Thursday, February 26, 2009

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen......


- We are spending money faster than we can sell debt so we are in effect inflating the currency. The biggest buyer of our debt, Japan not China, had a -12% annualized GDP 4Q2008.

- The collapse of the stock market is causing people to put off retirement and/or move back in with the kids. This makes the idea of the End of the American Dream very real.

- The only regional economies in the country that are growing are some state capitals and Washington. USA Today reported last week that while the National economy shrunk last year Washington DC grew at a 2.5% rate. Expect the people in the red counties sending their money to the blue government counties resentment will grow.

- Big spending state governments like California are close to collapse. You could fire every employee in the state and only close 1/2 of the budget deficit. Their bonds are at junk status and they cannot sell new ones to raise capital. Like the Automotive manufacturers, their legacy costs for retired workers have created a cost structure that cannot be covered.

- Big cities in the midwest like Cleveland or Detroit are going broke and are partly ungovernable. There are literally places in Cleveland that police will not enter unless their are multiple cars and multiple officers.

- The Mexican government, like Pakistan, can no longer exercise control over large swaths of its territory.

- Texas Homeland Security went on alert last week because they are afraid of refugees streaming across their border in the event of civil war in Mexico and don't expect the Federal government to respond.

- Just under 50% of tax payers pay no federal income tax. We are reaching the tipping point where people who pay nothing will be a the majority with nothing stopping them from demanding more and more creating an untenable economic situation.

- We are about to implement a foreclosure program which will move the idea of wealth redistribution from the theoretical level to the very real neighborhood level. Neighbors living within their means and paying their mortgage will be able to go online, look at their neighbors property records and see that the guy who lives outside his means is getting mortgage help the average guy paying his bills cannot get.

- Obama has appointed people with huge tax problems while calling on the rich to pay more.

- We have a new conservative dominated government in Israel which could hit Iran's nuke program and in response Iran could attack a few installations in the region and shut down 20% of the worlds energy supply.

I could go on and on. But we are tearing apart the American social contract while facing huge threats both home and abroad. We are in for rough times.


All that being said, it does not merit this kind of craziness:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/22/militias/

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Ass Wednesday.

Parade...





Throw me something mister!







Here's a singing Mime....On Bourbon Street. Singing Mime?!





Mico and Mike Hood:




Ending the evening in Fritz Jazz Club, Bourbon Street 430 am.





So long, Mardi Gras!


What starts with joy often ends in tragedy. Last year, Mico and I actually witnessed a guy getting shot. I may have to stop going, or just stop going to the parades.







Can't leave on a sour note: here's some brilliant production from Kimmel.


Monday, February 23, 2009

From the gut.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/218576/february-11-2009/truth-from-the-gut



Friday, February 20, 2009

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

God Damn those Baptists!



"..Just one Las Vegas-style casino in downtown Atlanta could generate up to $1.7 billion in economic impact, create 10,800 direct jobs, fill tax coffers with $135.3 million annually and add nearly $3 million to the city's hotel-motel tax fund.

Casinos -- according to a new study by Atlanta hospitality experts PKF Consulting Inc. obtained by Atlanta Business Chronicle -- could be the winning hand downtown needs to stay on top of the convention business, and add a strong leisure attraction.

A downtown Atlanta casino could lead to a massive redevelopment of the central business district, spanning from near CNN Center along Marietta Street to Underground Atlanta. "


But we can't have one, because of those f*cking evil Baptists! Thanks alot, 'Christians'!




"...Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, a 2010 candidate for the GOP nomination for Governor, today announced he will oppose any legislative attempts to legalize Sunday sales of alcohol in the 2009-10 term of the General Assembly.

"Republicans are supposed to be the party of family values. Where is the value in selling alcohol on the Lord's Day?" Oxendine asked.

Georgia lawmakers are considering legislation to allow Sunday package sales and in grocery stores on Sundays. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle has said he would allow a vote on the issues in the state Senate.

Oxendine said he will join Gov. Sonny Perdue, the Georgia Christian Alliance, the Christian Coalition of Georgia, the Georgia Baptist Convention, and the Georgia Council on Moral and Civic Concerns opposing Sunday sales.

"I am proud to join hands with them and thousands of other Faith leaders and lay people all across Georgia of so many denominations who have taken a strong stand against Sunday sales in Georgia," Oxendine said. "I share the disappointment of many in the Faith Movement in Georgia that certain elected officials have moved away from the position they promised to support during their campaigns once they were in office.

"Unlike certain elected officials, I will keep my promise on this important issue of safety and faith."


It's crap like this that makes me question religion.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Critical Mass

Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn’t believe that humans are causing global warming.

"I don’t think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.

"They’ve seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.

"Not that the planet hasn’t warmed. We know it has or we’d all still be in the Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there’s disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming."

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.

Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses — for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth’s crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.

Schmitt said he’s heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven’t been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: "It’s one of the few times you’ve seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it’s coloring their objectivity."

Friday, February 13, 2009

Dr Dirtbag Deluxe.



When my son was diagnosed on the Autism spectrum, my wife did more research into causation then most parents....She became a member of online Forums, one of which bought into the 'vaccine=Autism' conspiracy....

The real charlatan is one Dr Wakefield, who fled the UK and now peddles his 'wheres' in Texas somewhere...


"Normally when the words “bad science” are used, it refers to, failure to account for possible errors or bias in the data, poor use of controls or just illogical conclusions. However, in the case of the study that started the whole MMR Vaccine/Autism controversy, it seems that this was not a case of bad science or a poorly managed study at all. No, in this case, it was just good old fashioned lying. It’s not that the data was biased or incomplete, it was a big fat lie, made for no other reason than to derive a conclusion that is entirely false.

Ironically, the doctor who has been the foundation of the “Autism Truth” movement (which is a lot like the “9/11 Truth” movement), seems to care nothing about the truth. Wakefield is widely cited as the single individual most responsible for the controversy over the vaccine that prevents measles, mumps and rubella.

Via The Times Online:

THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.
Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

This is not the first time that Wakefield has been investigated for misconduct around the study he published back in 1998. Shortly after the article was published, some very disturbing inconsistency and allegations began to come to light over Wakefield’s conduct. In 2007 information came to light that indicated Wakefield had paid his young son’s friends for blood samples at a birthday party. Wakefield has also been charged with taking payments from those involved in autism litigation and on conducting research without full consent of those involved.

All in all this information comes as only the latest to come to light in what appears to be a disturbing pattern of bizarre and unprofessional conduct by Doctor Mister Wakefield. At this point Wakefield has long lost any respect or trust that he may have had in the medical or scientific community. The recent disclosure of records really only confirms what was already known about Wakefield.

Sadly, it also seems that this does not matter very much when it comes to his ability to garner support and line his pockets. There are plenty of suckers ready to line up to cheer the bold faced liar Wakefield as he shamelessly continues to exploit ignorance, fear and suffering in the name of dishonest cash.



Indeed, Wakefield seems to relish his new status, as a hero to the ignorant and a villain to those who know better. Wakefield has shed any semblance of legitimacy to take a place as the figurehead of a community of conspiracy theorists, ill-informed parents and fellow lying scammers. A strange cross between a political movement, a cult and a 19th century medicine show , it is the kind of movement tailor made for someone like Wakefield.



The only thing that seems to have changed for Wakefield is that he is now undermining public health efforts and spouting his venomous lies to line his pocket with dollars, as opposed to pounds. Yes, that’s right, as the heat got turned up on Wakefield, the criminal liar moved to the US, and has now opened a clinic in Texas. "









Who also needs to be brought to justice as well are the celebrity fellow travelers of this fraud. By any rational analysis they should be charged with conspiracy. In fact I would start with Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy. It’s about time this whole class of people get a wake-up call over their propensity to leverage their fame to meddle in maters beyond their station.

Maybe a ruined career should be enough to send the message to that whole community that the skill of pretending to be someone else does not qualify one to extend medical opinions. (And maybe reinforce the commonsense observation that you shouldn’t put your butt on the line over the wild ideas of a stripper, or a failed POTUS candidate)

Yeah...Right.

I wish I could comment on this more, especially as I went to the valentines party @ my child's Autism school today, and heard this sommented in the hallways by various other parents. But I'm afraid ( yes ) that would get back to someone and my child would pay for my views.

Surprise!




UPDATE: The Democrats finally made the bill's language available around 11 p.m. Thursday, approximately 10 hours before members meet Friday to consider the bill and 38 hours short of the time promised Americans to review the bill.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30697



Surprise!





Clinton wants 'more balance' on airwaves

Even though no member of Congress has scheduled hearings on the Fairness Doctrine, it remains on a hot topic on both liberal and conservative shows.

Today, radio host Mario Solis Marich asked former President Bill Clinton if it was time for "some type of enforced media accountability."

"Well, you either ought to have the Fairness Doctrine or we ought to have more balance on the other side," Clinton said, "because essentially there's always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows and let face it, you know, Rush Limbaugh is fairly entertaining even when he is saying things that I think are ridiculous...."

Clinton said that there needs to be either "more balance in the programs or have some opportunity for people to offer countervailing opinions." Clinton added that he didn't support repealing the Fairness Doctrine, an act done under Reagan's FCC.

In the past week, a couple Democratic Senators, Debbie Stabenow and Tom Harkin, have both spoken favorably about the Fairness Doctrine, or holding hearings on radio accountability.


Transparency? Nope.

No lobbyists in power positions? Nope.

No more 'culture of corruption'? Really?!

It's going to get real ugly when the Obamatron's figure out they have been played.

Count on it.


Say, Bill: how come nobody has heard that the #2 city with the most kidnappings is Phoenix? I would think that 'the media' would have 'balanced' that out in the last year. I mean, it's not like the GOP candidate was FROM THERE!

And McCain? Why have you been so silent on this issue, huh? Where the f*ck is all that 'straight talk'? You both are full of crap.










http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0209/Clinton_wants_more_balance_on_the_airwaves.html

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A Storm's a comin'!!





A Storm that’s gonna sweep Louisiana clean of corrupt politicians once and for all! And that Storm’s name is Stormy. Stormy Daniels.

Honesty, passion and strength of character. These are the traits Louisiana needs in a Senator at this crucial time. And honesty, passion and strength is what this Storm is all about.

A champion of entrepreneurism, a fighter for decency and the embodiment of pure libertarianism, Stormy Daniels will be a tireless champion for the forthright values of common sense and do-it-yourself individualism!









Awesome.


Next weekend look for Mico, Jamie and I @ Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon Street for our annual Mardi Gras 'Saint's on a Train' celebration...






Monday, February 9, 2009

Were all socialist now





I love reading the 'comment' sections of HuffPo, just to get see what the 'other side' thinks. When Newsweek and Time are telling you were 'socialist', then it's already happened.

Check out this gem fro CarboLaw "..And at the same time, thanks to our system of Capitalism we have over 420 Billionaires in the US all of whom saw there income double from 2000-2007 while everyone else saw their wages stagnate or shrink.... but when people are living in multiple luxury homes (ala McCain) driving numerous 100K plus cars and their idea of suffering is getting their daughter a Beemer instead of a Porche for her sweet sixteen, all the while more and more Americans are homeless, school districts are declaring bankruptcy and millions of Americans are uninsured, something needs to change."

Hate the rich. So original. That's 'change' I can believe in.

On the Climate 'Change' scene, not looking good for Owl Gore and his lemmings.




Fifty-four percent (54%) of U.S. voters say the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is. Only 21% say the media present an accurate picture, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Thirteen percent (13%) think the media make climate change appear to be better than it truly is. Twelve percent (12%) don’t have an opinion.

No wonder 23% say it is at least somewhat likely that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century.
Common to all surveys about the media, Republicans are more critical than Democrats.

Seventy-nine percent (79%) of GOP voters say the media paints a darker picture of global warming that the reality merits, and 63% of voters not affiliated with either party agree. Democrats, however, are much more closely divided: 27% say the media make it look worse than it is, 22% better, and 34% say they present an accurate picture.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? Sign up now. If it's in the news, it's in our polls).

Men are more skeptical about media coverage of global warming than women. Younger voters question it more than their elders.

Whites are more than twice as likely as African-Americans to say the media make global warming look worse than it is.

One beneficiary of positive media coverage is former Vice President Al Gore who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-global warming efforts. But only 36% of voters believe he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to the environment and global warming.

Still, 64% of voters think global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem, with 41% saying it is Very Serious. These numbers are down slightly from earlier surveys.

But voters are shifting away from the idea promoted by Gore and others that human activity is the cause of global warming and are viewing it instead more as the result of long-term planetary trends.

The majority perception that the media aren’t playing it straight with global warming matches similar Rasmussen Reports surveys last year in which doubts were raised about news coverage of the presidential campaign and the problems in the economy. Public unhappiness with this coverage comes at a time when newspapers, magazines and broadcast media are all dramatically downsizing, thanks to shrinking audiences and advertising revenues.

In a survey in mid-November, 46% of Americans said most reporters and media outlets try to make the economy seem worse than it really is. This was a slight improvement from July, however, when 50% said the media was guilty of painting a worse economic picture than the facts merited.

Just before last November’s election, 68% of voters said most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and 51% believed they were trying to help Democrat Barack Obama. Just seven percent (7%) thought they were trying to help his Republican opponent, John McCain.

The number of those suspecting a media tilt toward Obama had grown since June when just 44% believed reporters would try to help him get elected. At that time 13% thought they would work for McCain’s benefit.

Friday, February 6, 2009

who shot BJ?


BENNDALE, Miss. – Billey Joe Johnson Sr. opens the driver’s-side door of his dead son’s Silverado and begins to examine some of the leftover splatter. It clings to the dashboard, leeches out of air conditioning vents. Some of it even found a resting place on the truck’s exterior.

“There goes a hunk of meat right there,” the father said, pointing to a nickel-sized fragment of his son’s brain. “How’d it get over here?”

In the back seat, a geometry book rests next to camouflage clothing and empty boxes of buckshot. Billey Joe Johnson Jr. often woke up at 4 a.m. to hunt before heading to George County High School, where everyone knew him as the football star who would escape crushing rural poverty by running from it.

Piles of recruiting letters litter the back seat, the remnants of life as one of the most sought-after running backs in the Class of 2010. Alabama wanted Billey Joe. So did Notre Dame. And dozens of other schools. He was ready to commit to Auburn. By many accounts Billey Joe was a popular, big-dreaming, clean-living kid. So it’s no wonder his father stands in the yard next to a single-wide trailer, trying to play forensic expert. Searching – like many in this rural community – for answers about who shot his son.

Local authorities stopped Billey Joe for a traffic violation on the morning of Dec. 8, and they say the truck is simply the site of a terrible tragedy. But to the elder Johnson, it’s a crime scene.

Nearly two months later, only one fact is certain: Instead of running out of George County as a football hero, Billey Joe was buried beneath it at the age of 17.

The George County Sheriff’s Department claims that on that fateful morning, Billey Joe attempted to break into the home of an on-again, off-again girlfriend in the nearby city of Lucedale. According to the sheriff’s department, he left the scene and ran a red light at 5:34 a.m. After a 1½-mile pursuit, Billey Joe got out of his truck, met sheriff’s deputy Joe Sullivan and handed over his license. Then Billey Joe returned to his truck, put a 12-gauge shotgun he used to target deer to his head and committed suicide. It was 5:40 a.m.

Sullivan’s patrol car was not equipped with a camera, and his is the only account of the event. Billey Joe’s friends and family don’t believe the story.

Billey Joe was black. Sullivan is white. The case, as such, is shrouded by race in this small community in the Deep South. Everyone wants answers. No one is getting them. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations and the local district attorney – the two bodies in charge of the case – have issued neither a ruling nor many pertinent details.

Tony Lawrence, the district attorney running the state’s investigation, met with the family Dec. 19 and urged patience.

“I have said from the beginning that this investigation will be exhaustive and not based on any timeline other than that which leads to the truth,” Lawrence said at the time. His office declined further comment this week.

With no answers and a state investigation that is dragging on, the region has descended into a cauldron of speculation, suspicion and conspiracy. Theories are easy to find, the truth all but impossible.

Johnson fixates on the truck that is stained with what is left of his son. The day after the incident, police returned it to the family as is. Rather than wash it, junk it or sell it, Johnson keeps it in a garage, driving it out to re-examine. He stares at it. He imagines his son.

He’s convinced someone forced Billey Joe on his knees, shoved the shotgun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

“They must’ve tortured my baby,” Johnson says.

Here is what the police say about Billey Joe’s death: During a routine traffic stop, Billey Joe Johnson Jr. shot himself in the head.

He woke at 4:30 a.m. that day, a school day, at his parents’ trailer and took a shower. His dad thought he was going hunting. Instead, he drove 15 miles to Lucedale, the 2,700-person county seat and location of both his high school and a girlfriend.

Billey Joe’s truck had notes from multiple female admirers, and his friends said he enjoyed the attention offered to a star athlete. He’d already run for 4,000 yards in his high school career and helped make George County a state powerhouse. Everyone knew him. Many wanted to be with him.

One girl, whom Yahoo! Sports will not name since she is a minor, had been around the longest. It was a typical high school relationship – “they’d break up every day and then get back together,” said one of his friends, Drew Bradley. The fact that she was white bothered some people.

“It’s George County, it’s a little Southern town,” said Bradley, who is white. “You’ve got a bunch of racist people down here. You have people who hated on them because it was black and white.”


It was about the only unsettled part of his life. His friends swear he never drank or did drugs, a claim backed by a toxicology report that also found no trace of steroids. If anything, his biggest vices were hunting, playing video games and occasionally driving a little too fast.

“The photos on his cellphone contained one picture of a girl and after that it was deer, deer, deer,” said Jerome Carter, the Johnson family’s attorney and a managing partner in the Mobile, Ala., branch of the Johnnie Cochran Law Firm.

When gas prices soared last fall, Billey Joe moved into the Lucedale home of assistant football coach Darwin Nelson, whose son was a friend. It shortened his commute and provided comforts such as a swimming pool and a computer his parents’ unpainted, country trailer lacked. He stayed two months and was polite, prompt and respectful.

“He was a model citizen when he lived here,” Nelson said.

Even as new girlfriends came on the scene, the old one would return. There were rumors of a restraining order but no paperwork indicating such a filing was present in county court.

The girl lived with her father in a small trailer park near downtown Lucedale. Billey Joe had been there many times before when he pulled up in the predawn hours. She was home alone. Billey Joe’s cellphone records show there had been no contact between the two that morning.

According to an incident report filed by the Lucedale city police, the girl claimed Billey Joe tried to break in through the front door and later tapped her bedroom window before leaving.

As Billey Joe drove away, the girl called her mother, who in turn called police and said they wanted to “sign charges.”

It’s unknown whether Billey Joe knew about the call to the cops or what his state of mind was at that point. The girl’s family has declined comment and has refused to speak to Johnson family investigators, according to Carter. It’s a key mystery in the case and the center of much of the gossip.

After leaving the trailer, Billey Joe ran a red light as he headed in the direction of home. Deputy Sullivan observed it and turned on his blue lights in pursuit. A little more than a half-mile down the road, Johnson ran a four-way stop sign. Slightly less than a mile after that, he finally pulled into a driveway that serviced a few shops, including Benndale Carpet.

When Billey Joe stopped, he got out of his truck and approached the officer, according to Sullivan’s incident report. Sullivan told Billey Joe to hand over his license and return to his truck. Sullivan turned and walked to his squad car.

“When I went back to my vehicle I picked up the radio to call it in and heard a gun shot and glass breaking,” Sullivan wrote in his incident report. “I looked up and the black male fell to the ground and the gun he had in his hand fell on top of him.

“I called dispatch and advised them that the subject had just shot himself.”

Police have not publicly identified the gun, but Billey Joe’s brother Eddie Johnson said he bought a Ted Williams, 12-gauge, full-choke, pump shotgun at a local pawn shop about a year ago. The barrel of that model is either 27 or 28 inches in length. Carter had Billey Joe’s arms measured before burial and will determine whether they were long enough to pull the trigger when the weapon is produced.

There is only one other official eyewitness account of the crime scene, an incident report written by Lucedale police Sgt. James O’Neal, who initially responded to the girl’s home and then went to the site of the shooting.

“I approached the scene and observed a black male, identified as the suspect Billey Joe Johnson, lying on the ground outside the driver’s side door with a shotgun lying on top of him and blood on the ground around his head,” O’Neal wrote.

“He was lying on his back, his head away from the truck. The shotgun was lying on his body with the barrel pointing in the direction of his head.”

Although Billey Joe’s parents were on the scene soon, authorities asked Darwin Nelson, the football coach, to identify the body next to the truck.

Nelson said that when he arrived, the driver’s-side window had a bullet hole in it which appeared to come from the inside of the open door.

“There was kind of a jagged hole in the window, 3 or 4 inches across, almost like a lightning strike to the window,” Nelson said. “The rest of it was shattered, but still in place.”

There’s been speculation that the 3-inch magnum buck shots which Billey Joe favored for hunting would’ve blown the window out rather than left a bullet hole – thus eliminating his gun as the weapon and making suicide unlikely.

However, Andrew Scott, a former police chief in Boca Raton, Fla., who now works as an expert on forensics and crime-scene investigations, said that at such a close range it could’ve produced the hole Nelson described.

Here is what family and friends say about Billey Joe’s death: Billey Joe Johnson was shot in the head by someone else.

They start with his personality. He was calm, never violent, happy and hopeful. Last fall, he’d begun attending the First Baptist Church with friends and “gave his life to Christ,” according to his youth pastor, Rob Hilbun.

He had more friends than he could count – “that boy would be text-messaging in his sleep,” said his mother, Annette. His funeral was held in the biggest room in the county – the middle school gym – yet it struggled to contain the estimated 1,000 mourners.

Just a junior, he was fielding letters and recruiting pitches from college coaches Charlie Weis and Les Miles and taking visits to Alabama and Mississippi State. They saw him as the second coming of Walter Payton, a small-town Mississippi legend from not too far down the road.

He’d fallen for Auburn, where he saw himself fitting into the small-town environment with hunting woods close to campus. He’d affixed a school license plate on the front of his truck.

The future had become his focus – he’d started weight training and running. Inside his truck were registration forms for the ACT. He talked about helping his family, which had fallen on desperate financial times since his father, once a logger in the piney woods of Mississippi, went on disability with a bad back.

“We’re all over my uncle’s on the Friday before [his death] and he was just telling us he’s going to go to Auburn and go pro,” said Joseph Lee Bradley Jr., a cousin, the sophomore class president and no relation to friend Drew Bradley.

“We were throwing the football and he was telling what he was going to do for himself and his family,” the cousin continued. “His family can hardly afford anything. They have to borrow to pay for things. He didn’t like that. He wanted them to have money before buying stuff. He wanted them to have a better house.”

The family’s attorney, Jerome Carter, disputes the allegation that Billey Joe attempted to break into the former girlfriend’s trailer. He notes that there was no evidence of forced entry presented by police, and the powerful 6-foot, 205-pound Billey Joe easily could have gained forceful entry.

“An attorney right out of law school would’ve been able to completely decimate that case,” Carter said. “A simple kick of the door and he would have been in.”

As for the alleged self-inflicted gunshot, when the body was returned to the Johnsons, a state pathologist had cut out about one-third of his skull (the left, back side) and his tongue. Because the rest of him was intact, the assumption is the barrel was inside his mouth when it went off.

The kickback on a 12-gauge shotgun is considerable. Yet none of his teeth were broken and Deputy Sullivan said he saw Billey Joe still holding the barrel as he fell to the ground before it rested on his chest.

“I’ve shot that gun before and it kicked like a mule,” Johnson Sr. said.

Then there are the numerous acts that might appear to violate police procedure.

According to Deputy Sullivan’s incident report, Billey Joe traveled 1½ miles in police pursuit before stopping. Sullivan never called for backup or mentioned the fleeing in his report.

When the pursuit ended, Sullivan allowed someone who had just run to get out of the vehicle and approach him.

“It’s inconsistent with standard police practices and procedures,” said Scott, the former police chief. “It’s very unusual for an officer to continue for 1.5 miles and not to call for additional officers. [At the stop] it’s unusual for the officer to not draw his weapon and say, ‘Get back in the vehicle.’ ”

One possible explanation, although there is no mention of it in the incident report, is that Sullivan knew it was Billey Joe. His play on the football field had made him a local celebrity.

His truck was easily identifiable. It had a vanity plate, and during the season cheerleaders had stickered on the back window his name and football number “21.”

Billey Joe had told friends he’d been pulled over by police dozens of times, including at least 18 times by one officer – not Sullivan. Friends admit he liked to drive fast on the country roads, so it’s possible those incidents were reasonable and police were actually cutting him a break by letting him off. Others think police routinely targeted him.

“He said it seemed like the police were all the time hating on him,” said friend Drew Bradley.

George County Sheriff Gary Welford declined comment for this article.

“He’d have never gotten out of that truck, never, never, never,” said cousin Joseph Bradley. “I’ve been in the truck with Billey Joe when we’ve been pulled over a few different times. He knew how to act. … They would ask, ‘Where are you going? Billey Joe would just hand his license [and say] ‘Home, sir.’ Then they’d let us go.

“He’d say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir’ to anybody,” Bradley continued. “He’d say it to the woman at McDonald’s. You know how you can’t tell if someone working at McDonald’s is a teenager or an adult? He said ‘yes, ma’am’ one time and the woman said, ‘Ma’am? I’m not a ma’am, you’re probably older than I am.’ ”

Based on pictures of the scene, the distance between Johnson’s truck and Sullivan’s patrol car was no more than 30 feet. It would’ve taken Sullivan approximately 10 seconds to walk back from meeting Johnson, sit down in his seat and pick up the radio.

Billey Joe’s 1999 Silverado was an extended cab, but with an extra door only on the passenger side. Like many hunters, he stored the gun on the floor under the back seat. In those 10 seconds, he would’ve needed to return to the truck, climb in and, if the gun was in its normal spot, pull it over the seat, step back out and shoot himself.

It also would’ve been a split-second decision to end his life. If he was suicidal, why didn’t he shoot himself when he pulled to a stop? Instead he got out, approached Sullivan and said he was racing home because his mother was sick.

“He was trying to get out of a ticket,” said Carter, the lawyer. “If you’re going to kill yourself, you don’t care about a traffic ticket.”

Police have left open the possibility of an accidental shooting. However, it doesn’t explain why Billey Joe would’ve pulled the shotgun in the first place. Carter’s pathologist determined the shooting took place outside of the truck and was not a result of the gun mistakenly going off inside the cab.

Carter has asked for an opportunity to examine Deputy Sullivan’s uniform, which would show signs of being within close range of a gun being shot.

“We’ve received no response,” Carter said.

At some point, the window with the bullet hole was broken rather than preserved with a special film available to police. The pieces were swept under a row of mailboxes. Why the film wasn’t used and how much examination authorities performed on the window before it was broken is unknown. The result is the same – a key piece of evidence was lost.

“That would not be proper police procedure,” Scott, the former police chief, said. “You’d want to preserve that.”

Scott also said it was improper to return the truck to the family the next day. It still had tabs of measurement tape on it, indicating a forensic investigation, but remained a potential crime scene.

Almost immediately after the incident, both the sheriff’s department and city police turned the investigation over to the state.

Nelson, the football coach who was asked to identify Billey Joe’s body, said he saw Deputy Sullivan at the scene and didn’t notice anything suspicious – only that he appeared to be in a state of shock.

“He was very visibly shaken, like he seen something he hadn’t wished to see,” Nelson said. “What that is, I don’t know.”

In truth, only Sullivan and Billey Joe knew. Conspiracy theories conjure up mysterious murders. The local chapter of the NAACP has already “ruled out suicide.” Until the state releases its investigation – which could come as soon as next week – a vacuum of information has been filled by speculation.

Billey Joe Johnson Sr. remains convinced that his son was murdered by someone, although he doesn’t know whom.

Johnson Sr. was born in George County in 1965, entering the world at home because the local hospitals were still segregated. He got his unusual name because someone misspelled “Billy” on his birth certificate. In turn, he passed it onto his son.

He met his wife, Annette, in the ninth grade and says, “I didn’t know much about her except I loved her.” With limited means and fading health, he’s raised four children, the youngest a 9-year-old girl.

Now he stares at his son’s truck in the yard and shakes his head.

“He was just a country boy,” he said. “He never got a chance.”

Inside Billey Joe’s blood-spattered truck, amidst the recruiting letters from famous coaches and female classmates, near the ammo boxes and the pictures of wildlife, sat a copy of the Emily Dickinson poem “The Chariot.”

Lying eerily amongst the remains of a violent end to a promising life, the opening lines still call out:

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me .....

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Only you can prevent fires in Biden's office.





Cooper's question: "Have you had a cigarette since you've been to the White House?"

The president's answer: "No, I haven't had one on these grounds."

"OK, you said on these grounds," Cooper noted.


"I'll let you pass on that."

Obama smiled brightly but did not elaborate.


Just admit it, dummy.






"Early this afternoon, the D.C. Fire Department was called to the Executive Office Building in response to reports of smoke on the 4th floor. A limited number of staff were temporarily evacuated and have now returned to their offices. There were no injuries and no apparent damage to the building."


























Wednesday, February 4, 2009

STH





http://www.amazon.com/Sounds-Like-Teen-Spirit-Ripped-Off/dp/1583480234/ref=si3_rdr_bb_product

Monday, February 2, 2009

Yep...still sucks.

sonething funny about seeing a guy who hates corporations play the most corporatized sporting event in the Western hemisphere.

Prince > Bruce.