Tony Stewart Cleared

A grand jury has determined that race car driver Tony Stewart will not face criminal charges in the death of fellow racer Kevin Ward on August 9 in upstate New York.  The investigation showed no criminal intent from Stewart's driving, and the toxicology report revealed that Ward had marijuana in his system at the time of the incident, which could explain why he apparently tried to latch on to the wing of Stewart's car as it whizzed by.  This is just one more example of how young people who get high sometimes use bad judgment and get themselves killed. 

 

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Tony Stewart will not be charged by an Ontario County (N.Y.) Grand Jury in the death of Kevin Ward Jr.

The grand jury determined Wednesday that there was no evidence of a criminal act. The case was passed on to the grand jury by Ontario County District Attorney Michael Tantillo last week.

Tantillo said "two dozen" people were interviewed in the case and revealed that toxicology reports determined that Ward had marijuana in his system.

"There is toxicology evidence in the case related to Kevin Ward, that actually indicated at the time of operation that he was under the influence of marijuana," Tantillo said. "There was no toxicology work performed on Tony Stewart, however a certified drug recognition expert had interviewed him on the night of the collision and determined that he found no basis to observe any alcohol consumption or impairment by drugs."

When asked about Ward's toxicology reports, Tantillo said that the amount in his system was "enough to impair judgment."

Tantillo also said that there was no evidence of "aberrational" driving from Stewart before he hit Ward and that it appeared Stewart was driving in a straight line until he hit Ward. Two videos of the accident were used as evidence in the investigation.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nascar-from-the-marbles/tony-stewart-not-charged-by-grand-jury-in-death-of-kevin-ward-jr-190047656.html

Forbes on Obama and the Economy

I named this blog The Snow Monkey in part because it is a counterintuitive concept since monkeys typically live in tropical regions.  I often see things different from the majority, and I don't subscribe to the idea that one party is good and the other is evil.

After the 9/11 attacks Democrats were blaming Bush for not acting on intelligence advisories (or for actually conducting a false flag operation) and Republicans were blaming Clinton for not taking bin Laden out when he had the opportunity.  I felt that there was plenty of blame to go around.  When Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011 Democrats were saying that Obama succeeded where Bush failed.  Republicans were saying that Obama didn't get him, our military did.  My take on it was "Why do people insist on partisanship at a time like this?  You have to give Obama credit for authorizing the mission, but at the same time you can't seriously believe that none of the groundwork for that mission was laid during the Bush administration.  Why can't we just be happy that he's dead and say 'Good for us!  We finally got that bastard.  GO AMERICA!' ? "

In order to see things objectively you have to leave the two-party mentality behind and drop the partisan talking points.  That's true when it comes to foreign policy and it's equally true when it comes to the economy.  Take this week's Forbes article, for example.

This is the best private sector jobs creation performance in American history

“What’s now clear is that the Obama administration policies have outperformed the Reagan administration policies for job creation and unemployment reduction.  Even though Reagan had the benefit of a growing Boomer class to ignite economic growth, while Obama has been forced to deal with a retiring workforce developing special needs. During the eight years preceding Obama there was a net reduction in jobs in America.  We now are rapidly moving toward higher, sustainable jobs growth.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2014/09/05/obama-outperforms-reagan-on-jobs-growth-and-investing/


The article goes on to state that the average stock market returns during the Obama administration are better than those of the Reagan administration.  Had this come from a left-wing publication or MSNBC it might be suspect, but Forbes has never been known as a liberal magazine.  The polls may not reflect this but Obama has presided over an impressive economic recovery.  We can debate all day long what these numbers mean, but the idea that Obama has wrecked the economy is now hard to accept. 

Personally I believe that the economy is cyclical and that presidents get too much of the credit in good times and too much blame in the bad times.  I do feel that Reagan was a bit of an exception because his administration marked a transformation in how we view the role of government and the progressive tax system.  Supply-side economics, referred to as "vodoo economics" by some of his opponents including his own VP, was a radical concept at the time and the Reagan Revolution included that as part of its platform.

As for Clinton, he was fortunate enough to take office at a time when the technology revolution and the worldwide web produced an incredible economic boom that eventually went bust at the end of his term.  I will credit Clinton (and Greenspan) for managing the growth fairly well, but it would be a bit of a stretch to say that he produced it, despite the fact that his vice-president took partial credit for creating the internet. 

Bush took office less than a year after the dotcom bubble burst and inherited a sluggish economy that eventually plunged into a recession following 9/11.  Despite the obstacles he faced the economy rebounded and grew steadily from 2003-2008, only to tank again as a result of the financial meltdown of 2008 where again, there was plenty of blame to go around.

Obama inherited a mess and has constantly reminded us of that fact, but now with this latest report he can honestly say that things have indeed turned around.  How much of this is cyclical and how much is due to Obama's leadership is certainly debatable but the facts are there for all to see, and if this trend continues as the article suggests it will be hard for the Republicans to make a strong argument for changing parties in 2016 based on the economy.

     

9/11

 
As we observe the 13th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack on American soil I thought that this would be a good opportunity to state my views on what happened.  I believe that there was a conspiracy to destroy the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. I believe that dozens of people were involved in the conspiracy, but none of them were named Bush, Cheney, or Wolfowitz. None of them worked for the US government or an oil company. I believe that they were all members of Al Qaeda and here's why.

Al Qaeda had a history of conducting well orchestrated attacks like we saw on 9-11. They had the funds, the organizational skills, and the planning to pull it off. And they were dedicated enough to their cause to have 19 of their members commit suicide carrying it out.

I can hear some of you now yelling out "but what about WTC 7?" "Why wasn't there any plane debris in Shanksville, Penn.?" "Why wasn't there a plane in the video of the Pentagon attack?" "Why was the WTC the first skyscraper to ever collapse because of a fire?" All of those questions have been asnwered by experts for anybody who's really interested in the truth. I believe that many of the "truthers" want their story to be heard, and they're more interested in that than the truth.

There's an old saying that "if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is". That usually has to do with investment scams, but I think the same principle is applicable here as well. As much as the truthers would like for this conspiracy theory to be true, it just isn't possible. You see, the logistics of pulling off a government conspiracy in cahoots with the military-industrial complex to attack targets in the US as a pretext to go to war for oil make the theory completely impossible. How many people would have to keep quiet? How many people involved in the subsequent investigations would have to be involved in the coverup? How much of the preparatory work would have had to be conducted without detection? Remember, this was the same administration that couldn't find Osama bin Laden and looked for months for Saddam Hussein, and never did find the stockpiles of WMD that they claimed were there in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. After all, this was the same president who said "is our children learning?" and "misunderestimate", and "subliminable". Do you really believe that these guys were capable of plotting and carrying out the most brilliant false flag operation in world history? 

1998 Al Qaeda embassy attack

Here's what really happened. Osama bin Laden formed Al Qaeda at the end of the Afghan-Soviet war around 1990. When Saudi Arabia invited US troops into their country to defend against a possible invation by Saddam's Iraqi forces, bin Laden was incensed and began carrying out terrorist attacks against the west. In 1992 he sent soldiers into Somalia who shot down two US helicopters in Mogadishu. In 1993 the WTC bombing killed six people. The mastermind of the operation was a radical Muslim named Ramzi Yousef. Yousef avoided capture until 1995 when he was discovered in a house in Pakistan owned by bin Laden. In 1998 bin Laden told ABC reporter John Miller that he intended to keep targeting Americans. Later that year Al Qaeda blew up the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Three years later they followed that up with the 9/11 attacks.

That's my theory anyway. Let me ask you what you think is more likely. Is it more likely that the cabal or international bankers or the military-industrial complex along with the Bush administration planned this and executed it to perfection as a premise to go to war in Iraq? (First of all, they didn't claim that Iraq was behind the attacks. They said that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. If they lied about all of this why didn't they just say that the hijackers were Iraqis? And if they lied about WMD instead of just telling us what their flawed intel led them to believe, why didn't they just plant stockpiles of WMD in Iraq so that they could "find" them later and justify the invasion rather than stand before the whole world with egg on their collective faces? To me it sounds more like incompetence than anything else.) Or is it more likely that a small group of well-trained and well-funded radical Muslims who were already linked to a previous attack on the WTC discovered breaches in our air travel system and exploited them in an attempt to destroy our economy?

This is just the big picture analysis argument against the government conspiracy. And now for a more detailed analysis of the evidence.

1. Truthers claim that a missile hit the Pentagon. The fact is there were at least a hundred witnesses who saw an airliner strike the building. In addition to that, conservative commentator Barbara Olson was on that plane and has never been heard from since along with all of the other passengers on all of the other planes that were hijacked. Olson was on her way to tape a segment of Bill Maher's TV show Politically Incorrect. Maybe this is one reason Bill Maher is so adamantly opposed to the government conspiracy theory.

2. Truthers claim that WTC 7 was brought down in a controlled implosion. I will admit that it looks like a controlled implosion, but to do a controlled implosion on a 47 story building like that would have created an audible blast of 130-140 decibels for up to half a mile which wasn't reported by anybody there.  Besides that, it would have been virtually impossible to transport that much explosive material into the building undetected.

3. Truthers claim that the statement "maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it" by WTC 7 owner Larry Silverstein is proof that it was a controlled implosion. But Silverstein is on record saying that he was talking to the fire chief about pulling the firefighters out of the building because it was obviously in danger of collapsing. He was not talking to a demolition crew.

4. Truthers reject the investigation and findings of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), apparently considering them complicit in the conspiracy. (Use Google and see the numerous references to the NIST cover-up.)

5. Truthers reject the findings of Popular Mechanics' 2005 article called "Debunking the 9/11 Myths", so I guess they're also in on the cover-up, even though they consulted more than 300 experts in fields like air traffic control, aviation, civil engineering, fire fighting, and metallurgy, and then rigorously, meticulously, and scientifically analyzed the 25 most persistent 9/11 conspiracy theories.


This is just a small sampling of the many things that truthers get wrong. For further illumination see:

http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/

http://www.debunking911.com/

Many of the leaders of Al Qaeda have been eliminated since 2011, including Osama bin Laden.  And yet the threat continues, as we're seeing now with ISIS in their quest for a caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and their threats against the US.  In order to defeat our enemies we need to first of all recognize who our enemy is.  When conspiracy theorists cloud the issue with featherbrained accusations it distracts us from the real issue and how to resolve it.  Hopefully we won't need to experience another 9/11 to convince us all that the threat from militant Islam is real.    

Trayvon Martin Revisited

A couple of years ago I created a blog called Media Douchebags in response to the horrific media handling mishandling of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman story.  My thinking at the time was that I would devote the blog to similar cases of media distortions.  While there is certainly no shortage of such cases, circumstances compelled me to return to blogging about the dinar and I never did anything more with that blog.  You can read that one article here, however. 

In following the recent story of the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. I was struck by the parallels with the Trayvon Martin case.  The first thing that got my attention was when I learned about the popular use of Swisher Sweets cigars for rolling joints.  It reminded me of the alternative use of Trayvon Martin's Skittles and Arizona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail which are often mixed with cough syrup to create a codeine-based drink called "lean".  In other words both of these young men had just left a convenience store where they scored some of the necessary material for getting high, and may have already been under the influence.

But the similarities don't stop there.  They also include:

• Both were portrayed as boys when in fact they were both over six feet tall. 
• Both were constantly referred to as unarmed which suggested that they were gunned down in cold blood, ignoring the injuries that they apparently inflicted upon the shooters.
• Both had posed for photos making gang signs and displayed gangsta behavior.
• Both came from a broken home.
• Both were living in a temporary location in a suburb of a major city.
• Both were incorrectly reported as having been shot in the back.
• Both were unemployed.
• Both were portrayed as having great ambitions in life.

And beyond that, their fathers' are about the same age and bear a strong resemblance to one another.

Michael Brown Sr. & Tracy Martin

Taking all of this into consideration, these two cases a thousand miles and two years apart suggest to me that they represent something more than a culture of racism or police brutality.  I believe they represent a cultural climate in America that leads to bad judgment and a lifestyle condusive to such tragic ends.  These two young men were at a point in their lives where they should have been preparing for adulthood.  They should have had a strong male figure in their lives living an example for them of how to be a man.  They should have been watched a bit more closely.  Instead they fell through the cracks. 

I'm not saying that they don't bear any responsibility here, but good parenting might have made a difference.  Young people need guidance.  They're not experienced enough in life to understand how things work, and they need good adults to help them to make good decisions. 

I did a lot of stupid things as a teenager, and I'm hardly alone in that.  I know from experience that without the right influence most kids will make poor choices and suffer the consequences.  With good examples and proper guidance most kids will make better choices and fare better in life.

Tracy Martin recently said that fathers need to "go out and teach our children how to walk and how to talk ... just basic etiquette on how to deliver themselves in the public". You can't help but wonder if he's referring to his own son's suspicious behavior before he lost his life in Florida two years ago.

Something that many white people don't realize is that hip-hop and gangsta rap is as divisive in the black community as the Vietnam War was in the white community.  When Shaquille O'Neal asked his dad if he could listen to rap music his dad, a former seargent in the U.S. army, told him "okay, but you better not let me catch you listening to any of that gansta rap!"  Years later Shaq stated about his rapping:

``I talk about stuff I know. You'll never hear me talk about gangsta rap, 'cause I'm no gangsta,'' Shaq sez. ``And I really wouldn't be calling girls the `B' word on my album, 'cause I got a lot of beautiful women in my life and I don't wanna get them upset. So I just try and say things that'll make people go `oooh,' that'll make them think a bit.''

Shaq also credited his father with disciplining him when he needed it.  As a result he was able to stay out of trouble, focus on his goals, and have a great career. 

The famous neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson was the son of a single mother in Detroit.  His mother required him and his brother to read two books a week and write a book report for her.  She also limited their television viewing and playtime.  As a result they both finished their education and had successful careers as well.  (Dr. Carson's brother Curtis was a mechanical engineer.)  Stories like these are repeated every day with parents who play an active role in their children's lives and keep them on the straight and narrow.  Unfortunately many children stray from the straight and narrow, and in the cases of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown they end up on the broad road to destruction. 

I have already stated that George Zimmerman's poor judgment escalated the situation in the Trayvon Martin case.  It remains to be seen how Officer Wilson's judgment and actions might have contributed to the tragedy in Ferguson.  But instead of defaulting to the accusatory "he had no right to kill that boy" position, maybe we should be asking "how did these young men end up on the road to destruction?"  As comedian Bill Burr says, "even firemen dig through the debris to see how the fire started".