Don’t worry, they’re “just” advisers! And special ops! What could possibly go wrong?
Homeschooled kid kills parents
This is something I wonder about: Why would teenagers want to spend all their time around their parents? Is the homeschooling for the kid’s benefit, or is it a manifestation of the parents’ need for control?
A teenager from Frisco, Texas is accused of murdering both of his parents late Monday night.
According to DallasNews.com, the 16-year-old was “very sheltered,” and was being homeschooled by parents who wished to shield him from the world.
The teenaged gunman was one of two school-age children left at home out of five. The deceased — Ryan Callans, 48, and Maria Elena Callans, 49 — had three other adult children.
Frisco Police Officer Chad LaPrelle told the Dallas Morning News that officers responded to a 911 call around 2:00 a.m. Monday reporting gunshots. Both Callens parents were dead of gunshot wounds when police reached the residence.
Taney shirts, hats available now
Also bus tickets to Friday’s game at Williamsport!
I just found out today Mo’Ne Davis was discovered playing football!
The rest, as they say, is history. Or, at least making it. Davis will be just the 17th girl ever to play in the Little League World Series when the Taney Dragons take the field Friday afternoon in Williamsport. She will be the first American girl to play in the tournament in a decade.
It’s no small feat. Davis started pitching her first season playing baseball, the same year Bandura discovered her. She’s honed her skill since then, but right from the beginning she had a knack for throwing strikes. In the younger age groups, Bandura said, that’s all a player needs.
As she’s gotten older, though, Davis has improved dramatically. Bandura said the physical differences between male and female players usually kick in between 10 and 12, but that hasn’t been the case for 13-year-old Davis. She can throw a fastball. She can throw a changeup. She’s worked on her breaking ball this year, too. Her shutout propelled Taney to the tournament.
“From the beginning, she had good control,” Bandura said. “She has incredible spatial awareness, or kinesthetic awareness — whatever you want to call it. If she’s doing something wrong, she knows how to fix it, what to do with her body to fix it. She knows what she’s doing wrong. She knows how to correct it and she corrects it. Because of that, she always throws strikes.”
And that’s something special. Bandura has coached scores of baseball players over the years, both boys and girls. He’s overseen plenty of talent at all different positions. But considering her age and ability, Davis tops his list. He said he’s even more impressed at how well-rounded she is; Davis is an honor student at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, one of the best schools in the area.
“At this age, she’s the best pitcher I’ve ever had,” Bandura said. “I’ve had pitchers that are now in the minor leagues, but at this age, no one’s had the control to go with the velocity that she has and the command.”
Bandura doesn’t coach the Dragons. This week in Williamsport, he’ll “just be a dad,” he said (his son Scott plays catcher to Davis’ pitcher). But he’s been handling media requests for the team lately, and there’s been a lot of them for Davis.
“I had to talk to her and let her know that it’s important that she does the interviews because she’s a role model,” he said. “The more we can get her story out there, the better for other girls — other inner-city girls, any girls.”
NYPD blames everyone but themselves for Garner’s death
You have to admire their willingness to spin bullshit into blame!
In the wake of Eric Garner’s death via cop chokehold, the NYPD is coming under all sorts of additional scrutiny. This is in addition to the appointed oversight ordered by Judge Scheindlin after finding that elements of its infamous stop-and-frisk program were unconstitutional. Scott Greenfield has a very stark recounting of the incident, as well as a recording of Eric Garner’s last moments. (Here’s additional footage, which includes the officer who applied the lethal chokehold waving at the camera, as well as several officers gamely pretending Garner is simply passed out.)
The unexpected happened when the official medical examiner’s report failed to find that the 400-lb Garner (who is heard repeatedly telling officers he can’t breathe) had simply dropped dead of a heart attack or pre-existing health conditions — something that supposedly would have happened with or without a cop applying direct pressure to his windpipe. Instead, the report contained a word rarely found in examinations following in-custody deaths: homicide.
The largest union within the NYPD — the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association — couldn’t have been expecting that. But PBA president Pat Lynch still managed to find something spinnable about the entire situation, greatly aided by the convenient arrest of the cameraman on weapons charges.
Continue reading “NYPD blames everyone but themselves for Garner’s death”
Robin Williams interview
This is the famous interview with Marc Maron where he talks about his drug use and depression. Very moving.
Gee
Now, what do you suppose happened to people over 50 that would make them want to kill themselves? Let me think about that for a minute:
In the United States, the age-adjusted death rate from suicide grew by more than 11% between 2006 and 2011, even as the overall death rate from all causes fell almost 7%. (To put that another way, more Americans now die from suicide than from car accidents.)
The spike has been particularly concentrated among middle-aged Americans, with age-adjusted suicide rates rising by more than 30% over the past decade.
Given that suicide attempts generally increase in frequency as Americans get older, the aging Baby Boomers are especially at-risk, Rutgers sociologist Julie Phillips wrote in adraft paper she presented last year.
While suicide rates had declined in the early 2000s, Phillips noted that was appearing to reverse “as the large boomer cohort (particularly males) move into the older age ranges with traditionally higher suicide rates and with the development of increasing suicide rates among the middle-aged.”
“The boomers had great expectations for what their life might look like, but I think perhaps it hasn’t panned out that way,” Phillips subsequently told the New York Times. “All these conditions the boomers are facing, future cohorts are going to be facing many of these conditions as well.”
R.I.P.
Happy Hour: Dave Brubeck – Blue rondo a la turk
http://youtu.be/RZPKYj9Jzb0
Sanctions never do what they’re supposed to do
And besides, the companies who want to sell to Russia will work deals through straw buyers, etc. — just the way Dick Cheney did with Halliburton and Iraq. Poor people suffered, but it didn’t do squat to Saddam Hussein. Seems like sanctions are just political theater to make it look like we’re “doing something”:
The introduction of newly-enhanced US and EU sanctions against Russia, which have now targeted its most important financial institutions and several of its most important energy companies, has compelled some journalists to wonder whether or not its economy is “on the verge of collapse.” Others have started to openly speculate aboutwho would replace Putin in the event that the government collapses or in the event that he is driven from power in a palace coup. These criticisms fold nicely into those delivered by Barack Obama: Russia is a country that doesn’t make anything, that doesn’t support entrepreneurs, and that, quite simply, is place where no one wants to live. Russia, in other words, is doomed.
As someone who has been extremely critical of Russia’s recent policies, I can understand why some of these criticisms are being voiced. It genuinely does seem that, over the past five months, Russia has regressed: it has not only waged a hyper aggressive, Soviet-style, information war against the “Kiev fascists,” it has openly annexed the territory of a neighboring state and subsequently supported separatist forces waging war against its central government. One can both sympathize with Russian interests in Ukraine and criticize the Ukrainian government while also noting that using the military to seize territory is completely and totally unjustifiable.*
Continue reading “Sanctions never do what they’re supposed to do”
Challenging a militarized police state
Great article in Counterpunch:
Critics say the DHS represents a classic case of mission creep, expanding its mission into multiple facets of civilian law enforcement, with its overall budget soaring from $29 billion in 2002 to $61 billion in 2014, according to the Journal.
Even former Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was taken aback by the DHS’ evolution.
“They’ve kind of lost their way..,” Ridge was quoted by the Journal. “I’m trying to figure out why these local communities need Humvees…they could probably use a couple of more patrolman rather than another military vehicle.”
Yet, like the DOD-defense contractor revolving door, money is to be made in the business of policing.
Dubbed Tasergate by some pundits, Albuquerque is now engrossed by the news that former Police Chief Ray Schultz negotiated a deal with Taser International to supply his department with nearly $2 million in equipment prior to the chief’s departure from office last year.
Shortly thereafter, Schultz emerged as a paid consultant to the company, according to local media accounts.
Wave of Activism Against Police Brutality
In Albuquerque, police violence has triggered the biggest wave of activism in the New Mexico city since the early 1970s.
Since the shooting of James Boyd, activists have marched in the streets, packed City Council and DOJ meetings, conducted vigils, organized community forums, and prepared petitions to remove the mayor and convene grand juries that will indict officers. Citizens are participating in the DOJ’s current goal of writing a consent decree that will impose new recruitment standards, training, oversight policies, and standard operating procedures on the APD.
Street protests have drawn hundreds of young people who are cutting their teeth in activism and civil disobedience.
At an April forum held at the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, activists formulated nearly 40 short-term and long-term demands. Significantly, the proposals call for the demilitarization of the policing, zero tolerance for racial profiling and citizen oversight of the police department.
Only a few hours away on the U.S.-Mexico border, groups like the ACLU’s Regional Center for Border Rights likewise call for independent oversight of the Border Patrol.
The UNHRC’s report on the state of human rights in the U.S., affords the CBP “an opportunity for comprehensive reform if they’re serious about preventing unnecessary deaths and injuries,” says Regional Center Director Vicki B. Gaubeca.
In the wider context, last month’s Albuquerque meeting highlighted structural changes urgently needed: adequate services for returning veterans and other people with mental health issues; increased funding for social services like substance abuse prevention and treatment; the right to housing; the full funding of schools; and an end to the school-to-prison pipeline.
Two weeks later, speaking at the site where her former student, 19-year-old Mary Hawkes, was shot to death by the APD on April 21, Albuquerque educator Carolina Acuna-Olvera summed up the sentiment of many in the movement:
“We’re already spending billions of dollars going to war around the world, but can’t feed kids.”
The events in Albuquerque bring into sharp focus many fundamental issues as part and parcel of an inseparable package. Whether activists will be successful in winning changes is still far from certain, given the historic impunity connected to police shootings and instances of brutality.
While the City of Albuquerque has paid out nearly $30 million in wrongful death and excessive force lawsuits during the past few years, no police officer has gone to jail for a shooting. And in the seven weeks following James Boyd’s shooting, the same number of additional officer-involved shootings-three of them fatal-have shaken Albuquerque and nearby Los Lunas.
Besides APD officers, New Mexico state policemen and U.S. marshals have been behind the triggers in the latest shootings.
Still, many residents say the city has a historic opportunity to change the course of police-community relations, reassert democratic controls over law enforcement and respond to a deluge of worsening social problems that threaten to tear society apart.
“This is widespread,” said Nora Tachias-Anaya of the October 22 Coalition, one of the groups participating in the Albuquerque movement. “This is national, and we know it, but I strongly believe New Mexico is going to make the difference.”