Paradise Gone

6,414 people on Facebook “Like” Writeing.

This should be viewed as a sad commentary on life and the educational system in America in the year 2012.

That 6,414 people like, Writeing, a word they can’t even spell properly, is unbelievable. I might be able to understand if was a more complicated word such as phrenology, but writeing?

In the past, if there was a topic we found of special interest, we would try to learn everything we could about it from the meager resources that might be available at a local library, a school, or a neighbor’s folklore. Now, we have the “internets” and research on any subect, and probably a video or two too, is just fingertips away and 6,414 people “Like” writeing. Pathetic.

A woman charged over an alleged racist rant on a tram that was captured on video and seen online 11 million times is set to face trial at a Crown Court.

Emma West, 34, of New Addington, has been charged with two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear.

She gave Croydon Magistrates’ Court no indication of her plea and said she wanted to face a Crown Court trial.

Ms West was given bail and will appear at Croydon Crown Court on 17 February.

Magistrate Ian Hornby granted Ms West bail on the condition that she does not travel on a tram within Croydon and Sutton, lives and sleeps at her home address and does not comment on the case.

Ms West was arrested after footage, filmed on a Croydon-to-Wimbledon tram, allegedly showing her racially abusing fellow passengers was posted on YouTube.

She was charged with intent to cause fear or provocation of violence after a passenger, Ena-May Eubanks, said she hit her left shoulder with a “closed fist”.

Thanks to DavidsFirst for posting an image of the accuser.

snoremaster has a beautiful picture of the lovely Emma West:

God bless Emma West.

Paradise gone: a fond wish to return to return to simpler times when families (actually existed and) and people were happier, when shame existed, and to being able to believe in a secure future.

On and off I have considered buying a place. In 2001 I would look at prices and think I need to buy soon. If I don’t, I am going to be priced out of the market. Then common sense would set in, I am a single male, I make the average family income for my ZIP code but I am single, how can I be priced out of buying at 2.5 times my gross income? Income and price have to remain relational and I make the median family income, so I should be able to buy a median unit. But, I didn’t buy.

Then I would look again, repeating a similar thought process a couple of times over the last decade. Only this time the response would be …. I make the median family income, so I should be able to buy a median unit, but I can’t because prices are too high, I should have bought in 2001.

Now prices are substantially lower, and I make a few dollars more ….. if I had bought in 2001, or at any time after, I would have been a money loser for buying. Glad I didn’t buy.

Now I look, and I say what if …..

I don’t like Chicago. I think it is an infested shithole. And even after 12 years, it amazes me what people put up with here. Most likely, I am out of here if I get let go as the field I am in has been decimated by consolidation, abusive regulations, and by poor management of the institution providing the venue. Opportunity just doesn’t exist anymore (and I am lucky to still be employed).

So now, when I can afford to buy, I don’t because I don’t know if I will even be here in a year. So I look at a market of 30 year mortgage priced residences without knowing whether I will be around long enough so that a purchases won’t automatically be a losing transaction. ….. paradise gone.

Krugman’s Austerity Alarms Miss Depression Lesson

So it’s official. The New York Times, or at least columnist Paul Krugman, has declared us to be in a worldwide depression. And just in time for Christmas.

Democracy is at stake, Krugman alleged in his Dec. 11 column, and Europe, economically and socially, will tip into fascism if it doesn’t cease pursuing “ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth.”

Those are big assumptions and scary forecasts. But Krugman is comfortable making them, he says, because he has evidence. His evidence that European democracy is teetering in favor of repression is the case of Hungary, which is a member of the European Union but still has its own currency, the forint. There, the governing Fidesz party is pursuing policies that suppress free expression, judicial independence and the news media.

Hungary is the only example?

Emma West.
“Kill The White Slag” Muslims freed because “they weren’t used to drinking”.
US media’s refusal to print the race of suspects.
Obamacare.
Elena Kagan.
Rupert Murdoch.
Distruction of communities via Section 8.
TSA.
Obese children removed from their homes.
Cell phones that track movement.

Our rights and wages are being stolen from us, and in many cases, being given to those who oppose us. The TSA was an experiment. In one giant swath, all rights were taken away from all air passengers with little opposition. And it was a giant success. The next step will be the removal of the right to privacy in one’s home.

Emma West, loud tram rider, has been granted bail.

The decision was reached at a Croydon Crown Court hearing behind closed doors this morning.

Miss West is charged with a racially-aggravated public order offence after a video showing a woman yelling at passengers on a Croydon tram was posted online on November 27.

The 34-year-old, from New Addington, had initally been denied bail at Croydon Magistrates’ Court on December 6 and faced the prospect of spending Christmas behind bars.

She is due to appear at Croydon Magistrates’ Court on January 3 for a committal hearing.

A committal hearing is when the magistrate decides that there is enough evidence to send the court to trial. The committal hearing is heard in a magistrates’ court and would usually happen within 2 months of being charged. The idea around committal is that the magistrate has the right to dismiss the case completely before it goes to trial, based on lack of evidence.

It is down to the magistrate at the committal hearing to decide if there is enough sufficient evidence to send a defendant to trial at a higher court. The usual process for this is:

The prosecutor will present the case against the defendant and call witnesses to obtain evidence
The defence lawyer may cross-examine the witnesses
The magistrate may invite submissions
After hearing all the evidence, the magistrate will decide if the evidence is enough to put the defendant on trial
If this is the case, the magistrate will charge the defendant
The defendant will choose whether to plea ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’
If the plea is guilty, the defendant will be sentenced
If the defendant pleads not guilty, then they will be committed for trial in a higher court
If the evidence is not substantial enough at the committal hearing, then the case will be dismissed

from: http://magistrates-court.co.uk/the-court-process/committal-hearing

Please, leave this dear woman only. All she did was put into words what the UK appears to be trying to outlaw — that current UK immigration policy is destroying the UK.

When a government outlaws speech, then it must be shell-casings that talk.

From Forbes:

Germany might be pulled into the Eurozone mess in the worst way: a ratings downgrade.

Standard and Poor’s warned Germany, France, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands and Luxembourgh that they are at risk of losing their AAA rating amid the ongoing Eurozone debt crisis, the Financial Times reports.

The strongest country in the EU. The country that rebuilt Europe. The country that essentially funded the building of Israel. The Germany that one year ago made it’s final war debt payment:

From ABC:

Germany will make its last reparations payment for World War I on Oct. 3, settling its outstanding debt from the 1919 Versailles Treaty and quietly closing the final chapter of the conflict that shaped the 20th century.

Oct. 3, the 20th anniversary of German unification, will also mark the completion of the final chapter of World War I with the end of reparations payments 92 years after the country’s defeat.

The German government will pay the last instalment of interest on foreign bonds it issued in 1924 and 1930 to raise cash to fulfil the enormous reparations demands the victorious Allies made after World War I.

Welcome to the European Union.

I rarely really watch TV unless it is older shows but I leave it on. To be honest, I leave it on certain channels until I am completely offended and then I switch — or I make notes about it.

The TV was on NBC5-Chicago when I got home because that was what I was watching at 6:30 this morning.

Brian Williams was being usurped by a blaring alarm on and off during the entire 30 minute segment (6:30 EST/5:30 CST). He explained that alarm testing was going on at adjacent floors.

The building I work in has a similar alarm system. It is NOT that obnoxious between floors.

So I am wondering, … Are the sets of major network TV news studios filled with such worthless producers (and their subjects), that no one would take a hammer to the apparently uncontrollable speaker in their studio during a commercial?

Actually I should rephrase that ……. NBC News, Brian Williams, producers, uncontrollable, worthless, speaker.

Original Air Date: 4 May 1967

…………

This is the city. Los Angeles California. It’s a big place, and getting bigger all the time. …

— Skip to about 2:30

Capt. Lou Richey: It’s not just a problem of law enforcement, it’s a community problem.

Sergeant Pearson: Trouble is there is no community captain. These people come piling in here from every where. They dont know each other and don’t want to. They come out here, make a down payment on a house and move in with a couple of kids. That doesn’t mean they made a home no more than givin’ a name to a place makes it a community.

Sergeant Joe Friday: Yeah and you get a littele weary of hearing every kid give you the same excuse when you tag them. You don’t understand, I just wanna to belong thats why I did it. Belong to what?

Capt. Lou Richey: What it boils down to is the new morality, doesn’t it, a whole new sense of values. The kids see it on television, in magazines. Even hear it from the pulpit. God is dead. Drug addiction is mind expanding. Promiscuity is glamorous. Even homosexuality is praiseworthy. How you gonna fight that?

Officer Bill Gannon: It ain’t easy.

Capt. Lou Richey: What you got to remember that, the vast majority of the juveniles you’re handling are the kids next store. They’re not hard core criminals. It’s just that for them it’s a great deal more important to be accepted by the other kids than to please their parents. …..

…………

This aired in 1967. People who held conservative Christian values thought there was moral decay being professed on television before I was born.

What would they think of current network television programming?
What would they think of our current leaders?
What would they think of the current immigration situation?

And, what do the people old enough, who supposedly held those values in 1967, think of themselves now with the leadership to whom they have given support?

No drug laws.

Who’s going to scrape up the overdoses or we just going to let the corpses rot on the sidewalk?

A Libertarian is just a Democrat that thinks he won’t have to open his wallet.
A Libertarian would plunge us into darkness faster.

“He subjected the children to repeated oral sex and intercourse.”

I am sorry, but sodomy is not intercourse.
Intercourse implies mutual exchange or gain.
There is no intercourse in the sodomizing of a child.