Comcast CEO Brian Roberts throws power-packed Martha’s Vineyard soiree for Obama - NYPOST.com
http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/vineyard_top_picks_for_OMJQYAPrvYHghXkwwg5BVJ
Friday, August 16, 2013
Fiddles and Koolaide Drinkers Play as the World Burns....
Comcast CEO Brian Roberts throws power-packed Martha’s Vineyard soiree for Obama - NYPOST.com
http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/vineyard_top_picks_for_OMJQYAPrvYHghXkwwg5BVJ
Florida Sheriffs Unanimously Support 'Stand your Ground " Law
“The right to self-defense is well-established in law. The Florida Sheriffs confirmed this position by voting unanimously, at the 2013 Florida Sheriffs Association Summer Conference, to support the Stand Your Ground law as it is currently written," FSA President, Sheriff Grady Judd.
House Speaker Will Weatherford said he'd be open to legislation changing the state's controversial self-defense law if Florida law enforcement advised that changes are needed.
Friday, Florida's sheriffs unanimously came out in support of the controversial law:
“The right to self-defense is well-established in law. The Florida Sheriffs confirmed this position by voting unanimously, at the 2013 Florida Sheriffs Association Summer Conference, to support the Stand Your Ground law as it is currently written," FSA President and Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in an official statement.
"Our current judicial system is comprised of multiple checks and balances to ensure fair and equitable application of all laws, including Stand Your Ground.”
UPDATE: The FSA has since stated that only 57 of 67 sheriffs were present for the vote. Some, like Broward's Scott Israel, have since come out in opposition to the 'unanimous' support.
The FSA has remained largely neutral on the self-defense law, which removes the duty to retreat, since it was enacted in 2005.But prominent police chiefs and sheriffs have at times been very critical of the legislation.
"Whether it's trick-or-treaters or kids playing in the yard of someone who doesn't want them there or some drunk guy stumbling into the wrong house," former Miami police chief John F. Timoney told the New York Times in 2005, "you're encouraging people to possibly use deadly physical force where it shouldn't be used."
Hillsborough County Sheriff David Gee said "Stand Your Ground" "puts an extra burden on the prosecution. That could make it more difficult in a case where it's really murder," noting several cases in which the defense was successfully used by someone who was the original aggressor.
The sheriffs' recent change of heart is stocking wood on the fire of support for the law.
“I think they recognize that Florida is a safer place when our citizens don’t have a duty to retreat and run,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fort Walton beach), whose subcommittee will hold a hearing on the law this fall.
Gaetz, whom Weatherford appointed as chair of the "Stand Your Ground" hearings, has also said that he doesn't support changing "one damn comma" of the law.
Report Maps Three Decades Of Violence In Brazil
August 12, 2013 at 5:00 AM
A new study into violence in Brazil over the last 30 years suggests an array of social and economic factors have fuelled rising murder rates, with the growth of organized crime and the drug trade playing a peripheral role.
The Latin American Studies Center's (Cebela) Map of Violence 2013 analyzed government figures on violent deaths over 30 years to look at where and why Brazilians kill each other, as well as how often. It found while the murder rate overall has changed little during the last ten years, within different states it has changed dramatically.
Read full report here [pdf]
Contrary to popular belief, growth in organized crime and drug trafficking has not driven murder rates, according to the report. Instead, impunity and other institutional deficiencies have allowed a culture of violence to thrive, in which people murder each other for trivial reasons and go unpunished.
Across the entire population, homicides have risen 132 percent during the last 30 years, -- from 11.5 per 100,000 people in 1980 to 27 per 100,000 in 2011. Among those aged between 14 and 25 the rate in 2011 was around double that -- 53 per 100,000. Just over 200,000 Brazilians were murdered in the last four years of the study -- only slightly less than the number of deaths directly caused by the 62 armed conflicts that raged around the world between 2004 and 2007, when the Iraq and Afghan wars were in full swing.
Homicide rates in Brazil since 1980
"This magnitude cannot be attributed to the continental size of Brazil," said the study, pointing out the country's murder rate soared above that of the rest of the world's most populated nations. Across the nine other most populated countries, including China, Russia and the USA, the most recent annual murder rates range between 0.3 and 13.3 per 100,000, compared to Brazil's 27.4 -- the seventh highest among the 95 countries with collated figures.
The study also examined geographical trends of violence within Brazil, noting dramatic jumps in murder rates in northeastern states as violence migrated out of the country's southeastern regions and biggest cities.
Murders in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro dropped 76 percent and 44 percent between 2001 and 2011, drops attributed to security investment in metropolitan areas, better policing and public disarmament schemes. Meanwhile, the murder rate in the state of Rio Grande do Norte quadrupled, and in the states of Para, Maranhao and Bahia the rates more than doubled, with the rate of increase accelerating in the last ten years. The study attributed this to an "incapacity and/or inefficiency in local security apparatuses to confront new environments of violence."
When confined to the murders of young people only, the figures are even more startling. For people aged between 14 and 25, the murder rate in Alagoas state was 156.4 per 100,000, and a staggering 288.1 per 100,000 in state capital Maceio (compared to 111.1 per 100,000 for the total population).
Across the whole of Brazil, researchers noted interesting changes during three distinct time periods when tracking the violence in state capital cities compared to other areas. From 1980 to 1996, the average murder rate across all Brazilian state capitals rose 121 percent, whereas the rate across the non-capital city region of all states -- what the report calls the "interior" -- rose by 69.1 percent. However for the subsequent seven years, the murder rate across capital cities barely changed, rising less than one percent, while in interior areas the rate rose by more than 30 percent. Finally, from 2003 to 2011 the capital cities murder rate fell steadily, dropping by almost a third, while in the interior regions it continued to rise steadily, growing by 23.6 percent in total.
A similar pattern was noted between large and small cities -- between 2000 and 2011, murder rates dropped by a third across cities with more than half a million inhabitants, but grew by a fifth in cities with a population of between 100,000 and 200,000.
Homicide Rate History in Brazil's States
The study noted migration of violence coincided with a change in Brazil's development model, which saw industry formerly centered in Sao Paulo spring up in new economic hubs across the country, especially in the northeast and in small and medium-sized cities.
It also looked at why people were killing each other, claiming organized crime and drug trafficking were not the major factors -- as is commonly assumed. Instead, there was a national and institutionalized "culture of violence" in which people committed murder for trivial reasons or on impulse -- during disputes with neighbors or spouses, or during incidents of road rage for example.
Impunity was also a major factor -- only five to eight percent of murders were ever solved, compared to 65 percent in the United States and 90 percent in the United Kingdom. There was a "tragic" tolerance of violence by state institutions, said researchers, and a tendency to criminalize and blame victims.
More than nine out of ten victims are men, and Afro-Brazilian young people are more than twice as likely to be murdered than their white counterparts. A report released by the World Bank in January, which also analyzed Brazilian violent crime figures, highlighted a murder rate for Afro-Brazilians in the northeast states (where there is a majority Afro-Brazilian population) of 375.2 per 100,000 in 2008, a major jump from an already extremely high rate of 185.7 per 100,000 in 2002. To put that into perspective, the most recent murder rate in the world's most violent city, San Pedro Sula in Honduras, is 176 per 100,000.
InSight Crime Analysis
The report highlights how a generally stable national murder rate over the last ten years masks how huge changes have taken place in the dynamics of violence in Brazil. The World Bank report made a similar point, noting how if the southeastern states of Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro were removed from the national average between 2003 and 2007, the homicide rate would have increased by 29 percent instead of declining by seven percent. The World Bank study also praised policing and investments in security in the southeast, such as gun control initiatives and programs for at-risk youth and in crime hotspots.
Like the Cebela research, the World Bank did not point to organized crime as a siginificant element affecting murder rates -- instead, identifying demographic and social developments, with changes in the numbers of young males in the population, changes in income inequality and changes in high school dropout rates as the most significant factors, in that order.
This contrasts with the common Latin American narrative that the boom in the international drug trade and organized crime over the last three decades is to blame for surges in violence across the continent (the world's 20 most violent cities in 2012 were all Latin American). While certainly true that international drug trafficking and the presence of transnational criminal organizations have had a major impact on the region, particularly in certain countries, the studies show that the roots of violence are often far more complex. Government management of the economy, justice and education systems, and demographic factors such as birth rates and income disparity, can be far more significant.
Across the region, impunity and corruption play an absolutely crucial role in spurring and perpetuating cultures of violence, like the one described by Cebela. In Brazil, the lack of regard for life is sharply illustrated by kill rates within the country's own security forces -- police in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro killed 11,000 people between 2003 and 2009 -- one death for every 23 people arrested in 2008. In comparison police in the United States averaged one death per 37,000 people arrested that year.
In some countries, this impunity and corruption interacts with organized crime to devastating effect -- as in Mexico, where the horrendousescalation in violence of the past six years is largely related to organized crime. In others, not just Brazil but also countries like Venezuela -- where freely avaliable arms, weak institutions and a polarized society have contributed to record murder rates -- the interaction is far more complex.
Guns Save Lives and Obama Continues to Lie!
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- CA Resident is Shot by Armed Intruder, Manages to Return Fire and Stop the Threat
- [Video] Marines Moving Towards Combat Pistol Training Program Instead of Current Slow Fire Training
- [Video] Washington Open Carrier Awarded $15k Settlement After Cop Drew Gun on Him
- [Video] Piers Morgan Schooled AGAIN in Gun Debate, Cites Completely False Stats to Try & Recover
CA Resident is Shot by Armed Intruder, Manages to Return Fire and Stop the Threat Posted: 15 Aug 2013 01:31 PM PDT A 56 year old Oakland, CA man was forced to defend himself last week when a younger, 23 year old man broke into his home. The intruder, armed with a rifle, attempted to steal a cell phone in the home, but was confronted by the homeowner. The intruder shot the homeowner in the shoulder following […]  |
[Video] Marines Moving Towards Combat Pistol Training Program Instead of Current Slow Fire Training Posted: 15 Aug 2013 10:33 AM PDT The Marine Corps is in the process of rolling out its new combat based pistol training program. The new program marks the first change in handgun training within the Marines since the 1980′s. The current, legacy program, focuses on slow fire accuracy. The new program will focus on faster target acquisition, reloading and a new […]  |
[Video] Washington Open Carrier Awarded $15k Settlement After Cop Drew Gun on Him Posted: 15 Aug 2013 09:30 AM PDT Openly carrying firearms is legal in Washington State, but apparently at least one Bellingham city police officer wasn’t aware of that fact. According to KIROTV, John Laigaie, a retired military veteran was taking his dogs for a walk in Bloedel-Donovan Park when he was approached by a Bellingham police officer. The officer challenged Laigaie over […]  |
[Video] Piers Morgan Schooled AGAIN in Gun Debate, Cites Completely False Stats to Try & Recover Posted: 15 Aug 2013 07:52 AM PDT Piers hasn’t had the best track records debating pro gun supporters on his show recently. Morgan has resorted to shouting matches in the past when he begins losing a debate and in this case, he completely MADE UP statistics to support his viewpoint. Morgan had Brietbart contributor and frequent gun rights author A.W.R. Hawkins on […]  |
Thursday, August 15, 2013
The ConArtist in Chief .... Sets the standard "con of the century!
Obamacare is coming, and so are the con artists
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100963714
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RT @anti_commie32: Keep up the great work!!! https://t.co/FIAnl1hxwG — Joseph Moran (@JMM7156) May 2, 2023 from Twitter https://twitter....
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Thought you might like to hear the real story …. No need to Snopes this….Channel 12 in Beaumont Texas did the reporting Story appears on Bea...