Categories
Immigration Mexico Politics

Man Tried to Hang Himself… on Border Fence

The 27 year old man from Mexico apparently thought dying was better than living in his homeland.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent near 1st Street saw the man scaling the fence with a rope on the Mexico side about 7 p.m. As the agent approached, the man wrapped the rope around his neck, hanging himself on the U.S. side of the fence, Border Patrol Agent Eduardo Jacobo said.

The agent grabbed the man by his legs, elevating him to release the pressure around his neck, until another agent arrived to help, a Border Patrol news release said. At some point, the rope came loose and the agents lowered the man to the ground.

The man wasn’t breathing and was unresponsive, the release said. An agent was able to revive him.

The man, identified only as a citizen of Mexico, was taken by ambulance to Calexico Regional Medical Center for evaluation.

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cops Featured Politics

More Florida News – Some Police Officers Were Members of The KKK – Video

The FBI’s investigation broke this news. The unimaginable conclusion that some police officers in Florida were active members of the KKK… Oh, wait… we are talking about Florida here… carry on then, no news here!

Police morale in Fruitland Park, Florida has been shaken after a deputy chief and officer resigned when the Federal Bureau of Investigations identified them as members of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement presented Chief Terry Isaacs with copies of a confidential FBI report last week that allegedly identified Deputy Chief David Borst and Officer George Hunnewell as members of the KKK.

Earlier this year, a Florida Klan leader boasted to WFTV 9 that the organization has “police officers, paramedics, judges…everywhere.”

However, Chief Isaacs would only tell reporters for the Orlando Sentinel that the pair belonged to a “subversive organization,” because he did not believe he was authorized to release the results of the report.

“It’s a tough situation. He was my assistant,” he said, adding that he never witnessed any behavior that would lead him to believe former Deputy Chief Borst was in the KKK. “But I’ve read the report, and it’s convincing.”

Chief Deputy State Attorney Ric Ridgway — from whom Isaacs sought counsel concerning the FBI’s report — told the Orlando Sentinel that “it’s not a crime to be a member of the KKK, even if you are the deputy chief. It’s not a crime to be stupid. It’s not a crime to hate people. It may be despicable, it may be immoral, but it’s not a crime.”

The loss of two officers is significant for a town that only employs 13 full-time cops. “They’re a good group of people,” Isaacs said. “The last thing I was expecting to hear in the year 2014 was for a professional law-enforcement officer to be a member of a subversive organization.”

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Categories
Celebrities

Tracy Morgan Speaks to Media For First Time Since Fatal Auto Accident – Video

Photo: Richard Harbus/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Mr. Morgan was seen exiting his home in Cresskill, N.J., walking with the aid of a walker. As he entered a black Lincoln Navigator, Morgan made eye contact with photographers and showed a victory symbol with his trademark smile. As the car drove closer to the photographers, Tracy was asked how was he doing.

“I’m OK, I feel strong,” he said.

“Love you, thank you very much. Appreciate it,” he added, to applause from the small gathering.

Morgan’s friend, James McNair was killed in the accident when a Wal-Mart truck slammed into the vehicle they were traveling in. Morgan suffered a badly broken leg and several broken ribs.

Tracy Morgan has filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart.

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News

Long Island Railroad Will Go On Full Strike on July 20th

The union sent out this notice to its workers after negotiations between the MTA and the Union broke down. Accordint to the notice, the strike will begin on July 20, but riders are warned to expect slowdowns to begin as early as Wednesday, four days before the full strike begins.

Read the notice below

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Featured Homosexuality Politics

Pastor Who Wrote a Book Called “Freedom From Homosexuality” Arrested for Molesting a Boy

Pastor Duane Youngblood of the “Higher Call World Outreach Church” in Pittsburgh is once again under arrest.

The pastor and author of the book “Freedom From Homosexuality: No Longer Living The Lie,” is being charged for sexually assaulting a boy he was supposed to be counseling.

CBS reports that according to the victim, the abuse started in 2009 and ended in 2011 when he was a freshman in college and told Youngblood he didn’t want to be counseled by him anymore.

Youngblood reportedly asked the teen not to tell his mother “because he didn’t want to get into trouble.”

The pastor has a previous arrest record. In 2002, Youngblood was arrested for molesting a 15 year old boy. He was sentenced to one year of intermediate punishment and seven years’ probation.

And get this, Pastor Youngblood is also a registered sex offender.

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Categories
Elizabeth Warren Politics

Elizabeth Warren’s Populist Message Gaining Support Nationwide

Elizabeth Warren is slowly becoming the most popular Democrat in Congress. She has been invited to campaign for multiple Democratic candidates nationwide, and is receiving welcome crowds wherever she goes

Since March, the Massachusetts Democrat has stumped for candidates in Ohio, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington and Kentucky and has trips planned this week for West Virginia and Michigan. It’s a hefty schedule for a freshman senator who not long ago was teaching law at Harvard.

Along the way, Warren has found her brand of economic populism resonating far from her home in the liberal enclave of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Part of Warren’s economic pitch is legislation she sponsored that would let college graduates refinance their student loans at lower interest rates, an effort blocked by Senate Republicans.

Warren found a receptive crowd during a recent campaign stop at the University of Louisville with Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Kentucky secretary of state hoping to unseat Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Warren said the Kentucky race is “about a man who stood up and filibustered the student loan bill.”

“When you’ve got a choice between billionaires and students, Mitch McConnell says it is more important to protect the billionaires,” Warren told the crowd. Senate Republicans blocked Warren’s student bill last month on a 56-38 vote that fell short of the 60 needed to advance the proposal to a debate.

Categories
Donald Trump Donald Trump Politics

Chris Christie’s Failed Economy – Trump Plaza Casino Going Out of Business

New Jersey’s economy under the failed leadership of Chris Christie. Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City,  bites the dust.

Atlantic City’s crumbling casino market disintegrated even further Saturday as the owners of the Trump Plaza casino in Atlantic City said they expect to shut down in mid-September.

Trump Entertainment Resorts told The Associated Press that no final decision has been made on the Boardwalk casino. But the company said it expects the casino to close its doors Sept. 16.

Notices warning employees of the expected closing will go out to the casino’s 1,000-plus employees Monday.

If Trump Plaza closes, Atlantic City could lose a third of its casinos and a quarter of its casino workforce in less than nine months. The Atlantic Club closed in January, the Showboat is closing next month and Revel might do likewise if a buyer can’t be found in bankruptcy court.

Trump Entertainment Resorts told the AP that its managers and board of directors “have been reviewing alternatives for the property. Although this review has not been completed and no final decision has been made, the company expects that it will terminate the operations of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino on or shortly after September 16, 2014.”

Categories
Politics

Judge Says Incest and Pedophilia Will Soon Be Accepted as Gays

It was said in Australia by a District Judge, but similar opinions have been expressed here in the US by many elected officials.

District Court Judge Garry Neilson was caught on tape offering his view that just as same-sex relationships were once considered socially unacceptable, sexual contact between adults and children or siblings may no longer be regarded by society as unnatural or taboo.

…a jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now ‘available,’ not having [a] sexual partner.

Jed Horne, Policy and Project Officer at New South Wales Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, told Australia’s Star Observer that “the comments attributed to the judge are completely unacceptable.”

Not only do they make a highly offensive comparison between being gay and sexual offences, but they are an affront to members of the community which have experienced sexual abuse in their lives.

Categories
dead Politics

Former Democratic Representative Ken Gray Has Died

Former U.S. Rep. Ken Gray, who represented southern Illinois in Congress and earned the nickname the “Prince of Pork” for bringing $7 billion in projects to his district, died Saturday at age 89.

Parker-Reedy Funeral Home in West Frankfort said Sunday that Gray died at a hospital in Herrin after a long illness. Gray was first elected to Congress in 1954 and served ten terms until high blood pressure forced him to retire in 1974. He returned to Congress in 1984 to serve two terms but retired again, citing a muscular disorder caused by a tick bite during a congressional visit to Brazil.

Gray, a Democrat, was a colorful figure during his time in Washington. He was known for bringing federal projects to his depressed district, including a federal prison, an interstate highway, post offices and hospitals.

Categories
Politics weekly address

President Obama – Time For Republicans To Do Their Part – Video

President Obama used this week’s address to recapped his visits with folks who have written him letters about their own American stories — their successes and struggles. While Congressional Republicans are blocking meaningful measures that would strengthen the middle class, the President continues looking for ways to grow the economy and expand opportunity for more hardworking Americans.

Categories
Education News north carolina Politics Teachers Rights Texas

Stupid Costs More

I know, I know: Money is the answer, plain and simple. School districts don’t want to pay teachers for advanced degrees and right wing politicians don’t want public schools to begin with, so it makes sense that Texas and North Carolina are both in the forefront of starving their states of effective teachers in an effort to…well, I’m not sure.

The debate over whether teachers who earn advanced degrees and credits that allow them to earn more money on the salary scale are actually better teachers than those who don’t, or are better themselves than if they had just stuck with their Bachelor’s degree credits, is becoming louder and more intense. As any teacher can tell you, though, there really is no debate. Teachers who continue their educations, broaden themselves or even go in  a new educational direction tend to be more effective. There is no question that teachers should be encouraged (required?) to take courses in content or pedagogy.

So why the screed? Because  a few states, most notably Texas and North Carolina, have decided that paying teachers more for advanced degrees doesn’t necessarily lead to high student test scores. And they might be right, but that’s exactly what’s wrong with the current push for test scores to evaluate teachers. Earning a higher degree makes the teacher more knowledgeable and exposes them to more effective teaching methods. Students are then exposed to a greater variety of teaching methods and more expansive content. That’s the point of an education. Equating the tests with teacher effectiveness is a terrible idea whose time, unfortunately, has come.

Even worse is the fact that public leaders continue to say that we need the best and brightest college graduates to become teachers (as if we don’t have a significant majority of them in classrooms right now). What the best and brightest know, and being one of them allows me to represent their argument, is that educating yourself is the best practice any teacher can follow. The best and brightest also know that motivating people to push themselves should be recognized monetarily. Isn’t that what law firms, banks and other corporations do?

The best and brightest are not swayed by specious arguments from elected officials who are not, in most cases, the best and brightest. For proof, consider the reaction in North Carolina: 
In April, the Wake County Public School System – the largest in North Carolina with about 150,000 students – said more than 600 teachers had left since the beginning of the school year, an increase of 41 percent over the same period the year before.

 

One district official blamed a lack of a significant pay raises in recent years, along with the phasing out of tenure and extra pay for advanced degrees. Human Resources Superintendent Doug Thilman called the figures “alarming” but “not surprising.”

Not surprising? If your best teachers are leaving the schools, why continue the policy? And who, might I ask, is taking the place of these best and brightest? People with no interest in getting advanced degrees? These are not the best people to have in your classrooms. This is the kind of lazy thinking that will rule the country if conservatives are elected to the Senate and the White House.

Something to seriously think about this fall and for 2016.

You want more? That’s easy. Simply go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest

Categories
Immigration Politics

BIG Government Rick Perry Wants The National Guard at The Border – Video

Big government indeed. Rick Perry, governor of Texas, is requesting more and more from tax payers and ultimately the Federal Government. He wants the National Guard to come in and patrol the border not because they can make arrests, they can’t, but because he wants the visual.

According to the backward thinking of Big Government Rick Perry, who was interviewed on Fox News by Brit Hume, cutting into the already depleted budget to pay a few thousand of National Guardsmen to patrol the border for the perfect picture moment, is how we will stop the children from coming over the border.

“They need to be right on the river. They need to be there as a show of force because that’s the message that gets sent back very quickly to Central America,” he said.

Hume challenged Perry, asking what purpose troops could actually serve.

“They’re not, under the law, allowed to apprehend any of these children that are crossing, are they?” he asked.

“The issue is with being able to send that message because it’s the visual of it, I think, that is the most important,” Perry responded. “If you don’t stop the bleeding. If you don’t staunch this flow of individuals that are coming up here, this is only going to get worse.”

Hume continued to press Perry.

“But the question I’m trying to get at with you is this: if these children, who have undergone these harrowing journeys to escape from the most desperate conditions in their home countries, have gotten this far, are they really going to be deterred by the presence of troops along the border who won’t shoot them and can’t arrest them?” he asked.

“I think we’re talking about two different things here,” Perry responded.

The governor then added that the “most humanitarian thing that we can do” is to take care of the undocumented immigrants, quickly process them and return them to their families.

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