Monday, August 27, 2018

Jacksonville Just the Beginning

Haven't you heard? 

The September shock and awe is going to be one mass shooting after another, mostly at schools, with many days having multiple attacks all day long all across the country. Ma$$ media pre$$titues will be breaking down on air in tears. That will bring a blue tsunami of Democrats into office and gun control will be among their first acts that Trump will sign (if not Pence).

Remember New Mexico and what was described as abused children, one of whom had died? We were told it was some sort of strange brainwashing cult that was allegedly training kids for school shootings. The owner of the property had to pester the authorities to get them to act, then the judge let everybody go and the state destroyed the evidence -- while the ma$$ media completely dropped the story. 

Heads up:

"3 dead, including gunman, in Jacksonville shooting" by Alan Blinder, Christopher Mele and Patricia Mazzei New York Times  August 26, 2018

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A man armed with a handgun killed two people at a video gaming tournament Sunday, turning a football competition waged in a virtual domain into the chaotic scene of a double murder. The shooting suspect, a gamer attending the event, then fatally shot himself, authorities said.

Oh, boy. Here we go. 

Sheriff Mike Williams of Jacksonville identified the suspect as David Katz, 24, of Baltimore, but said it was too early to know his motive. The sheriff said the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives were assisting in the investigation.

Uh-oh.

A livestream of the tournament caught the chilling moment when the shooting began. A red laser dot appeared on the chest of one of the players, who was wearing white headphones and a red sweatshirt. The video of the players then disappeared. Twelve gunshots rang out.

I'm not going to watch it. Those that do will be able to tell if it is a staged and scripted piece of theater, some bit of false flag fakery, or whether it is an actual real event.

The shooting took place at 1:34 p.m. at Jacksonville Landing, a riverfront collection of restaurants, shops and an open-air performance space that is a gathering place in the city on weekends. President Trump held a packed rally there as a candidate in 2015. By late Sunday, it was surrounded by fire trucks and police vehicles, its perimeter roped off by police tape. SWAT team officers stood at the entrance of a nearby parking garage. A helicopter flew high overhead.

It's an “all too common” occurrence. 

Then the web version fired off some reedited and rewritten work:

Speaking outside a Jacksonville hospital Sunday night, Governor Rick Scott mourned another mass shooting in his state.

“We have got to change, we’ve got to really stop and say to ourselves, ‘There’s something wrong,’ ” said Scott, who signed gun-control legislation into law after the Feb. 14 rampage at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead. “Why are young men willing to give up their lives? Or why don’t they value somebody else’s life? We’ve got to figure this out. We don’t ever want this to happen again,” but Scott is due to leave office within months — he is running for a seat in the US Senate — and Sunday night, he made no specific policy proposals. As he walked to his motorcade, stopping for a picture with a hospital employee, he ignored reporters who called out more questions about gun control.

More on that Senate race below (somebody got a big boost from this mass casualty event).

Jacksonville was already reeling from another deadly shooting over the weekend. One person was killed and two others were injured in a shooting after a high school football game Friday. Mayor Lenny Curry blamed that violence on youth gangs.

The violence rattled locals and visitors and rippled through the state’s political establishment. Florida’s primary election is Tuesday; five Democrats running for governor decried the violence and reiterated their push for gun control. The two Republican candidates canceled planned campaign events in the Jacksonville area.

You guys gotta get another playbook, and it's okay to flog the issue if it is not an illegal killing some girl in Iowa, right? Then you are being political. Okay to blare lies from the headlines leading to the deaths of millions in wars, but bad taste to mention it.

“How long is it going to take for us to get guns off the street?” Marquis Williams, 28, told local reporters after his girlfriend was treated for an ankle injury. “How many more people, how many more friends, do we have to lose — die — to this?”

Williams and his girlfriend, Taylor Poindexter, 26, had come to the tournament from Chicago. They wore Bears jerseys and had been at the bar preparing to order a pizza at Chicago Pizza and Sports Grille, which shares an entrance with the space hosting the gaming tournament in Jacksonville Landing, when the shooting began.

“We heard a first pop, thought it was a balloon,” Williams told The Florida Times-Union. “And then we heard multiple pops. Took off running.”

Poindexter said she was trampled on the way out.

“Never did I once think, ‘Oh, we’re going to be part of a mass shooting and I’m on crutches just playing video games,'” she said. “It’s crazy.”

They are from Chicago, you say?

See8 people, 6 of them children, killed in Chicago apartment fire

How many shootings this weekend anyway?

You know what would be a real shock and awe? A mushroom cloud over Chicago during a Bear's home game. When is their first home game anyway?

Sujeil Lopez was at home in the Tampa Bay area when she got a call that her 25-year-old son, who plays video games professionally, had been shot.

“I have to get to him. I am four hours away from him and I have to get to my son,” Lopez said in a telephone interview. “He was shot three times, once on the nipple, once on his hand and somewhere else.” She did not know his condition.

A professional video game organization, compLexity Gaming, said on Twitter that it had a player at the tournament who “suffered a small injury” when a bullet grazed his hand but that “he is away from the scene.”

The player, Drini Gjoka, wrote on Twitter that the “tourney just got shot up.”

“I am literally so lucky,” he said. “The bullet hit my thumb.” In another Twitter post, he said he would “never take anything for granted ever again.”

People ran in panic from the restaurant, and at least two people were injured while fleeing, police said.

“The look on everybody’s face was like they were terrified,” witness Javari Long told the local Fox affiliate, noting the presence of families and “babies” at the pizza joint next to the gaming tournament. “It’s games.”

After Sunday’s shooting, Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville treated three patients, all of whom were in stable condition, a spokesman, Peter Moberg, said. Another hospital, UF Health Jacksonville, was treating six patients, one of them in serious condition and five in good condition, said the hospital’s spokesman, Dan Leveton.

Doctors at UF Health Jacksonville told reporters that the most seriously injured of the patients there had been shot in the chest but was expected to survive. Three patients were shot once; the others were shot more than once, said Dr. Marie Crandall, a trauma surgeon. The patients range in age from 20 to 35.

In Baltimore, federal officials were investigating in HarborView, an affluent condo and town house community just south of the Inner Harbor area. Several agents from the ATF emerged from a town house there Sunday night and declined to comment.

Searching the family home of Katz.

Cameron Stearns, who lives next door to the town house where he said Katz lived with family, said he was surprised and horrified at the news that Katz had been identified as the gunman. “It’s shocking and scary to think only a wall separates you from somebody capable of shooting up a video game tournament,” he said.

The shooting happened at the GLHF Game Bar, which is short for “Good Luck Have Fun.” The venue inside the pizza restaurant was hosting a tournament that viewers could watch on Twitch, a gaming network owned by Amazon. Spectators watch the games, many hoping to pick up skills and tips from more experienced gamers.

The bar was scheduled to host a qualifying round for the Madden NFL Championship Series, a gaming tournament. “Madden NFL 19,” developed by Electronic Arts, is the 30th installment of the popular NFL video game series, which has sold more than 100 million copies. Its release each summer — just before the start of the football season — is practically a holiday for many NFL and video game fans.

The shooting took place at the southeast regional qualifying contest for a Madden tournament. It advertised a $5,000 grand prize, and the top two finishers were to receive a berth in the finals in October.

In a video clip shared on social media, the game could be seen on a television screen. Someone playing as the Atlanta Falcons appeared to have scored, and was kicking off. Commentators remarked that the players were so good that it would not be easy to knock anyone out of the tournament.

“Run run run run run pass run run run,” one viewer said in a comment stream as the game unfolded.

Then the sound of gunfire began. Several shots could be heard, one after another.

Then as the shots sounded, commenters repeatedly said, “Oh my God.”

“Is there a shooting?” a viewer asked.

“That’s a gun,” said another.

The video then cut off.

Casting doubt on whether this was a real event at all.

--more--"

Given the identity of the alleged shooter, I expect this item to go the way of YouTube shooter and Maryland newsroom guy who worked at Labor Department under Obama (those are two off the top of the head anyway), but you better buckle your seat belt just in case.

Related: Pathetic Pokemon Psyop

All fun and games, right (before the CIA turned it into a mapping and monitoring platform)?

Looks like the staged and scripted stuff went live this time. 

Related:

"The opening weekend for ‘‘Crazy Rich Asians’’ was historic. Its second weekend was even more impressive. The romantic comedy sensation slid just 6 percent from its chart-topping debut to again lead the box office with $25 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. Propelled by enthusiastic reviews and an eagerness for a major Hollywood film led by Asian stars, ‘‘Crazy Rich Asians’’ is showing almost unprecedented legs. The adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel, starring Constance Wu and Henry Golding, was helped by weak competition. STX Entertainment’s critically slammed R-rated puppet caper ‘‘The Happytime Murders’’ debuted with $10.1 million, a career-low wide release for star Melissa McCarthy. The robot-dog fantasy ‘‘A.X.L.,’’ from the beleaguered Global Road Entertainment, flopped with $2.9 million, but the talk of the weekend was the sustained success of ‘‘Crazy Rich Asians,’’ which grossed approximately the same from one Saturday to the next. ‘‘I’ve been telling my team that Big Foot sightings are more common than zero percent Saturday drops,’’ said Jeff Goldstein, distribution chief for Warner Bros. The remarkable hold left many in Hollywood searching for comparisons. ‘‘The Happytime Murders,’’ which cost approximately $40 million to make, came into the weekend with some of the worst reviews of the year (22 percent ‘‘fresh’’ on Rotten Tomatoes) despite the pedigree of the Jim Henson Company. Brian Henson, the chairman of the company and son of Jim Henson, directed the raunchy Los Angeles detective tale, a kind of ‘‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’’ for puppets. It’s the second straight disappointment for STX, which has also seen its Mark Wahlberg thriller ‘‘Mile 22’’ underperform......"

Who goes to the movies anymore?

"Russian meddling comments weigh on senatorial campaign" by Gary Fineout Associated Press  August 26, 2018

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Caught in one of the toughest campaign fights in his lengthy political career, Senator Bill Nelson’s recent comments that Russians are meddling in Florida’s election system have triggered a firestorm for the mild-mannered politician.

The statements mark the third time Nelson, a Democrat, has said something questionable, or untrue, during the last few months, but it has also triggered a line of attack from Republican Governor Rick Scott and his campaign supporters who contend that the 75-year-old Nelson is ‘‘terribly confused’’ or even ‘‘incoherent.’’

Why isn't he being put on the pre$$ rack for inaccuracies like Trump?

Nelson’s campaign has labeled it as ‘‘dirty politics,’’ but Scott’s campaign has defended the criticism, and some view the tactic as a way to suggest that Nelson — who will turn 76 in September — is too old to run.

These guys are like punch-drunk fighters; they never know it is time to toss in the towel.

If he has dementia or Alzheimers, would the pre$$ tell us?

‘‘It seems like they are trying to project a strong relationship between longevity in office and age and flip-flopping and uncertainty,’’ said Susan MacManus, a retired University of Florida professor and long-time political analyst.

Nelson, whose only loss in his long political career was his 1990 defeat in the governor’s race, had relatively easy matchups in his last two reelection campaigns, but Scott, a two-term governor leaving office due to term limits, has been on attack since jumping into the race last spring.

The two have traded barbs over everything from guns to health care and the environment. Scott, relying primarily on $25 million of his own money that he’s pumped into his campaign, has pounded Nelson in a series of ads so far.

Nelson’s slow start to his campaign has worried some Democrats as they battle to regain control of the Senate. Now Nelson’s comments on Russian meddling have created a controversy that may hang over his campaign until November.

In a fair election, the Republicans would be increasing their majority by 3 or 4 seats. In a fair election. This is one of those that should flip come the fall.

He told reporters earlier this month that Russians had penetrated the systems of certain Florida counties and ‘‘have free rein to move about’’ ahead of this year’s election. He made the comments after being asked about a rare warning that both he and Senator Marco Rubio sent to state election officials earlier this summer.

Nelson’s comments ricocheted quickly because Russian hackers targeted Florida along with other states during the last election. While many details of the 2016 hacking efforts have remained murky, an indictment last month said Russian operatives sent more than 100 fake e-mails to elections offices and personnel in Florida.

Scott demanded proof of a new incursion, and state officials pressed federal officials for confirmation.

Senator Richard Burr, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Rubio, the Florida Republican who sits on the committee, declined to either confirm or deny Nelson’s statements. Nelson stuck by his comments but declined to answer detailed questions, saying the information is ‘‘classified.’’

This past week, however, federal authorities told Florida election officials they saw no signs of any ‘‘new or ongoing compromises’’ of state or local election systems. Scott said this proved Nelson was ‘‘reckless’’ and ‘‘irresponsible.’’

Just laying the basis for hollering Russia stole it if he loses.

His campaign then put out a lengthy 2-minute video on YouTube that strung together Nelson’s comments that called him ‘‘terribly confused.’’

Chris Hartline, a spokesman for Scott, went further: ‘‘It’s been more than two weeks since Bill Nelson’s bizarre Russia comments, and the only people more confused than Bill Nelson are the people who have to listen to him speak.

“His constantly changing, incoherent explanation has left watchers across the country and across the political spectrum scratching their heads.’’

Maybe he wants out and this is the easiest way to do it.

Carlie Waibel, a spokeswoman for Nelson’s campaign, blasted the video: ‘‘This is the worst, the worst kind of dirty politics and shows just how desperate Rick Scott is,’’ but this is not the first time this year that Nelson has said something that invited scrutiny.

Isn't Scott ahead in the polls?

Shortly after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people, Nelson said on national television that the person behind the shootings was wearing a gas mask and used smoke grenades. Nelson in the spring tweeted out that the shootings of two teenagers in Miami were done with a type of military semiautomatic rifle.

Neither statement was correct. 

Jacksonville will get the focus off that while bolstering his bid

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This all comes, of course, as the kids are on the march and picking up bikes before firing off a round.

Did you see the latest charge regarding Russian interference in the midterms?

"Russia is unveiling a floating nuclear power plant. Tied to a wharf in the city of Murmansk, the Akademik Lomonosov rocks gently in the waves. The buoyant facility, made of two miniature reactors of a type used previously on submarines, is for now the only one of its kind. Moscow, while leading the trend, is far from alone in seeing potential in floating nuclear plants. Two state-backed companies in China are building such facilities, and US scientists have drawn up plans of their own. Proponents say they are cheaper, greener, and perhaps safer. They envision a future when nuclear power stations bob off the coasts of major cities. “They are light-years ahead of us,” Jacopo Buongiorno, a professor of nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the Russian floating power program. Smaller reactors on floats can be assembled more quickly, be put in a wider range of locations, and respond more nimbly to fluctuating supply on power grids that increasingly rely on wind and solar. The Russian reactors will generate a combined 70 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 70,000 typical US homes." 

It's OFF the COAST of FLORIDA as I TYPE!!!!

The sad thing is that the dumb idea was first floated by the North Koreans


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You know who didn't like Asians?

Obama, Bush expected to speak at John McCain’s funeral

I wonder if Bush will apologize for the South Carolina robocalls saying McCain had fathered a child by a black woman? That was after McCain upset W in N.H. and was a real threat to blocking the boy's path to the presidency.

I'm told he always put country first and was the guy with whom you most wanted to share a hot dog. He was the adopted son of New Hampshire with a rare combination of edginess, grace, grit, and honesty that led to a special meeting of the minds that proved the press wrong as he redefined how to run for president and was a ‘true profile in courage’.

They did confiscate the medicinal pot plants he left behind, but who is going to prosecute at this point?

He was ‘‘living history,’’ but now.....

John McCain is Dead

Remembering John McCain

American Hero John McCain Dead at 81

RelatedMan who survived Hanson plane crash is paralyzed

Also see:

"Cristhian Bahena Rivera is charged with first-degree murder in 22-year-old Mollie Tibbetts’s death. Investigators say the 24-year-old Mexican farmworker led them to a cornfield Tuesday where her body had been left since her July 18 disappearance. On Saturday, a group of Iowa conservatives appeared to fall short of the necessary signatures to add an attorney general candidate to the November ballot. Their effort was fueled by the arrest of the Mexican suspect in the Tibbetts case....."

So he is no longer an undocumented illegal, huh?

The reporting is not evenhanded or fair, or is there even a pretense of it anymore, and are they ever having a bad week, huh? 

A mass grave of hundreds of babies who died at a church-run home and the Pope didn't go there?

Probation recommended for school official in knife incident Adetokunbo Akinnaso, 64, pleaded guilty last week to two counts of fourth-degree child abuse in Superior Court. Akinnaso was the director of the Dawn to Dusk Christian Childcare and Learning Center in Plainfield when prosecutors alleged she showed a knife after two 4-year-olds were brought to her office for disciplinary reasons earlier this year.

Meanwhile, looks who is new at Brandweis.

Lane brought record rain to Hawaii, but lost its wallop

Which is when I lost mine as far as reading anymore of this slop today. My heart is just not into it. Too painful to read.

UPDATE: 

"Chicago police said two teenage boys who were missing for days were found shot to death on the city’s South Side. The bodies of 16-year-old Raysuan Turner and 17-year-old Darnelle Flowers were found Sunday near Golden Gate Park. The teens’ families reported them missing on Friday. Community activist Andrew Holmes says their relatives posted fliers and knocked on doors over the weekend hoping for clues on their whereabouts. In a separate development....."

NEXT DAY UPDATES:

"David Katz, Jacksonville shooting suspect, had a history of mental illness" by Russ Bynum Associated Press  August 28, 2018

BALTIMORE — The suspect in a deadly shooting at a Florida video game tournament had previously been hospitalized for mental illness, according to court records in his home state of Maryland.

Divorce filings from the parents of 24-year-old David Katz of Baltimore say that as an adolescent he was twice hospitalized in psychiatric facilities and that he was prescribed antipsychotic and antidepressant medications.

The records show Katz’s parents disagreed on how to care for their troubled son, with his father claiming his estranged wife was exaggerating symptoms of mental illness as part of their long and bitter custody battle. The couple divorced in 2007.

Katz opened fire Sunday at a gaming bar inside a collection of restaurants and shops in Jacksonville. He killed two people and wounded nine others before fatally shooting himself during the ‘‘Madden NFL 19’’ tournament, authorities said.

Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams has declined to comment on the gunman’s motive.

He was angry at losing and being out of the tournament is what we have been told.

The suspect’s father, Richard Katz of Baltimore, and his mother, Elizabeth Katz of Columbia, Md., did not respond to phone messages Sunday or Monday. Efforts to reach them at their homes were also unsuccessful.

The Howard County, Md., divorce filings say that David Katz played video games obsessively as a young adolescent, often refusing to go to school or to bathe. Elizabeth Katz, a toxicologist who worked at the Department of Agriculture, said she confiscated some of her son’s gaming equipment after finding him playing in the wee hours.

‘‘His hair would very often go unwashed for days. When I took his gaming equipment controllers away so he couldn’t play at 3 or 4 in the morning, I'd get up and find that he was just walking around the house in circles,’’ the mother said, according to a transcript in the court files.

At one point, she put his gaming controllers in her bedroom behind a locked door and he punched a hole in the door, she said.

Elizabeth Katz said her youngest son had increasing difficulty concentrating following his parents’ split. A judge awarded custody of the boy to his mother, with visitation rights to the father.

At times David ‘‘curled up into a ball,’’ refused to attend school, and sobbed, she said. She asserted that her former husband instructed David not to take Risperdal — an antipsychotic medication prescribed to him. The father claimed in court filings that David was not ‘‘diagnosed as psychotic.’’

He missed large stretches of school while under his mother’s supervision. He was admitted to the nearby Sheppard Pratt mental health system for about 12 days in late 2007.

Court documents say a psychiatrist at that time administered antidepressants. He later spent about 13 days at Potomac Ridge, a mental health services facility in Rockville.

Richard Katz, a NASA engineer, said his former wife had ‘‘an obsession with using mental health professionals and in particular psychiatric drugs to perform the work that parents should naturally do.’’

So there are government fingerprints all over this one, too! 

WOW!

He said she routinely gave false information to mental health care providers. He described one incident in which his son was handcuffed by police after locking himself in his mother’s car in an attempt to avoid going to a mental health appointment with her.

Federal law requires gun buyers to disclose whether they have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution. Maryland state law also prohibits the sale or transfer of a gun to someone who has been diagnosed with a mental disorder or who has a history of violent behavior.

In recent weeks, Katz legally purchased the two handguns he carried from a gun store in Baltimore, the sheriff said. One of the weapons was equipped with a laser sight that paints the intended target with a glowing red dot.

The sheriff said Katz may not have fired both weapons. He did not say whether Katz disclosed his past hospitalizations on the form for the required federal background check.

By the time Katz was 15, the divorce records show, the father asserted that Elizabeth Katz ‘‘routinely’’ called the police for ‘‘trivial matters.’’

In a transcript of a 2010 phone call, the mother phoned a 911 dispatcher, accusing David of ‘‘abusing’’ her by coming home late after a visitation with his father.

She then insisted he was ‘‘assaulting’’ her by trying to gain control of the cable cord to the television. She complained to the dispatcher that he was rolling his eyes and laughing.

‘‘You’ll roll your eyes. Fine. You’ll pay. Where are you going to be tomorrow?’’ she said in the transcript, addressing her son. The dispatcher encouraged her not to say anything further until a police officer arrived. He was eventually sent to a wilderness therapy program in Utah called RedCliff Ascent for nearly 100 days.

Mormon mind control?

According to the father’s version of events, the relationship between mother and son got increasingly worse.

At least he didn't take her out on a boat.

Elizabeth Katz put David’s clothes in suitcases on at least two occasions and asked him to leave, including once on Mother’s Day in 2007. In court filings, the father asserted that David ‘‘routinely expresses his anger’’ toward her. He claimed that when David was staying with him, the boy showed no signs of behavioral problems and was ‘‘generally lively, communicative’’ and ‘‘playful.’’

Looks like programmed mind control with triggers (pun unintended) and God only knows what else.

--more--"

Can't even make your own gun anymore.

"Under pressure, Trump re-lowers White House flag for McCain" by John Wagner and Josh Dawsey Washington Post  August 27, 2018

WASHINGTON — White House officials again lowered the American flag atop the building to half-staff Monday afternoon after intense criticism of the administration’s response to Senator John McCain’s death and bipartisan calls from Congress to lower the flag.

‘‘Despite our differences on policy and politics, I respect Senator John McCain’s service to our country and, in his honor, have signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of his interment,’’ President Trump wrote late in the day, breaking his two-day silence on the Republican senator from Arizona.

The move came after White House officials had raised the flag earlier in the day, and Trump ignored almost a dozen shouted questions about McCain while White House staffers convulsed over his reaction.

Trump had blocked efforts to release a statement honoring McCain and calling him a ‘‘hero,’’ instead expressing condolences to McCain’s family via Twitter on Saturday night.

US code calls for flags to be lowered in the event of the death of a member of Congress ‘‘on the day of death and the following day,’’ but presidents have the power to issue proclamations extending that period and have done so routinely.

By now you would think they would have it through their fat heads that this president is different.

The American Legion, a veterans organization, had called on Trump to treat McCain with more reverence.

‘‘On behalf of The American Legion’s two million wartime veterans, I strongly urge you to make an appropriate presidential proclamation noting Senator McCain’s death and legacy of service to our nation and that our nation’s flag be half-staffed through his internment,’’ said Denise Rohan, the group’s national commander.

In a tweet Monday morning, a spokesman for Senate minority leader Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, said that he and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell had asked the Department of Defense to ‘‘provide necessary support so that US flags on all government buildings remain at half mast through sunset on the day of Senator McCain’s interment.’’

After facing a day of criticism, the president released his statement. He also said he had requested that Vice President Mike Pence speak at Capitol Hill services honoring McCain on Friday, and chief of staff John Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Ambassador John Bolton to represent his administration at the funeral. And he said he had authorized military assistance for the funeral and burial.

Trump was not invited to the funeral. Former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush are scheduled to deliver eulogies.

He's not invited, and yet he's the one snubbing the guy who was a conduit for the Stelle dossier as well as a Capitol Hill leaker to the pre$$.

In a final letter released Monday, McCain expressed his deep gratitude and love of country and implored Americans to put aside ‘‘tribal rivalries’’ and focus on what unites them.

Yeah, it's time to unite.

Rick Davis, former presidential campaign manager for McCain who is serving as a family spokesman, read the farewell message Monday at a press briefing in Phoenix.

In the statement, McCain reflected on the privilege of serving his country and said he tried to do so honorably. He also touched on today’s politics.

‘‘Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here,’’ McCain wrote. ‘‘Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.’’

McCain died Saturday from an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Extensive plans to honor the senator were taking shape. McCain will lie in state Wednesday in the Arizona State Capitol on what would have been his 82nd birthday. A funeral will be conducted Thursday at North Phoenix Baptist Church with former vice president Joe Biden speaking.

In Washington, McCain will lie in state Friday in the Capitol Rotunda with a formal ceremony and time for the public to pay respects. On Saturday, a procession will pass the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and arrive for a funeral at Washington National Cathedral. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are expected to speak at the service.

What about Jimmy Carter?

He served in the Navy.

McCain, a former Navy pilot, is scheduled to be buried Sunday at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

The White House flag episode was the latest involving Trump and the powerful American symbol. For months, he has castigated NFL players who choose to kneel during the national anthem, accusing them at political rallies and in other settings of disrespecting the flag.

Trump has also threatened to strip the citizenship of those who burn the flag.....

Time to fold it up.

--more--"

Also seeHonoring McCain rings hollow with Trump in the White House

Scant mention of his racism.

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Tropical storm forms in eastern Pacific, may near Hawaii

"Chicago fire officials said two people who were injured in an apartment fire that killed six children and two adults remained in critical condition. Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford didn’t have any details about the two survivors of Sunday’s predawn fire at an apartment on Chicago’s southwest side, other than one is 14-year-old boy and the other is in his 20s. Langford said investigators don’t believe the fire was deliberately set, but they are still trying to determine its cause. In a separate development Monday....."

"Jury deliberations began Monday in the trial of a white former Texas police officer charged with fatally shooting an unarmed black teenager leaving a house party last year. Roy Oliver was fired from the Balch Springs Police Department days after he shot into a moving car filled with five black teenagers, killing 15-year-old Jordan Edwards. The deliberations started Monday after lawyers gave their closing arguments....."

The race issue looms over the Dallas suburb while the perp walks free.


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"Attleboro police wound armed man after exchange of gunfire" by Emily Sweeney and John R. Ellement Globe Staff  August 27, 2018

ATTLEBORO - Two rookie Attleboro police officers dodged bullets Monday morning, then shot and provided first aid to the man who fired at them, according to police.

Police Chief Kyle P. Heagney praised both officers for how they handled the situation and said he was “very proud” of their actions.

Neither officer was hit, but bullets struck and damaged their police cruisers.

“Their instincts and training took over,” Heagney said. “God forbid that they were still sitting in those cruisers.”

Eric Lindsey, 41, of Coventry, R.I., who allegedly attacked the officers, is recovering at Rhode Island Hospital from wounds. He faces a host of charges, but no arraignment date has been set yet, Bristol District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III’s office said in a statement.

Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux applauded the two officers for providing life-saving first aid to Lindsey after they wounded him. Heroux, in a telephone interview, said the confrontation between the man later identified as Lindsey and police was not motivated by a political agenda but appeared to be an isolated incident..... 

The Globe will find the political agenda to push.

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