In the latest shooting to rock the U.S. two volunteer firefighters have been shot and killed and two others injured after they rushed to battle a house fire which had broken out in the upstate New York town of West Webster.
The two injured me were taken to hospital in the nearby town of Strong, and were reportedly talking to emergency workers ast they were transported for treatment.
Initial reports from the scene suggested that the men were fired on by an unknown man brandishing an assault rifle and that he has not been apprehended yet.
Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputies say there is not an active search for a shooter right now.
Michael Steele was once the Chairman for the RNC, and after hearing what the NRA had to say in today’s press conference, Michael Steele said, “I don’t even know where to begin. As a supporter of the Second Amendment and a supporter of the NRA, even though I’m not a member of the NRA, I just found it very haunting and very disturbing that we are a country now that are talking about arming our teachers and principals in classrooms. What does that say about us?
“The idea that the message, the top line message coming out of this press conference is, ‘lets put a gun in the hands of our teachers in the classrooms,’ I do not think that’s where rank and file NRA members expected this to go to.”
Steele was a guest on MSNBC Live, and his disgust with what the NRA had to say in their press conference was apparent.
Wayne Lapierre, the CEO and Exec. VP of the NRA began his press conference by expressing his and his organization’s sorrow over what happened in Newtown Connecticut, where twenty children and six teachers were killed by a crazed gunman. After spending about five seconds acknowledging the horror of the shooting, Lapierre began pointing the fingers of blame at everyone else, while calling for even more guns… in our schools.
Lapierre blamed the media, the entertainment industry, the media, the politicians and the media. He even showed a video of a game where someone with a gun is shown shooting kids at their school. “It’s called Kindergarten Killers” Lapierre said, failing to see the obvious fact that even in the game, the player was using a gun.
“As parents, we do everything we can to keep our children safe. It’s now time for us to assume responsibility for our schools.” Laierre went on,”the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
Trying to make his case for more guns on our streets, Lapierre points out that the President is protected by Secret Service with guns, and that the military uses guns to protect this nation. He then asked, “why is the idea of a gun good when it’s used to protect the President of our country or the police, but bad when it’s used to protect our children in our schools?”
The NRA’s solution to stopping these of mass murders in the United States is putting more guns in the hands of the average civilian. Lapierre even mentions the name of the Sandy Hook shooter, saying, “what if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary school last Friday, he could have been confronted by qualified armed security. Would you at least admit it’s possible that twenty six little kids, that twenty six innocent lives might have been spared that day?”
But this is an old argument from the NRA.
“It is old news,” says John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Violence. In his appearance on News Nation, Mr. Rosenthal points out that “there were two armed guards at Columbine High School. They were outgunned by the shooters with assault weapons and high capacity ammunition clips.” Rosenthal continued, “the FBI was even outgunned at Waco by David Koresh with a Tennessee made Barrett 50 caliber assault rifle that he blew up a tank with an killed police officers.”
Mr. Rosenthal concluded that Congress should “find their backbone, stand up the the dangerous NRA policies and enact an assault weapons ban and a background check for all gun sales.”
It seems that the NRA is foolishly choosing to disregard this fact: that the U.S.,accounts for 5% of the world’s population, but owns 50% of the world’s guns. With this knowledge, calling for more guns seem pointless.
The 11-year-old boy allegedly told other students his parents encouraged him to bring a gun to school for protection following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday.
The boy reportedly pulled the gun, a .22-caliber pistol, out of his backpack during recess Monday morning.
“At recess, he pointed a gun to my head and said he was going to kill me,” said Isabel Rios, one of the boy’s fellow 6th grade students.
Granite School District officials say students didn’t notify teachers about the weapon until 3 p.m.
“Once the teacher knew there was a weapon in the classroom, the student was apprehended in 30 to 45 seconds and immediately brought down to the office and the police were on site within five to 10 minutes,” said Granite School District Spokesman Ben Horsley.
Granite School District sent a pre-recorded message via telephone to the parents of West Kearns Elementary students at 5:30 p.m. By then, some of those parents had already heard about the incident from their children.
“There was no lockdown. No one was called. Nothing was done. And then we had to hear it from our kids,” said John Klaus, the father of a student at West Kearns Elementary.
School administrators said they didn’t lock the school down because the gun was taken into possession quickly and they felt a lockdown would have scared the students.
The big story now, in the Republican circles at least, seems to be the tragedy that happened in Benghazi Libya on September 11th 2012 when four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens were killed. The Obama administration originally said that the attack on the Embassy was the result of a hateful video against Islam, a video that caused violent uprising in many Islāmic nations.
After an investigation, it was determined that the American Embassy was the target of a terrorist attack. It was also revealed that the Embassy may have requested extra security before the attack happened.
Republicans led by Mitt Romney, saw some political benefit in attacking the Obama administration for not “providing the necessary security” the Embassy requested, and they have harped on this over the last few weeks. But a new report is shedding more light on this claim and the reason more security wasn’t sent to Benghazi.
It seems that Republicans, including the Republican vice president candidate Paul Ryan, voted to cut funding to the very department responsible for paying for extra security. The New York Times reports;
The ugly truth is that the same people who are accusing the administration of not providing sufficient security for the American consulate in Benghazi have voted to cut the State Department budget, which includes financing for diplomatic security. The most self-righteous critics don’t seem to get the hypocrisy, or maybe they do and figure that if they hurl enough doubts and complaints at the administration, they will deflect attention from their own poor judgments on the State Department’s needs.
But as part of the Republican majority that has controlled the House the last two years, Mr. Issa joined in cutting nearly a half-billion dollars from the State Department’s two main security accounts. One covers things like security staffing, including local guards, armored vehicles and security technology; the other, embassy construction and upgrades. In 2011 and 2012, President Obama sought a total of $5 billion, and the House approved $4.5 billion. In 2009, Mr. Issa voted for an amendment that would have cut nearly 300 diplomatic security positions. And the draconian budgets proposed by Mitt Romney’s running mate, Representative Paul Ryan, would cut foreign affairs spending by 10 percent in 2013 and even more in 2016.
Have you heard this one? A new poll conducted by Public Polling Policy in Ohio finds that there are some people who think Mitt Romney was the one that killed Osama Bin Laden. Mitt Romney, the Republican who held no political office at the time Bin Laden was captured and killed, is being credited for getting the mastermind of the September 11th attacks.
When the average voter was asked who should get the credit for killing Osama, 63% said the President should, 6% said Romney and 31% had no clue.
The results were even more unbelievable when Republicans answered the question. 15% of Republicans credited Mitt Romney for getting Osama Bin Laden and 47% couldn’t decide. Only 38% of Ohio Republicans knew that President Obama made the final decision that led to Osama’s death, while 62% (15% said Romney and 47% didn’t know) got the answer wrong.
Makes you wonder where these people are getting their information… oh, never mind. They get their news from Fox News.
A Florida man “obsessed with Fox News and the Republican party” felt that his girlfriend was too “liberal” — so he decided he had to kill her.
Police arrested David Kappheim, of Lake Park, on Saturday after the 60-year-old threatened a woman’s life because of her supposed political affiliation, according to a probable cause affidavit.
The report recounts several incidents in which Kappheim allegedly arrived “stark naked” at the home of his girlfriend’s friend, choked his girlfriend and told her that he would “kill her and burn her home,” thePalm Beach Post reports.
Kappheim explained to a sheriff’s deputy, “He was very conservative, and his girlfriend was liberal and he felt he was going to have kill her,” according to the arrest affidavit, according to WPTV.
A special prosecutor has decided not to use a grand jury in the Trayvon Martin case.
State Attorney Angela Corey’s decision is not to be considered a factor in whether charges are eventually brought against George Zimmerman, Corey’s office said in a statement.
The grand jury, which was previously scheduled by a previous prosecutor, was set to convene on Tuesday in Sanford, Fla.
That means the decision now rests solely with Corey.
Martin, a 17-year-old from Miami Gardens, was shot to death by Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, at a gated community in Sanford on Feb. 26.
Every once in a while, a week comes along that brings clarity and definition to the world and enables us to find meaning in the beautiful things that make up our lives.
The circumstances – an unarmed teen carrying Skittles, a gated suburban community and a man with no official authority – along with simmering economic frustrations in the nation’s African-American community turned the death into a social touchstone. Social media, black radio and cable television drove the debate about racial profiling and the state of black males, helping give rise to an indelible image that seems to be everywhere: Trayvon Martin and his hoodie.
It shed light on the Florida Stand Your Ground Law, which essentially allows people with guns to decide who’s a threat and who’s not, and to allow suburban vigilante justice in the guise of neighborhood watch.And as more evidence comes out about what might have happened on that fateful night, more questions are raised. Finally, what about Wrigley, the company that makes Skittles? That’s complicated. Sales are up, but for all the wrong reasons.
As if the Martin story wasn’t complicated enough, this was also the week of health care. Ironic, no?
Enough words have been senselessly killed since Monday in an effort to describe, analyze, parse, interpret, divine, enunciate, explicate and pontificate on what exactly the justices meant, when it’s fairly clear that the conservatives would rather make love to a broccoli stalk than rule the law to be constitutional.
And the broccoli bit is the heart of the problem. Is it just me or did anyone else get the sense that Antonin Scalia didn’t merely complain about having a 2,700 page law to leaf through, he never actually read any of the briefs related to it? How else to explain his repetition of the broccoli conundrum that was standard fare in the mainstream press for the past 6 months? Or his mis-citation of the Cornhusker Kickback, which was troubling enough for a man of his intellect? I thought the justices were supposed to focus on the law, not repeat the talking points that radiate from all corners of the Cable News/Twitter/Blogosphere Axis.
At least we’ll know the outcome of the health care law at the end of June. After that, President Obama and Mitt Romney can adjust their campaigns and move forward with their lives.
Trayvon Martin’s parents might not get that kind of closure for many months after that. And they’ll always have more questions than answers.
“Racial profiling has to stop. Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum.”
That was Democratic Representative Bobbie Rush of Illinois, as he took off his jacket on the House floor and revealed his hoodie. The representative then put on his sunglasses and quoted from the Bible as he was asked to leave the floor.
Rapper Plies pays tribute to Trayvon Martin. Seventeen year old Martin was killed by George Zimmerman in Florida on February 26th, for apparently being black and walking the street with a pack of Skittles in his hand and his hoodie on, trying to shelter himself from the rain.
As of today, Zimmerman has not been charged with a crime.
Kyle Mantyla writes: As we have noted several times in the past, Jesse Lee Peterson of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) has carved out a very unique niche as a black right-wing activist who specializes in accusing Democrats, and especially black Democrats, of being racist while defending white people who are accused of racism.
Earlier this year, Peterson made news when he declared that he would like “to take all black people back to the South and put them on the plantation so they would understand the ethic of working.” So it comes as no surprise that Peterson has now decided to weigh in on the Trayvon Martin tragedy by declaring that the outrage over his death is not about justice but rather “about getting even with whites and gaining political power”:
“It’s hypocritical for so-called black ‘leaders’ to call for the prosecution of George Zimmerman and accuse the police of racism without knowing the facts. Black-on-black crime takes place every day. And blacks kill whites in far greater numbers than whites kill blacks. Yet, we only see these leaders and their hypnotized black followers worked up when a black is victimized by another race. This is racist and evil.
“Where were the NAACP, Al Sharpton, the Black Caucus and black ministers when black flash mobs were terrorizing the city of Philadelphia and attacking whites and others? It was so bad that Mayor Michael Nutter threatened to jail parents if they were not willing to get their thug children under control. In Kansas City, a 13-year-old white kid was attacked by two black teens who poured gasoline on him and set him on fire saying, ‘you get what you deserve, white boy.’ If these leaders were sincere, they would condemn crime across the board.
“I’ve said for the last 22 years that most black Americans are brainwashed. The recent actions of these black leaders and their followers are not about justice—it’s about getting even with whites and gaining political power. This is black hatred of white people and a result of more than fifty years of brainwashing by racist civil-rights leaders.
Tracy Knauss posted this message on his Facebook page, blaming the so-called “News” Network for the death of his mother. According to Knauss, his mother, an extremely devoted Fox News viewer, died 10 days after she suffered an injury and refused to go to the doctor because she didn’t want “ObamaCare getting all her information.”
Karole reports: When I first saw this image on Facebook, I wasn’t sure how on earth Fox News could have killed someone’s mother. And then I read the message that went with the photo. Tracy Knauss posted it on his Facebook page along with a message which said in part:
I know this personally. FOX News killed my precious mother, Hallie. She watched FOX religiously. And when she fell ten days before she died, she refused to go to the doctor because, “I don’t want Obamacare to get all of my information! she declared, recalling the warnings from FOX News “anchors.” She was emphatic. She was not going to consort with the muslim enemy. As she made out her will she told her lawyer, “I don’t want any of my money going to the Muslim Brotherhood!” And her last protestation dealt with “Obama’s death panels.” Mother died just days later. I hold FOX News responsible for my mother’s death.
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