"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.














 










 


 

Tough guys.

  I caught the O man's speech last night, and it was, as is to be expected, presidential. I didn't feel the earth moving, but it was solid, and you can tell it had its required effect by how the wingnuts responded.




On MSNBC the man with the dead intern was beside himself with rage about O raising the minimum wage. And over on Fox the usual suspects were foaming at the mouth and shaking their fists at the president for not being willing to work with republicans as much as they would like him to.




Honestly, I am pretty sure that after six years this president realizes that no matter what he does republicans will never work with him. They hate everything he stands for and represents, and they are not afraid to show it.




Last night, for example, there was the following:


"..Randy Weber, a Texas Republican called President Obama the “Kommandant-In-Chef” ahead of the State of the Union Tuesday. He also misspelled chief as “chef.” A spokesperson for Weber confirmed the tweets are his.
 




I wonder where all this anger,  acrimony, and vitriol is coming from.


One of them even threatened to throw some poor reporter over a balcony last night for crying out loud. (And they call Richard Sherman a thug. Go figure.)


It's all about tone. We can disagree with each other about our politics, but our tone is so important. If you look at the elected officials in the republican party I think that you will find that setting the proper tone is not very high on their list of priorities. I mean these people just all seem so angry.


I suppose that this is to be expected when Chris Christie, of all people, is the leading contender to be their party's nominee for president come 2016.


I guess this is why the republicans gave us the very calm and motherly Cathy McMorris Rodgers last night to deliver their main response to the president's address.


Her tone was fine, although I felt like I wanted some milk and cookies after watching her.


"Let me be clear to you, you ever do that to me again I'll throw you off this f-----g balcony....No, no, you're not man enough, you're not man enough. I'll break you in half. Like a boy."


Or, like I would do to that Obama fellow.

Celebrating "The Beeb".

Justin Beiber's arrest is the biggest news in America these days. (BTW, to all the racists who were calling Richard Sherman a "thug", you need to check your boy "beebs" to see what a real thug looks like.)

"Respected journalists" like Andrea Mitchell were cutting into real news to give us breaking news accounts of Beiber's arrest. Sadly, this is what's considered major news in America these days, and it is a poor reflection on our shallow, celebrity obsessed, culture.

Not the uprising brewing in Kiev; not the growing crisis of income inequality in the world; not the mad man in North Korea threatening to blow his neighbors to the South out of the water; or, for that matter, the plethora of real problems we have in this country such as what to do with the NSA and controlling the proliferation of assault weapons on our streets. No, what we want to hear about is what a strung-out Justin Beiber happens to be doing with his money and his time.

I just wish that there were more people like me out there who could give a damn about what goes on with "The Beeb".


Finally, it looks like the Secret Service decided to pay a visit to my slave catching friend down in Florida. Sorry Joshua, you can't make such a high profile threat against the life of the president of the United States and not expect your threats to be taken seriously.


You, of all people, should realize that this particular president is more vulnerable when it comes to these types of threats than others who came before them. We all know that Americans have no problem with taking out their presidents, so making these types of statements in public was dangerous and irresponsible.  


"It was not a threat," said Black, insisting that his tweet — "I'm past impeachment. It's time to arrest and hang him high" — was merely expressing outrage over the president killing U.S. citizens with drone attacks and without due process."


Oh but it was a threat. And the boys in the dark suits were just making sure that you weren't going to follow through with it.