Democrats Bought By Special Interest Money, and They Say It's All Republicans...

Rational Nation USA 
Purveyor of Truth

We'll start with the thing that will catch your attention, as is the way: Democrats who voted for the giant spending bill on Thursday night received, on average, twice the campaign contributions from the finance/insurance/real estate industry as their colleagues who voted against it.

Yes folks, it's true. Money talks, regardless of party affiliation. And so we continue witnessing the purchase of influence by the wealthy and powerful.

 Does this register? Does it tell us anything? Should it tell us anything? Or do we simply go along to get along and be thankful things are as they are? It seems worth questioning what we view as our biggest national domestic problems.

 READ THE FULL WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE.

 Via: Memeoandum

UPDATE:

 JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon made calls to lawmakers on Thursday urging them to support the “cromnibus” spending bill... 

 Dimon's involvement came amid progressive outrage that the House cromnibus included a provision that they said would weaken Wall Street regulations.

  FULL STORY HERE.

Why go on?

There's really no point, is there?  I  mean I've been protesting and griping and occasionally exulting about things for over 50 years and although it sometimes seems I've been on the right side, sometimes on the winning side, the wins have been so slow to grow into anything and the losers so able to readjust their stories to define the losses as wins that perhaps it doesn't matter. Even angels have to fear the sticky epithets falling on the guilty and the innocent, fear to tread on the right and the wrong because right and wrong can't be discerned through the fog of politics of any denomination. Descriptions mean nothing when our language, our history, our morals are written in water and change with the tide. We are not saved by works, but damned at random.

I don't believe in protests any more. I don't believe in elections. I don't believe in the public's ability to pay attention, to be objective, rational or enlightened enough to do anything but make noise and make it all worse.  If  we actually feel we've been allowed anything like good government,  it's often really that we've been thrown a bone to distract us from seeing that the chuck wagon has rolled off  with dinner.  Take the amazing fact that Congress passed a budget rather than shutting down the country they pretend to love. Reading it you may feel like the patient who learns his illness is gone, but there's a disturbing spot on his lungs. The spot, the shadow, the tumor, the poison pills, are riders you won't hear about, unless the Fox decides they can blame them on Obama.

And of course the President will have to support it else we hear more of the chorus of  "he's a tyrant, an emperor ignoring the will of the people" even though there can't be a whole lot of "the people" who approve of allowing a huge increase in the amount of money one can contribute to the Republican Party ( up to 3 million for a married couple) and of allowing a return to the reckless bank chicanery with exotic derivatives that caused the recent recession. After all that protest and demonstration and passion! Should we just admit there's no way to control the course of events that involves democracy? 

And of course I've always been told that I hated America, because I opposed a whole shooting gallery of things, like the war in Viet Nam or segregation or torture or the end of probable cause or forfeitures without due process. I hated America, it's said,  for warning that paying  for our most expensive and lengthy war with tax cuts for the wealthy wouldn't work.  I hated America for making a fuss about My Lai 4, for the abomination of HUAC.  I hated it for not hating enough.

Perhaps now, with the voice of  evil, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros claiming that the only reason we finally admit to illegal and immoral practices like torture, is that Obama wants you to think America isn't 'awesome' ,  with the ability of  war criminals to define their crimes away,  perhaps now I can decide that yes, I really do hate this evil empire. This abomination of a country that dares screech about FREEDOM but won't let you leave, won't let you live abroad and wants to make you pay US taxes even if you're a foreign national and don't live in the US - unless you're a corporation of course.  I have to oppose it.  I can't do otherwise.

No, the center isn't holding. 

Yes, I'm a fool for protesting, for blogging, for hoping.  I can't change minds or anything else and even if I did, our country is a runaway train anyway because people do not vote, corporations do. It's a runaway train because no one can do anything without the permission of  the ruling party.  Even old John McCain who lost an election because he had to pretend his masters weren't evil, because he had to run with that Alaskan millstone around his neck must hate America for trying so eloquently  to hold it to a moral standard higher than the Spanish Inquisition. It brought tears to my eyes. Misery makes strange bedfellows indeed.

Are there enough of us to rebel, to force the money grabbers, the tyrants  out of the government?  Of course not and not only because only the worst of us vote. We can't unite because we truly are a small minded, self absorbed, uncompromising and gullible group of fractious fools and because it's too late anyway and it's all our own fault. The enemy is us. It always has been.

Long and strange

I remember Huey Newton, standing on a platform at Clark and Jackson, speaking to a Chicago crowd by the courthouse where The Chicago 7 trial was going on. A chant of "free Bobby Seale" had just ended. Mother Fuck, he began.

It was rare in those days, and possibly still rare to hear someone saying mother fuck in public, rolling the phrase around his mouth, savoring it like a piece of candy. Mother Fuck!

"The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution."

He was holding up a little boy, speaking about the brave new world he would grow up in, a world of justice, equality, opportunity and most certainly legal Marijuana. Are we there yet?  It's hard to say.  that boy would be the age of our president, Who would have believed that?

 The thing I recall most clearly about that day was saying to one of my fellow office workers, in our suits and ties and wingtip shoes, that these kids, the age of my own kids, would be so heavily propagandized by the time they were adults that they would hate and ridicule us more than the "hard hats" as we used to call them did. Nixon's "silent majority" -- lambasting us as unwashed slackers looking for handouts, dreading work and responsibility enemies of "law and order."  Indeed, an the last year of the 1960's even a modest, trimmed mustache and slightly longer than military hair could elicit shouts of "get a job." 

Indeed the generation following became young Republicans, carried briefcases around college campuses, talking about LBO's, made the word 'hippie' a vicious pejorative and forgot about Kent State and the obscenity of the '68 Chicago convention. By the time Forrest Gump came out, the vision of the hippie with red armband beating up on women was an easy sell.

Newton, by then Dr. Newton, was murdered on the street by a rival  Black Guerilla Family activist in 1983, when it seemed that everything had been lost: movement discredited, leaders gone, history rewritten and America  in love with a clueless cornball buffoon. The young seemed to have inherited the Reagan Revolution and trampled on the ruin of our hopes.  The movement was killing itself off, discrediting itself.  Michael J. Fox became a role model for conservative youth.

Bobby Seale and the rest of the group on trial for having incited the police riot directly attributed to the police and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.were eventually acquitted of  the obscene and absurd 
charges, but Fred Hampton, co-founder of the Black Panthers was murdered in his bed, shot three times in the head at point blank range by the Cook County State's Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan and the FBI 45 years ago last week.

"We expected about twenty Panthers to be in the apartment when the police raided the place. Only two of those black niggers were killed, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark."
—FBI Special Agent Gregg York--

That they claimed self defense and got away with it, that the State's Attorney was billed as a hero inspired the Weather Underground, some of whom the young Barack Obama was idiotically accused of "palling around with"  by people of the same age as that child held hopefully up before the crowd on a sunny noon in Chicago.  Welcome to his world.    

Rational Nation USA 
Purveyor of Truth

 Uh oh, overall good economic news, including the best increase in jobs for a single month in 15 years. What next, the Dow sprinting above 18,000? Can not help but thinking about whether the current administration gets any credit for the improved performance and if the Tea Boys and Girls are working on the next scandel yet.

After more than five years of elusive gains, ordinary Americans may finally be about to see the benefits of the recovery where it really counts: in their pocketbooks and wallets. 

The Labor Department reported Friday that employers added 321,000 jobs in November — a much stronger number than expected — but perhaps even more significant was the biggest gain in average hourly earnings since June 2013.

Hourly earnings rose by 0.4 percent in November, double what economists had been expecting. That gain in hourly pay was significantly above the measly 0.1 percent increase in October, let alone the unchanged number in September. At the same time, the number of hours worked ticked up by one-tenth, adding to pay envelopes. 

“The pairing of strong hiring and wage gains is a really strong indicator of the health of the economy,” said Tara Sinclair, chief economist at Indeed.com, a leading job search website. “Now, we want to see people coming back into the work force and also finding the right jobs for them in terms of wages, skills, and hours.” 

The pickup in wage growth is coming as gasoline prices are plunging, providing a double boon for consumers and retailers with the holiday shopping season underway. 

For the year as a whole, the gain in jobs, with one month still to go, is shaping up as the best in 15 years. 

In economics most things cut both ways, however, and Friday’s report was no exception. 

 The nascent labor market strength makes it more likely the Federal Reserve will start raising short-term interest rates sooner rather than later. Most economists expect the central bank to increase interest rates in mid-2015, after leaving them near zero since the depths of the financial crisis in late 2008. Some now argue that the Fed may move to raise its key interest rate lever as early as March next year, but most are still sticking with midyear. 

As positive as the figures for November were, one month’s data probably isn’t enough to shift the Fed’s thinking, said Guy Berger, chief United States economist at RBS. “You’d have to see these kinds of number over the next three or four months, then March comes into play,” he said. “Our view now is that the first rate hike will come in June.”

Full article with video BELOW THE FOLD.

 Via: Memeorandum

INNOCENT until PROVEN GUILTY (Beyond a Reasonable Doubt)

By (O)CT(O)PUS

"Innocent until proven guilty (beyond a reasonable doubt)" has been a core principle of our criminal justice system taught to generations of school children since the beginning of the Republic. Yet today, not enough people focus on the words in parenthesis, as demonstrated by this comment:

"There is nothing wrong with racial profiling (…) Our brains tell us what to think by gathering past experiences and condensing them down to create "profiles" of how we expect things to be (…) There is nothing wrong with this - and the ability to draw quick conclusions helps us in many aspects of our lives" (Timestamp: Dec 2, 2014 at 4:44 PM). 

Wrong on all counts! 'Innocent' does NOT mean ‘guilty’ by reason of racial profiling or crime statistics. Negative stereotypes perpetuate discrimination by restricting the rights, opportunities, and freedoms of people. In the public sector, racial profiling is also UNCONSTITUTIONAL under the Fourteenth Amendment, which confers equal protection under law to all peoples in all jurisdictions. Furthermore, racial profiling violates another principle of law: Reasonable Search and Seizure. It does NOT mean stopping any citizen at random on the basis of skin color and/or ethnic identity alone without ‘reasonable cause.’

Within my circle of friends - and a member of this forum - is a LAWYER who works as a legislative analyst for the North Carolina State Legislature. Despite her education and accomplishments, my friend cannot shop in upscale department stores without being shadowed by store security. Why? Because my friend is racially profiled. How utterly offensive and galling to be stopped every time you shop! Reactionary rightwing hacks justify racial profiling on the basis of crime statistics; this is the same mindset that deprives my friend of simple freedoms - taken for granted by the rest of us.

I recall this experience from my childhood: On afternoons after the religious schools of churches in my community let out, I was chased home by bullies who tormented and menaced me with this remark: “You killed our Lord.” What? Who? Me? What are you talking about! These recollections from childhood – and the fear felt by an 8-year old kid – explain my empathy for all people who are gratuitously profiled, targeted, and victimized on the basis of ethnic, racial, or religious intolerance. Racial profiling is a violation of human rights that has led to deadly consequences:

This story dominated news headlines for over a year: Ignoring the instructions of a 9-1-1 dispatcher to wait for law enforcement to arrive, a self-appointed neighborhood vigilante stalked and killed an unarmed teenager. 

In Cleveland, Ohio, a rookie patrolman shot and killed a 12-year old boy who was reportedly brandishing a toy gun in a public park. The 9-1-1 dispatcher failed to inform responding officers that the suspect was “probably a kid” and the gun was “probably fake.” 

NYPD officers savagely beat and sodomized a Haitian security guard with a broomstick handle. What provoked this outrage? The suspect reached for his wallet to show his ID. 

In Oakland, California, a BART transit officer shot a suspect in the back. The patrol officer claimed he had mistakenly reached for his revolver instead of a stun gun: One more dead boy!

'Innocent' does NOT mean ‘guilty’ by means of street justice where rookies and adrenaline-addled hotheads act in haste as judge, jury and executioner in a flash of gunfire. All too often, miscues have resulted in death. In a court of law, none of the alleged offenses would merit a death sentence. Yet, death is meted out instantaneously on the street for offenses that are normally considered minor. In practice, the default reaction is: “Shoot first, ask questions later.” Instead, the default reaction should be: "Use non-lethal means" whenever possible.

'Innocent' does NOT mean ‘guilty’ in the kangaroo court of media and public opinion. Yet, all too often, cable networks violate the meaning of “fair and balanced” as sensationalized news reports sink to the level of mob incitement. People believe incendiary journalism is motivated by partisanship. I offer a contrary view: The Gilded Age of Yellow Journalism lives and thrives in the Era of Cable News. Broadcast television is where indifference to truth and justice merges into the fast lane of free enterprise and crass commercial self-interest; where Nielson ratings, audience share, and advertising dollars take precedence over journalistic integrity and civic responsibility; where profits always trump principle.

'Innocent' does NOT mean ‘guilty’ in a court of polarizing polemics by hacks of every persuasion. The long simmering resentments of people - harassed by racial profiling - cannot be assuaged with a simple appeal: "We need to have an honest and forthright conversation about race."  We’ve had conversations about race since the beginning of the Republic - with less than universal results.  Today, we have a biracial President whose education and accomplishments should end all talk of racial profiling. Yet, we have a reactionary fringe that defames, discredits, and vilifies the President at every turn and nullifies every initiative with cheap shot tactics and theatrics. There will never be equality and justice under law for anyone unless there are full human rights for everyone.  Instead of a national conversation, we need reforms - not this national impasse driven by an old cliché:

Don’t just stand there!

Do nothing!

(But make sure you scream into the camera!)

Are Democrats racist?

Wandering around the conservative end of the internet, every so often I'll slam up against the phrase "the Democrat Party is the most racist!" Usually misspelled, and often in all-caps.

It's easy to refute, but you end up knocking down the same arguments, over and over. For example:

The Democrats are the Party of the Klan

Now, it's true that Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Democrat even before he set up the first iteration of the Ku Klux Klan (there have been three, if you're curious). And it's also true that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican when he was first elected.

(Fun fact: Lincoln left the Republican Party at the end of his first term. Republicans are rarely aware of that: for his second term, Lincoln created the National Union Party, a coalition party made up of both Republicans and Democrats.)

But here's the thing: at that point in time, the Republican Party was liberal, and the Democratic Party was conservative. (This fact particularly angers the Teabaggers, who've been brainwashed to think that liberalism is synonymous with "evil.") And from the Civil War to about 1950, the Southern Democrats (sometimes called "Dixiecrats") were among the most conservative (and usually racist) people in America.

In 1948, though, Truman, as the Democratic candidate, put forward a very mild civil rights platform, and that was too much for the Southern Democrats: 35 of them walked out of the Democratic National Convention, and they split off into their own political party, called the States Rights Democratic Party (a.k.a. "Dixiecrats," a term which has been used ever since for hyper-conservative Southern Democrats).

The Dixiecrats ran Strom Thurmond for president, and actually managed to carry four states (Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina) along with one stray electoral vote from Tennessee. (Incidentally, that, plus the 39 electoral votes drained from Truman by Progressive Party nominee Henry A. Wallace, was expected to have produced a Republican victory, which is why we have the most famous newspaper flub of all time.)

The Dixiecrats never ran another presidential candidate, and eventually the party dissolved. And following that victory, the liberal Democrats became a stronger and stronger force in the party, eventually reversing the formerly conservative platforms, and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

This same action, of course, drew the Republican Party to the right, in an effort to pick up the disillusioned Southern Democrats.

Following the 1964 Civil Rights act, LBJ famously said “I think we just lost the South,” which would prove to be remarkably prescient: in the late Sixties, Richard Nixon, with the help of his advisor Pat Buchanan, devised the "Southern Strategy," using dog-whistle racist terms (example: "states' rights" - the states would have the "right" to ignore these new civil rights laws).

In 1980, Ronald Reagan (working with Nixon's advisor Pat Buchanan) further honed the "Southern Strategy." In fact, it was another of his aides, Lee Atwater, who famously spilled the beans years later, thinking he was speaking off the record to a reporter.

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

And that's where the Republican myth of the "racist Democrats" comes from: the Dixiecrats, and the changing face of the Democratic party. Back when Democrats were the conservative party, they were, in fact, racist; in swinging to the left, they also became the party of racial equality. To the point that, yes, the Ku Klux Klan may have been founded by Democrats, but these days, while not every Republican is in the KKK, almost every Klansman votes Republican.

__________________

Edit: (12/6/14) Corrected "North Carolina" to "South Carolina," with apologies to any North Carolinian in the audience.

President Pardons Turkey - GOP Outraged

A Ferguson Post Mortem

In the months since the Ferguson incident, I have followed the news accounts and commentary - but assiduously avoided expressing a viewpoint on the subject until now.  Bad news travels faster than the speed of light – especially sensationalized news or inflammatory news whose motive is to bring out the pitchfork brigade. So I have adopted this attitude:  Read but refrain from commentary until all facts are known.

Within the first weeks after the Ferguson incident, we did learn that the black Community had been harassed for years by local police – with numerous documented abuses ranging from speed traps to racial profiling.  Add political under-representation, and you have community with little or no voice in their own affairs.  We need not determine the guilt or innocence of subject officer or subject victim to understand community resentments that had been smoldering for years.

Furthermore, we need not determine the guilt or innocence of anyone to know that some citizens are marginalized and treated with callous disregard or even with depraved indifference compared with citizens in other communities.  For me, the Ferguson story is not about a specific incident but about pent up rage far removed from the spark that ignited it.

Virtually every week, there are reports of law enforcement officers all too often making tragic mistakes. As recently as yesterday, a 12-year old boy was killed in Cleveland for carrying a toy gun on a playground. A chokehold - banned under official police policy – caused the death of a Staten Island man. A swat team mistakenly shot a 911 caller during a manhunt.  Innocent lives lost due to momentary lapses of forethought and self-restraint. We read accounts of citizens living under siege - not attributable to crime - but attributable to an overbearing, "over-militarized" police force acting as an army of occupation.  Clearly, a review of law enforcement procedures is long overdue.

These days, the default condition – on the part of police officers, the news media, and the general public - is to “shoot first, ask questions later.”  It appears this national tendency to react in an instant without forethought pervades every corner of society and runs counter to the priorities of law and common sense.  This is not merely a Ferguson problem but a national problem.

LHTC

Scarlett.  

She's "the most accomplished woman in e-sports" and "is known for her macro mutalisk style and kick-ass creep spread." according to New Yorker. I don't need to ask Dorothy if we're still in Kansas any more or if they still speak English there. If this were a 'tweet' or a 'text,' or if I were 14, I'd say WTF?  It's not your fathers English any more, it's your granddaughter's and Madison Avenue's.  And yes, sometimes Madison is still an avenue and back in 1957, for a short while, a dance that made you hip.

Being willing to bet that a mutalisk isn't the gastropod it might appear to any speaker of Old English (last Thursday's) to be, I looked it up.  Apparently there's a Heart of the Swarm and a Wings of Liberty version of this beast, for beast it is or would be if virtual reality were more real than virtual.

I suppose that knowing I'm dealing with Video game dialect and that indeed it is a dialect separated by several degrees from the language formerly known as English, relieves me of the need to look up e-sports.  This being the age that it is, the universal and sole metaphor for defeat is the kicking of ass. Movies today can be based on video games which are based on Comic books which are based on life as people fantasize it with the aid of movies.  As I said, the hip world is removed by several degrees as is the language they speak there.

A cartoon in the same issue carries the punch line: "@FBarnes12 favorited a prophecy you were mentioned in"  WTF?  

Language has to change, rufft uns die Stimme. And of course, like it or not, it does change. LHTC is not just a dispassionate observation I fear, as much as a phrase usually used to stop all conversation about the nature, extent, causation or direction of that change or the question of whether the change is inevitable as much as it is profitable, a thing of politics, a thing of choice --  of proclamation, hortatory or compulsory or sought after.  I often think that the inevitability of that reaction, the peremptory attitude and conclusive pose of that retort smells strongly of  one of those social, cultural or academic cults that proliferate and evolve, expand and contract like planes in a Multiverse, and like universes, resist the transit between or access to each other. Things all that are for me like reading Kierkegaard -- things of nausea and sickness unto death.  It doesn't matter whether I walk, or march or ride or crawl as much as it matters -- where.

While cultures world wide seem to be agglutinating and homogenizing and Americanizing, there is a level at which it is fragmenting and racing apart at an accelerating rate.  Gamer-speak or Business school babble of  last week is harder for me than Chaucer and the number and compartmentalizing of dialects  follows suit.  The question for me however is whether this change is a "must-be" or an attempt to make the fool seem intelligent, the nerd hip and the outsider belong. Do we accept clumsy, indecipherable English because the English Department bullies insist we do, or because we are so afraid that if we can't understand it, it's because we are inadequate?  Did the Sokal hoax succeed because people who needed to seem smart thought it was over their heads, because we thought that academics talked like this?  I hate the Imperial nudity fallacy, a form of the argument from ignorance, but sometimes -- hey!

It's been suggested that the main attraction of being able to quote Derrida or Foucault is that it sounds impenetrable and thus immune from contradiction because it puts the opposition on the indefensible defensive and at the point of aporia.  I have to ask whether this is the kind of change that has to happen or is this, like so many changes we see: simply marketing.  Do changes in nomenclature reflect diversity of objects as much as the desire to create false choices, make things more attractive or less undesirable -- to cover the emperor's ass?  We used to laugh 50 years ago at the insistence that we call the garbage collector a 'solid waste transfer technician' while we don't seem to be amused any more at ordering some tongue twister at Starbucks instead of  a cup of coffee. Marketing of marketing, all is marketing.

Is the LHTC, Language Has To Change catechism here mostly to support this sort of thing?  Is the teaching of English now no more than rigid spelling exercises?  Do we indulge and feel good about ourselves because video game lovers want to be seen as athletes, participants in "e-sports" instead of nerds, because 'homes' are more attractive than houses or apartments, pre-owned sounds less sordid than used.  Are we suddenly "gifting" presents at Christmas instead of giving them because it sounds more technically knowledgeable to the easily confused?  Do things "negatively impact on" rather than hurt, damage, harm, degrade, retard or a dozen other nuanced words because we think it elevates our speech or because it reduces the need for vocabulary?  Are we seeing change for change's sake, for business sake, for political reasons, for the furtherance of  a cause -- for social climbing, for social equality, for identifying with criminals or saints or intellectuals or food faddists?  When we talk about gluts or abs are we trying to seem athletic and fit in with those who are?  Again, it doesn't matter that change is inevitable, but where it inevitably takes us.

Orwell had a grand old time showing us the benefits of change in 1984, where language had to change because you had to change.  Whether you call it Obamacare, the ACA or Swiss style or Socialized medicine has everything to do with who you're trying to keep on track for your station as well as which track you've been put on. Control the language, control the thought, control the purchasing and call it lifestyle.

Yes, jargon has a use. Acronyms and abbreviations have a use although we so often use them to ridiculous extremes  SOS or QRM make life easier for the telegrapher, ALS is easier to say than Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but so much is simply marketing or euphemy or other ways to hide fraud, fallacy and fakery:  FFF if you will. There does seem to be an expansion in that universe, but contrary to the message of the LHTC, all change isn't the same, doesn't serve the same purpose and may or may not be deleterious (may negatively impact on) to your health, well being, freedom of thought or solvency.

We have to have new words -- sometimes.  We don't necessarily have to learn to talk like people who  are 12 years old or are illiterate, confused or dialect infused, although we might buy more or more foolishly if we do.  We don't have to think we're sophisticated multilingual sophisticates by ordering an Americano in Fargo like a phony.  We don't have to assume Liberal means Fascist or Conservative means Anarchist or that calling Asia the Orient means you're a racist any more than you are just being current, hip or up to date by thinking your uncomfortable chair might discomfit you.

How much of LHTC is really "follow orders" posing as "do as thou wilt?"

The question is not whether language has to change, but whether lack of  education is to be the driving force or whether the need to deceive, persuade or to sell should never be interfered with, that any idea must be allowed to masquerade as something else and most of all the self esteem of the unread should never be risked.  Telling us it has to change is more than a way of  giving up, it's a way of facilitating deception, interfering with cognitive function and increasing the difficulty of  communicating.  

AND SO IT BEGINS?

This is Lennon Lacy, 17 year old football player, son, nephew and dead as of August 29, 2014. Lennon lived in the town of Bladenboro, a small berg in the eastern part of North Carolina. He was found hanging from a swing set in a predominantly white occupied trailer park. 

There wasn't much media coverage so most of us, even those of us who live in North Carolina, were not aware of his death but that is about to change.

The case of Lennon Lacy was quickly ruled a suicide, supposedly brought on by depression over the death of his sick great uncle with whom he was close. But Lennon did not appear depressed and had no prior medical diagnosis of depression or any other mental illness. In fact, Lennon was cleaning his football equipment earlier on the day he died in preparation for a Friday night game.

He was found hanging from a 7'6" cross beam of a swingset without any swings attached. There was nothing found at the scene for him to stand on and he was 5'9". There were two connected belts used, one of which was a blue belt that did not belong to Lennon.“There are a number of concerning factors about the apparent noose. The picture provided show that the black belt was not consistent with the one worn by Lennon. The blue belt is reported to be consistent with a belt worn by a male who resided in the mobile home where Lennon was last known alive.” (Finding of Dr Christena Roberts, FL based pathologist hired by NAACP)

He was wearing white sneakers without laces two sizes too small for him and between the trailer park and the medical examiner's office, the sneakers disappeared from his feet!

"An official autopsy carried out by the chief medical examiner, Dr Deborah Radisch, soon after Lacy’s body was discovered concluded that the cause of death was “asphyxia due to hanging”. But both the medical examiner investigation report and the death certificate went further, listing the manner of death as “suicide”."

Story Here

More disturbing information: "Furthermore, no photographs were taken at the scene of Lacy’s death. According to the local medical examiner identified in the report as “Mr. Kinlaw,” SBI officials at the scene wouldn’t allow him to take pictures and threatened to confiscate his camera if he did. Kinlaw also stated that local officers didn’t want an autopsy performed on Lacy’s body and that he had to order one from the local District Attorney’s office." Article Here

Every North Carolinian who lets this slip by without demanding further investigation should hang their head in shame. To lose one of our bright and shining stars without shedding a tear or raising a fist in rage will certainly prove the comment left by amjad65: "We are ceased to exist as civilized, compassionate , God fearing , society."

Contact one or both of these two people to demand a thorough and complete investigation into the death of Lennon Lacy.

Thomas G. Walker, USA
Office of the United States Attorney
310 New Bern Avenue
Federal Building, Suite 800
Raleigh, North Carolina 27601-1461
Phone: (919) 856-4530
Fax: (919) 856-4487
USANCE.webmaster@usdoj.gov

Congressman Mike McIntyre (outgoing)
2428 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-2731
Fax: (202) 225-5773