Tragic Police Shooting Death Leads To Of All Things, Kids Able To Have Lunch

Philando Castile was shot and killed by a Minnesota
police office in 2016. Castile was school nutrition
supervisor. A fund in his name is now paying off
childrens' school lunch debt. 

A guy named Philando Castile worked in a school cafeteria as a school nutrition supervisor.  Sometimes, he'd dip into his own pockets to help kids who couldn't afford lunch.

Castile was killed by a police office during a 2016 traffic stop, which of course meant the world lost a generous, kind guy, the type of person we all need.

As is pretty much always the case when a police officer shoots a black person, the police officer was acquited of criminal charge. Which compounds the tragedy.

When a good person dies, people often try to turn the tragedy into something good. And Castile's death has led to exactly that.

According to CNN, a charity run in Castile's name has wiped out the lunch debt of every student in all 56 schools in the St. Paul Public Schools district in Minnesota.

"That means that no parent of the 37,000 kids who eat meals at school need worry about how to pay that overdue debt," according to a fundraising page for the charity Philando Feeds the Children.

I'm going to stop right here for a second and get on my soap box. I get it that school districts everywhere are strapped for cash and can't afford to pay for school lunches. Somebody has to pay for them.

However, I have an immense problem with all those schools who punish the kids because their parents either can't pay for the school meals or won't.

In many schools, when there's lunch debt, the kids involved often just get a lame, cold sandwich while their friends get full meals.

That's an insidious practice that's become known as "lunch shaming." It's terrible to deny a kid a decent lunch. It's also terrible to shame a kid by giving him or her something substandard in front of all their friends. I thought schools discouraged bullying. All this does is encourage it.

In St. Paul, Minnesota, the Philando Feeds The Children fund goes beyond rescuing kids from food bullying by the school district.

CNN says student parents or caregivers cannot submit paperwork to request free or reduced-price lunches (based on income and need) unless the kids' lunch debt is retired.

Which leads to a never-ending cycle. The kids' lunch fund keeps going deeper and deeper into debt, so it becomes more impossible for the kids' parents to pay off the debt. Some parents acrue as much as $1,000 in debt.

Which means the kids will never, ever get decent food.  They can't pay the debt, so they can't apply for free or reduced cost lunches. That's the way it works in today's America. If you're poor, you need to be punished. Whether or not it's your fault.

It looks like when he was alive, Castile understood this. So do the people donating to this cause. There's a lot of bad things in this world, but at least some good can come of it, at least sometimes.

As of about a week ago, the Philando fund stood at over $107,000, which really, really surpassed its goal of $5,000, CNN says.

"Philando is STILL reaching into his pocket, and helping a kid out," the charity wrote in a social media post recently.

Florida Teens Giving Me A (Slight) Glimmer Of Hope

Articulate teenagers like Cameron Kasky are trying - and
might succeed - at doing bribed, stupid and dumb politicians
won't do: Create sensible gun laws that don't
violate the Second Amendment 

Teenagers across America, particularly in Florida, have been embarrassing the rest of us this past week, and I couldn't be more delighted that they're doing so.

As you sadly know too well, we had another mass shooting last week, taking the lives of 17 high school students and teachers in Florida.

As always in these cases, which now seem to happen every day, the people who are supposed to be the adults in the room, especially many politicians, fail us.

They're supposed to lead us, but instead offer empty thoughts and prayers, clutch their pearls over people with mental illness, and above all, quake in fear over angering the National Rifle Association.

The NRA has long since decided that their ability to provide - and make plenty of money - from making sure everybody has unfettered access to any kind of weapon is worth a few dozen people getting killed in mass shootings every year.

After the Parkland, Florida mass shooting, teenagers in Florida are having none of it. The dignified rage, the logic and the resolve of these kids are putting us all to shame.

Current politicians will continue to kowtow to the NRA and nothing will immediately change. The millions of dollars politicians get from the NRA will grease the wheels to Capital Hill, with a gentle additional push from timid voters. Want an AR-15 to shoot up a school, concert or church? Knock yourself out!

For now.

These kids not only those in Florida, but the ones that are now part of a groundswell nationwide, will soon be old enough to vote. They've taken an activist cue from older people who are resisting the Trump administration, the Nazis, the white supremacists that seem to be gaining strength in this country.

The resistance from high school students in particular gives me a glimmer of hope that these teenagers will change things.

Their anger is building. And their message is getting more powerful. There's lots of examples.

Parkland student Cameron Kasky, interviewed by CNN's Anderson Cooper, didn't mince words. Kasky did heap deserved praise on teachers, staff and first responders, but has no patience for the thoughts and prayers crowd.

"Everything I've heard where we can't do anything and it's out of our hands and it's inevitable, I think that's a façade that the GOP is putting up."

Kasky pressed on: "After every shooting, the NRA sends a memo saying 'send your thoughts and prayers.' This is the only country where this kind of thing happens. I've heard from other people, and they don't have gun drills. We had to prepare extensively at Stoneman Douglas. This something that can be stopped and will be stopped.

"There is a segment of this society that will shrug this off and send your thoughts and prayers but march for hours over a rainbow wedding cake."

That last line crystalizes the hypocrisy in the GOP more than anything. (By the way, the entire Kasky/Cooper interview is definitely worth the watch. 

As Wired notes, teenagers are more savvy at social media, and media in general, and know how to fight back against lies, gaslighting and self-puffery.  These students, amid the shock and terror of the attack, literally began to fight back against the NRA and their politician patsys as the rampage was ongoing.

David Hogg, a Parkland senior and reporter for the school's paper, interviewed students barricaded in a culinary classroom during the shooting. "No amount of money should make it more easy to get accessibility to guns," one frightened student told Hogg in that room.

Many of the students are wonderfully through with respecting some of their elders. But only the elders that are failing them.  The teens, gloriously, are not afraid to be blunt.

Professional idiot and, I guess, right wing pundit Tomi Lahren spewed the usual talking points, saying liberals and morons and the mentally whacked out are to blame for Parkland, not guns.

This prompted one student to respond on Twitter: "A gun has killed 17 of my fellow classmates. A gun has traumatized my friends. My entire school, traumatizes from this tragedy. This could have been prevented. Please stfu  tomi."

Yeah, Tomi, probably best to listen to that student. I would, if I were in your shoes.

Here's another Twitter post from a Parkland student named Sarah Chad:

"I don't want your condolences you fucking piece of shit, my friends and teachers were shot. Multiple of my fellow classmates are dead. Do something instead of sending prayers. Prayers won't fix this. But gun control will prevent it from happening again."

As if you need more, a teen at the school was quoted as follows:  “I’m not a Russian computer, so I can’t vote but will push elected officials on gun control."

High school students across the nation are planning a walkout from their classes sometimes in March to demand changes to gun laws. They all know that almost nobody wants to repeal the Second Amendment. Most of the students don't want that.

But every Constitutional right has its responsibilities as well. You can't just do whatever you want, including mass murder. These teenagers understand this, because it's common sense.

Too bad the NRA and their puppet politicians don't understand this. Or pretend not to. The activism of teenagers across the United States give me a glimmer of hope that this will one day change.

Florida Man (Of Course!) Shoots Utility Truck Tires Because Who Knows Why

An image taken from a cell phone video shows Jorge Jove,
64, shooting utility trucks in front of his house for
reasons only he seems to know. 

Some utility trucks, parked legally on a Hialeah, Florida street, came under assault the other day because some guy who lives there didn't like them parked in the neighborhood.

As you can see in the remarkable video below, the guy, age 64, opens fire on the tires and radiator of at least one of the trucks.

Guy seemed to be having a bad day.

According to NBC Miami, one of the AT&T utility workers was trapped in the bucket above the truck while another shot cell phone footage while waiting for police to arrive.

Says NBC Miami: "The suspect, identified as Jorge Jove, reloaded his weapon several times, police said. Moments later, officers arrived at the home....and took Jove into custody."

According to an arrest report, Jove told detectives he went 'bananas' and shot at the tires and trucks to stop them from leaving. 

'He just lost his mind for a moment. We don't know what the deal is with him,' said Hialeah Police Detective Carl Zogby."

We don't know either. If Jove didn't want the trucks there, why did he shoot them to make them stay?

Anyway, logic doesn't apply here, does it?

Here's the video:

Congress Wants Crazy People With Guns To Shoot Bears From Airplanes

Wolf pup emerging from a den. Is it really OK to go
into dens and shoot hibernating bears and wolves?

I'm not sure why some Republican lawmakers are stumbling over each other trying to outdo each other for most batshit crazy legislation, but that's where we're going.

First, Congress repealed an Obama-era rule meant to limit the sale of guns to some people with mental disabilities.  

Let's let more unstable people have guns!

People who wanted to do away with the rule said lax or incorrect reporting standards meant that people who had mental issues, but who were still safe with guns, were barred from having firearms.

As a person who is high functioning but has a (mild) mental illness, I can see that concern.

After all, I have ADHD, but because of psychiatric counseling, effort on my part and a fairly low daily dose of Adderall, I function just fine. If I were trained to properly use handguns, I'm sure I'd be safe with them.

But wouldn't it be better just to make a case by case judgment on this?

Now that practically everybody can have guns, what are we all gonna sboot?

In Alaska, the answer apparently is, we want to shoot bears and wolves from airplanes, or barge into dens while the animals are hibernating and shoot them there.

Sounds fun! If you're into unsportsmanlike hunting, that is.

Yep, the U.S. House of Representatives, voting along party lines, approved the repeal of laws that prohibited people from shooting bears and wolves from airplanes and entering dens to shoot hibernating animals.

According to Buzzfeed and many other news outlets, this all started last August when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, under the Obama administration, sensibly issued rules banning hunting tactics that then-director Dan Ashe said was "a withering attack on bears and wolves that is wholly at odds with America's long tradition of ethical, sportsmanlike, fair-chase hunting."

More from Buzzfeed:

"The banned activities on Alaska's wildlife refuges including hunting tactics common elsewhere in the US but nevertheless troubling to wildlife advocates: baiting brown bears to draw them to hunters and shooting them; shooting bears ensnared in traps, and shooting bears and wolves in their dens with their cubs or pups."

That last bit is something. Go into a bear den and shoot the mother bear and cubs. Because you can, I guess.

People want to be able to shoot bears and wolves, even if they are in dens, because bear and wolves sometimes eat moose and elk.  

That reduces the number of moose and elk that people can, yes, hunt. So people want to hunt bear and wolves in nonsportsmanlike ways so they can, um, hunt other animals too.

It's true that some Alaskans hunt moose and elk because they rely upon them for food. However, my suspicious mind thinks that Congress approved this change to satisfy their rich contributors who go to Alaska to hunt, but don't rely on wild animals for sustenance.

Basically, what's going on here is, "Let's kill more animals so we can kill more animals."

Wildlife advocates say it's not like they're trying to stop hunting on wildlife refuges. They just want to stop extreme forms of hunting that throw off the ecosystem.

It seems especially galling to go into dens and shoot sleeping bears and cubs. I don't know why anybody would get off on this, but you never know what some people think.

Look, I'm not against hunting. I live in Vermont, where there is a big hunting culture and I have no problem whatsoever with it.  As long as the hunters are responsible and not a bunch of yahoos. Most hunters are great.

But, we're in an anything goes atmosphere now. Time to start shooting everything in sight, I guess.

Keep Dancing Orlando Gets Boost From Sheriffs Who Had To Deal With Pulse Nightclub Massacre

 

The best act of defiance against the homophobia and possible quote, unquote Islamic radical fundamentalism that fueled last month's Pulse nightclub massacre is Keep Dancing Orlando.

The catchphrase has turned into a rallying cry, a Twitter hashtag and a touchstone of rebellion against those not only kill people, but also kill the joy out of life.

The whole area around Orlando has adopted Whitney Houston's song "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and the accompanying hashtag #KeepOrlandoDancing in joyful defiance of the hate that culminated in the murder of 49 people who were out dancing that night in June at The Pulse nightclub.

I like how the Orange County Sheriff Department, which includes Orlando, got involved in this, with their own Keep Dancing Orlando video.

The sheriff's office Keep Dancing Orlando video opens with what looks like a press conference featuring "an important announcement by Sheriff Demings."

Sheriff Deming steps up to the podium and says: "We're here for an important announcement today. I wanna keep Orlando smiling. Keep dancing Orlando!"

Then he places a boom box on the podium and suddenly we hear Houston singing "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," and then we're treated to many scenes of Orlando County Sheriff personnel dancing.

Not all the personnel in that office are great dancers, but who cares? Joy stomps terror.

(H/T JoeMyGod for this story.)

The Sheriff Department video is at the bottom of this post. Definitely worth checking out.  

Here's the Orlando Sheriff's "Keep Dancing Orlando video

Conspiracy Nutjobs Delight In Torturing Orlando Shooting Victims

Patience Carter, who was injured during The Pulse nightclub
massacre in Orlando, was victimized again by nutjobs
 claiming she's a crisis actor partiipating in a government
ruse to take all our guns away, or something.
Photo by Zack Wittman/Tampa Bay Times 

A woman named Patience Carter was shot and injured at The Pulse nightclub during the massacre there earlier this month and a friend she was with was killed.

Carter, like all the victims in this shooting deserves all the support and love anybody can give her,  obviously.  

But cue the nutjobs!

Every time something like this happens the conspiracy weirdos come out of the woodwork to tell us the same old story they have. This massacre didn't happen. It was staged by the government to take all our guns away and suspend all our civil rights.

And those victims we all saw on TV? Those are all crisis actors brought in to stage the "shooting"

Riiiigghht.

You'd think the conspiracy wackos would come up with something original, but that's the narrative they give every time.

We could safely ignore these idiots if they didn't make sport of harassing people like Patience Carter. But they seek people like her out, splash her all over the internet and "expose" her as the fraud she is clearly not.

According to Slate, the "proof" the conspiracy dingbats offer is that Carter is supposedly a crisis actor , which is obvious because she had interned at television station WTFX.

She worked for awhile at a TV station! Which proves she's an actor!

Or something like that.

Patience Carter meets with President Obama after the
Orlando shooting, not before, as the conspiracy nutjobs
would have it. 

Carter also Instagrammed photos of herself after the shooting, including one in which President Obama was comforting her when he went down to Orlando after the crime. 

Someone changed the time stamps on Carter's Instagrams to make it look like they were taken before the shooting, then re-posted them on line.

Hey, if you do a sleight of hand and change the time stamp, then the time sequence really did alter, apparently. What, these conspiracy theories have Cher's "If I Can Turn Back Time" as a constant earworm in their sick little heads?

Similarly to this situation, the kooks tortured parents of young children who were killed in the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut school massacre. As if these grieving parents needed more pain in their lives.

I'm not sure what to do about these nutjobs. Trying to bat away their idiotic rantings is just a fruitless, endless game of whack-a-mole.  Still, they deserve all the ridicule we can throw at them, which is what I'm trying to do here.

As for Patience Carter, she ended up "thanking" the morons who were bothering her with the nutty conspiracy theories. On Instagram she wrote: "It's your outrageous insensitivity that makes me want to heal even faster, and grow even stronger."




WTFX

Plane Full Of Great Human Beings Helps Grieving Grandmother Of Orlando Shootings

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20, was one of the victims
of the massacre at the Pulse nightlcub in Orlando
last Sunday. Passengers aboard a JetBlue flight wonderfully
comforted his grandmother as she flew
to Orlando for the funeral.  

Every time something like the massacre in Orlando happens - and it happens way too often, I and many others seek out examples of humanity's good side to help us get through the horror, and to recover our faith in people.

Fred (Mr.) Rogers once famously said:

"When I was a boy and I wuld see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me. 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'

To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words and I am always conforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world."

On cue, the helpers materialized in droves in Orlando and around the world.

The first responders who saved lives. The people who lined up for hours under the hot Florida sun to give blood to save the wounded. The people who handed out umbrellas, water and granola bars to those people waiting in line.

Then there was the crew and passengers aboard a JetBlue flight to Orlando this week.

One of the youngest victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre was Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20. His grandmother, devastated, boarded a JetBlue flight to Orlando to go to her grandson's funeral.

The JetBlue crew knew why the grandmother was on that hour and half long flight to Orlando. That's because JetBlue offered free flights to Orlando for relatives heading there for funerals.

According to CNN, one of the flight attendants, Kelly Davis Karas, thought it would be nice to ask passengers if they wanted to sign a paper offering condolences for the grandmother on that flight as she and fellow flight attendant Melissa Sloop Winstead made their way up the aisle with the beverage cart.

Karas thought they'd just sign their names.  But soon, there was a mad but quiet scramble to find more paper. Here's why, says CNN:

"Instead of signing their names and moving on, passengers were writing paragraphs - long notes of compassion, grief and strength.

'When we gathered them together to present them to her, we didn't have just a sheet of paper covered in names, which is what I had envisioned. Instead, we had page after page after page of long messages offering condolences, peace, love and support. There were even a couple of cash donations, and more than a few tears,' Karas wrote on her Facebook page."

When the plane landed, a couple of passengers asked for a moment of silence for Omar and the grandmother agreed to that.

When the moment of silence ended, people gathered their things to leave the plane.

However, everyone on board stopped and wished the grandmother well and offered condolences. Some people touched her hand, or hugged her, or cried with her. Not one person complained about the extra time it took getting off the plane because of this.

I confess I have shed a few tears over the Orlando massacre and all those victims. This story also made me shed tears, but happy ones, in gratification for the beautiful humanity on that JetBlue flight - that wonderful planeload of helpers.

Fearmongering Is Behind The Orlando Atrocity And Many Others

People outside the Pulse nightclub massacre in
Orlando today. 

Everything about the Orlando mass shooting is about fear.

Obviously, the shooter, Omar Mateen, wanted to instill fear, directly on the people who were in the Pulse nightclub, and other people in general.  

Like me. And many others, of course. Probably everybody.

Mateen targeted gay people in a gay nightclub when he killed at least 50 people and injured dozens more early this morning.

Most readers of this blog know I'm gay, and married to what I and a lot of other people know to be one of the best, kindest men on the planet.

Most people support us, love us, or like us, or at least are perfectly willing to leave me and Jeff alone and let us live our life. This is as it should be.

Not everybody likes my sexual orientation. Or Jeff's. That's perfectly fine. Nobody owes us. Nobody has to like us just because me and Jeff exist.

The vast majority of people who don't like my sexual orientation  don't bring up the subject, or ignore us, or avoid us, and go on with their lives. And they let us go on with our lives. These are not fearful people.

Unfortunately, the world is full of fearful people. They're not in the majority, obviously. But this fearful subset cannot handle anyone or anything that is not like them.  So you get what you got today in Orlando.

People outside the Pulse nightclub shooting
in Orlando early today.  

To this fearful group, anyone who  is of a different race, has a different sexual orientation, adheres to a different religion, or has differing political viewpoints than theirs is to be avoided. Killed. Wiped off the face of the Earth like the scary spider in my kitchen sink that startled me this morning.

Of course, the consequences are far, far, far greater than a spider.  And the fear creates a worldwide spider web of hate and murder.

Omar Mateen was not born hating gay people. Somebody taught him to do that.  Somebody who fancied themselves a leader, who created the fear in Mateen that led him to do what he did.

NBC News reported that two months ago, Mateen became angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami.

It triggered the fear in Mateen - that toxic stew in Mateen's head brewed for two months until he killed all those people, who were just out for a good time.

Whoever instilled the fear in Omar Mateen knows their efforts worked.

I'm not letting Mateen off the hook here. He made the decision to kill all those people in the Orlando nightclub. He's no victim.

There are others, though, who had an indirect hand in this outrage, and in every other terrorist incident I can think of -- from 9/11 to Brussels and Paris and Charleston and Oklahoma City and countless others.

There are a number of people who call themselves leaders who exploit the fear they placed in the heads of people llike Mateen.  Pump them up. Encourage the fear.

That's because these so-called leaders really don't have any real solutions to any problems. Or, they're just trying to amass power.

The way to do that is to incite fear.

Nobody makes good decisions when they're fearful. Fearful people are easily led. Or more accurately, easily led astray.

So called leaders who exploit fear know that doing so distracts the fearful from the real issue, or from the real bad stuff these "leaders" are up to.

People who exploit fear know creating scapegoats can cow the masses, and let these "leaders"  get away with whatever they're up to.

That creates a population that hates gays. Or Muslims. Or Christians. Or women. Or Jews. Remember Hitler? He was the world's greatest master at exploiting fear by targeting Jews. The greatest masters at this cause the world's greatest tragedies. Like the Holocaust.

Fifty people dead in an Orlando nightclub is horrific, but obviously not anywhere close to the level of the Holocaust.

But the same fear exploiting playbook was at work here.

Fear and anger are close cousins. Fearful animals often lash out at what makes them fearful. Terrorize a dog and it might bite you out of fear. '

People are the same way. Mateen was fearful and lashed out.

Fear and anger mestasize like cancer.  Mateen knew his actions would make people fearful and angry, and they did. I'm fearful and angry over this, because that's the natural human reaction.

But remember, like I said, fear and anger make us irrational, and I think Mateen knew that on some level.

So called leaders know this. And they'll exploit Orlando just like they exploited so many other terrorist incidents. Because that's what they do. Each outrage lets them build on others.

They'll try to whip up the population. Let's ban Muslims! The gays deserved it! Let's take people's freedoms of speech and assembly and due process away in the name of combating terrorism!

Some leaders will do this out of genuine concern for our well being and that of the nation. A smaller number of other leaders will do that to continue amassing power, and screwing the rest of us.

I'm gay, so Orlando proves that I have a target on my back. I'm fearful and angry, yes.

But please, let's all try to rise above this fear and anger, and think rationally. Yes, we need to super aggressively go after the bad guys and gals, and the people who inspire them to kill and terrorize.

Let's also escape the fear cocoon that keeps us fearful of everybody that's different from us. The best antidote to fear is knowledge.

Knowledge is power. Fear is weakeness.   Instead of hiding away from what we don't like, try to understand it. Learn about it. What makes those who are "different" from us tick.

Once we get to know these "different" people, religions, orientations and such, we still might not like them. But I bet the knowledge will make us less likely to lash out in fear.

It's everybody's responsibility to do this. The nation's and the world's top leaders must do this. You and I must do this.

I don't think we'll ever stop these terrorist tragedies. But if we rise above the fear, and embrace facts and knowledge, I bet we can reduce the number of these atrocities and the level of death and suffering.

We have to. It's our only hope.

Scary Shooting At Canada's Parliament Building

A street being cordoned off in Ottawa this morning.  

In a story now unfolding, shots were fired in and around Canada's Parliament building in Ottawa.   

I don't picture Canada as a hot spot for this kind of crime or even possibly a terror attack, but these things can happen anywhere, unfortunately.

People in Ottawa near Parliament Hill have been told to stay off the streets and away from windows.

This is just two days after a soldier in Quebec was killed and another injured in a hit and run incident that the government says was a terror attack perpetrated by a jerk who had embraced radical Islam.   

Here's a scary video, taken by a Globe and Mail reporter, of an exchange of gunfire in the Parliament building:

Florida Man Who Was Bummed About Moving In With Parents Now Won't Have To: Going To Jai

Good news! This guy won't have
to move in with his parents after all
because now he is going to jail.  

Frederick Wenzel IV, 28, of Deltona, Florida was really bummed out because financial circumstances meant he had to move back in with his parents.

No self-respecting man really wants to do that, unless it's to help ailing parents.

Wenzel was frustrated by the situation, says the Daytona Beach News Journal, so he had to let off some steam.

He chose to do that by getting drunk and firing rounds from his AK-47 into the air in his neighborhood at around 5:30 in the morning.

Well, at least he didn't hurt anybody.

And all this shooting led to some good news, of sorts, for Wenzel.

He no longer will be living with his parents, since Wenzel is now charged with six counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. That means he will be living in jail, not with his parents.

I wonder which he thinks is worse?

At last report he was at the Volusia County, Florida Branch Jail without bail. So he might be there awhile.

Let us know how the accommodations are, will ya, Frederick?

Florida Man Is Not Employee Of The Month

Gawd, I love Florida

Not sure if Willie Mitchell looks angry
in this mug shot because he was arrested or
because he didn't win the employee
of the month award at a Florida Walmart.  

Every day, the Sunshine State yields a bright boatload of strange people, strange crimes, just general strangeness.

There's a whole damn Twitter feed called Florida Man which dedicates itself to monitoring all the weirdness that is Florida. It's a busy Twitter feed, let me tell you.

This one story actually didn't come from Twitter's FloridaMan, but I'm sure it will get there soon.

It turns out the Deerfield Beach, Florida Walmart awarded its employee of the month award to a woman who worked there, and not fellow employee Willie Mitchell.

Mitchell was PISSED that he didn't win the award, according to CBS4 in Miami. (Note, if you click on the link, a Toyota video ad will start playing, so lower the sound all the way down)

He vowed to show that winning employee, you betcha! So he didn't what any Florida man would do, apparently, and shot out the window of the winner's car.

"Perhaps (Mitchell) wanted to be employee of the month but clearly these actions that we saw in response to this, I think we see why he wasn't chosen as employee of the month," said Broward County Sheriff's spokeswoman Veda Coleman-Wright, who was also clearly demonstrating her superb understatement skills.

Of course, now, not only is Mitchell out of the running for next month's employee of the year at Walmart, it turns out,  Surprise! he no longer works for the retail giant, according to Walmart.

Ya think?

So, next time you want to impress the boss at work, learn from Mitchell. Don't shoot out your successful co-worker's car window. Bosses, not to mention police, kind of notice these sorts of things.  

Incomprehensible Newtown Massacre: A Few Thoughts.

Like everybody else in America, I can't get my head around the Newtown, Connecticut school massacre, in which 27 people died, including 20 young children.

A mother comforts her daughter after
the Newton, Ct. school shooting. Photo by
Melanie Stengel, New Haven Register

The news channels have been on for 24 hours now, trying to explain the unexplainable. It's too much for me to get to the heart of the matter. It's too big. Too baffling. My thoughts have gone around the edges of this, touching upon just a few of the millions of issues, concerns, thoughts, prayers this all leads to.

We don't know what led Adam Lanza, what could lead any human to kill innocent young children.

Most people who are seriously mentally ill people,  holding vicious grudges or harbor white hot anger don't spray bullets into crowds, especiallly when the crowd consists mostly of kindergarteners.

I was listening to an NPR report last night on the profile of mass killers. The problem is, millions of people have the same mental traits as these monsters, yet these millions of people never hurt anyone.  So how do we weed out , in advance,   the people that would cause such heartache. You can't.

Of course we hurt for the families of the people who lost their children, their joy. Nothing we say and do can help, really. I know it's our responsibility to make some good come of this, but obviously no amount of good will fix this. The world, unfortunately is much worse for this.

 What would have become of the children had they been allowed to grow up, thrive, live?  Many of them would have contributed wonderful things to the world. We've all lost that.

I also worry about the police and other emergency responders who raced to that school.  Yeah, cops are tough, paramedics are seasoned, but not tough enough or seasoned enough to live with the horror of those poor children, gunned down. Let's hope they find the peace they need.

As an aside, I want to especially congratulate the cops and responders who led the children out of the school, and had them cover their eyes as they did so, so the children wouldn't have to see the carnage they were seeing. These responders surely spared these kids a lot of mental trauma.

One of the best things I saw rattling around social media yesterday was a link to the Mr. Rogers Company, which offered help and how to talk about something like this to kids. 

The best part of the link is this quote from Mr. Rogers:

Mr. Rogers passed away ten
years ago, but left
behind comforting words
for situations like this.

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in the world."

As in every American disaster, there's been a huge outpouring of help for the people in Newtown. I know. Because I looked for the helpers on the news and saw lots of them.

But now I have to go negative. There are a minority of people who insist on not helping. To make things worse. To further their agenda. Yes, I know there's a renewed debate on gun control. There's that. Some of the gun control debate is healthy. Some not.

However, I really want to touch on people who are even more vile with their agenda. People like Bryan Fischer and Mike Huckabee are going around saying the reason this happened is prayer was taken out of the schools and God doesn't go where he's not wanted so he didn't protect the kids in that school when the shooting started.

What sad lives these people live if they think a God would be so spiteful that he's allow a bunch of innocent kids to be killed. What these people are really after is a theocracy, and they're on a religious war to bring us that weird, right wing form of Christian theocracy.  And they'll stoop to something like this to advance their agenda.

Next up: The gays did it. Some of the same people who say God was kicked out of schools will repeat the nonsense we hear in every disaster: That God is killing our children, our innocent people in shooting sprees, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods because many of us are accepting of our gay families, friends and neighbors.

We're loving thy neighbor. But I guess that part of the Bible isn't important to the likes of the religious wing nuts. And I'm sure they're offending the vast majority of Christians who are good, loving and giving.

Oh, and by the way, I'm not aware God has been kicked out of schools. Organized, coerced Christian prayer has, because there's a variety of religions in this nation, in our schools, and we have to respect that. Even if we don't like somebody else's religion.

People are free to pray silently, however they want, to whatever diety they want, in our schools. The following sentence is going to sound inappropriately flip,  but it's heartfelt: I bet there was a lot of praying in that school during the shooting spree.

Now,  there's a lot of praying going on across the nation and world.   I bet, I hope, a lot of those prayers will be  answered.