Long time White House
reporter Helen Thomas died today at age 92.
She was a prominent reporter from the Kennedy administration right
through to President Obama. She said
that President Kennedy was her favorite and alluded to some “reach for the
stars” saying. She asked all the hard
questions others were afraid to ask. One
would only wish that every reporter at a White House press briefing was as
assertive as Helen Thomas. But she got
into trouble because of some remark supposedly made in May of 2010 about “When
are the Jews going to get out of Palestine”, or at least – that’s what it
sounded like. Actually I would like to
hear the entire exchange again in context.
I hardly see how anybody’s carrier lasting decades could be torpedoed by
one remark. But there have been others
that exited on a sour note. I remember
David Brinkley’s last day as a news reporter was the victory celebration of
Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection and he said something about ‘You know Bill
Clinton’s campaign is all a bunch of bullshit”, and others asked him to retract
the remark but he wouldn’t. Then there
was Dr. Laura who made any number of missteps but the one that did it for me
was finding out that her beloved son in Afghanistan was a real whack job - - a
dangerous cross between Ted Nugent and George Zimmerman. It’s strange that these days George Zimmerman
is held up as a hero but Paula Deen is vilified by one and all- - and her
financial empire has fallen apart overnight.
It’s sad to see people go out on a bad note- - especially when it doesn’t
seem to be their fault. By the way it’s
not that the right loves the Jewish people so much. But they see the Jews as a convienient
stalking horse to vent their extreme and over-blown hatred of Arabs and Moslems.
As to that whole “Giant”
roller coaster thing at Six Flags, Texas - - we have heard a lot of stories
over the years of fat people falling out of roller coasters. Sometimes I think these women must be on
qualudes or something because any normal person would manage to stay in the
car. I’d call it contributory negligence
at least. My one exception is that
Disneyland death twenty years or something of a person in line to go in the
Pirates of the Carabean ride- - was struck dead by a flying projectile. That individual never had a prayer. I heard that Disney Corp only paid the surviving
relative $112,000 or something in an out of court settlement. It’s no secret I’ve regarded the Disney Corp
rather “full of themselves” for most of my life. I know that there are more “incidents” about
people kicking people at Disneyland out of the park, or not even letting them
in for dress code violation- - there have been more incidents with Disneyland
than every other amusement park in the country combined.
And now for the Timothy
Leary medical hour. On KLOS this morning
they were saying that people with Alzheimers who take LSD suddenly get their
memory back and begin acting normally. I
really think science should investigate this.
It seems that LSD has chemical properties that gets all of the chemical “sludge’
out of the brain. It is interesting that
much of the best music in history was written under the influence of LSD. I know it’s a dangerous drug, but perhaps we
could bring back a little safe research to learn more and update our knowledge.
For the second week in
a row the Republican response was what I’d call constructive. So it's not like I'm always out to "get the republicans". It was two guys who are “concerned” that the
President is giving “big business” a tax break but not the ordinary
householder. Because we still have the
mandatory insurance thing we have to sign up for. And personally if I were a voting member of
the house- - this is a bill I would vote for because it’s targeted and specific
to something which has not happened yet.
The way I figure it’s just a “vote on principle” and if Obama Care turns
out to be a big success anyhow, nobody will even remember how I voted. I did here a caller make the following remark on the radio however. She said that since so many personal bankruptseys are triggered by a medical crisis, the system we have now is just another of those "redistributing wealth upward" systems where the poor fall on hard times by medical emergencies that wipe out all their resources- - and then they have to sell their home, and people like Mitt Romney buy the property up cheap and make a lot of money on it. I guess help paying your medical bills is what the Republicans call "the 2013 version of - Slow Walking the Real Estate Crisis". If you will remember Mitt's frustration with the economy was not that people were having troubles- - it's that they weren't having ENOUGH troubles and too many people were being able to stay in their homes. I guess they were "standing in the way of progress" so that people like MItt could come in and re-zone the property into some ultra High Rent district.
The thing with Chris
Matthews this week is that I’ve reached my saturation point of the Zimmerman
case. But I will say- - and this kind of
a pet peeve of mine brought about by my own “Experience”- - that one should
always go for objective fact and not rely on feelings or experience, so in this
I agree somewhat with what Rush claims to believe (although he relies heavily
on the prejudices and ignorance of his Own Side) And the reason is simple. The other side can always come back and say
“Well who are YOU? YOU are Nobody!” and
I ought to know because that HAS happened to Me. Let me also say this. People say "Well Zimmerman isn't White he's Hispanic". OK let me say THIS for the hundredth time. I don't condemn Zimmerman for his RACE, I condemn him for his attitude and actions. I wouldn't care if Zimmerman were Korean, or a Hassidic Jew, or like Apoo on the Simpsons. It isn't the race- - it's the state of being drunk on his own power, which the System sanctions. That is where the wrong is. We have to look at what we
know DID happen in the Trayvon case and what we know did NOT happen. We know that Zimmerman was a racist and had
expressed intent to “go hunting”. We
know he was instructed not to. We know
that Trayvon was retreating and was afraid.
We then know that Zimmerman jumped Trayvon and knocked the phone out of
his hand and Trayvon said “Get off – get off” and the phone went dead. We know that Zimmerman’s wounds on his head
were NOT the result of having been pounded into the concrete between one and
two dozen times. We know that
Zimmerman’s nose was not broken. Hence
we know Zimmerman is a liar, and courts everywhere instruct jurors to distrust
the testimony of liars. We also know
there IS no “testimony’ from Zimmerman in this case, and anything offered as
such- - as well as things he may have said to others about feeling threatened-
- is heresay and cannot be admitted. We
know that it IS Martin’s voice yelling “Help” in panicked manner. A voice expert with established voice wave
technology has proved this. We know we
have an audio sample of Trayvon’s voice.
We know when one shot was fired the yelling stopped. We know Zimmerman was in fact on top and not
on the bottom when the shot went off because Zimmerman had no blood on him and
gravity doesn’t travel upward. Knowing
these basic facts about the case we don’t have enough to reconstruct every last
event that occurred in that two minutes.
Also we know that Zimmerman knew the cops would be there within two
minutes- - and even so was bold enough to “shoot to kill”. I rest my case. As Willy Brown states everything is strange
in this case. The state of Florida is
strange, the gun laws are strange, the prosecution of the case was strange, and
the jurors strange, and it is very strange that the man claiming self defense
would not take the stand in his own defense, knowing that leagelly if he does
not offer sworn testimony in his own defense- - there would be no logical
recourse, at least in most court systems- - to find him guilty of not 2nd
but first degree homicide. Having said
that- - I hope all of today’s protests were not just a futile exercise and mass
induced depression for which no one can see any remedy.
No comments:
Post a Comment