Rodrick Shonte Dantzler

 "Police describe Dantzler as 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 250 pounds."

GRAND RAPIDS -- A nearly 9-hour manhunt and standoff ended tonight when a gunman who police said was a suspect in the shooting deaths of seven people, including two kids, shot himself in the head. His hostages are safe. Police in Grand Rapids say that seven people were shot and killed at two locations on Thursday and they are actively searching for suspect Rodrick Shonte Dantzler. Police say three people, reportedly two women and a 10-year-old girl, are dead at one scene, and four others were killed at a separate scene about two miles away, reports CBS affiliate WWMT

Roderick with his  Convict Toned Weight Training Physique (courtesy Michigan taxpayers)

• GRAND RAPIDS -- According to state corrections records, mass murder suspect Rodrick Dantzler: was arrested by Walker Police in 1992 on charges of stealing a car and breaking into an occupied home. Both charges were dealt with in Kent County Probate Court because Dantzler was a juvenile at the time.
• In 1997, Dantzler was charged with felony malicious destruction of property. He pleaded guilty. He was jailed for 33 days and fined. He was on probation for 1 year.
• In 2000, he as charged with felony assault and felony assault with intent to murder. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison.
• In 2010, he was accused of misdemeanor assault and pleaded guilty. He was given 8 days in jail.

"A man believed to be the father of one of the young shooting victims inside 2046 Plainfield Ave. NE collapses in the street after learning of his daughter's death. (Chris Clark | The Grand Rapids Press)" 

The US Liar's Club in Washington

The arrogance of our rulers and masters; their cynical contempt is endless. They either think we are stupid or perhaps they know something. Yesterday, the Affirmed POTUS tweeted, but Obama could not comply with a symbol limit , no more than he can with debt limits or any other restraint involving truth, letters or numbers, but Obama is no ordinary mortal. He is a half-breed with the gods:
_________________

WASHINGTON — So much for 140 characters or less. A president, it seems, gets to respond to a tweet on his own terms.

President Barack Obama got an avalanche of questions on Wednesday at a town hall forum through Twitter, the popular social media service. Of the many thousands that streamed in, he answered 18 in a familiar, spoken explanatory style that well-exceeded the limited length of a tweet.

Obama's first answer, to a question on mistakes made in handling the recession, was relatively short by his standards. It still amounted to about 2,300 characters — 2,160 longer than a tweet can be.

"I know, Twitter, I'm supposed to be short," Obama conceded in the midst of another multilayered response about college costs.

The White House had warned this might happen.

"He's the leader of the free world," presidential spokesman Jay Carney said. "He decides how short his answers will be."

Where is a well-placed asteroid when we need one?

Read more if you must:

Thaddeus Who?

HAT TIP: Whit

Thaddeus McCotter jumps into presidential race. Thaddeus who?

By Mark Guarino | MinnPost

Thaddeus McCotter, a US Representative from Michigan whose agenda appeals to tea party activists, announced his bid Saturday to win the Republican presidential nomination.

Rep. McCotter champions lower federal taxes, energy independence from foreign sources of oil, he is against illegal immigrants receiving government benefits and he endorses the concept of American “exceptionalism” regarding foreign policy.

His candidacy promises to be unorthodox compared to the growing field of competitors in his party.

McCotter launched his campaign at a rock festival in Whitmore Lake, Mich. and later demonstrated his lead guitar skills onstage. His musicianship is key to helping generate attention: He is often pictured with his guitar in hand and has performed at appearances, such as Mike Huckabee’s Fox News television show, where policy discussion and fret shredding are inseparable.

Musical pedigree aside, McCotter’s connection to the automotive industry is likely to give his economic agenda merit.

He lives in Livonia, Mich., and he represents a suburban district outside Detroit. His seat on the House Financial Services Committee is credited for helping restructure General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group, rescuing both companies from bankruptcy through government loans.

“If you believe American needs manufacturing and farming, that is going to be a message you will hear,” he told the Detroit News Friday.

McCotter says he supported the federal government’s hand in helping both companies recover and adds that their restructuring can be used as an example of what can be done to Social Security and the banking system.

“If you continue to raise taxes, if you continue to massively increase government, you are crushing the chances of a recovery.... The White House should finally get the message that we are not going to make this recession worse, we’re not going to make it harder for people to recover, we want to fix and restructure government starting with the debt ceiling,” he told Huckabee on his show last weekend.

McCotter has been critical of the federal bank bailout, saying that it didn’t result in stimulating the economy unlike the automotive industry recovery, in which domestic automakers added jobs and jump-started profits.

“Here we were giving $300 billion to the people who caused the problem…. There’s something inequitable about that, and something needs to be done about it now,” he told the Livonia Observer Friday.

McCotter is the third House Republican running for president, joining US Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Ron Paul of Texas. Other candidates for the Republican nomination are former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former US senator Rick Santorum, and businessman Herman Cain.

Name recognition remains McCotter’s first obstacle.

He is organizing in Iowa, which holds its caucuses Feb. 6, as well as New Hampshire, which holds the first primary Feb. 14.

While rank and file Republicans traditionally vote in the New Hampshire primary, Iowa tends to attract caucus goers more open to candidates not necessarily from the mainstream.

According to a recent poll conducted by the Des Moines Register, 69 percent of Republican voters in Iowa say they are open to voting for a candidate who is not their current first choice.

Abraham Lincoln on Jefferson, human rights, and property rights (1859)

Springfield, Ills, April 6, 1859

Messrs. Henry L. Pierce, & others.

Gentlemen

Your kind note inviting me to attend a Festival in Boston, on the 13th. Inst. in honor of the birth-day of Thomas Jefferson, was duly received. My engagements are such that I can not attend.

Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago, two great political parties were first formed in this country, that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the head-quarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson should now be celebrating his birthday in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere.

Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon its supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided.

The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man’s right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.

I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have perfomed the same feat as the two drunken men.

But soberly, it is now no child’s play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.

One would start with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success.

One dashingly calls them “glittering generalities”; another bluntly calls them “self evident lies”; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to “superior races.”

These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect—the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard—the miners, and sappers—of returning despotism.

We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.

All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.

Your obedient Servant


A. Lincoln

4 July 2011

And then we hear from the Grifter in Chief:

Down on the Fourth of July: the United States of gloom

By Toby HarndenLast updated: July 3rd, 2011 TELEGRAPH

...With the United States mired in three foreign wars, beaten down by an economy that shows few signs of emerging from deep recession and deeply disillusioned with President Barack Obama, his Republican challengers and Congress, the mood is dark.

The last comparable Fourth of July was probably in 1980, when there was a recession, skyrocketing petrol prices and an Iranian hostage crisis, with 53 Americans being held in Tehran...

...A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that 39 per cent think that “the current economic downturn is part of a long-term permanent decline and the economy will never fully recover”. That was up from 28 per cent last October. Last month, a CNN poll found that 48 per cent of Americans believe another Great Depression is somewhat or very likely….

...So what is going on? How did the land of the free, the home of the brave, and a country that less than three years ago elected a young, untested black man as president on a platform of hope and change, get into this funk?
The parlous state of the economy is only part of the explanation. More significant is the recession’s length. Obama’s promise of a national transformation after the Bush years, moreover, means that the thud of coming back down to earth has been that much harder.

The intoxicating atmosphere of the 2008 election and Obama’s inauguration has given way to a hangover. Americans were promised that the $787 billion Obama stimulus package would cut unemployment by funding so-called “shovel-ready projects”. Instead, unemployment is at 9.1 per cent compared to the 7.8 per cent Obama inherited, while the national deficit has tripled from less than $500 billion to a staggering $1.5 trillion.

To add insult to injury, at a recent gathering of his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, during a discussion about the length of time it took to get projects funded, a smiling Obama interjected: “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” Members of the council sitting around him tittered but most Americans were not amused...

...On foreign policy, there was a brief spasm of celebration over the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. But Obama’s decision, against military advice, to capitalise on this by withdrawing 33,000 US troops from Afghanistan has been accompanied by a sense that the US is retreating, if not surrendering…

Illegal Immigrants: We have earned the right to be here.

Thousands rally against strict Ga. law cracking down on illegal immigration at state Capitol

ATLANTA — Thousands of marchers stormed the Georgia Capitol on Saturday to protest the state’s new immigration law, which they say creates an unwelcome environment for people of color and those in search of a better life.

Men, women and children of all ages converged on downtown Atlanta for the march and rally, cheering speakers while shading themselves with umbrellas and posters. Capitol police and organizers estimated the crowd at between 8,000 and 14,000. They filled the blocks around the Capitol, holding signs decrying House Bill 87 and reading “Immigration Reform Now!”

Friends Jessica Bamaca and Melany Cordero held a poster that read: “How would you feel if your family got broken apart?”

Bamaca was born in the U.S., but her mother and sister are from Guatemala. She said she fears they will be deported.

“I would be here by myself,” said Bamaca, 13. “I have a feeling (the governor) doesn’t know the pain affecting families. If he were to be in our position, how would he react?”

Adelina Nicholls, executive director of the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, said the crowd was sending a message.




“They are ready to fight,” Nicholls said. “We need immigration reform, and no HB87 is going to stop us. We have earned the right to be here.”

Azadeh Shahshahani of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia called the rally inspiring and said she hoped lawmakers would recognize the law’s potential to damage the state.

“I think it’s going to have an impact,” she said. “Unfortunately, the damage has already been done as far as people of color having second thoughts about moving to Georgia.”

Several different groups stood with the largely Latino crowd, including representatives from the civil rights movement. The Rev. Timothy McDonald, an activist who has been supportive of immigration protesters, was among the speakers showing his solidarity.

“You are my brothers and my sisters,” McDonald told the crowd. “Some years ago, they told people like me we couldn’t vote. We did what you are doing today. We are going to send a message to the powers that be ... that when the people get united, there is no government that can stop them. Don’t let them turn you around.”

MiLi Lai, a student at Emory who is Chinese, also attended the rally because the immigration law doesn’t just apply to Latinos, but “all non-American people.”


“We are the same community,” Lai said. “We have to fight for our rights.”

Bellanira Avoytes came to the rally with her husband and three children. Although she is a legal resident and her children were born in Georgia, she does not see herself as separate from undocumented Latinos.

“I have family who are not residents,” she said. “I am together with the Latin people. I love Georgia. I have stayed here for 18 years. I want to buy a house here.”

Saturday’s rally follows a “day without immigrants” organized Friday, when some parts of the law took effect. It was organized by the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights. The organization asked businesses to close and community members not to work or shop to protest the law.

On Monday, a judge temporarily blocked key parts of the law until a legal challenge is resolved. One provision that was blocked authorizes police to check the immigration status of suspects without proper identification. It also authorizes them to detain illegal immigrants. Another penalizes people who knowingly and willingly transport or harbor illegal immigrants while committing another crime.


Parts of similar measures in Arizona, Utah and Indiana also have been blocked by the courts.

Provisions that took effect Friday include one that makes it a felony to use false information or documentation when applying for a job. Another provision creates an immigration review board to investigate complaints about government officials not complying with state laws related to illegal immigration.

Sturgeon fishing the Fraser River of British Columbia Canada near Chilliwack

60% of French voters thought it was a political conspiracy against Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

It looks as if they were right:
Guardian

Strauss-Kahn case is 'close to collapse', say reports

The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is in doubt following reports of major holes in the credibility of the woman who alleges the former head of the IMF attacked her in May

The prosecution case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund and French presidential hopeful accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid, is close to collapse, a report in the New York Times has claimed.

The newspaper reports allegations that significant problems have emerged with the case against the former IMF boss that could see the conditions of his house arrest in New York being relaxed with immediate effect.

Based on interviews with two unnamed law enforcement officers, it says that "major holes" in the case will be admitted to a federal criminal court in Manhattan as early as Friday. New York Police Department had no comment last night.

At the centre of the potentially dramatic turn in the case, the New York Times reports, is lack of confidence on the prosecution side in the witness's testimony about herself and what she says happened to her in Strauss-Kahn's room at the Sofitel hotel in Manhattan on May 14. After she alleged that he sexually assaulted her, New York authorities swept into action, arresting Strauss-Kahn as he waited to take off on a flight to Europe.

Separately, the Associated Press reported that prosecutors have raised issues about the woman's credibility, citing an official who is familiar with the case saying the issue was not necessarily about the rape accusation itself, but rather questions surrounding the alleged victim's background that could damage her credibility on the witness stand.

Lawyers in the defence team for Strauss-Kahn have suggested that they had evidence calling into question the veracity of the housekeeper's account, but until now the nature of the doubts have not been revealed.

Lawyers for the maid - who is not being named - were unavailable for comment last night. She has already testified before a grand jury about the charges in New York and convinced them of the merits of her case. When stories first emerged that Strauss Kahn's lawyers intended to argue the woman had consensual sex with Strauss-Kahn, her former lawyer Jeffrey Shapiro said: "There was nothing about any aspect of this encounter between this young woman and the defendant which was remotely consensual or could be construed as consensual, either physical contact or sexual contact."