulating among police officers in this country. Over the past few days it has happened again, and again, and again.




The latest tragic tale comes to us from the city of St. Louis, where an unarmed teen was killed by a police officer in what was described as a "police shooting".


The police chief, in his press conference, seems to be hinting that the shooting was justified; eye witnesses and others, on the other hand, say something quite different happened out there. He was shot ten times. I guess with the Negro you have to keep shooting until he is dead. They hard to kill those Negroes.




Members of the community are understandably outraged. But they should be used to this by now. And, sadly, the tipping point will not be coming anytime soon.


Check out this collection of men of color who were killed by members of law enforcement over the past few years.


Chilling stuff. But it's something we have to live with here in America.


As a man of color I have learned how to navigate the day to day perils of life in our country. It is a delicate dance. One that requires vigilance, street smarts, and knowledge of the law. It's a dance that always ends tragically for some, and one that leaves a constant feeling of cynicism and jaded mistrust for those of us who survive it.


Some of us have an easier time of it than others. Fate has been kinder to us. We don't live in those neighborhoods, or hang around with those types of people. The chances are, then, that we won't be executed by some trigger happy, color aroused cop, or some gangbanger's stray bullet.


But we are not naïve; we understand that we are just a car stop or a misunderstanding away from meeting the same fate as Eric Garner, Michael Brown, or Trayvon Martin.


It's our reality, but it doesn't make it right.    















 

Wrongdoing in New York but not with Benghazi.

And now this from the news you will never hear on FOX VIEWS department:




"The House Intelligence Committee, led by Republicans, has concluded that there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee.


The panel voted Thursday to declassify the report, the result of two years of investigation by the committee. U.S. intelligence agencies will have to approve making the report public.


Thompson said the report "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given."


That conflicts with accusations of administration wrongdoing voiced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista (San Diego County), whose House Government Oversight and Reform Committee has held hearings on the Benghazi attack."


Oh my! What is the "car thief" going to do now? He wasted millions of dollars on his investigation witch-hunt to score political brownie points, and, as it turns out, he hid the truth from the country for over a year.




He went from stealing cars to stealing from the American people.




Now on to New York, where the videotaped chokehold killing of Eric Garner has spurred a new debate about police brutality and police misconduct.




The killing has been ruled a homicide by the New York City Medical Examiner's office, and the minority residence of the country's largest city are demanding justice.




I would like to say that justice will be forthcoming, but sadly, I am not that optimistic. Already we are learning that the citizen who bravely filmed the tragic incident has been arrested. (Mr. Orta, it might be time to leave New York)




Now, to add insult to death, the police union in New York has declared that the officer who murdered Mr. Garner was following proper police practices, and that the ME report was politically motivated. I have to give it to you boys in blue; you sure know how to get each other's back no matter what.




But this is the environment in which New Yorkers are seeking justice. Good luck with that.




Finally, did you hear the one about some dude who was trying to take a selfie with his gun and shot himself to death?  That's crazy, right? 




Well, you know what's really crazy?  Here in this country the NRA is advocating letting blind people own guns. Yep. As if it's not bad enough that children get their hands on guns with tragic results. Now we have to add blind people to the mix.




I bet Darrell Issa is a card carrying member of the NRA. They both deserve each other.