Are_grits_groceries
Are_grits_groceries's JournalWhat We Lost: Remembering Newtown victim Jack Pinto
(This story appeared in the Dec. 9, 2013 issue of Sports Illustrated.)
The night before, he had been so excited. Someone had said that wrestling was the off-season sport of choice for football players who wanted to stay in shape, to be ready. Jack Pinto wanted to be ready. He was six. He had a plan. So they were heading to his wrestling meet at Sandy Hook Elementary School. His mom was driving the family's Honda minivan. His brother, Ben, 11, was sitting beside her up front, thumbs dancing, eyes boring in on his Nintendo DS.
Wrestling wasn't for Ben. But Jack seemed unfazed by the sport's gladiator trappings: yelling parents, a single winner and loser for all to see, the intimate physicality. At a practice two nights before, in fact, a rogue shoulder had knocked out the second of his top front teeth; blood stained his shirt and lips. Most six-year-olds would pause. Jack handed the tooth to his coach and hustled back onto the mat.
Now, Thursday evening, Dec. 13, 2012, at about 6 p.m., Jack and his family were driving to his second meet -- Newtown vs. Ridgefield. Jack -- first-grader, 55-pound weight class -- sat in the big backseat. Ben, preteen and thus strenuously unimpressed by little-brother activities, was along for the ride. Jack never could leave Ben alone for long, but now he had a specific question.
"Ben, what position do you think I'm going to play?" he asked.
<snip>
Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/news/20131213/jack-pinto-newtown-shooting/#ixzz2nSKL1xGV
sigh........just sigh.......
Wait!Wut!? Bizarre puppy dispute ends with one roommate tied up naked in a ditch & the other in jail
An argument about a puppy sparked a bizarre and violent confrontation near Galveston that left one man naked and tied-up alongside a country road. David Franey woke up in a ditch Thursday night with multiple fractures and barely a stitch of clothing. After managing to secure help, the 47-year-old La Marque resident has been confined to a trauma bed at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) ever since.
He tells KTRK Ch. 13 that the incident started when his neighbor — a woman his roommate and co-worker James Aron Lee, 31, was trying to date — gave him a puppy. When Lee came home on Thursday, he was upset to find that the neighbor had the dog tied to an extremely short leash to keep it from jumping.
Apparently angry at how Franey handled the puppy situation, Lee waited for his roommate to get out of the shower later that evening and attacked. "He knocked me out, tied me up, tried to hang me once or twice," the victim recalls. "Then he took me out to the woods."
Still naked after his shower, Franey says Lee ran over him with his vehicle and tied him to a tree, before tossing his battered body in a ditch. Franey drifted in and out of conscious for nearly seven hours before mustering the strength to get help.
The following afternoon, La Marque police arrested Lee in nearby Hitchcock on felony charges of assault and unlawful restraint. Placed into the custody of the Galveston County Sheriff's Office, Lee's bond has been set at $500,000. A court date is scheduled for Feb. 6. A representative with UTMB tells CultureMap that Franey remains at the hospital in fair, but stable condition.
http://houston.culturemap.com/news/city_life/12-12-13-puppy-dispute-ends-with-one-roommate-tied-up-naked-in-a-ditch-and-the-other-in-jail
Juuuuuuuust a bit outside.......
@MotherJones:This is what the $361B the Pentagon handed to military contractors in 2012 bought
The Budget Deal Is a Big Win for the Pentagon
<snip>
But now, the Pentagon has once more gotten a reprieve from the budget ax: Under Murray and Ryan's congressional budget deal, the Pentagon will get an additional $32 billion, or 4.4 percent, in 2014, leaving its base budget at a higher level than in 2005 and 2006. (The Department of Defense expects its total 2014 budget, including supplemental war funding, to be more than $600 billion.)
Before the budget deal, some critics of defense spending had been ready to accept sequestration as the blunt, imperfect tool that might force the military to shed some of the bulk it acquired while fighting two of the longest and most expensive wars in our history. Even with the sequester in place, the Pentagon's base budget was set to remain well above pre-9/11 levels for the next decade, and the military would have taken a far smaller haircut than it did after Vietnam and the Cold War wound down.
<snip>
More: http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2013/12/pentagon-budget-deal-charts-cuts
Onward and upward or somewhere......
A squirrel negotiating with a bird:
@Earth_Pics
Or gossiping and talking about the weather.
They could be discussing how well the plan for world domination is going.
A link to a real-time global wind map. Watch the airflow and temperatures from different views:
@MeredithFrost: This real-time global wind map will completely devour your weekend
http://earth.nullschool.net
Fascinating!
A real-time tweet from a student hiding in Arapahoe High during the shooting:
@patrickstanton: My brother's text w/ my niece while in class at #ArapahoeHigh
A reporter said that one problem that police hadn't anticipated before Columbine were the number of students who hid and where they hid.
While they were trying to clear the school, students began appearing from everywhere. They were coming out of lockers, dropping from the ceiling where they had hidden behind the tiles, and every nook and cranny there was.
In addition, the police had to look in every possible place in case some were too scared to come out. This made clearing the building a much more fluid and difficult situation to handle. Knowing it can occur with huge numbers of students helps deal with it, but it's not easy.
I can imagine that with fear and massive amounts of adrenaline, students would be able to hide in seemingly inaccessible places.
In addition, some parents were not happy with the students being patted down after leaving the school. However, most of them understood why it was necessary.
Edit to add: Many students said they were following Twitter while in hiding. It gave them immediate feedback from many sources.
Now for something completely different: Tissue Animals. (amazing)
smh......just smh....
BREAKING: Active shooter at Arapahoe High School in Colorado
@mpoppel:
KUSA-TV: Police calling incident at Colorado high school an "active shooter situation"; at least 2 people believed injured
Arapahoe High in Centennial, CO
@mpoppel:
KMGH-TV: Sheriff says gunman still believed to be inside high school where gunfire has been reported; at least 2 injured
Kids running from the school:
@mitchellbyars:
RT @ryanparkerdp: Students tell me 2 students were shot about 30 minutes ago. Shooter also shot, they say
Woooo! The state's investigation of Jameis Winston was beyond screwed up. I listed some points:
1-The victim's attorney requested that the urine and the blood taken from the victim be retested. She wanted to confirm they were the victim's and would confirm the original tests that found no drugs in her system.
The attorney wanted this done as part of the state's investigation and because the victim had many symptoms that were consistent with having been given a "rape" drug. Meggs had the blood but not the urine retested. No results were give.
2-The state gave out a packet that contained the report from the investigation. Included in that report were the medical records of the victim. However, the attorney compared them to the records the family had obtained from the hospital. There were several omissions. The notes about her injuries were not included and neither was the order for pain medication for her.
3-One of the points that Meggs and especially Winston's lawyer beat to death was the assertion that the victim did not act as if she was concerned about the rape after it happened. Meggs stated that the victim made 48 calls after the incident. They said this was evidence that she was ok and talking and texting many people.
The attorney obtained the victim's phone records. She only made 18 calls. 6 were to her parents. 8 were to her friends. The others were to people who aided her after the rape. She was hysterical after the incident.
4- Meggs did not interview the 'outcry witness.' This is the person that a victim has contact with first. The first statements made are extremely important. What was said as well as the victim's condition at that point are crucial.
Edit to add:
The blood and urine were not sent to the lab for 37 days after the incident. The attorney requested that Meggs check the chain of custody.
ESPN cut away before she was finished. I think she had a lot more to point out. I am waiting for a news article or other report from the press conference. Needless to say, I believe somebody with no connection at all to the state or anybody in this case should now investigate all of it as well as Meggs. His investigation was a sham and the information released was not true in parts and slanted to cast a negative shadow on the victim.
Bastards!!!
@McCannSportsLaw: Alleged victim has till at least Dec 2016 to sue Jameis Winston. Could wait for him to enter NFL in 2015, sign contract & endorsement deals.
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