Police in Kelly Thomas Case Acquitted by Jury

Hot off the press:  The two Fullerton officers charged in the Kelly Thomas death case were apparently cleared of all charges voted Not Guilty by the jury.  The verdict has engendered a lot of outrage.  Keep in mind we have the whole thing on video for the world to see.  People were saying that the reason why Kelly Thomas died is because he used to take drugs like Meth, and it weakened his bodily constitution.  But I guess the bigger question is whether any of us have our “Constitutional rights” against a summary death sentence as the officers play the role of judge, jury and executioner.  This verdict comes as little surprise to anyone who has followed police shooting cases at all, since I don’t think I can think of a one where the cops have actually been found guilty, and less still, if this were to be the case, that they would serve sentences in accordance with any other criminal convicted of the same charges.  (Selah)  I’ll try and refrain from singing a stanza of “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carol”.  Of course the family is outraged, but it’s our justice system and they can’t do anything about it.  It took the jury eight hours to arrive at their decision.  The jury did not deliberate at all on Friday.  But as such – this is a more encompassing verdict than even the Rodney King verdict was.

Dr Oz was touting another of his famous altered wheat products that bloat up in your stomach and makes you feel full for hours because you can’t digest it.   It’s this product that apparently has been around since Biblical times or something that’s green wheat that allows for higher iron and potassium and stuff.  Then it was Katie Kuric on the legalization of marijuana and she had as guest the mayor of Colorado.  He was initially against legalization because he says “I’m a child of the eighties’ and “grew up in the era of the crack cocaine explosion and saw a lot of families torn apart by this drug”.  Of course he says “and you know- - all those users got their start by smoking marijuana”.  But now he’s said that he “had worked with the medical people when pot was legal just for that exclusive medical use.  And he’s convinced the roll out of the drug has been a good one.  Actually one ounce of marijuana is a pretty impressive amount, and you can make thirty joints from the volume shown there.  “There is no practical way of stopping citizens of Colorado from going from store to store and buying more than an ounce, but it’s still illegal to have more than one ounce on you at any one time”.

This afternoon before dinner I watched almost half of the White House briefing on C-Span.  They kept the topics interesting and talked in some detail about Iran.  Then I watched Paul Ryan’s lecture to the liberal Brookings Institute.  Many of the points actually made logical sense, and were academically respectable.  Government should further the cause of commerce and bring people together for cooporation and not drive people apart in their Cause to achieve a desired end.  He also defined getting ahead as “taking a chance” and also mutual Trust by the one hiring and by the one hired.  How profound!  He also said that the poor who choose to work and better themselves pay an effective “tax bracket rate” of between 55% and 80% and that’s downright conthiscatory, no matter how you slice it.  Anything much over fifty percent- - for anybody, I don’t care how rich you are- - to me becomes oppressive and confiscatory 

I turned on Sean Hannity, who of course was fawning all over Governor Christie once again.  It only highlights the emotional commitment to this man that they are so incapable of even contemplating the idea Christie might have done anything wrong.  Jim was talking about these big oversize blueberry muffins he likes.  I guess they are like the ones Janet used to give out.   It was one of these crime shows where the statement was made "People believe irrational things because they Need to believe it".  They believe that good people go to heaven and that bad people go to hell, as "they define it" of course.  Governor Christie has been thus "Adopted by the right wing as one of their own" and they defend him the way they might a child, or more to the point, a favorite offspring who somehow manages to "get away with murder" all of the time.  In other words, just as with God Himself, Governor Christie has become an extension of their own Egos, and an attack against him becomes a personal attack against them.  They will compare this case to three dead dog scandals of the Obama administration, the IRS, Bengazi, and Fast and Furious, in which, in the case of all three they have spent months and years exhaustively investigating them and found, over and over again, that there is no cause AT ALL for any suspicion.  And one has to ask "Is there case so weak that they have no Fact they can point to in Christie's defense so they immediately "Go To' that Other Place, where they feel somehow Safe.  But of course this scandal is less than a week old, and there is no telling what developments will come up.  Like Watergate in April 1973 I think the major dam has yet to burst.

There is a jolly pastor who is so conscious of the “needs” of the football fans in his congregation that he delivered a sermon faster than most people can play the ‘Minute Waltz”.  All he said in Roger Daltry fashion “You are forgiven”, and adds, “By the way there is some bread and wine up here and if you’d like some help yourself to some on the way out”.  That borders on the blasphanus, and Paul in Corinthians has a word or two to say about that.  But strangely I agree with Sean Hannity that the participants in the Super Bowl will be the Seattle Sea Hawks and the Denver Broncos, and that the Broncos will win that contest.  I hope that isn’t the kiss of death to agree with Sean Hannity on this one.   You know “flexability” was shown like this in ‘Paper Moon” where Tatum O Neil chose to perhaps one rich old lady $24.00 for a Bible they asked everyone else $8.00 for, whereas when they came upon one economically desperate family Tatum said, “Oh Dad, this Bible has already been paid for; it’s Free”.

We had tacos for dinner.  But we sure had to wait for it.  Our table got served at 4:38 and then it was the pumpkin pie dessert which I ate first.  Then we got two hard shell tacos and a “dallop” of sour cream, and refried beans.  I gave Glen one more cigarette making four, so that I can hopefully get a respectfully strong cup of java tonight, even if of the instant variety.  So far we continue with no rain, which we sorely need.  They promised us that come the middle of January that “everything would shift around” and the pineapple express would get reactivated.  They are getting for an Ice Hockey game in Dodger Stadium between the Ducks and the Kings.  What it wrong with this picture.  I’m pretty sure we made it into the low eighties today.  Now they have taken to not even letting who live in the States of the visiting football teams, even buy tickets in the big game.  Denver wouldn’t sell to people living in California last week.  And Seattle won’t sell to people living in California next week in the big contest with the forty-niners, but they will let people from British Columbia buy tickets.  In fact it was Seattle that started this whole business of putting decoys in the stands wearing the visiting teams colors as “bait” for anyone who would commit violent acts against them.  It’s a paranoid world we live in.