People living in a vans down by the river, huh?
"Down by the river, LA homeless watch their backs; Killings put spotlight on lawless region" by Christopher Goffard, Los Angeles Times | November 27, 2009
LOS ANGELES - After the killings, the people on the river slept with their knives closer. They leashed guard dogs outside their tents and cardboard lean-tos. They listened for strangers’ footsteps above the thrum of traffic on the bridges overhead. They got used to the sight of police stepping carefully along the big white rocks of the embankment....
Violence is common and often unreported along the 51-mile Los Angeles River, daytime haunt of the occasional jogger and bird-watcher and in many parts a lawless no-man’s-land populated by hard-core addicts, the mentally ill, and uncountable others, broke or hiding. But what happened last November made an already fearful place feel more perilous still.
Someone gunned down three men and two women in a homeless encampment a few miles from the river’s final southern curve into Long Beach Harbor. Hidden by bottlebrush trees along a freeway off-ramp, it was a cave-like spot with a single entrance - a narrow footpath along a chain-link fence - and a reputation as a drug den. Police suspect the shooter came to punish a drug debtor and turned the gun on everyone to eliminate witnesses....
Under the Seventh Street Bridge in Long Beach, where a dozen or more people can be found living in the garbage-heaped shade between the pylons, the population obeys the rhythms of any flophouse....
This is America?
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Here Comes Santa Claus' Sleigh
Nope, this is AmeriKa!
The bridge, about 6 miles south of the killings, has no small number of addicts, their blasted olfactory sense numbing them to the reeking water, human waste, and rotting garbage.
A future that is waiting for many of you, America. Designed and brought to you by the guys "fixing" it.
Although Musgrove has lived in many spots along the river, she feels safest under the bridge - a place where church groups deliver meals twice a week, and where “everybody cares about everybody, and they take care of each other.’’
And amidst ALL THAT POVERTY they are MORAL and BETTER THAN US!
Among the river’s jerry-built villages, it’s a common mantra: We take care of each other. Just as common is the remark that no one around here can be trusted. All the talk of “community’’ is a joke, said Mike Ducret, who is in his mid-40s, corpulent and blind in one eye, a loner who lives on the rocks a couple of miles north of the bridge. He avoids the encampments and their dramas. “I don’t want anything to do with them,’’ he said. “They’re just strung out all the time.’’
Ducret is too ashamed of his appearance to hunt for food from city trash bins in the daytime.
(Blog editor stunned by that sentence; that sure is a powerful social commentary on the US)
“I’m dirty and nasty,’’ he said. “I’m more of a vampire now.’’
No, here is what a vampire is: Vampires Are Real
The Failing Firms of Massachusetts
Have that hammer and cross ready.
Nearby lives Sarah Lomeli, an Arkansas woman in her mid-40s who said she keeps a machete or a Louisville Slugger close by, and is terrified when her husband, Omar, wanders from their camp on the eastern bank. “I cry every day,’’ she said. “I hate being scared all the time.’’
Hard not to be with vampires running around.
Sandra Lopez, a woman in her mid-50s, lives on the opposite bank and said she doesn’t take her medication for manic-depression because she likes to stay alert. “It’s like ‘Wild Kingdom’ out here. . . . I sleep with pepper spray, knives, clubs. I’m ready,’’ she said. “Because of the murders, we don’t want strangers down here.’’
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Let's see, I need to find a place to stay for the evening.
Related: Camping Out in Rhode Island
I can stay there later.
Better gas up before heading out:
Georgian Gas Station
Remember all those homeless folks?
No money to help them, Congress?
PLAINS, Ga. - In the age of the $787 billion stimulus package, it is, perhaps, a modest question: Should the American taxpayer foot the bill to enshrine the gas station run by the late Billy Carter - the beer-swilling, wisecracking, self-professed redneck brother of Jimmy Carter, our 39th president?
**********************
In October, the House of Representatives approved a measure that would incorporate the station into the Jimmy Carter Historic Site, a National Park Service operation that already operates a number of Carter-related buildings in Plains. A similar bill is under consideration in the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The legislation calls for the Park Service to take over the gas station, plus an old farmhouse that Jimmy and wife Rosalynn lived in from 1956 to 1961.
They are kidding, right?
The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will cost $17 million to upgrade and maintain the sites over the next five years.
Yup, just TOSSING AWAY MONEY at any old bulls*** they can find as this country drowns in red ink and the people suffer.
That was enough to elicit an objection from Steve Ellis, vice president of the Washington-based Taxpayers for Common Sense. Ellis said his concern has nothing to do with Billy Carter’s place in history. It’s a question of priorities, he said. The Park Service already faces a $9 billion maintenance backlog for the property it currently manages, according to the Congressional Research Service....
And you want them running a national health plan, America?
One last stop before heading for home.
Oooops, wrong choice!
"NYC man’s 1992 murder conviction tossed; judge expresses ‘profound regret’" by Associated Press | November 13, 2009
NEW YORK - A judge yesterday threw out a murder case against a man imprisoned for nearly two decades and declared he was innocent, saying a key witness lied and others influenced one other into identifying him as the shooter....
Related: Massachusetts Justice: Wrongful Convictions
It's endemic!
Un-flipping-real!
Readers, NEVER BELIEVE GOVERNMENT because THEY NEVER ADMIT TO LYING or being WRONG!!!!
They do NOT DESERVE TRUST anymore!
Four of Bermudez’s friends testified that he was with them, miles away, at the time of the crime; friends of Blount’s also said Bermudez wasn’t the shooter, according to the judge’s ruling. No forensic evidence linked him to the crime.
But the COPS STILL THINK HE IS GUILTY!
Yup, they FIND a SUSPECT and TAILOR ALL THE EVIDENCE TO THEM, PLANT IT ON THEM, and then they DISCARD and CONCEAL that which is EXCULPATORY!!!
Welcome to AmeriKan justice!!!!
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Almost makes me glad I'm back home in Massachusetts -- almost!
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