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Saturday, January 19, 2019
China FIRST! Mount Pleasant and Racine NEXT
Going Full Lincoln
Aka Civil War II http://voxday.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-major-announcement.html "I will be making a major announcement concerning the Humanitarian Crisis on our Southern Border, and the Shutdown, tomorrow afternoon at 3 P.M., live from the @WhiteHouse." -Donald J. Trump It had better be one of two things. The God-Emperor is declaring martial law and Draining the Swamp. The God-Emperor is announcing the Building of the Big Beautiful Wall. ... It had better be one of two things. The God-Emperor is declaring martial law and Draining the Swamp. The God-Emperor is announcing the Building of the Big Beautiful Wall. Both would be way better than either. As others noted, Lefty judges will issue injunctions against any actual actions, so Trump better have a plan for going full-Lincoln if he's actually going to act
Friday, January 18, 2019
Four for Fridays!
Good morning everyone I hope you are all doing well and I hope you had a good week. Here are your questions.
1) Are you ready for the nasty S word tonight?
2) If you go out are you prepared if you have car problems?
3) Do you have plans to go out tonight?
4) Are you just going to hibernate until Spring comes?
Try to have a great weekend!
1) Are you ready for the nasty S word tonight?
2) If you go out are you prepared if you have car problems?
3) Do you have plans to go out tonight?
4) Are you just going to hibernate until Spring comes?
Try to have a great weekend!
" Column: Mothers of gang members must wake up and see their sons for who they are"
From Chicago Tribune:
 |
| April Ward, mother of Micheail Ward, gives a statement at her son's sentencing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago on Jan. 14, 2019. Micheail Ward was found guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated battery in the 2013 slaying of Hadiya Pendleton. (Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune) |
Micheail Ward was sentenced this week to 84 years in prison for killing Hadiya Pendleton. At Ward’s age of 24, that amounts to a lifetime.
Some
would say that Ward, a gang member who was in and out of trouble with
the law, had been working his way to this point for a long time. But his
mother apparently never saw it coming. Maybe it’s because she would not
open her eyes.
In an interview during the waning days of her son’s murder trial last summer, April Ward sat down with me to talk about the son she knew. She insisted, just as she did on the witness stand during the sentencing hearing Monday, that he was a good son. She told me he was never in a gang, and most certainly is not a murderer.
“I raised him spiritually, always in church,” Ward, 45, said during a lunch break in the courthouse cafeteria last year. “My son can quote Scripture. He knows it well. His grandma taught him that.”
The young man who confessed to police on video that he went to a South Side park one afternoon in 2013 and fired into a group of high school students, striking Hadiya, was not the child she had raised with her husband.
There was no need for any sort of retaliation against a rival gang because the young people her son hung out with were just innocent kids, she said. It was a tragedy that the 15-year-old honor student’s life was taken, but her son was not responsible.
“They say he’s a leader of the gang. I’m trying to understand how that is possible. He was 14 or 16, and he’s the leader of some gang that’s been around 20 years?
“That makes him look bad. It makes him look like an animal. My son is not an animal. He’s not a mad dog walking around crazy.”
It is understandable that a mother would not want to believe that her son is some sort of monster. No mother would.
The sentencing and trial in the 2013 fatal shooting of Hadiya Pendleton, at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago.
Perhaps Ward isn’t evil. But he certainly isn’t the choirboy his mother has tried to make him out to be. And that’s a problem, not just with her, but also with many mothers of gang members.
Of course, they love their sons unconditionally, as most mothers do. When a son is shot down in the street, his mother grieves as you or I would. And when she realizes that he could spend the rest of his life in prison, she cries out that, like the victim’s mother, she, too, has lost a child in the tragedy.
By now, no one cares. Her son is just another gangbanger who has been taken off the streets, and most of us feel relieved.
Rather than deal with the truth, it is easier for a mother to look at the gang symbol tattooed on her son’s arm and convince herself that it’s just a fad. It is less disheartening to see his social media posts — pictures of him posing with wads of dollar bills and sometimes even a gun — and convince herself that he’s just playing around.
It is less painful to believe that every time her son is arrested for anything, police got the wrong kid. It requires less energy to decide that when her teenager walks out the door at 10 or 11 p.m., he’s just going for a bit of fresh air.
Most mothers, though, know the truth about their sons. They just don’t know what to do about it.
Along the way, they lost control as a parent. At some point, the young man figured out that there are no real consequences at home for his behavior. He saw that no one is paying attention, and in some cases, that no one cares.
Gang violence almost always is confined to neighborhoods rife with poverty. Even in a two-parent household like Ward’s, parents struggle to make ends meet. April Ward and her husband, Thaddeus Bridgeman, 45, hold respectable, low-paying jobs. But their home life is far from perfect.
Still, April Ward said she thought that she and Ward’s father, whom she has been with for 27 years, were doing as much as they could to raise their son and his three brothers right in a neighborhood filled with violence.
“When my boys were growing up, I talked to each one and said, ‘This is what you’re going to do once you graduate. You’re going to the Army, the Marines, trade school or college,’ ” she said. “Most of them gave it to me.”
But in neighborhoods like theirs, it takes a village to save a child.
In 2016, the National Science Foundation released a study looking at the factors associated with mass shootings and street violence. It concluded that parents play a significant role in either increasing or decreasing violence.
Though rampage shootings and street violence are different in many ways, the study found that children with lower risk of youth violence had “close attachment bonds with consistently supportive caregivers” and received “effective and developmentally sensitive parenting.”
But the study also revealed something else. When it comes to street violence, parents, schools, neighborhoods, and a wide range of other entities and support systems have to work together.
Even so, it is still up to young men to make their own choices. According to the prosecutor, no one else can be blamed for the decision Micheail Ward made.
“He made choices, he’s chosen to ignore his family and the opportunities,” Assistant State’s Attorney Brian Holmes said in court. “He chose to join a gang. He chose to pick up a gun.”
It is hard to argue with that.
dglanton@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @dahleeng
From: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/glanton/ct-met-dahleen-glanton-micheail-ward-mother-denial-20190116-story.html
In an interview during the waning days of her son’s murder trial last summer, April Ward sat down with me to talk about the son she knew. She insisted, just as she did on the witness stand during the sentencing hearing Monday, that he was a good son. She told me he was never in a gang, and most certainly is not a murderer.
“I raised him spiritually, always in church,” Ward, 45, said during a lunch break in the courthouse cafeteria last year. “My son can quote Scripture. He knows it well. His grandma taught him that.”
The young man who confessed to police on video that he went to a South Side park one afternoon in 2013 and fired into a group of high school students, striking Hadiya, was not the child she had raised with her husband.
There was no need for any sort of retaliation against a rival gang because the young people her son hung out with were just innocent kids, she said. It was a tragedy that the 15-year-old honor student’s life was taken, but her son was not responsible.
“They say he’s a leader of the gang. I’m trying to understand how that is possible. He was 14 or 16, and he’s the leader of some gang that’s been around 20 years?
“That makes him look bad. It makes him look like an animal. My son is not an animal. He’s not a mad dog walking around crazy.”
It is understandable that a mother would not want to believe that her son is some sort of monster. No mother would.
The sentencing and trial in the 2013 fatal shooting of Hadiya Pendleton, at the Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago.
Perhaps Ward isn’t evil. But he certainly isn’t the choirboy his mother has tried to make him out to be. And that’s a problem, not just with her, but also with many mothers of gang members.
Of course, they love their sons unconditionally, as most mothers do. When a son is shot down in the street, his mother grieves as you or I would. And when she realizes that he could spend the rest of his life in prison, she cries out that, like the victim’s mother, she, too, has lost a child in the tragedy.
By now, no one cares. Her son is just another gangbanger who has been taken off the streets, and most of us feel relieved.
Rather than deal with the truth, it is easier for a mother to look at the gang symbol tattooed on her son’s arm and convince herself that it’s just a fad. It is less disheartening to see his social media posts — pictures of him posing with wads of dollar bills and sometimes even a gun — and convince herself that he’s just playing around.
It is less painful to believe that every time her son is arrested for anything, police got the wrong kid. It requires less energy to decide that when her teenager walks out the door at 10 or 11 p.m., he’s just going for a bit of fresh air.
Most mothers, though, know the truth about their sons. They just don’t know what to do about it.
Along the way, they lost control as a parent. At some point, the young man figured out that there are no real consequences at home for his behavior. He saw that no one is paying attention, and in some cases, that no one cares.
Gang violence almost always is confined to neighborhoods rife with poverty. Even in a two-parent household like Ward’s, parents struggle to make ends meet. April Ward and her husband, Thaddeus Bridgeman, 45, hold respectable, low-paying jobs. But their home life is far from perfect.
Still, April Ward said she thought that she and Ward’s father, whom she has been with for 27 years, were doing as much as they could to raise their son and his three brothers right in a neighborhood filled with violence.
“When my boys were growing up, I talked to each one and said, ‘This is what you’re going to do once you graduate. You’re going to the Army, the Marines, trade school or college,’ ” she said. “Most of them gave it to me.”
But in neighborhoods like theirs, it takes a village to save a child.
In 2016, the National Science Foundation released a study looking at the factors associated with mass shootings and street violence. It concluded that parents play a significant role in either increasing or decreasing violence.
Though rampage shootings and street violence are different in many ways, the study found that children with lower risk of youth violence had “close attachment bonds with consistently supportive caregivers” and received “effective and developmentally sensitive parenting.”
But the study also revealed something else. When it comes to street violence, parents, schools, neighborhoods, and a wide range of other entities and support systems have to work together.
Even so, it is still up to young men to make their own choices. According to the prosecutor, no one else can be blamed for the decision Micheail Ward made.
“He made choices, he’s chosen to ignore his family and the opportunities,” Assistant State’s Attorney Brian Holmes said in court. “He chose to join a gang. He chose to pick up a gun.”
It is hard to argue with that.
dglanton@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @dahleeng
From: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/glanton/ct-met-dahleen-glanton-micheail-ward-mother-denial-20190116-story.html
Thursday, January 17, 2019
2019: World Economy Is Reaching Growth Limits; Expect Low Oil Prices, Financial Turbulence
Financial markets have been behaving in a very turbulent manner in the last couple of months. The issue, as I see it, is that the world economy is gradually changing from a growth mode to a mode of shrinkage.
This is something like a ship changing course, from going in one
direction to going in reverse. The system acts as if the brakes are
being very forcefully applied, and reaction of the economy is to almost
shake.
What seems to be happening is that the world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as predicted in the computer simulations modeled in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth. In fact, the base model of that set of simulations indicated that peak industrial output per capita might be reached right about now. Peak food per capita might be reached about the same time. I have added a dotted line to the forecast from this model, indicating where the economy seems to be in 2019, relative to the base model.1
Read more: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/01/09/2019-world-economy-is-reaching-growth-limits-expect-low-oil-prices-financial-turbulence/
What seems to be happening is that the world economy is reaching Limits to Growth, as predicted in the computer simulations modeled in the 1972 book, The Limits to Growth. In fact, the base model of that set of simulations indicated that peak industrial output per capita might be reached right about now. Peak food per capita might be reached about the same time. I have added a dotted line to the forecast from this model, indicating where the economy seems to be in 2019, relative to the base model.1
 |
| Figure 1. Base scenario from The Limits to Growth, printed using today’s graphics by Charles Hall and John Day in Revisiting Limits to Growth After Peak Oil with dotted line at 2019 added by author. The 2019 line is drawn based on where the world economy seems to be now, rather than on precisely where the base model would put the year 2019. |
Read more: https://ourfiniteworld.com/2019/01/09/2019-world-economy-is-reaching-growth-limits-expect-low-oil-prices-financial-turbulence/
Someone please bathe and shave Letteney!
The man is an embarrassment. Our city attorney has terrible personal hygiene. He smells and offends all who come near. This bearded yahoo should not be allowed to represent our city. Let's start a lottery. The winner gets to bathe and shave Letteney. Or should that be the loser?
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
"Move over, jewelry and leggings. Selling CBD oil is the new side hustle for moms"
 |
| Teressa Sworsky, right, of Plainfield, speaks with Carmen Barr, of Mokena, at her CBD oil booth during the Mokena Park District's January Flea Market on Jan. 13, 2019. Sworsky sells hemp products for people and pets. (Warren Skalski/for the Chicago Tribune) |
"Looking to relieve her miniature dachshund Parky’s arthritis, Plainfield mother of two Teressa Sworsky discovered hemp oil.
"After researching the exploding industry of products infused with cannabidiol, or CBD, Sworsky, 36, a registered nurse who works full time in the corporate office of a hospital system, soon learned about other uses for the substance, which is most often derived from hemp, a plant in the cannabis family, but without the mind-altering properties of THC. After giving the CBD oil to her dog, she decided to try it for herself as an alternative to her side effect-ridden anxiety medication.
"It worked, said Sworsky, who realized she could also sell it for side cash."
Read more: https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/ct-life-moms-sell-hemp-oil-20190108-story.html
I have a friend whose eczema on his hands and arms have tortured him for years. Nothing the MD's prescribed worked. Then he tried CBD salve. His eczema was gone within two weeks and hasn't returned. His doctor's response was a flat "Oh."
Dear Madame Zoltar
Junior is picking up on this. I had a heck of a time getting him to take this year's flu shot. I'm not going to have two men down, whiners, while I do all the work. I told Junior to get the shot or expect absolutely NO help from me. He got it, I think.
Taking down the Christmas tree is a sad affair. It's so beautiful, but so dead. I think if you lit a match within 6 feet of it, it would burst into flames. So, it's taken down and the needles are vacuumed up and the decorations put away. Now comes the part of winter I usually hate the most. Usually, it's subzero throughout much of the next two months. I hate that. However, thanks to climate change, it's not too bad out there. Still, boring and nothing to do.
I haven't followed anymore Packer news. Until they dump Rodgers, I don't give a damn. So there.
What is going on with Sandy Weidner and Judge Eugene Gakfidgrtwyuvcngksh? How does a request for files turn into such a mess? She's already been found guilty and fined, but it's been suspended until the rest of the mess plays out. Rock on, Judge Gaskfloeudyvbtdsnmmhjlpd!
I want to go skiing. Have the local resorts generated enough snow? Let's go bust a leg.
I'm so glad that Jayme Closs was rescued. I knew she was alive and tried a number of times to offer my services in the search for her, but I was rebuffed. She might have spent far less time in captivity if the authorities could get over their prejudices. You have to read the serial numbers off of the bills in their pockets, first. How denigrating!
I'm used to it. Nonbelievers have always been a part of the business. I usually ignore them. I just do what I do, which shames them. If any of them are particularly nasty in their criticisms, I just turn them into pigs.
No, I don't have that power. Do I?
Thank you all for tuning in this week. I love all of my readers. madamezoltar@jtirregulars.com
Enjoy the weather. Who knows when it will change?
_________________________
Please donate: paypal.me/jgmazelis If you don't like PayPal, send me a note at madamezoltar@jtirregulars.com and I'll send you my street address so you can send a check or money order. Thank you.
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Monday, January 14, 2019
Sunday, January 13, 2019
How do you bleed the brakes on your 1961 DeSoto?
With the power booster mounted directly above the master cylinder?