DJ AM, Adam Goldstein, was a DJ of high esteem in the DJ/hip-hop/club communities. DJ AM was a Philadelphia native who had opened a successful club in Atlantic City so his impact is doubly felt by those who promote, attend parties or listened to his custom mixes. Dr. Drew Pinsky hosted DJ AM on his radio show Loveline and asked him to walk the audience through a crack binge to typify drug addiction.
And here is a video, courtesy of TMZ.com, of his last gig in Atlantic city before his subsequent drug overdose and death hours later.
In 2007, after the city recorded 31 murdered children during the school year, Arne Duncan, then-CEO of public schools, expressed similar disappointment.
Duncan, who now serves as President Obama’s secretary of education, said “all hell would break loose” if these killings took place in one of the metro area’s upscale enclaves.
“If that happened to one of Chicago’s wealthiest suburbs — and God forbid it ever did — if it was a child being shot dead every two weeks in Hinsdale or Winnetka or Barrington, do you think the status quo would remain? There’s no way it would,” he said.
[…]
Mayor Richard Daley said the numbers appear worse in his city because the public school system considers teenagers students even after they drop out. “The rest of America doesn’t count them. You’re a dropout forever. We don’t think they’re dropouts. They’re students,” he said. He further said Chicago’s problems are no worse than those in any other American city. “It’s all over, the same thing,” he said. “You go to a large city or small city, it’s all over America. It’s not unique to one community or one city.”
Despite Daley’s remarks, CNN has learned that none of the city’s 36 victims this year was a dropout. Also, Daley’s statistics on the number of youths killed in other cities don’t appear to match reports from American cities.
Los Angeles, California, notorious for its gang problems, is larger than Chicago. It has reported only 23 child slayings this school year. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is about half the size of Chicago, but it has witnessed only a ninth of the child slayings: four this school year.
In 2007, Diane Latiker, founder of the community group Kids Off the Block, began a memorial on a vacant lot in Chicago. She bought 30 landscaping stones and wrote the name of a slain school-age child on each of them.
Her hopes were that the stark sight of the memorial would shock the city into action.
Today, the memorial includes 153 stones, some for children as young as 10, and there is little indication the pace is waning, as at least two children were killed since Alex Arellano’s body was found Saturday.
“They come by here and they do this, and they come by here in cars and families come and cry,” Latiker said of the burgeoning memorial.
Asked who was failing the kids — police? schools? city officials? — she replied flatly, “We all are.”
Mayor Daley made two generalized points that kind of disturb me:
Other cities have murdered kids too
The violent ones are drop outs
I just think the fact that these two points come up with a conversation regarding innocents being murdered is part of the problem. These are two points that sound like accepting a failed community and illustrate the weight big city officials, communities and most importantly children have to bear because of endemic youth violence.
SS United States docked on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, Pa
Every Philadelphian has seen this ship hundreds of times. We may see it for the last time soon.
That would be the SS United States — the fastest ocean liner in the world. Bigger than the Titanic and fast enough to water-ski behind, she’s a steamship so sophisticated, her capabilities remained a Cold War secret for decades.
She transported royalty and starlets. Her crew served frog legs in first class. Before the dawn of the jet age, the SS United States was the Concorde of her era.
A 16 year old was murdered 3 blocks away from his school. Fenger High School student, member of the Honor Roll, football player and someone’s son.
The screams of concern from Derrion’s friends as he is pummeled to death are awful. They are helpless to intervene in a brawl where gang members are pummeling each other with fists, feet and railroad ties. The culprits:
Prosecutors said Derrion, an honor roll student, was pummeled with wooden planks and kicked in the head after he found himself in the midst of a large fight on Thursday afternoon between two groups of youths a few blocks from his school, Christian Fenger Academy High School, on the South Side.
Prosecutors said the fight followed a shooting earlier in the day outside the school, involving the two groups.
Silvonus Shannon, 19; Eugene Riley, 18; Eugene Bailey, 17; and Eric Carson, 16, were charged with first-degree murder on Monday and held without bail. The police said the video helped them identify the suspects.
The cameraman is a recent Fenger alum who went to pick up his younger sister as she finished class at his Alma Mater. She told him that a gang fight was going to occur and he resolved to film the incident because the endemic violence is never addressed. I hope Chicago PD and District Attorney do everything they can to protect the amateur cameraman and his sister. A member of either one of these gangs may want to retaliate against them for this video being recorded and released.
This is what a failed school system and community looks like. As harsh as it sounds, it just simply the truth.
A question comes to mind: when a violent gun, drug or gang related crime occurs, do any of these schools have any special protocols regarding how they deal with their students from a safety standpoint. I’m not really sure, but maybe a staggered and escorted immediate dismissal of children or mandatory parent/guardian pick up after such an incident occurs. I do not assume that all students will be met by a responsible guardian, sibling or authority. Maybe this type of proactive reaction to violence could be used by faculty to more readily identify at risk children by what help they actually receive in an emergency. It may also help identify students who would seek to be involved in such nefarious activity by randomizing the order in which students are evacuated and using the police to buffer the school premises during the hours immediately following gun violence. There aren’t any easy solutions to fixing failed school districts that exist in one of the richest countries in the world.
TIME magazine posts tennis tips from Novak Djokovic. John McEnroe impression is a bonus.
Djokovic stresses the importance of footwork in the lesson above. A few weeks ago, The New York Times had a great interactive feature breaking down Federer’s footwork.
A guy named Barack Obama asks a gal named Mary Apple if that is indeed her real name. (Peggy Noonan probably hissed “You, Mr. President Obama are a Boor!” at her floor standing, oak cased television set and then changed the channel to Lawrence Welk re-runs to remind herself of less boorish times.)
“Investors” paid six figures to hear her speak about, well anything. If shareholders of any company will pay for her pearls of wisdom is it any wonder that the corporations they own may be at the heart of so many financial crises? Take this nonsense back to “main street”.
worked for years and owns a home and is inelligible for government assistance
had employer based health care that disappeared with her termination
shortly thereafter was diagnosed with tumors in her stomach that need to be treated immediately.
Cantor’s Health Care Solution: Oh my, did you lose your employer funded insurance? There’s probably a government program out there you don’t know about that can help you, if not some charity may hook you up.
The minority whip dodged the question, pure and simple. It betrays the real stance of most GOP legislators at this time. They have not engaged in any real policy thought regarding health care. Health care is a personal, business and quality of life issue. It affects every segment of our society and if a legislator has nothing besides “tort reform” to offer as a health care solution then they are not serious about their duties.
Pictured above is a kind of idiot who, even when married with children, would hear out John Edwards’ scheme for covering up his tryst with “videographer” Rielle Hunter.
Edwards: Hey Andy, you know how I talk about two Americas?
Young: Uh-huh
Edwards: Well, this will be two Americas, one where you admit to my affair, ruin your family, I throw you under the campaign bus (only pretend like), end your career so that we can save my slim chances to ever become President Of The ol’ USA, the other America where I know you are the best wingman in the world.
Young: Yes, when do we start?
That son of mill worker is an idiot and apparently Andrew Young was his right hand dunce.
Former Edwards staffer Andrew Young has said he was the girl’s father — but has recanted and says he made it because he believed in Edwards, lawyers and others familiar with the matter told CNN.
Young was married with children when he claimed to have fathered Hunter’s child. He never signed any affidavits or legal papers, however, and reversed his claim after Edwards, as one of the sources put it, dropped Young “like a hot potato.”
There are a huge list of democratic consultants who consistently lose national races and yet it never seems to affect their future job prospects.
Over his 30-year career, Shrum has worked on the campaigns of seven losing presidential candidates–from George McGovern to Bob Kerrey–capping his record with a leading role in the disaster that was the Gore campaign. Yet, instead of abiding by the “seven strikes and you’re out” rule, Democrats have continued to pay top dollar for his services (sums that are supplemented by the percentage Shrum’s firm, Shrum, Devine & Donilon, gets for purchasing air time for commercials). Although Shrum has never put anyone in the White House, in the bizarro world of Democratic politics, he’s seen as a kingmaker–merely hiring the media strategist gives a candidate such instant credibility with big-ticket liberal funders that John Kerry and John Edwards fought a fierce battle heading into the 2004 primaries to lure Shrum to their camps. Ultimately, Shrum chose Kerry, and on Nov. 3, he extended his perfect losing record.
Shrum is the type of consultant who advise John Kerry not to address swift boat garbage, pick a lame empty suit R.F.K. clone John Edwards as a running mate and take the pulse of the nation by talking to their peers on K-Street. These types of political minds have been steering the democratic party for decades. The results speak for themselves.
Get it? Peggy Noonan aka Ms. Manners has some updates to our contemporary understanding of a few terms:
“boorish”: appearing on six political shows to discuss political issues
“young man”: 48 year old adult male
“in your face”: when someone is on your television more than once a day. (regardless of whether said television has a “power” or channel up/down capability
Apparently, the bridges in one of the busiest corridors in the US rails system are fast turning to junk:
The massive rail bridges over 52d Street in West Philadelphia are a portrait of neglect.
Trees grow from their ramparts, water weeps through their stone walls, holes are visible in the rusting deck, the piers are cracked, beams are corroding. Trash gathers at the base of the columns.
[…]
Amtrak inspectors rate many of its structural elements “poor.” Some components are even worse, marked “serious,” just one grade above “failed.”
The rumored Obama Administration request for Governor Patterson to go quietly into the night will probably be a story that will jump to the front pages and push health care reform off the newspaper front pages , website home pages and cable new chyrons.
President Obama had sent a request to Mr. Paterson that he withdraw from the New York governor’s race, fearing that Mr. Paterson cannot recover from his dismal political standing, according to two senior administration officials and a New York Democratic operative with direct knowledge of the situation.
The decision to ask Mr. Paterson to step aside was proposed by political advisers to Mr. Obama, but approved by the president himself, one of the administration officials said.
Some speculate she is thinking about leaving the GOP. Either way, the fundamentalist/neo-con right coalition which is steadily increasing their power over Republican purpose, platform and politics can’t look upon these statements fondly.
SC also has a delegation full of GOPers radically opposed to health care reform. Or maybe just the President. Or both. In any case, electing people to run your government by how many culture war merit badges they have doesn’t seem to work out very well. At least not for health care.
Herbert was born June 10, 1905. His hearing is going but his mind is sharp. Zelmyra was born Dec. 10, 1907. She uses a walker to get around the house and yard. The two of them can still give their reasons for marrying on May 13, 1924.
“He was not mean; he was not a fighter,” Zelmrya said. “He was quiet and kind. He was not much to look at but he was sweet.”
GOP Majority Leader, Pain Management Guru and Race Economist Rush Limbaugh does the math:
You put your kids on a school bus you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering ‘yeah, right on, right on, right on.’ Of course everybody said the white kid deserved it he was born a racist, he’s white
via: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/16/rush-limbaugh-obamas-amer_n_288371.html
I missed this part of Obama’s speech to school children. I imagine he said something like: “Fellow blacks, time to show these white kids what the f*ck is up in 2009. You are now in charge of bus seat rationing. If a white person attempts to sit down, he is racist. Form an impromptu death panel and go to work on him.” He then went on to declare this “hard power” policy “bus seat gerrymandering also known as a beat down”.
Jon Stewart summarizes the thoughts of any man who attended High School and doesn’t listen to Rush Limbaugh:
In addition to such a magnificent shot, the scream and fist pump at the end of the point stand out to me. The last few years, heightened competition has brought Federer completely out of his shell. The heavyweight bouts with Nadal, and light heavyweight matches versus Djokovic, Roddick and now Del Potro have pulled him from being always cool, always composed to the point where he was an inconsolable mess after Nadal beat him at Wimbeldon. Good. The big upset by Del Potro could be a road bump, or a road block to Federer compiling more grand slams, but in the down swing of his career, if he wins any more majors, due to his age and the field, he’ll never have worked harder. It’s good sports when the greatest battle other greats along the way.
