The family of Mike Brown, an eighteen-year-old Ferguson teenager shot and killed by police on Saturday, August 9, has said that the young man recently took up a passion for music, with an interest in sound engineering and plans to study at Vatterott College next week. According to his grandmother, Desuirea Harris, “All he wanted to do is make music.”
“Everyday he made one or two more records,” she explains. “He rapped about life in general — about what he went through and people went through. Just life.” Brown rapped under the name “Big Mike.” If his SoundCloud page is any indication, his musical fascination was a recent one — according to his family, he had become obsessed with making it as a rapper after graduating high school this spring. His first upload on the music-streaming service is dated July 24, only eighteen days ago. While Brown has been described as a “gentle giant” and “a big teddy bear,” his tracks are filled with the usual guns-and-money bluster one might expect from a trap-rap artist.
Howard Kurtz ... "What is striking now is a growing sense, fairly or unfairly, that Obama is not capable of rising to the occasion, that he just doesn’t like politics, that he’s disengaged, that despite his soaring rhetoric in 2008 he has a passion deficit.
"All the criticism about him playing golf and being at Martha’s Vineyard is kind of a code for his supposedly being unplugged from the job." ...
When Barry gets blue ... "Today Peter Baker and Julie Hirschfeld Davis give us the perspective of the New York Times crowd in “A terrorist horror, then golf: Incongruity fuels Obama critics.” Baker and Davis report that (despite appearances created by the incongruity of his joyous golf game) Obama was “unusually emotional” as a result of Foley’s beheading. The joyous photos of Obama’s golf outing — how to put it? — tend to belie the description of Obama’s state of mind as presented by Baker and Davis. Funny, he doesn’t look bluish." ...
Contempt ... "The same trend is under way internationally. Thus, from Israel’s liberal Haaretz, formerly a staunch Obama backer: “Will the Middle East ruin Barack Obama’s summer vacation?”
It isn’t very hard to pretend to be president: Obama did it for five years or so. But now, he can’t be bothered. He leaves his allies with no ammunition with which to defend him, thereby showing, one might argue, even more contempt for them than for his enemies. There is an adage, Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned. If that is true, Obama is in for a long two years."
From Maureen Dowd in the New York Times:Alone Again, Naturally ... "Almost everything else — from an all-out push on gun control after the Newtown massacre to going to see firsthand the Hispanic children thronging at the border to using his special status to defuse racial tensions in Ferguson — just seems like too much trouble.
"The 2004 speech that vaulted Obama into the White House soon after he breezed into town turned out to be wrong. He misdescribed the country he wanted to lead. There is a liberal America and a conservative America. And the red-blue divide has only gotten worse in the last six years.
"The man whose singular qualification was as a uniter turns out to be singularly unequipped to operate in a polarized environment." Continue reading the main story
This is the candidate who stood alone on the stage at his acceptance speech in Colorado, a stage far removed from the Greek columns behind, and with nobody else in sight.
A Vacation is All Obama Ever Wanted"Apparently, after seeing a British subject execute an American citizen, David Cameron couldn’t, with a clear conscience, have spent another minute at the Surfside Cafe in Polzeath, Cornwall sipping tea and enjoying the balmy weather.
"Meanwhile, Barack Obama had zero compunction about returning to Martha’s Vineyard after coming home for a couple of days toting oldest daughter Malia. "The president couldn’t break away from his golf game to attend Major General Greene’s funeral, with full military honors, at Arlington Cemetery on Friday, but was able to land at the White House early Monday morning and hang around for less than 48 hours." ...
Charles Krauthammer "Baghdad called President Obama’s bluff and he came through. He had refused to provide air support to Iraqi government forces until the Iraqis got rid of their divisive sectarian prime minister.
"They did. He responded."
A Kurdish peshmerga fighter looks at smoke rising in the horizon following US airstrikes targeting Islamic State (IS) militants at Mosul Dam.
"With the support of U.S. airstrikes, Iraqi and Kurdish forces have retaken the Mosul dam. Previous strikes had relieved the siege of Mount Sinjar and helped the Kurds retake two strategic towns that had opened the road to a possible Islamic State assault on Irbil, the capital of Kurdistan.
"In following through, Obama demonstrated three things: the effectiveness of even limited U.S. power, the vulnerability of the Islamic State and, crucially, his own seriousness, however tentative.
...
"Obama was slow to bring American power to bear. And slower still to arm the Kurds. But he was right to wait until Baghdad had gotten rid of Nouri al-Maliki, lest the U.S. serve as a Shiite air force. We don’t know how successful Haider al-Abadi will be in forming a more national government. But Obama has for now wisely taken advantage of the Abadi opening."
...
We have now seen what air cover for Kurdish/Iraqi boots on the ground can achieve. But for a serious rollback campaign, Obama will need public support. He has to explain the stakes and the larger strategy. His weak and passive rhetorical reaction to the beheading of American journalist James Foley was a discouragingly missed opportunity.
...
Writing of Obama's claim that these animals will ultimately fail, Krauthammer reminds us that the "role of a great power, as Churchill and Roosevelt understood, is to bring that day closer."
When this president gets an attaboy from Mr. Krauthammer, you know he has done well.
" 'Every day we find new evidence that he’d rather be on the golf course than he would be dealing with a crisis that’s developing rapidly in the Middle East," Cheney declared during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity." ... "I noticed the reaction of David Cameron, the British prime minister, when he found out that the individual who apparently did the beheading was speaking with a British accent. He wanted to immediately leave his vacation," Cheney said. "Of course, our president headed to the golf course as soon as he made his relatively, I thought, ineffective statement." Read more:
Media Stop Defending Obama's Serial-GolfingVideo "We all remember the media endlessly hectoring George W. Bush about his golfing, fundraising, and vacations at his ranch in Texas. We also remember this very same objective, unbiased, not-at-all-liberal media excusing and even defending (with false reporting) President Obama's seemingly serial vacations, golf outings, and fundraisers (even the day after an American ambassador was brutally murdered in Libya.)"
"He had just hung up the telephone with the devastated parents before heading in front of the cameras. Unusually emotional, President Obama declared himself “heartbroken” by the brutal murder of an American journalist, James Foley, and vowed to “be relentless” against Islamic radicals threatening to kill another American.
"But as soon as the cameras went off, Mr. Obama headed to his favorite golf course on Martha’s Vineyard, where he is on vacation, seemingly able to put the savagery out of his mind. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the links even as a firestorm of criticism erupted over what many saw as a callous indifference to the slaughter he had just condemned."
I think the video of Michael Brown robbing that store was what dishonored his name by showing us what he was like.
"But his sharpest criticism was aimed at Sharpton. At one point in the program, O'Reilly played a clip of Sharpton declaring "we have had enough" of police violence.
" 'Enough of what Al? Enough what? Police efficiency?" O'Reilly asked, citing statistics to show police shootings are rare compared to the total number of arrests. "Sharpton has the nerve to insult the American police community — men and women risking their lives to protect us. This charlatan has the gall to do that and NBC News is paying him. My God, why is that acceptable?' " Read more:
"Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," network contributor LZ Granderson and political analyst Tara Wall hammered activists like Al Sharpton for being a "charlatans" who come into situations like Ferguson to "make names for themselves.' "
Momdot. About 5 minutes ago one of my very good blogger friends shared that a family member of hers was allegedly sent to in school suspension for saying ‘Bless You’ in a high school class today.
"Bless you.
"As in someone sneezed and she said “Bless You.' ”
(Photo of the criminal below.)
... "I am blown away that in a society that claims itself to be so progressive and free, we have stripped away our religion so far down to the roots that our kids cannot say Bless You without fear of retribution.
"I was so shocked about this situation that I asked Kendra to reach out to me and she did.
"Here are her words on what happened [then]:" Full article.
Hat tip to Walt Stier; Santa Maria, CA. Post from American Family Association
The family of Mike Brown, an eighteen-year-old Ferguson teenager shot and killed by police on Saturday, August 9, has said that the young man recently took up a passion for music, with an interest in sound engineering and plans to study at Vatterott College next week. According to his grandmother, Desuirea Harris, “All he wanted to do is make music.”
