• SPECIAL EDIT:

    Video of the incident can be found via this direct link. This is to circumvent NDN Media Player's autoplay feature and keep people from getting written up at work. :D

    This happened on her birthday.

    I'll just say that if the above had happened to anyone in my family...strike that. The last thing I'd want to do is to leave behind a paper trail for investigators. Let's just say that I know people and I know how to do...things. Yeah, let's just leave it at that.

    The LAPD stated it would start its investigation on Jan 21, when schools were back in session. I thought schools were closed on MLK, Jr. Day. At any rate, we can't afford to wait for scum to be brought to justice, no matter the circumstance.

    EDIT:



    UPDATE:

    LONG BEACH, Calif. (KTLA) — A San Pedro woman has been charged with beating up a 12-year-old girl who was a rival of her daughter in an alley fight that first aired exclusively on KTLA.

    Amber Lee Gutierrez, 33, was arrested Tuesday for her alleged involvement in a prearranged fight in a West Gaffey Street alley after school on January 14.

    Gutierrez was charged on Tuesday with assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury. She is being held on $100,000 bond.

    If convicted as charged, Gutierrez faces a possible maximum state prison term of seven years.

    According to police, the 12-year-old and Gutierrez’s daughter had agreed to fight in the alley, but mothers and adults showed up as well and got involved.

    The girl suffered a broken arm. Her mother, who spoke anonymously to KTLA, said she’s disappointed Gutierrez hasn’t been charged with a hate crime.

    Racial slurs are heard repeatedly on the video, which was recorded on a cellphone by an onlooker.

    Prosecutors have not decided whether to charge Gutierrez’s sister, who is also seen in the video throwing punches.

    Both the aunt and the child are said to be in hiding. Not that I have any sympathy for either one or the mother, for that matter. If and when she's convicted, she might have to spend most of those seven years in protective custody.


  • About sometime after President Obama and the First Lady decided to put their walking shoes on for the second time and leave the relative safety of what's now known as the "Bulletproof Jesus," Twitter went down faster than, well, that guy in the picture:

    Twitter.com became inaccessible from two browsers, Google Chrome and Firefox, for HuffPost staffers starting around 4 p.m. ET. However, Twitter's iOS apps for iPhones and iPads seem to be working fine -- if you really need to scratch that Twitter itch.

    The website downrightnow also reported the outage, writing that it is having "Likely Service Disruption." A similar site, "Down For Everyone Or Just Me," also noted that "It's not just you! http://twitter.com looks down from here."

    We've reached out to Twitter and will update with comment when we receive it.

    UPDATE 1: Just before 5 p.m. ET, the company confirmed the issue on its status blog. "Some users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter," it reads. "Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue."

    So I guess the Twitter fiends are just gonna have to calm that social media craving with some good ol' Facebook or a little Instagram for the time being.


  • Yesterday, Barack Obama was officially sworn into his second four-year term as President of the United States. Today, he was publicly sworn in a second time in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands, with millions more watching on television and via live internet feeds.



    The Wall Street Journal has a transcript of his second inaugural address here.

    The president's public inauguration also falls on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday created in memory of the slain civil rights leader. In a way, it's both fitting and fulfilling to see the nation's first black president ushered into a second term on the same day that celebrates the legacy of a prominent voice in a movement to attain and extend human rights to those once considered "second-class citizens." In a sense, Obama's second term in office is an affirmation of the type of progress Dr. King envisioned.

    Meanwhile, many people wish that the president would to more to emulate Dr. King, whether it be speaking more strongly and more frequently on issues affecting the black community or being more of a man of peace, especially in regards to the deadlier side of foreign policy and the subsequent military action that follows. There was a minor uproar about the president using Dr. King's bible in addition to that of Abraham Lincoln's during his first official inauguration, as though doing such was highly inappropriate.

    Looking at that story, I sense a minor undercurrent that the president didn't seem worthy enough to use Dr. King's bible for his swearing-in ceremony. That stems from the assumption that the president is somehow indebted not just to Dr. King, but also the black American public who played a significant role in securing his presidency. There's also a tendency to link both Dr. King and President Obama to one another, as though the latter is somehow obligated to continue the legacy of the former.

    To do so would be a grave mistake. While Dr. King was among the many civil rights figures instrumental in breaking the cold, iron grip of Jim Crow and opening the country's eyes to injustice and hatred in their own backyards, the President of the United States has the task of being the president, not a surrogate civil rights figure. Although it would be wonderful to see the president become a greater champion of black American issues, he also has the obligation of governing the country for the benefit of all Americans.

  • Yesterday was "Gun Appreciation Day" as gun lovers across the U.S. flocked to ranges, gun shows and exhibitions to show that awful socialist Negro in the White House what for show their appreciation for firearms. Well, the day was capped off by a few events definitely worth noting.

    To start things off, I wouldn't want to be in Dr. Charles Bizilj's shoes right now. He has to deal with the loss of his son, something that happened largely of his own carelessness:

    The teenager who worked at a gun show where 8-year-old Christopher Bizilj accidentally killed himself while shooting an Uzi testified today he twice suggested the boy's father pick a less powerful weapon for the boy to shoot.

    But Christopher's father, Dr. Charles Bizilj, insisted that his son be allowed to fire the automatic weapon, Michael Spano told the court. Spano was 15 at the time of the 2008 Massachusetts gun expo and was put in charge of allowing people to fire the 9 mm Micro Uzi, a submachine gun that fires 20 rounds a second.

    Former Pelham, Mass., police chief Edward Fleury is on trial for the boy's death because he organized the gun expo. He is charged with involuntary manslaughter. He has pleaded not guilty.

    The most dramatic moment of the trial came Thursday when the court watched video recorded by Charles Bizilj of the boy handling the gun. The father, who was on the stand at the time, closed his eyes as the video showed the boy struggling to handle the gun's recoil. The barrel reared up and shot the boy in the head. The court room gasped and the boy's mother left the courtroom in tears.

    The family may have to relive that moment again in painstaking detail. The prosecution has asked that the video be played again, this time frame by frame. The judge has not yet ruled on that request.

    It's one thing to teach a young boy how to safely handle and shoot a low-powered .22 long rifle in a safe environment. It's another to let a boy fire a submachine gun known for being a handful in the hands of a full-grown adult.

    But that's not all. With the gun control debate raging, accidental discharges seem to be getting more play in the news:

    A 4-year-old child was injured when hit by bullet fragments Saturday morning after a gun accidentally discharges at a Tupelo gun show.

    The child was hit by fragments from a bullet that went through a wall. Also, a man was grazed in the leg in the same accident.

    Tupelo Police say both were treated at North Mississippi Medical Center. Neither suffered life threatening injuries.

    A preliminary investigation indicated it was an accident and no charges are expected.

    And yet another accidental discharge:

    At least four people -- three in North Carolina and one in Indiana -- were injured after weapons went off at gun shows Saturday, officials said, at a time when there's been renewed discussion about private gun sales at such shows.
    Dixie Gun and Knife Show attendees bolted, with at least one woman wiping out in the frenetic scene, after gunfire rang out around 1 p.m., as seen on video captured by CNN affiliate WRAL.

    Police later explained that a a 36-year-old man from Wilmington, North Carolina, was unfastening the case of his 12-gauge shotgun on a table near the show entrance when it accidentally discharged. The man planned to sell the shotgun at the show.
    The bird shot ended up injuring three people. One was a sheriff's deputy, who suffered a slight injury to his hand and was treated and released at a local hospital before returning immediately to work, said Joel Keith, chief of police of the North Carolina State Fair.

    A 54-year-old woman from Benson, North Carolina, was being treated a wound to her right torso at a local hospital, and a 50-year-old man from Durham, North Carolina, was treated for an injured left hand, Keith told reporters.

    Even gun dealers are getting in on the accidental discharges:

    Police in Medina say a gun dealer was checking out a semi-automatic handgun he'd bought Saturday when he accidentally pulled the trigger.

    Police Chief Pat Berarducci says it appears the bullet struck the floor, then a longtime friend of the gun dealer. The man was wounded in the arm and leg.

    Berarducci says the man was taken by helicopter to a Cleveland hospital. His condition isn't known.

    Police say the gun's magazine had been removed from the firearm but one round remained in the chamber.

    These incidents all happened at gun expos, places that offer a smorgasbord of firearms and relatively loose controls on purchases. In contrast to gun store purchases, gun expo sales are considered private transactions between individuals and thus aren't subject to background checks. Therefore, there's no Form 4473 to fill out. Making guns harder to purchase is something the National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups are dead set against happening.

    Meanwhile, it's easy to dismiss the above as simple accidents made by careless individuals, events that don't reflect on guns and gun ownership in a larger light. Too bad there are millions of careless individuals out there who choose to exercise their right to bear arms without knowing how to properly bear those arms. According to research performed by Dr. Arthur L. Kellermann, a gun kept in the home was 43 times more likely to be involved in the death of a member of the household than to be used in self-defense.

    Kellerman's statistics were seen as a sneaky end-run around the gun control issue by having it reclassified as a health concern and subsequently squashed thanks to the efforts of NRA lobbyists. For their efforts, the Centers for Disease Control, which was responsible for funding Kellerman's findings, was fiscally cut off at the knees and told, in so many words, to stick with contagious diseases and brain injuries.

    On a lighter note:

    House Republicans gathering to discuss minority outreach picked an odd venue for the retreat — a former slave plantation.

    Weary GOPers left Washington Wednesday for the Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va., where they’re recuperating and focusing on unity after last year’s rough-and-tumble fiscal cliff fight with Democrats.

    Panels will take place in the resort’s “Burwell Plantation” room, named after the family that once owned the plantation. The luxury resort is now owned by billionaire Philip Anschutz, a conservative political donor.

    [...]

    On tap for Friday morning is a forum to discuss “successful communication with minorities and women.”

    Republican lawmakers also hope to address the looming battle against the Obama administration over a debt limit extension and budget cuts.

    I'm not surprised. The trappings of a genteel antebellum establishment that once represented the pinnacle of Southern economic power is the perfect place for Republicans to discuss “successful communication with minorities and women.” It's a lot like the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, except instead of divvying up a continent, the GOP gets to feign cluelessness about those dangblasted minorities and womenfolk.

  • What do you want to bet if this was a picture of a black man, with a Black Liberation flag hanging in the background, watching The New Black Panther Party on TV, surrounded by weapons, calling for black people to take up arms against the government, accusing the government of trying to take their guns away and calling it tyranny, we would have us some gun control legislation quick, fast and in a hurry?

    Oh Redeye, you and I know full well that gun control bills would be flying out of the anuses of every Republican senator and representative on Capitol Hill if that ever happened. It's the reason Madame J. Edgar came up with COINTELPRO in the first place. Well, that and those dangblasted commies.

    America's excessive fascination with guns transforms into abject fear whenever they end up in the hands of blacks, Latinos or any other vaguely threatening minority groups. Ironically, the whole idea of gun control was to keep guns out of the hands of those awful Negros and other assorted "undesirables" in the first place:

    In the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, the slave population successfully threw off their French masters, but the Revolution degenerated into a race war, aggravating existing fears in the French Louisiana colony, and among whites in the slave states of the United States. When the first U. S. official arrived in New Orleans in 1803 to take charge of this new American possession, the planters sought to have the existing free black militia disarmed, and otherwise exclude "free blacks from positions in which they were required to bear arms," including such non-military functions as slave-catching crews. The New Orleans city government also stopped whites from teaching fencing to free blacks, and then, when free blacks sought to teach fencing, similarly prohibited their efforts as well. [4]

    It is not surprising that the first North American English colonies, then the states of the new republic, remained in dread fear of armed blacks, for slave revolts against slave owners often degenerated into less selective forms of racial warfare. The perception that free blacks were sympathetic to the plight of their enslaved brothers, and the dangerous example that "a Negro could be free" also caused the slave states to pass laws designed to disarm all blacks, both slave and free. Unlike the gun control laws passed after the Civil War, these antebellum statutes were for blacks alone. In Maryland, these prohibitions went so far as to prohibit free blacks from owning dogs without a license, and authorizing any white to kill an unlicensed dog owned by a free black, for fear that blacks would use dogs as weapons. Mississippi went further, and prohibited any ownership of a dog by a black person. [5]

    Understandably, restrictions on slave possession of arms go back a very long way. While arms restrictions on free blacks predate it, these restrictions increased dramatically after Nat Turner's Rebellion in 1831, a revolt that caused the South to become increasingly irrational in its fears. [6] Virginia's response to Turner's Rebellion prohibited free blacks "to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead..." The existing laws under which free blacks were occasionally licensed to possess or carry arms was also repealed, making arms possession completely illegal for free blacks.[7] But even before this action by the Virginia Legislature, in the aftermath of Turner's Rebellion, the discovery that a free black family possessed lead shot for use as scale weights, without powder or weapon in which to fire it, was considered sufficient reason for a frenzied mob to discuss summary execution of the owner. [8] The analogy to the current hysteria where mere possession of ammunition in some states without a firearms license may lead to jail time, should be obvious.

    One example of the increasing fear of armed blacks is the 1834 change to the Tennessee Constitution, where Article XI, 26 of the 1796 Tennessee Constitution was revised from: "That the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence," [9] to: "That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence." [10] [emphasis added] It is not clear what motivated this change, other than Turner's bloody insurrection. The year before, the Tennessee Supreme Court had recognized the right to bear arms as an individual guarantee, but there is nothing in that decision that touches on the subject of race. [11]

    Ardent gun lovers will go as far as threaten to commit mass murder or contemplate treason to maintain their "God-given" right to own as many AR-15s, Calicos and SKSs as their budgets and dwelling spaces allow. These same people wouldn't hesitate to talk up coups de tat, revolutions and even breaking away from the U.S. if they don't get their way. All of this, just to keep gun control off the table.

    Add blacks to the equation and the tone suddenly shifts. You'll start hearing millions of reasons why black Americans shouldn't have guns. You'll have reams of crime statistics thrown in your face by "race realists" who use data to bolster their beliefs and validate their theories. Listen long enough and you'll hear talk of RaHoWa - race wars that aim to "purify" the nation of its supposed "filth." You start with a white American spending hours in his basement caressing his gun collection and you end with Algiers Point.

    Fear - that's the main active ingredient in the potion whipped up by certain pro-gun advocates, lobbyists and self-proclaimed militia organizers, an ever-present element that's literally driving this country to the brink of psychotic collapse. Only the gun manufacturers seem to benefit - every time gun nuts hear a rumor about the scary black guy in office taking their guns away, they buy more of them. It's a lovely racket as long as you have enough lawyers on hand to keep your business distanced from what your buyers do with your product.

    Fear of what black Americans might do in masse if they ever got the sense to do as their WASP gun-loving brethren are doing is what historically drove - and continues to drive - efforts to keep themselves armed to the teeth and efforts to keep blacks and other minorities perpetually disarmed and perpetually vulnerable. History is a great tool for figuring out America's peculiarities when it comes to gun ownership. Without it, it would be a lot easier to swallow the assumption that stockpiling guns is a sure-fire sign of liberty.
  • It was a hot Sunday morning last July when, right on schedule at 6:30 a.m., 61-year-old Johnny Lee Butts left his rural Mississippi home on his morning ritual, a 4-mile walk.

    His neighbor, Otis Brooks, says Butts, a Sunday school teacher, waved as he passed his front door wearing a blue T-shirt.

    Brooks remembers that his neighbor's skin tone was easily visible that morning. "You could tell he was black; you could see his arms." The point would become important later.

    At nearly 7 a.m., about an hour after sunrise, three white teenagers were barreling down Panola County Mississippi Highway 310 in a white Monte Carlo. Two of the three teens later admitted they had been heavily drinking vodka and smoking marijuana all night. They were headed right toward Butts.

    The two teen passengers said they and the driver, 18-year-old Matthew Whitten "Whit" Darby, spotted a man walking on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road.

    In statements to police and also in statements given to a grand jury, all obtained exclusively by CNN, the two teenagers, a then-15-year-old and 18-year-old Tony Hopper Jr., described what happened next.

    "We see a walker on the side of the road. The complete left side of the road while we are on the complete right side of the road," the unidentified teen told a police lieutenant. "And I pointed out to say, 'watch out there is a walker there...'"

    The unnamed teen continued his story: "Whit slightly turns the steering wheel and I saw him. 'Watch out, don't do nothing stupid' and then he just keep turning the steering wheel and eventually before we knew it he ran him straight over."
    "He didn't slow down," Hopper said in a statement to a deputy sheriff.
    The deputy asked: "He never hit his brakes?" Hopper replied: "No sir."
    "Do you think he hit him on purpose?" asked the deputy.
    "Yes, sir, I do," said Hopper.

    Butts was hit from behind by the Monte Carlo, which was traveling somewhere between 55 and 70 mph, according to the documents. The car violently tossed him into the air, slamming him into the windshield, and his head struck the rear windshield. Butts' body hit the car with such force that the windshield collapsed into the car, bending the steering wheel back sharply. His leg was nearly severed.

    Butts' body was found lying in the road, 172 feet from where the car hit him, the documents show.

    Darby stopped his badly damaged car. His two passengers told police they got out and looked at Butts' pummeled body. Then they got back in the car and Darby sped away. Darby drove them to a house where they'd been partying, according to the documents, and the two teen passengers tried to sleep. Darby left the house alone and drove on to his grandmother's home.

    Much later that day, the two teen passengers turned themselves in to police. Darby was arrested, telling police exactly what the two other teens said he would say, that he hit a deer. Darby denied he was drinking or smoking marijuana.

    Right about now, the average "race realist" would be in a fury over the "they hit him because he was black" angle. Then again, this is Mississippi, a land where deep pools of racial antagonism lurk underneath a thin veneer of civility and Southern hospitality. It's a place where some people still think it's well within their rights to fuck with black Americans minding their own business just because they can.

    Local law enforcement aren't willing to call this a hate crime, nevermind how there's plenty of evidence that points in that direction:

    Champion told CNN that there is "no evidence at all" that Darby killed Butts out of hate, or as a hate crime. One reason a hate crime has been ruled out, Champion said, is that the teens in the car that morning could not see whether Johnny Butts was black or white.

    But that is not true, according to the statements given by one of the teens in the car. In grand jury testimony obtained exclusively by CNN, Tony Hopper Jr., who was riding in the back seat, testified that he could see Johnny Butts was black before the teens hit him.

    "Could you tell whether he was a black man or a white man before ya'll hit him?" Hopper was asked by the grand jury.

    "Yes," Hopper said. "I could tell that he was black."

    Hopper said the same thing on the day after the killing, when a sheriff's deputy asked him: "Did y'all know if he was black or white?"

    Hopper answered: "I could tell he was a black man."

    The 15-year-old passenger in the car, riding in the front seat, says in his statement he couldn't tell whether Butts was black or white. CNN's policy is not to identify juveniles in criminal cases.

    The FBI is currently looking into the case. In the meantime, I'll leave you all with this wonderful gem from Panola County Sheriff Dennis L. Darby (no relation):

    Sheriff Darby told CNN on the phone they had looked into the incident with the boys on the road and found nothing. "There's nothing to this report," he said, "it's all hearsay," and "he-said she-said." Sheriff Darby told CNN he would not give a copy of the report to the network. Then the sheriff warned CNN not to "stir up trouble in my county." He warned if the network pursued the story, "I'll be coming after you."

    So much for Southern hospitality. You know, this place could do with a little "outside agitation." And Sheriff Darby could do with a nice, shiny federal boot wedged up his hindmost parts.
  • My guess is that we're going to get a law anyway, and my hope is that it will consist of small measures that might have some tiny actual effect, like restrictions on magazine capacity. I'd also like us to encourage people to gang rush shooters, rather than following their instincts to hide; if we drilled it into young people that the correct thing to do is for everyone to instantly run at the guy with the gun, these sorts of mass shootings would be less deadly, because even a guy with a very powerful weapon can be brought down by 8-12 unarmed bodies piling on him at once. Would it work? Would people do it? I have no idea; all I can say is that both these things would be more effective than banning rifles with pistol grips.

    The above quoted comes courtesy of Megan McArdle's lengthy essay on the futility of stopping the Adam Lanzas of the world from dealing death to innocents. You can just visualize poor Megan sighing in despair over a mocha latte while typing out another paean to the overall uselessness of gun control on her Macbook Air.

    Meanwhile, others are visualizing the spectacle of young schoolchildren being trained to zerg rush gunmen in utter disregard of their otherwise natural inclination to run away from the bad guy with the gun:

    Are you kidding me? You think gun control is impractical, so your plan is to turn the entire national population, including young children, into a standby suicide squad? Through private initiative, of course. It's way more feasible than gun control!

    Unless I am missing a very subtle parody of libertarianism, McArdle's plan to teach children to launch banzai charges against mass murderers is the single worst solution to any problem I have ever seen offered in a major publication. Newsweek, I award this essay no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

    Actually, the single worst solution to this particular problem is allowing teachers and janitors to carry guns inside schools, but this ranks a close second.

    Even the Department of Homeland Security would call a "time out" on this. Zerg rushing a gunman is perhaps one of the worst things you could do - not only are you putting your life at risk for little gain, there's no guarantee that people will break out of "bystander mode" and reconcile numerical strength in numbers with a lowered chance of dying. That's hard for even grown men and women to do and yet we expect it from our children.

    Sandy Hook did a hell of a number on the overall psyche of rabid gun owners and supporters. The NRA took a moment, but they eventually managed to find a narrative that would allow them to support gun ownership with a straight face. Now you have rank assholes convincing themselves that Sandy Hook was actually an elaborate hoax designed just so President Obama could declare those nasty-looking AR-15s illegal and send the spiritual successors of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel into the homes of patriotic Americans everywhere to destroy their ability to defend themselves, their country and the idea of Freedom™ (which, oddly enough, is encapsulated in the ability to own lots and lots of guns). A lone bald eagle sheds a solitary tear in front of a strategically placed American flag.

    Well, at least you have the youngsters doing their part to protect their fellow students from future Sandy Hooks. Sorry, kid - only the adults get to pack heat in the schoolhouse.
  • Yes, yours truly realizes that it's been about nearly a month between the last post and this. Let's just say that other events outside of this blog required my undivided attention.

    Unfortunately, that means I'll be doing quite a bit of catch-up in regards to covering many of the events that have happened between then and now:


    • The Sandy Hook tragedy and how the gun control issue spawned a shitload of crazy.
    • How America nearly went head-first into the fiscal cliff.
    • The South's latest attempt to secede from the Union.
    • Django Unchained.
    • Allen West being a whiny little titty-baby.


    I'm sure there's much more. Dealing with those outside events also meant turning a blind eye to the TV and Internet. Hopefully, things will get back on track ASAP.

    Sincerely,
    Mack Lyons
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)