Florida Teen Kills Self In Front Of Web Cam

From Reuters:

A Florida teenager committed suicide by drug overdose in front of a webcam streaming live video to the Internet and some viewers may have egged him on, authorities said on Friday.

Abraham Biggs Jr., 19, was found in the bedroom of his home in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Wednesday and an autopsy showed he died of a toxic combination of opiates and benzodiazepine, a drug used to treat anxiety and insomnia, the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office said.

"We have ruled it a suicide. Part of the terminal event was recorded on a website and there was streaming video," said Dr. Steve Cina, deputy chief medical examiner of Broward County.

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Biggs had written blogs about his intentions and some of the viewers who were watching the event live may have goaded him on, Cina said.

"There is some indication of that, yes," he said.

In a purported suicide note posted by Miami television station WPLG on its website, Biggs said: "I hate myself and I hate living."

The note said he had "thought about and attempted suicide many times in the past."

Just some more craziness from America's perverse society. People seem to come up with all kinds of ways to get themselves into the news. The only positive I guess is that he only killed himself and didn't go on one those suicide killing sprees we been hearing so much of lately.

8 Year Old Boy Kills Father And Friend

What is going on in this country? I just came across this story out of St. Johns, Arizona. From CNN:

An 8-year-old boy is scheduled in court Monday to face two counts of premeditated murder in the shooting death of his father and a friend. The hearing comes on the same day mourners were to gather for a funeral.

Police say the boy, a third-grader, confessed to planning and carrying out the shooting deaths of his father, Vincent Romero, 29, and a co-worker who rented a room from him.

The men were found dead inside Romero's home northeast of Phoenix on Wednesday.
Authorities had no motive for the shootings.

"That's what's puzzling to us," Police Chief Roy Melnick said Monday on NBC's "Today" show. "There's no record of any problems in school, no reported abuse."

Romero came from a family of hunters and wanted to make sure the boy wasn't afraid of guns, said the Rev. John Paul Sauter of St. Johns Catholic Church. He said the father taught his son how to use a rifle to kill prairie dogs.

Police say the boy used a .22-caliber rifle to kill his father and the other man, Timothy Romans, 39, of San Carlos.

St. Johns police are hoping a judge will agree to try the boy as an adult, but they admit it's unlikely.

The boy's attorney says police questioned his client without representation from a parent or attorney and didn't advise the child of his rights.

The killings took place in the St. Johns, a town of about 4,000 people located roughly 170 miles northeast of Phoenix.

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Stories like this is like the America's chickens come home to roost. America is still clinging to her ancient and out dated gun laws. You have evil organizations like the National Rifle Association (NRA) who want to see more guns on America's streets including automatic assault rifles. I bet if Mr. Romero had it do all over again he would have never taught his young son about guns.

Democratic Takeover Of Government Leads To Boom In Gun Sales

It seems gun enthusiasts, I like to refer to them as gun nuts, are worried that Obama will make it harder for them to buys guns in the future so they are rushing out to buy guns and ammunition before Obama and the democrats take over in January. This from the Associated Press:

When 10-year-old Austin Smith heard Barack Obama had been elected president, he had one question: Does this mean I won't get a new gun for Christmas?

That brought his mother, the camouflage-clad Rachel Smith, to Bob Moates Sports Shop on Thursday, where she was picking out that special 20-gauge shotgun — one of at least five weapons she plans to buy before Obama takes office in January.

Like Smith, gun enthusiasts nationwide are stocking up on firearms out of fears that the combination of an Obama administration and a Democrat-dominated Congress will result in tough new gun laws.

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No data was available for gun purchases this week, but gun shops from suburban Virginia to the Rockies report record sales since Tuesday's election.

"They're scared to death of losing their rights," said David Hancock, manager of Bob Moates, where sales have nearly doubled in the past week and are up 15 percent for the year. On Election Day, salespeople were called in on their day off because of the crowd.

Why the fuck do these gun nuts feel the need to own so many damn guns, are they that terrified of their fellow citizens, are they planning on going to war with the government or what? I just don't get it, one or two guns in the house is not enough, these fools feel they need an arsenal to feel safe. And what is up with buying guns for a 10 year old kid, shouldn't there be laws against that?

America's Overflowing Prisons Are A National Embarassment

From Citizen-time.com:

After decades of directing the world from atop its throne of moral authority, the United States has finally lost its perch. No one else has yet ascended to that exalted seat, so for the moment the international righteousness championship and the financial competence championship both remain vacant.

America forsook those titles by succumbing to the lures of unprovoked war, shameless torture, unsustainable greed, mistreatment of the poor, and vast overuse of prisons. As even hermits know by now, we suffer the highest incarceration rate in the world. Indeed, one author has deemed us the rogue state of imprisonment.

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Can you believe that 1 in every 100 U.S. adults is physically in jail, and that 1 in 32 is under some kind of state control? Too bad we can’t see all those jumpsuits and electronic anklets at the same time. It might jolt us into some policy changes.

Worse yet, 1 in 9 young black men are in the klink. No diploma in sociology is required to grasp how that number is a natural product of our society. Bad schools, bad housing, bad diet, bad health care, and biased law enforcement are not designed to breed productive citizens.

America's Prison Industrial Complex is something I'm hoping the Obama administration deal with. For this nation to lead the world in incarcerations means there is a societal problem here. I know there are individuals that should be removed from society but there are a lot of people in prison that could be rehabilitated, some just need a better chance in life.

Black and Latino Voters Crucial In Banning Gay Marriage

It seems African Americans played a huge part in passing Proposition 8, A California ballot amendment banning gay marriage. So blacks lined up with social conservatives to discriminate against the LGBT community. I am a straight black man OK, but based on the racism and discrimination black people had to go through in this country, personally I don't believe in discriminating against any group of people. I would never align myself with social conservatives - the same people that gave us so much hell in the past and still do - to discriminate against LGBT community today.

From Mercury News:

Even as African-American and Latino voters were a powerful force in boosting America's first black president to victory, in California they also were crucial to passing Proposition 8, a ballot measure labeled, "Eliminates right of same-sex couples to marry."

Exit polls showed that 70 percent of black voters, and a majority of Latino voters, voted yes on Proposition 8, one likely reason why the measure won a slim majority in Los Angeles County, where pre-election polls had suggested it would lose, even though it lost by a huge margin in the Bay Area.

The Evils Of Social Conservatism

When I run across someone who claims that they are a social conservative my antenna go up because I know what social conservatives have represented through out the history of America. They are the backwards thinking, intolerant and most racist element of American society. I don't even try to socialize with that group and they are the ones who are having such a difficult time accepting a Barack Obama presidency but, those backwards assholes love George Bush and Dick Cheney, two criminals who damn near bankrupt America.

I read a post over at Daily Kos that basically sums up my feeling towards those Neanderthals, so I desided to share it with you here:

The history of social conservatism in America is, in large part, a shameful and disgraceful one. It was social conservatives that demanded the protection of slavery in the new Constitution. It was social conservatives who helped tear America apart prior to the Civil War by their fanatical opposition to anything that would restrict slavery’s expansion. Social conservatives were the core of the viciously anti-immigrant Know Nothings in the 1850s. It was social conservatives who flocked to the Confederate cause during the war, and it was social conservatives who maintained the monstrous Jim Crow system of neo-slavery in the Deep South (and elsewhere).

Social conservatives formed the post-Civil War southern church movement, based on the sentiment that the wrong side had won the Civil War. Social conservatives have, at various times, opposed votes for women, votes for African-Americans, the abolition of child labor, the end of segregation, tolerance of Jews, equality for gays, equal pay for women, biracial marriage, unions, minimum wage laws, workplace safety standards, health care for the poor, reproductive rights (including the right to birth control), the teaching of science in science classes, and environmental protection. Social conservatives were the core of the Klan revival in the 1920s. They were the howling supporters of the lynch mobs from the 1890s to the 1960s. They were Joe McCarthy’s worshippers. They were the George Wallace fans and the core of the White Backlash. They loved Jesse Helms.

In short, on almost every issue, they have taken the most morally bankrupt stance. They are the enemies of rational thought, the enemies of science, and believers in a religiosity that borders on irrational fanaticism. Many are hoping for the literal end of the world and the physical destruction of the vast majority of the human race. The modern Republican Party has cynically used these people, but it has not let them actually govern.

Until now. The nomination of Sarah Palin, pushed by the most brutally radical sections of the Republican Party, represents the triumph of the Kristol-Coulter-Limbaugh-Hannity branch of the Republican Party, what I like to call the Timothy McVeigh wing of the Republicans. Palin is the final product of the long and vile history of American social conservatism. She represents the final insult to the rest of the American people, and as such, it is her malign influence that has the Republicans on the brink of a well-deserved defeat. Everything about the way Palin has been marketed is a slap in the face to every rational man or woman in America.

If Obama win tomorrow the social conservatives will be one angry group but fuck them, let them be angry for a while. We had to put up with their incompetent president for eight long years. Now it's their time to feel our pain for a while.

USA, RIP: Remembering the richest third-world country on Earth

From Unknkown News

We in the US are suffering a crisis of loyalty to our country.

Historically it is as if we have moved from a jingoistic nativ-ism directly to national nihilism in a couple of generations. The deep self-serving polarizations between the two dominant political parties, the hidebound commitment of so many to various political and economic ideologies, the increasing fundamentalist fanaticism of various religious groups and, most of all, deep allegiances to corporate and
multinational goals, have left no room for simple patriotic loyalty to country.

Everywhere we see patriotism proclaimed by scoundrels and the simple-minded and ignored by the rest. To an increasing number of US citizens their chief identity is couched in membership in some ethnic, religious or political group. Nowhere do we see people saying that we are all on the same side and, for the sake of the country as a whole, we need to compromise and settle our differences. No-one seems to place the welfare of the entire nation before their parochial con- cerns. This is dissolution.

To an astounding extent, people identify first as members of a faction and only as an afterthought as members of a community that contains within it members of other competing factions. We have become a nation of accidental traitors who care little about the welfare or reputation of their country.

As a functional reality, the United States of America has ceased to exist. We have a Constitution that is ignored and disowned by every center of power. We have a system of laws that are so selectively applied and enforced that it has become more of a system of excuses for the powerful. We have a government financial structure that has primarily been used as a convenient cash machine for criminals. We have developed a national debt, as a result of this looting, that can not conceivably be repaid and hence has driven the country effectively into bankruptcy.

We have a military that has been massively overbuilt and over-funded to the benefit of war profiteers, and which is sent on missions that only decrease the security of the country while pursuing economic gains for the multinational companies whose incestuous tentacles embrace the officer corps and their co-conspiring politicians with bribes and promises of future corporate positions and club membership in an international cabal of wealth.

We have a "representative" legislature that consistently ignores the will of the people who elect them. We have become a nation of irony, conceived in liberty but now dedicated to oppression.

Our real, unspoken pledge of allegiance goes like this, "I pledge allegiance to my faction and the lies for which it stands. One nation under the thumb of international conglomerates with impunity and wealth for marketplace winners and suffering and poverty for the rest."

Our true national religion is unbridled capitalism and opportunism, known in ancient times as the worship of mammon. We have abandoned our souls to the pursuit of commodities. We treat as enemies anyone who champions social reform, lest in the change that is called for we end up having to make some material sacrifice.

We watch as our nation is led in opposition to the rest of the world with actions that are indifferent to the climate crisis. In the face of dire warnings of worldwide catastrophe we accelerate our contribution to climate change as a matter of pride. We enforce with military might grossly unfair trade policies that are causing worldwide hunger and thirst.

We are a nation of individual petty tyrants with a depraved indifference to the suffering that we cause. We lack the attitude of mutual concern that defines a nation. We are no longer a nation. We are a loose association of consumers and pirates.

Finally, on every measure of standing except for strategic military power, the US has fallen to a dismally low status. Last amongst industrial countries in health care, public education, lawfulness, justice, fair elections and much else. We are the richest third-world country on Earth.

The US is dead. Long live the ideals on which it was founded.

Stupid Stuff for Stupid Voters

From Daily Kos
Every freakin' election cycle, voters bemoan the fact that the media focuses on the stupid stuff instead of policy issues. And yet during primary season, voters quickly suck up declarations that the policy differences between the most viable (a combination of name recognition, charisma and cash) candidates are slim to none which leaves on the the stupid stuff to talk about. When the general election rolls around, the policy differences are sufficiently blunted that once again, there’s not enough there there to bother with. Therefore, it’s the stupid stuff that matters.

In 2000 the final difference between Bush and Gore was that the former would send all taxpayers a check for a few hundred bucks and Gore wouldn’t. And Gore was a liar and Bush was the guy you’d want to have a beer with. What was the difference between Kerry and Bush? An elite old rich guy vs. an ordinary old rich guy. What would a Clinton vs. McCain general election come down to? Nothing more than higher taxes vs. lower taxes. And maybe more war vs. a lot more war.

A Clinton promised to fix healthcare in America sixteen years ago and once in office did NOTHING about it. Only an idiot would fall for that a second time. She may be willing to throw the kitchen sink at Obama, but she’s so far up the ass of the health insurance companies that she’s not about to rock their golden boat. And anyone that thinks health insurance companies are the solution to the problem is an idiot. She may not like the occupation of Iraq as much as McCain does, but the first woman president isn’t about to declare defeat and bring the troops home. Oh sure, there will be a difference between the warrior woman and the crazed former POW warrior, but both of the will SHOOT first and ask questions later.

McCain and Clinton are both nuts but we all pretend not to notice. Just as we pretend that GWB isn’t stupid and nuts. LOOK OVER THERE! Obama’s pastor is NUTS. Obama’s BLACK. (Even if his momma was white.) For a few years he had a MUSLIM stepfather. That’s the important stuff. Irrelevant, and therefore to be ignored, is that he’s smart. Really smart. If you like him because he’s unflappable, you’re told that he’s too passionless. Too passionless to cheat on his wife. (Have you noticed that his wife is BLACK?) Good gracious, neither Obama has screwed around on a spouse. What would we do with someone in the Oval Office that doesn’t have a big closet of skeletons that the media can rummage through for the next four years? We like our Presidents to use public funds to build a vault for their closet and watch the media safecrackers try to bust into it.

We LIKE the STUPID STUFF. Manufactured stupid stuff is better than real stupid stuff. Gore was crazy because he claimed credit for having invented the internet. (Who cares that the never said or claimed that.) Kerry only got a scratch in Vietnam and faked an injury to get a Purple Heart. (Who cares that GWB was too busy sucking up booze and coke to fulfill his National Guard obligation and declined to serve in Vietnam.) GWB is BOLD and talks to god. GWB didn’t cheat on his wife. (Important because Gore was VP for a man who cheated on his wife.) Hillary is smart. (Who cares that she makes stupid decisions.) McCain is a maverick. (Who cares if he doesn't walk the talk.) But you better be very suspicious of the Barack guy because nobody is really that smart and cool. Why he wouldn't even start a war over non-existent nukes in Iran. Better go with McCain or Clinton because they've demonstrated that they will happily spill American blood and treasure to chase phantom weapons in the hands of phantom enemies. That's the stupid stuff we care about.

"We're a Nation of Dunces"

From AMERICAblog.com

Today I gravitated towards Susan Jacoby stories both in the Times and the Post. Her new book "The Age of American Unreason" is about the anti-intellectual and anti-rational epidemics in America. Only last night we had a similar discussion with a Franco-American group over dinner. How do you move a country forward when that country is debating creationism versus evolution? We are not talking about a poor and uneducated country, but a wealthy and educated country. What still surprises me is that many of the uninterested and anti-intellectual people are educated. You don't have to be a pointy-headed intellectual to show interest in the world around us, do you?

Whether we like it (or know it) American money and influence around the world is substantial. Our decisions in Washington do have an impact yet so many care so little. It's "over there" so who cares? As a country we lack curiosity in the world around us as if it doesn't matter. USA is number 1 so who cares? How could anything possibly be any better than what we have? We tell ourselves that we are the best at everything, so it must be true. There's no country that is perfect and you find insular people everywhere but those other countries fail to have the same global influence as America. How can we be so proudly ignorant and still compete? It certainly doesn't bode well for our future economy or especially our foreign policy when we are so proud to be ignorant. As this trend continues, selling the next foreign invasion is going to even easier than Iraq.