Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Here's your Enemies of the American People, a**holes


As Hurricane Michael hit Panama City, Fla., this afternoon with a massive storm surge and 155 mph sustained winds, the staff of WMBB television were in the studio, on the air and getting the news out.

That is, until the folks at News 13 weren't. The cement building was shaking, viewers could hear the roar of the wind outside the station, the wind gauge blew of the roof . . . and then Michael blew WMBB off the air and left the studios and newsroom dark.

Then this happened on Facebook. Live. Via somebody's cellphone.

My wife's college newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan, used to have a T-shirt with the motto "Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down." That's how journalists roll. Even when the bastard is an almost-Category 5 hurricane.

Here's your damn "Enemies of the American People," folks.

And if this can't keep the "fake news media" down, neither will the halfwit tangerine toadstool-in-chief, nor will the other little Hitlers who occupied the Republican Party and populate Donald Trump's Nuremberg for Dummies rallies.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Meme-ing down your leg with holy water


Today's prayers, thanks to yesterday's inaction.

















* a sampling



What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister has nothing to wear
and has no food for the day,
and one of you says to them,
"Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,"
but you do not give them the necessities of the body,
what good is it?
So also faith of itself,
if it does not have works, is dead.

Indeed someone might say,
"You have faith and I have works."
Demonstrate your faith to me without works,
and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.
You believe that God is one.
You do well.
Even the demons believe that and tremble.
Do you want proof, you ignoramus,
that faith without works is useless?
Was not Abraham our father justified by works
when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?
You see that faith was active along with his works,
and faith was completed by the works.
Thus the Scripture was fulfilled that says,
Abraham believed God,
and it was credited to him as righteousness,
and he was called the friend of God.
See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
For just as a body without a spirit is dead,
so also faith without works is dead.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Tom Snyder's alive & well & wrangling hurricanes in Florida


TV legend Tom Snyder, of Tomorrow fame in the 1970s, died a decade ago at age 71.

Well, that's what he wants you to think.

But Revolution 21 has it on good authority that the impish, acerbic NBC anchorman and interviewer -- last seen enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke and wearing a tan leisure suit -- actually snuck off to sunny Florida in 2007.

But he didn't stray far from a TV camera and a microphone.

How?



WELL, we're not sure of all the how-tos and wherefores, but a highly reliable source at a Macedonian investigative-news website says the "death" and re-emergence of Snyder went something like this:

Tom Snyder
Snyder, about 15 years ago, stumbled across the Florida location of Ponce de Leòn's fountain of youth, reputedly located in a remote, uninhabited area somewhere between Cypress Gardens and Legoland. The whole "cancer diagnosis" was a ploy that allowed him, after preliminary planning, to disappear from the public eye. And with his "death," attention shifted away from the one-time media icon who did battle late nights with everyone from Johnny Rotten to Rona Barrett.

Sometime late in 2007, he made his way to central Florida. At some point, he immersed himself in the rejuvenating waters of de
Leòn's lost wonder of the New World, then took up meteorology.

Tom Snyder, born again in the magic waters, took on the identity of "Matt Devitt," it is said. The old TV fixture -- once so ubiquitous and recognizable that Dan Ackroyd built a career parodying him on Saturday Night Live -- had undone most telltale signs of his old existence.


Matt Devitt
But not all.

He could lose the leisure suits and the cloud of smoke. He could lose the groovy '70s hairdo. He could lose the past several decades, and lose the public's attention. He could lose his old specialty and pick up a new one.

What he couldn't leave behind, though, was that voice. The mannerisms. His way with words. The impishness.


"Matt Devitt," WINK television weatherman. Yeah, whatever you say "Mr. Devitt."

We'll play along. But you're not really fooling anybody . . . Tom.

We've learned to recognize fake news when we see it. And we damn well know that Tom Snyder will never die. He'll just go to Florida and dunk himself in the old explorer's saving waters as needed.

But don't worry, Tom. We won't tell Rona where you are.


Thursday, September 15, 2016

Dispatches from Trump's Amerika


Somewhere in Bumf****, Fla., there's a principal who apparently isn't obsessed with where one half of 1 percent of the American population gets to pee.

Unfortunately, he is obsessed with using authoritarianism to foster Americanism among his students. In other words, "Love your country . . . or else." A story Wednesday from WBBH television in Fort Myers proves that you can't make this stuff up:
A Collier County principal is requiring students to stand during the national anthem at school events or face ejection. 
Lely High School Principal Ryan Nemeth told students during video announcements they'll be ejected from school sporting events if they refuse to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner." 
Nemeth told students the issue is very important to him, and the policy applies to students at all school-sponsored sporting events. 
"You will stand, and you will stay quiet. If you don't.. you are going to be sent home, and you're not going to have a refund of your ticket price," he told them.
NEVER MIND that respect -- or love -- coming at the barrel of a gun (or the threat of being kicked out of a football game) isn't. What it is, is a lie. A Potemkin pledge. It is standing for nothing before a national symbol that half-assed dictators have turned into full-fledged idolatry.

The only legitimately American response to a half-witted, authoritarian bully like a certain Florida principal is to quite deliberately, ostentatiously and quietly sit during the Star-Spangled Banner.

And students who do will find the Constitution is on their side.

"Over a decade ago, Chief Justice [Charles Evans] Hughes led this Court in holding that the display of a red flag as a symbol of opposition by peaceful and legal means to organized government was protected by the free speech guaranties of the Constitution," Justice Robert Jackson wrote for the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1943 when it decided West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnett.
Here, it is the State that employs a flag as a symbol of adherence to government as presently organized. It requires the individual to communicate by word and sign his acceptance of the political ideas it thus bespeaks. Objection to this form of communication, when coerced, is an old one, well known to the framers of the Bill of Rights. 
It is also to be noted that the compulsory flag salute and pledge requires affirmation of a belief and an attitude of mind. It is not clear whether the regulation contemplates that pupils forgo any contrary convictions of their own and become unwilling converts to the prescribed ceremony, or whether it will be acceptable if they simulate assent by words without belief, and by a gesture barren of meaning. It is now a commonplace that censorship or suppression of expression of opinion is tolerated by our Constitution only when the expression presents a clear and present danger of action of a kind the State is empowered to prevent and punish. It would seem that involuntary affirmation could be commanded only on even more immediate and urgent grounds than silence. But here, the power of compulsion is invoked without any allegation that remaining passive during a flag salute ritual creates a clear and present danger that would justify an effort even to muffle expression. To sustain the compulsory flag salute, we are required to say that a Bill of Rights which guards the individual's right to speak his own mind left it open to public authorities to compel him to utter what is not in his mind.


REMEMBER, this ruling came in the middle of World War II. The justice continued:
Government of limited power need not be anemic government. Assurance that rights are secure tends to diminish fear and jealousy of strong government, and, by making us feel safe to live under it, makes for its better support. Without promise of a limiting Bill of Rights, it is doubtful if our Constitution could have mustered enough strength to enable its ratification. To enforce those rights today is not to choose weak government over strong government. It is only to adhere as a means of strength to individual freedom of mind in preference to officially disciplined uniformity for which history indicates a disappointing and disastrous end. 
The subject now before us exemplifies this principle. Free public education, if faithful to the ideal of secular instruction and political neutrality, will not be partisan or enemy of any class, creed, party, or faction. If it is to impose any ideological discipline, however, each party or denomination must seek to control, or, failing that, to weaken, the influence of the educational system. Observance of the limitations of the Constitution will not weaken government in the field appropriate for its exercise. 
2. It was also considered in the Gobitis case that functions of educational officers in States, counties and school districts were such that to interfere with their authority "would in effect make us the school board for the country." 
The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures -- Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.
WELL, this is the Age of Trump, and I suppose it's more likely than not that "to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes" is exactly what people want out of public education today.

This is precisely why we have a Bill of Rights. Perhaps it's not so much to protect us from an abusive government but, instead, to protect us from ourselves.
 
Language of fascists, racists and morons in this video definitely NSFW

IN TRUMP'S AMERIKA, the above video displays what "love of country" comes to when severed completely from any understanding of human dignity or the principles at the core of the American republic. 

It is the principles that underlie the Bill of Rights (and the Fourteenth Amendment) that define the United States of America. Not race, not region, not class, not ethnicity and not religious affiliation, but those principles define what it means to be American.

And whether we're talking about half-witted, racist vulgarians in Massachusetts or authoritarian school principals in Florida, that shared contempt for those tenets that define us as Americans call into question the loyalty of those making "patriotism" such an issue in the first place.

Traitors are as traitors do.


HAT TIP:  Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Things you can't make up


I would not attempt to make this up.

You only attempt to make up things people might actually fall for. Nobody would buy someone named Phuc Kieu being arrested on attempted-rape charges.

Further commentary would be pointless, except to say that of course this happened in Florida.


HAT TIP: Romenesko.

Saturday, July 05, 2014

So much better without the Hellfire missiles


So . . . what does one see after flying a drone tricked out with a GoPro camera into a fireworks display?

This.

"This" would be pure awesomeness, as captured by videographer Jos Stiglingh in West Palm Beach, Fla., some time back. Watch in high definition and full screen; you won't be sorry you did.

And, for the record, how did he not get his drone blowed up good? That would have been bad.


HAT TIP: New York Daily News.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Whither North Dakota?


Apparently, the government shutdown has dried up all funding for education.

But if you're going to have an epic geographical fail, you'd just as well put it on Facebook. Especially if you're the chief meteorologist for a local Fox affiliate in Florida. Which we all know is somewhere between Cuba and Egypt.

Rare is the government that is smarter than the people who put it in power. In other words, to quote Dr. Zachary Smith, "We're doomed! We're doomed! We're all going to die!"

Thursday, August 29, 2013

No, son, they're not calling you a whale


You have your freshman mistakes, and then you have your freshman mistakes that you can't wait to share with the world.

World, meet Ishmail Jackson, Nebraska football walk-on. He was set on being a Husker, and damn if he didn't make the team. The upside to that is obvious enough.

I imagine he's just about to experience the downside -- Coach Bo Pelini's survey course on the cold, hard facts of life. One of those is that Husker football players, even the walk-ons, are public figures. And public figures, if they know what's good for them, do not go on Twitter to disparage Nebraska womanhood.

For example, "98% of the black girls at this school are just disgustingly ugly."

For another example, "Yall [sic] thought florida [sic] had ugly girls? omg lol"

I THINK more than half the University of Nebraska-Lincoln population will be calling young Mr. Jackson something, but it won't be Ishmael. It looks like Uncle Matt -- as in Damon, of movie fame -- never got around to explaining public relations, how it works and why it's important. Or the whole public-figure thing.

Now that talk will come from Coach Bo, who sometimes could be mistaken for Mount Vesuvius. He won't be nearly so smooth as Uncle Matt.

Let's just hope that Jackson, post eruption, isn't mistaken for Pompeii. Which, actually, wouldn't be the worst thing that could happen to him.

After all, being an 18-year-old male, he might do something even stupider than scorning half the population, with a soupçon of racial je ne sais quoi for bad measure: He might actually ask a coed for a date. That probably wouldn't end well.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Because there are no 'enhanced recounts'. . . .

The Honorable Whack Job from Florida has ways of dealing with sticky wickets such as this.

Unfortunately for him, however,  it would have been impractical for congressman Allen West to shove the State of Florida's head into a weapon-clearing barrel and fire his sidearm into the sand next to it until it gave him the result he desired.

So, according to this story from ABC News, the other guy has at long last won:
Rep. Allen West, a Florida Tea Party Republican who rode the wave of anti-spending fever to Congress in 2010, has conceded to Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy, who will take his seat as the youngest member of the 113th Congress in January.

The Associated Press today called the race for Murphy. West conceded in a statement, while saying “there are certainly still inaccuracies in the results.

“For two weeks since Election Day, we have been working to ensure every vote is counted accurately and fairly,” West said. “While many questions remain unanswered, today I am announcing that I will take no further action to contest the outcome of this election.”

The race was decided by fewer than 2,000 votes, with Murphy topping West 166,233 to 164,316, according to the latest tally from the AP. The state of Florida must still certify the result.

“While a contest of the election results might have changed the vote totals, we do not have evidence that the outcome would change,” West continued. “I want to congratulate my opponent, Patrick Murphy, as the new congressman from the 18th Congressional District. I pray he will serve his constituents with honor and integrity, and put the interests of our nation before his own.”

Murphy maintained a considerable lead while provisional and absentee ballots were counted, but West forged ahead with legal challenges.

“I appreciate Congressman West’s gracious concession today,” Murphy said today in a statement. “To those who supported my opponent, my door is open and I want to hear your voice.  I campaigned on a message of reaching across the aisle to get things done for the people of the Treasure Coast and Palm Beaches, and that is as important in this district as it is in Washington.  I am excited and honored to get to work.”
ON THE BRIGHT SIDE for the soon-to-be-former congressman, he'll have a lot more free time to engage in non-negotiable sex acts with his very own personal "porn star," otherwise known as Mrs. West.

Onward Christian soldiers, marching off to. . . .

Thursday, June 21, 2012

It must have been the 'secret sauce'

Bad things happen when swamp people get not-so-secret sauced on some resort barroom's high-octane "goo-goo juice."

Ask "Trapper Joe," who found out the hard way that while Louisiana alligators might be marginally meaner than Florida cops, they ultimately lack the power to throw your ass in jail.

Which is where your ass is going to end up when your drunk girlfriend tells Orange County lawmen your drunk self assaulted and battered her, says the
TMZ website, which in this case must stand for Too Many Zombies:
Trapper Joe -- real name Noces Joseph LaFont Jr. -- was arrested for assault and battery in Orange County, Florida early Wednesday morning.

According to the arrest report, a witness told police Trapper Joe and his GF were arguing at the Buena Vista Hotel and Spa just after midnight ... and both appeared very drunk.

The witness claims he watched Joe punch the woman in the chest ... and then grab her by the arms and shake her very hard.

The GF told police Joe had received a call on his cell phone ... and she wanted to know who was calling ... but when she reached for his phone, he tried to burn her with a lit cigarette.
I'M SURPRISED they both didn't burst into flames, actually.

Well, at least the Florida cops didn't choot 'em. That's somethin', at least.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Hey, y'all! (Hic!) Watch this!


You're drunk off your ass (allegedly).

You have no driver's license.

Because it was suspended for 10 years after your third DUI.

Your wife also is three sheets to the wind (allegedly). She's in the back of your SUV.

She's cheering on your 7-year-old granddaughter.

Whom you're towing down the street in her plastic kiddie car.

Which is attached to the SUV with a couple of dog leashes.

What the hell could go wrong?

WELL, you could get stopped by the cops, who throw your and your boozy wife's saturated asses in jail. But that's what went right.

Naturally, this occurred in south Florida. And, naturally, it made the
MSNBC news headlines:
Belinda and Paul Berloni were arrested on Sunday after a deputy in a marked patrol car saw the SUV pulling a "small plastic hot wheels car" along an access road, authorities said. The vehicle was going about five to 10 miles per hour, the probable cause affidavit said.

The girl was wearing a bathing suit with no protective gear, authorities said. The toy car was attached to the SUV with two dog leashes tied to the trailer hitch, the affidavit said.

Paul Berloni, 49, smelled of alcohol and his eyes were bloodshot and watery, the affidavit said. When asked for his driver's license, he said it had been revoked for 10 years for a DUI. He also told authorities he had two or three drinks, authorities said. He later said it was more but wasn't specific, the affidavit said.

Belinda Berloni, 47, was in the cargo area with the rear hatch open cheering the little girl on, the affidavit said. She was also intoxicated and said she had a few drinks, authorities said.

She "also stated that she understood that it was dangerous to drag a child behind the vehicle but stated they were just having fun and had been doing it all day," the affidavit said.

Belinda Berloni's son, who is the girl's father, arrived and was upset with his mother. He also said that he believed they had a drinking problem that may have affected their decision making, the affidavit said.
FRANKLY, I'm wondering about Junior's decision making, which he apparently cannot blame on the bottle.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

This says nothing good about anybody


There's one hapless hog hunter in Florida who has some 'splainin' to do on, oh, so many levels.

I think I'd best leave it at that. The story is here.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

America's Caucasian problem

(Photo//Paul M. Walsh)

Apparently, the United States has a major Caucasian crime problem.

I mean, get a load of these alarming statistics in an opinion piece by
MSNBC political analyst Edward Wyckoff Williams, recently reprinted in the Louisiana Weekly, New Orleans' African-American newspaper:
The truth? As the largest racial group, whites commit the majority of crimes in America. In particular, whites are responsible for the vast majority of violent crimes. With respect to aggravated assault, whites led Blacks 2-1 in arrests; in forcible-rape cases, whites led all racial and ethnic groups by more than 2-1. And in larceny theft, whites led Blacks, again, more than 2-1.

Given this mathematical truth, would anyone encourage African Americans to begin shooting suspicious white males in their neighborhoods for fear that they’ll be raped, assaulted or murdered? Perhaps George Zimmerman’s defenders should answer that question. If African Americans were to act as irrationally as Zimmerman did, would any rationale suffice to avoid arrest?


(snip)

It seems that the media in general and white American society in particular prefer to focus on crime perpetrated by African Americans because it serves as a way to absolve them from the violence, prejudice and institutionalized discrimination engendered for generations against Blacks. It offers a buffer against responsibility, a way to shift blame and deflect cause and effect. But the truth, and numbers, tell a different story.
NO DOUBT about it, this "mathematical truth" certainly gives one pause.

I cannot conceive of any rationale that possibly
could justify arresting any black American who did any damn thing to a dangerous Caucasian, the raw crime numbers being what they are. I mean, when you have a white population 5.74 times as large as the U.S. black population raping and committing larceny TWICE as much as blacks -- hell, getting arrested period twice as much as blacks -- I don't see how the government just doesn't lock up every last damn cracker on the probabilities alone.

Naturally, some people may be scratching their heads at what they see as a crazy and illogical notion, but that's just because their math is racist.

Oh . . . and as Walker Percy once famously wrote, "The center did not hold."

Help! Help! The mobs are being repressed!


Whatever the Trayvon Martin shooting was in February, chances are it wasn't a hate crime.

Whatever the Trayvon Martin killing was that cold and rainy night, it wasn't premeditated. Prosecutors admitted that much by not filing first-degree murder charges against George Zimmerman.

But a lot of things being done in the young "martyr's" name absolutely have been premeditated. And they absolutely were hate crimes.


ONE OF the latest happened Saturday in Mobile, Ala. The story comes from WKRG television there:
According to police, Owens fussed at some kids playing basketball in the middle of Delmar Drive about 8:30 Saturday night. They say the kids left and a group of adults returned, armed with everything but the kitchen sink.

Police tell News 5 the suspects used chairs, pipes and paint cans to beat Owens.

Owens' sister, Ashley Parker, saw the attack. "It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed." Parker says 20 people, all African American, attacked her brother on the front porch of his home, using "brass buckles, paint cans and anything they could get their hands on."

Police will only say "multiple people" are involved.

What Parker says happened next could make the fallout from the brutal beating even worse. As the attackers walked away, leaving Owen bleeding on the ground, Parker says one of them said "Now that's justice for Trayvon." Trayvon Martin is the unarmed teenager police say was shot and killed February 26 by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida.
BACK IN FLORIDA this past winter, it's probably true that Zimmerman profiled Martin because of his age, gender . . . and race.

Given what's happened since that day in February -- not to mention the daily diet of violent-crime reports on TV and in the newspaper -- why do you think that might have been? It doesn't make profiling any less sad. Nor does it make profiling any less regrettable.

But it sure as hell makes it quite understandable.

In the real world, thugs don't get to complain about brutality. And unjust, violent mobs don't get to whine about injustice. That dog won't hunt.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Justice for Walgreens!


I just love how principled and socially conscious today's young people are, don't you?

When faced with the senseless shooting death of a Miami teenager amid questionable circumstances, these south Florida high-school youth responded by giving the rest of us a much-needed lesson in civics. A lesson in responsibly seeking redress of societal grievances.

They peacefully and respectfully demonstrated in favor of a full and fair investigation of the death of Trayvon Martin, calling for racial harmony and enforcement of the law free of favor or prejudice. Bless their little hearts.


The youth remained orderly, looking straight ahead as they sang hymns while an angry white mob ransacked North Miami Beach Senior High School, pummeling and spitting upon many of the nonviolent teens.

OOPS. My bad. I was watching a web video of Eyes on the Prize while I was checking out the national news, and I got kind of confused.

Note to self: Contemporary TV news reports are never on 16-millimeter back-and-white film. It's all videotape or digital video now . . . and in living color.



THE FOOTAGE from Friday's teenage protest in North Miami Beach is immediately above. Again, my apologies for the mix-up.

No, it seems that during last week's protest, a mob of little barbarian hooligans decided that "justice for Trayvon" entailed ransacking a local Walgreens.

This is because, for one thing, being angry justifies anything in today's culture and, for another, rumor has it that George Zimmerman, the Sanford, Fla., neighborhood-watch guy who shot the youth last month, "liked" the drugstore chain on
Facebook once. I think.

Local 10 television news got it straight from the junior lynch mob's mouths:
"I don't think they were doing it, like, to be malicious or whatever. They were just in the moment where they weren't really thinking right because they were so angry," said student Jenny Sincere.

"It showed bad character because that's not what we were out there for," student Eric On-Sang said. "A few just made us look really bad."

Some students admitted Tuesday to being part of the rampage.

"I'm not going to lie. I was one of the people that was pushing in there because I was mad," one student said.

When asked whether the incident may have hurt their cause, student Christopher Paul said, "Yeah, it kind of did, yeah. I was just angry. I don't know what the rest of them were doing. I was just trying to make a point for Trayvon. That's it."
WELL, so long as they were trying to make a point.

Consider it made.

Monday, March 26, 2012

A high-tech lynching


Back in the bad old days, not every victim of a white lynch mob was innocent.

History, rightly, has been no kinder to those who dragged a guilty black man off to the nearest lamp post or tree, put a rope around his neck and hanged him than its unblinking eye has been to those who did the same to an innocent African-American. Justice always has been more about the process -- and fairness -- than it has been about the outcome.

All earthly justice requires is that we do right, play fair and hope for the best. Ultimate justice, we must remember, is not in our hands.

Of course, history also -- unavoidably -- loves irony. That's because people so often forget their own history . . . and its lessons. Fairness is always all about us, not the other guy.

And especially not about The Other guy.

Welcome to the transformation of a movement that started out as a quest for "justice" for Trayvon Martin, a Florida teenager shot to death by a "citizens patrol" volunteer. Now it's just a photo-negative version of an old-time Southern lynch mob.

It probably is no surprise this is happening in a state long noted for its citizens' inability to work and play well with one another.


PERSONALLY, I think the neighborhood-watch guy, George Zimmerman, well might be guilty of something in the shooting of the 17-year-old. That's my judgment based on extremely incomplete information from the national press -- the same information the lynch mob for "justice" is going on. Probably more, actually.

I think the guy probably was a paranoid-type police wannabe who stereotyped a harmless kid because he looked like the unending bad news out of black America, as reported by your local Eyewitness Action NewsCenter team. I think Zimmerman decided he was Dirty Harry, got in way over his head, things got out of hand, the man with handgun panicked . . . and an innocent kid ended up dead.

I think Zimmerman could be convicted of something, but likely not premeditated murder or a "hate crime" -- a term many have thrown around recklessly. I also think, Florida being Florida, that the guy might get off scot-free.

I believe Florida just might burn before all this is over with.

Of course, my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it. And so are those of the "Justice for Trayvon" protesters.

In our system, the only opinions that are supposed to matter are a judge's and jury's. Right now, "justice" has nothing to do with an arrest. Justice has everything to do with ensuring a full and fair investigation.

Justice likewise has nothing to do with media tripe like the NewsOne (for Black America) blurb convicting Zimmerman of first-degree murder before the man is even arrested for . . . anything. In legal terms, this is what is called "actionable."

In journalism school, this is what we learned not to do if we didn't want to get sued to Kingdom Come. All is fair in love and lynchings, however.

Just like the "Pussy Ass Cracker" shirt now being sold, according to The Smoking Gun. The one with George Zimmerman's face on it.

Then again, if you're already lynching somebody, there's not exactly any point in not being racist about it.

Meet the black boss. Same as the white boss. We'll get fooled again.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

From the More $$$ Than Sense department. . . .


Never, ever pay $999,900 for a creepy mask of some notorious person whose name we won't remember in 20 years. And whose name I won't mention now.

Given the way things are going in Washington, I'd think you'd want to place that kind of money in a safe place, not on a gigantic bet that fools bigger than oneself will have money from which they can be parted.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Orlando cracks down on 'terrorists'


Who knew that Orlando, Fla., was the front line in the War on Terror?

But it is. The city that Mickey Mouse built is waging a brutal, years-long battle against homegrown al-Qaida, ruthless enemies of society and the state pursuing a relentless course of . . . feeding the homeless.

The repeated attacks on public hunger, in blatant disregard of Orlando's ban on feeding the
animals homeless, have thrown central Florida into a state of panic and chaos, leading Mayor Buddy Dyer to use the phrase "food terrorists" to describe Food Not Bombs' vegetarian-chili ladlers.

ABC News outlines why Orlando is after Food Not Bombs -- part of the city's effort to create a nation of bombs, not food:
Members of the organization Food Not Bombs were in good spirits as they passed out corn on the cob, rice, beans and other vegetarian dishes to the homeless and hungry in an Orlando park. This cheer was interrupted when police officers on bicycles arrived and arrested five of the volunteers.

This is not the first time this scene has played out for members of Food Not Bombs.

Since June 1, a dozen members of the group have been arrested for violating a new Orlando city ordinance that prohibits sharing food with large groups in downtown parks more than twice a year.

The mayor of Orlando even branded them "food terrorists."

Food Not Bombs is an international political organization that protests war, poverty and the destruction of the environment, according to their website. The group meets to distribute food twice a week in downtown Orlando's Lake Eola Park.

They won a district court case to prevent the enforcement of the new ordinance, but the decision was overturned in the appellate court.

A spokesperson for the city of Orlando said that the ordinance had its origins in complaints from residents and business owners about trash left after the food distribution, public urination and concerns about crime.
THIS IS BECAUSE it would be so much more difficult for a couple of cops to patrol the feedings, keep order and prevent public peeing than it is to bring in maybe a dozen or so cops to raid a soup line, arrest all the servers, call in the paddy wagon and haul everyone off to jail.

But you gotta do what you gotta do. Because it's terrorism, you know.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer has been quoted calling the group "food terrorists." He told ABC's Orlando affiliate WTFV, "I think they are using food or the feeding of the homeless for different purposes."

Cathy Jackson, the executive director of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, agrees that motives may be more about self-promotion.

"The meal service that's being provided by Food Not Bombs is an unnecessary service," Jackson said. She says there are at least seven shelter operations within less than a mile and a half of Lake Eola Park that provide daily meal services for the hungry.
BUT ALL THOSE hungry people in Orlando -- the ones it's illegal to feed in public without a permit, and not more than twice in one spot in a year -- weren't at those shelters, now, were they?

The professionals weren't where the homeless were, either, and thus were not "connecting with those they are serving to channel them back into a direction of housing and self-sufficiency."
But the "terrorists" were, and at least those homeless folk got a little something to eat.

If this were about more effective means of helping the homeless, we'd see a public-private push to find the homeless where they congregate and bring them to where the food and the counselors are. But the Orlando law -- like laws all across America just like Orlando's -- isn't about addressing our "least of these" problem.

It's about addressing our "Why do we have to encounter the 'least of these' and be troubled?" problem. But what do you expect in a Mickey Mouse city run by a bunch of rats?

Basically, it's always 33 A.D. somewhere, and somebody is always getting what Jesus got for doing what Jesus did.