


2016 Election Forecast | FiveThirtyEight
A collection of opinionated commentaries on culture, politics and religion compiled predominantly from an American viewpoint but tempered by a global vision. My Armwood Opinion Youtube Channel @ YouTube I have a Jazz Blog @ Jazz and a Technology Blog @ Technology. I have a Human Rights Blog @ Law
"Omar Mateen was a disciplinary challenge in school, unafraid to push buttons. “Constantly moving, verbally abusive, rude, aggressive,” that school assessment noted. In the third grade, his rendition of the school song at Mariposa Elementary replaced “Mariposa, Mariposa” with “marijuana, marijuana.”
The boy was formally disciplined more than 30 times in elementary and middle schools as he pursued attention and occasional conflict rather than his studies. His father would later say that young Omar preferred drawing pictures in class to listening, which seems borne out by an assessment one of his teachers wrote at the time:
“Unfortunately, Omar had great difficulty focusing on his classwork since he often seeks the attention of his classmates through some sort of noise, disruption, or distraction.”
So was Omar Mateen betraying his latent extremist sympathies — or was he just being tone-deaf — when, at 14, he shocked other students on his school bus by imitating an exploding plane so soon after the Sept. 11 attacks?
“He got on, walked up the first couple of steps, held his arms out and made sounds like a motor and then made an explosion sound — and slipped into his seat,” Robert Zirkle, another student on the bus, remembered. “He did this three or four times, and was clearly not in the mood or the same state of mind that we were in. He seemed excited.”
His unsettling pantomimes ended when others told him there would be problems if he continued.
Omar cycled through three high schools, collecting a string of suspensions — for fighting and other infractions — along the way. (In one case, a charge of battery was adjudicated and a charge of disturbing school function was dropped, he later wrote to a potential employer. “This was an experience of me growing up and I learned a big lesson from it.”)
Martin Bielicki, a former dean of students at Martin County High School, remembered in an email that this student “had issues with other students, in particular,” and “always would argue back and even defend himself.”
“I remember Omar as a 14-year-old boy,” Mr. Bielicki wrote. “I look at that yearbook picture of him and it brings back memories of an innocent and likable young man.”
Omar matured with time. He took up soccer and skateboarding, became infatuated with weight lifting, and shed the flabbiness that had become a source of ridicule."
‘Always Agitated. Always Mad’: Omar Mateen, According to Those Who Knew Him - The New York Times
"Omar Mateen was born in Queens in 1986 to Afghan parents. He moved to Florida with his family in 1991 and spent his early years in the Port St. Lucie area on the state’s east coast. In both elementary and middle school, his teachers described him as often being unable to focus or control himself in class. As a young man, Mr. Mateen became interested in a career in law enforcement andearned an associate degree in criminal justice technology from Indian River State College in 2006.
As investigators comb through his past to glean an understanding of the young man whose attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando killed 49 people and wounded 53 others, a portrait of a complicated childhood and young adulthood is emerging. These documents offer a glimpse into Mr. Mateen’s life."
NYTimes: A Glimpse of Omar Mateen's Past, From School Reports to Job Dismissal
http://www.cnet.com/news/levar-burton-interview-star-trek-bridge-crew-e3-2016/
Silicon Valley will need to catch up with himLeVar Burton on gaming, Star Trek and why.
"On Star Trek, in addition to your role as the engineer you were famous for wearing a piece of technology: a visor that allows the blind to see. We've seen other Star Trek inventions like the communicator and the PADD make it to reality (in the form of smartphones and tablets, respectively): when's the visor coming?
The visor is on its way. There are several more iterations that we will need to go through in order to get the technology into that small of a device, but we're definitely heading towards giving sight to the sightless. We're getting really close."
Omar Mateen, American Monster http://nyti.ms/1YsVg4C
"The massacre in Orlando, where 49 people were gunned down at an L.G.B.T. nightclub and dozens of others were wounded, came at the hands of a coward and a monster, but make no mistake: This was our monster."
"Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States' gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. And, even though the United States' suicide rate is similar to other countries, the nation's gun-related suicide rate is eight times higher than other high-income countries, researchers said.
The study was published online Feb. 1 in The American Journal of Medicine.
"Overall, our results show that the U.S., which has the most firearms per capita in the world, suffers disproportionately from firearms compared with other high-income countries," said study author Erin Grinshteyn, an assistant professor at the School of Community Health Science at the University of Nevada-Reno. "These results are consistent with the hypothesis that our firearms are killing us rather than protecting us," she said in a journal news release."
Of course they would claim it. I seriously doubt that this is anything more than domestic terrorism, a hate crime. The American media, in search of profits is playing into the agenda of ISIS by sowing fear, the real goal of terrorism.
ISIS takes responsibility for Orlando mass shooting - CBS News
"San Francisco — ASK people to identify a few landmark Supreme Court decisions on race, and they are likely to point to classics like Brown v. Board of Education, which ended segregation in schools, or Loving v. Virginia, which prohibited restrictions on interracial marriages. But 40 years ago Tuesday, the Supreme Court decided a pivotal case on race and equality whose legacy has profoundly shaped American race relations. And most people have never heard of it.
The case, Washington v. Davis, involved the constitutionality of Test 21, developed by the federal government and used by the District of Columbia police force to assess people looking to become police officers. From 1968 to 1971, 57 percent of black applicants failed Test 21 compared with 13 percent of whites, leading two black would-be officers to file suit. The issue was whether a “race neutral” test that led to vastly different racial outcomes violated the Equal Protection Clause."
LOL, I have always said the religious right were a group of phony hypocrites, Pharisies in the flesh.
"On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump headlined the Road to Majority conference, the first big Republican event since helocked up the party’s nomination. Jointly organized by the Faith and Freedom Coalition (Ralph Reed’s successor to the Christian Coalition) and Concerned Women for America, the Road to Majority was meant to excite social conservatives for the upcoming election. It featured a lineup of big Republican names—Sen. Mitch McConnell, Carly Fiorina—and Christian-right activists, several of whom had previously worked to thwart Trump and who now had to fire up an audience for their perpetually off-message orange sybarite of a candidate. It was a degrading spectacle; I almost felt bad for them."
The awkward spectacle of Donald Trump at the Road to Majority conference.
"When you’re deciding whether to plunge into a marriage, don’t ever make the mistake of thinking you’re marrying the person your partner is going to become, once he or she finally grows up or finds that perfect job or stops making meth in the basement. The only person you’re marrying is the one sitting right in front of you, and while some people do improve over time, only a fool would count on it.
On second thought, this advice probably comes too late for the Paul Ryans and Bob Corkers of the world, who were exactly this foolish when they wrapped their arms around Donald Trump and said: “I do.” But you know, they never asked."
"Far too many Republicans share this kind of racism and have for a long time. Trump has just dispensed with dog whistles and revels in his bigotry instead. But this is the party the Republicans have been deliberately and assiduously building for many decades, the party of division and intolerance. George H.W. Bush’s racist tactics in 1988 against Michael Dukakis — the Willie Horton ad in particular — seem almost genteel by comparison."
"The case, Washington v. Davis, involved the constitutionality of Test 21, developed by the federal government and used by the District of Columbia police force to assess people looking to become police officers. From 1968 to 1971, 57 percent of black applicants failed Test 21 compared with 13 percent of whites, leading two black would-be officers to file suit. The issue was whether a “race neutral” test that led to vastly different racial outcomes violated the Equal Protection Clause.
Consider three questions from Test 21:
1. Laws restricting hunting to certain regions and to a specific time of the year were passed chiefly to
A) prevent people from endangering their lives by hunting
B) keep our forests more beautiful
C) raise funds from the sale of hunting licenses
D) prevent complete destruction of certain kinds of animals
E) preserve certain game for eating purposes
2. The saying “Straight trees are the first to be felled” means most nearly
A) Honest effort is always rewarded.
B) The best are the first chosen.
C) Ill luck passes no one by.
D) The highest in rank have farthest to fall.
E) The stubborn are soon broken.
3. “Although the types of buildings in ghetto areas vary from the one-story shack to the large tenement building, they are alike in that they are all drab, unsanitary, in disrepair and often structurally unsound.” The quotation best supports the statement that all buildings in ghetto areas are
A) overcrowded
B) undesirable as living quarters
C) well constructed
D) about to be torn down
E) seldom inspected
Minority applicants were at a disadvantage because the questions were geared for white cultural norms and idioms. But the disparate failure rates also speak to decades of racially separate and unequal education. Test 21 can be seen as part of a long American tradition — from grandfather clauses to literacy tests — of seemingly race-neutral measures functioning in a discriminatory manner."
The Supreme Court Is Afraid of Racial Justice - The New York Times