Deadly Selfies: When Fun Takes a Tragic Turn

(Xenia Ignatyeva Fell 30 Meters, But Was Killed By Electrocution. Image credit Terra)

                                     Good Day World!

Believe it or not, there can be a dark side to selfies.

On any given day and any digital platform that shares photos you can find people (and animals) showing off their selfies.

But selfies can be deadly as a Houston man recently found out when he accidentally shot himself while posing for selfies with a handgun. It wasn’t a suicide attempt either.

Perhaps the real story was …why was this guy playing around with a loaded handgun in the first place? The fact that he had to record his stupidity is really tragic for his family.

Just last month there was a similar circumstance when Oscar Otero Aguilar, 21, lost his life when he tried to take a selfie with a gun for his Facebook page. The Mexican gun enthusiast accidentally shot himself in the head and didn’t survive.

Then we have Xenia Ignatyeva who took a selfie from a bridge 30 feet off the ground to impress her friends. The 17-year-old Russian girl lost her balance and fell. But the teenager didn’t die from an impact. The girl fell on a cable, which electrocuted her.

The Inquisitr recently reported a Polish couple who fell to their death while taking a selfie on the edge of a cliff.

This photo (right) is a selfie snapped by a famous Mexican reggaetón musician Jadiel (also known as El Tsunami), uploaded to Instagram moments before he had a fatal motorcycle crash in New York in May, 2014.

I don’t see the selfie trend slowing down anytime soon.

What I would like to see is a safer approach to taking selfies. I recommend having a friend take it for you.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Flake is No Flake: GOP’s Only Voice of Reason Wants To End Political Polarization

                                     Good Day World!

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake is no flake.

He’s more of a throw-back conservative in the Barry Goldwater tradition. He really understands how to look at the big picture in politics.

Two Examples:

* In 2013, he joined the bipartisan Gang of Eight to craft a comprehensive reform bill that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Earlier this August, he was the only Republican accompanying Secretary of State John Kerry to Cuba to preside over the reopening of the U.S. embassy after a 54-year diplomatic freeze.

* Flake vowed to consider the Iran deal with an open mind, and for more than a month, even as every other Senate Republican came out against it and anti-Flake attack ads began airing on Arizona TV, that’s exactly what he did. 

Eventually, on Aug. 15, Flake announced that he could not, in the end, bring himself to support Obama’s Iran pact. But at least he really studied the situation and didn’t follow the rest of the sheep who jumped the moment Obama’s name was mentioned.

WHY FLAKE IS GETTING THE “DEAD EYE” FROM OTHER CONSERVATIVES

Simply put, Flake doesn’t think that “scraping back the veneer” and “uncovering a lot of pent-up rage” is an effective approach to governance.

He doesn’t consider it particularly conservative to overturn the 14th Amendment, or send drones to the Mexican border, or promise enormous levels of growth with no supporting evidence whatsoever.

But the thing that really rings the bell for reason is Flake’s recognition that running the United States is ultimately about working within the system, persuading the skeptics, and accepting difficult compromises.

Flake developed a reputation as a honest broker who was willing to go against the GOP grain on issues as diverse as Cuba, immigration and gay rights. (Flake has voted to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.”)

I have just one question; why doesn’t Flake run for president? He’d beat out all the sorry GOP candidates who are making a circus out of the primaries.

Time for me to walk on down the road… 

Big Winners in Illinois State Lottery Are Getting Screwed

Good Day World!

The state of Illinois is messing with people’s dreams.

It’s committing fraud against lottery winners whose prize is over $25,000. Instead the state is passing out IOUs.

So what’s going on?

In a nutshell, Illinois lawmakers have not passed a budget so they aren’t paying their bills.

Under state law, the state comptroller must cut the checks for lottery winnings of more than $25,000. According to lottery officials lawmakers have yet to pass a budget so the comptroller's office does not have legal authority to release the funds to the big lottery winners.

To make matters worse, the state is nowhere near passing a budget. That leaves the big winners wondering when – if ever – they’re going to get their rightful winnings.

State Rep. Jack Franks, D-Marengo, has been a frequent critic of the state's handling of the lottery and said this is just another example:

"Our government is committing a fraud on the taxpayers, because we're holding ourselves out as selling a good, and we're not — we're not selling anything," Franks said. "The lottery is a contract: I pay my money, and if I win, you're obligated to pay me and you have to pay me timely. It doesn't say if you have money or when you have money."

How about that?

It’s typical: if you owe money to the government they’ll shake you down like a rat until they get it. But reverse the situation – where government owes you money – and it’s okay to give lame excuses and pay whenever they feel like it.

Don’t you just love our democracy where the people come last?

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

Alien Contact: Hunting Humans For Sport?

Good Day World!

I firmly believe there are other life forms, aka aliens, in the universe and galaxies far, far away. 

It would be narrow-minded not to acknowledge the odds of other entities out there among the millions of stars. 

People have talked about what aliens would do if they made contact with us for over 150 years – since the subject was first brought up.

Views about aliens range from fear to hope. The fear they’ll invade earth and slaughter us all, or the hope that an intelligent and compassionate species would share their knowledge with us.

I’ve pondered what contact would mean and have come up with a scenario that would truly be ironic:

For eons Humans have used violence as sport, and the idea is probably not mutually exclusive to us.

If the Aliens descended from a predatory base species, the use of violence as a means of entertainment is likely.

In any case, Aliens might invade because they are just so advanced and they can do it just like elk hunters travel thousands of miles to kill one prize stag.

Think about it – earth’s most powerful predator hunted like a prize stag! I suppose it would be intergalactic karma…

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Black Lives Matter Activists Chant ‘Pig in a Blanket, Fry ‘Em Like Bacon’

I’m having less sympathy daily for Black Lives Matter activists.

The group started out peacefully enough, but that’s changing rapidly.

It’s organizers – who vary from state to state – have gone from just being rude to chanting dangerously provocative lyrics that call for police to be targets.

Protesters were captured on camera yelling "pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon" during last Saturday's four-hour march around the fairgrounds in St. Paul, Minnesota.

This generation of protestors claim to be peaceful, but what they’re actually saying and doing are two different things. Their protest came hours after a white Houston officer was gunned down execution style by a black man.

Black Lives Matter St. Paul organizer Rashad Turner told the Associated Press on Monday that no one was advocating for violence against law enforcement. He said it was meant to call for similar treatment between black people and police officers.

How does Turner get that meaning from “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon?” Is he claiming the chant is a politically correct way of saying they want to be treated equally?

If so, something is getting lost in the translation.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

  

  

It’s About Respect: Presidential Candidates Need to Earn It

                                     Good Day World!

If the emperor has no clothes on it’s only right to point that out.

Author Paul Krugman points it out succinctly:

“If people consistently make logically incoherent, ignorant arguments, the duty of a commentator is to say just that - not to mislead readers by pretending that these people are serious and making sense.”

He was talking about the whole Republican field of presidential hopefuls and claims they are talking nonsense about economic policy. I have to agree.

“Consider a couple of recent entries. Jeb Bush, the supposedly sensible candidate, has been pushing the utterly ludicrous claim that he can deliver 4 percent economic growth; so now Mike Huckabee, another G.O.P. candidate, is trying to one-up Mr. Bush by promising 6 percent. Well, I can beat all of them: Whatever they're promising, I promise the same - plus a pony.”

Krugman lasers in on Rand Paul and the Tea Party:

“Meanwhile, Rand Paul is decrying the irresponsibility of US fiscal management - why, the United States hasn't been debt-free since 1835. Clearly, disaster looms, and has been looming for 180 years.”

Like Krugman, I believe in telling the truth to my readers. It might be ugly, but it’s unvarnished. Until these presidential candidates start handing out well-researched plans, and realistic policies, they don’t deserve your respect.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

 

Why do some so-called patriots fear the Spanish language?

Good Day World!

Why is it that some so-called patriotic Americans get upset when Hispanics speak their native language?

This clip shows a Southern California woman berating Norma Vasquez and her son Carlos for speaking Spanish amongst themselves at an IHOP.

She chose to tell this Salvadorian family to go back to Spain because they weren’t conversing in English. If they spoke another language – like French or German – I seriously doubt that “patriotic” lady would have said anything.

It takes some real hutzpah for someone to proclaim their own views as being "patriotic" while outright dismissing the rest. That First Amendment right that allows someone to tell people off is the same one that allows people to speak whatever language they want, without being asked to leave the country.

Let's look at why English is spoken in America. Let's look at the pilgrims.

Pilgrims were thrown out of England. A fact that bears repeating — they were thrown out of England.

In the Americas these rejects took root and their intolerance and confidence bloomed so much so, that not only did they disregard entire populations already living for centuries on this land, they decided to demonize every new wave of immigrant that landed on these shores.

The lie that America is 'white' and should only speak English in order to be 'great' has been perpetuated ever since. It's so ingrained in our national development that we've all accepted it as a default even though it's a fabrication.

If you think it may be a select few that are so willfully ignorant, look at Donald Trump's poll numbers. The guy has yet to present a viable policy point.

Yet all he's had to do to jump miles ahead in the primary race was to declare that Mexicans are rapists and criminals.

The woman’s outburst against the mother and son can be blamed on the divisive seeds being planted by GOP presidency hopefuls, struggling to "out-patriot" others in the political race to the bottom.

But 'the Donald' didn't start this ugly, he just gave people a target and a license to attack it.

I don't know why some parts of 'English America' are so intimidated by Latinos. They – and the native Americans - were here before the pilgrims. This was their land before it was taken away from them.

Unfortunately, this country is politically polarized today and still infected with racism. What the pilgrims started still divides us. The “Great Melting Pot” only a myth perpetrated by propagandists.

Time for me to walk on down the road… 

 

A look at comedic duos in film and politics

Good Day World!

When it comes to comedic duos in films my favorite pair is Abbot and Costello.

Up until now, I didn’t have a favorite comedy duo in politics. That’s changed however, since Donald Trump and Ted Cruz hooked up.

Ted recently invited The Donald to join him at a rally highlighting opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. It just may be the start of a comedy act that’ll make political history.

President Trump and Vice President Cruz.

They’ll be a lot like Laurel and Hardy with Cruz playing the clumsy and childlike friend of the pompous Trump. Trump and Cruz’s signature tune (like Laurel and Hardy’s), will be "The Dance of the Cuckoos."

Like Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, they’ll perform slapstick sketches and deliver jokes. Their punch lines will be thinly disguised as policy issues on the campaign trail.

It’s obvious that Cruz will play the straight guy and Trump will be the joker. History has shown that Trump has some real laughable ideas.

For example, building a massive wall on the US Mexican border to keep immigrants out and making Mexico pay a couple of billion for it!

Yeah right! What a kidder.

Americans are fed up with the status quo in Washington. These are dangerous times when anything could happen.

Electing a comedy duo, like Trump and Cruz, would certainly be good for a barrel of laughs. 

And, no doubt, we’ll become the laughingstock of the world – if we’re not already!

Time for me to walk on down the road…

‘All Lives Matter’ Dangerous Rhetoric Threatens Cops, Deputy Murdered Today

It’s fashionable lately to accuse all law enforcement officials of being unthinking brutes that victimize the public they serve.

Lost in the rhetoric of “Black Lives Matter” activists is the fact that all lives matter.

It matters a lot that the national dialogue has been anti-law enforcement. An “Us” versus “Them” mentality is threatening to further degrade respect for all lives.

(Deputy Darren Goforth, pictured in this official image from Harris County Sheriff's Office. Handout / Harris County Sheriff's Office)

For example:

Authorities have arrested a suspect in the "execution-style" shooting of a uniformed Texas sheriff's deputy, Darren Goforth, today. The suspect, Shannon J. Miles, 30, is black.

Investigators did not know what the motive was and believe the suspect targeted the married father of two simply because he was in uniform.

"We've heard black lives matter — all lives matter," a visibly angry Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman told reporters. "Well, cops' lives matter, too."

Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson said that law enforcement needs support despite there being a "few bad apples" — an apparent reference to the recent spate of police shootings of unarmed people. (source)

Here’s a thought; who would protect us from people like Shannon Miles – a cold-blooded murderer – if we didn’t have cops? It’s really quite simple, without cops we slip into total anarchy.

Sadly, I suspect that’s just what some people want.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

USA has 5% of world population and 31% of world’s mass shooters

Good Day World!

Why does the USA have the most mass shooters per capita than any country in the world?

The answer may lie between the availability of guns and people seeking fame.

A just-released study found that although the United States has just about 5 percent of the world's population, it has 31 percent of the world's mass shooters.

The possible association between mass shootings and a desire for fame is particularly eerie, given the nation's latest high-profile killing.

A former employee at a local news station in Virginia killed a reporter and a cameraman on-air, while filming the shooting with a GoPro camera. He later posted the film to social media.

The apparent desire to broadcast the crime places the killer in the same company as many notorious mass shooters of the past decade. (The History of Human Aggression)

YOUTH MOVEMENT

Experts are finding that younger shooters want attention. That's why you see them wanting to have a bigger head count, a bigger body count, to try to outdo the last one or to do something that is going to cause more of a rise.

OVERALL CRIME STATS DROPPING

Interestingly, the rise in active-shooter events bucks the general trend toward less violent crime in the United States: Overall violent crime dropped 14.5 percent between 2004 and 2013, according to the FBI.

What did predict the number of mass shootings, however, was the prevalence of firearm ownership. Countries with higher firearm ownership rates have more public mass shootings. [Private Gun Ownership in the US (Infographic)]

Studies within the United States have also found links between gun ownership and gun crime.

Research published in July found that states with more gun-owning households had higher rates of firearm assault, robbery, homicide and overall homicide compared with states with fewer gun owners.

There is a 'fame at any cost' mentality.

Many mass killers explicitly cite fame as their motivation: A quick Google search for "wanted to top Columbine" reveals multiple news articles about killers or would-be killers mentioning the 1999 school shooting as their inspiration.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

The answer is simple, but probably unattainable thanks to gun lobbies and the NRA – make it harder to buy guns by having a nationwide backround check on prospective buyers.

Also, get the media to focus more on victims instead of their killers who are looking for their 15-minutes of fame.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Presidential Candidates Range From Cats to People With Fake Names

Good Day World!

It started with a 15-year old prankster.

Brady Olson filed to run for the President of the United States with the FEC on July 26 as Deez Nuts.

The rest is viral history.

Deez Nuts – running as a Republican - polled at 9 percent in North Carolina against Trump and Clinton setting off a firestorm of imitators.

Some people don’t think fake candidates running for president are very funny.

For example:

‘Deez Nuts’ Copycats Are Giving Election Officials a Headache

Imagine a presidential debate that includes Frank Underwood from “House of Cards,” Ronald Reagan’s Ghost, a Bill Clinton imposter and three fraudulent Joe Bidens.

But these wags — including a bunch whose names crudely refer to body parts or sex acts — are also potential headaches for federal regulators, who already struggle with limited resources and massive paperwork backlogs.

What follows are actual Statement of Candidacy filings from presidential pretenders I’m (almost) certain are giving America the business.

1. Dat Ass (Independent-New York)

2. Sidneys Voluptuous Buttocks (Independent-New York)

3. Sir TrippyCup aka Young Trippz aka The GOAT aka The Prophet aka Earl (Federalist-Wisconsin)

4. Underage Candidate (unaffiliated-California)

5. Buddy the Cat (Democrat-Arizona)

6. Captain Crunch (Independent-California)

7. Jeffrey Dahmer (Independence Party-Maryland)

8. Mary Jane (Libertarian-Tennessee)

9. Dank Ass Kaptain Kush (Independent-U.S. Virgin Islands)

10. H. Majesty Satan Lord of Underworld Prince of Darkness (Republican-Texas)

11. Ronald Reagan's Ghost (Independent-Minnesota)

12. Slim Sack Shady (American Party-California)

13. Jack Sparrow (Independent-Oregon)

(candidate source)

Currently, there are about 850 registered candidates running for president this election. And counting…

Time for me to walk on down the road…