BAGnewsNotes: Underneath the Hood
litbrit: The view (and racket) outside my window: St. Petersburg tea baggers attend party of NO class
Cogitamus: Dear Blue Dog Bartlebys: Do your 'effin jobs or quit
the peoplesvoice: The great foreclosure robbery of the 21st century
naked capitalism: Goldman, Fed, Citi getting preferencial allotments of H1N1 vaccine
Infrastructurist: The Daily Dig: Strangest Bridges Edition
We already pointed out this audio recording of the 911 call placed by the lone survivor of that botched home-invasion robbery carried out by Shawna Forde and her gang of Minutemen. But further listening reveals a number of details about the crime.
It begins simply:
"Somebody just came in and shot my daughter and my husband."
The dispatcher begins asking questions and obviously dispatches deputies to respond. As she's asking about the killers, the victim cries out:
"They're coming back in! They're coming back in!"
An exchange of gunfire ensues. When the woman comes back on the line, she explains:
"They told us that somebody had, um, escaped jail or something and they wanted to come in and look at my house or something. And they just shot my husband. And they shot my daughter and they shot me."
"... Oh my God, I can't believe they killed my family."
She explains that the killers walked up cold-bloodedly to her daughter, 9-year-old Brisenia Flores, as she cowered and cried, and shot her two or three times anyway.
Later in the call she tells the dispatcher that the shooting began when her husband became suspicious of the invaders and asked them about their guns.
We also learn that the shooters were two men -- both tall, one white with a painted face, the other Latino -- and a "shorter fat woman."
That very much describes the gang that was arrested this week.
Scott North and Jackson Holz have more details on the tape.
Vivir Latino points out that there's been a disturbing theme in some of the coverage -- suggesting that perhaps the family somehow had it coming:
Something that tends to happen when the media covers these types of horrors, is double victimization. In an effort to answer the question why, subtleties, like how immigration has been racialized and how Latinos, painted as immigrants, are criminalized and dehumanized, get swept under the rug.
It certainly does raise the question: Why are the media paying so little attention to this story? Are they still wedded to their favorite narrative, that the Minutemen are just some big "neighborhood watch"?
As we said, that's some neighborhood watch.
I guess they're too busy covering that all-important David Letterman protest.
The lies that are told by right wing extremists know NO bounds. What Rep. Virginia Foxx said on the floor yesterday in attacking the hate-crimes bill was inexcusable. I will try to take some action against her.
From Media Matters Action Network:
Rep. Virginia Foxx Called Matthew Shepard Hate Crime "A Hoax"
Summary: On April 29, 2009, in a speech on the House floor, Rep. Virginia Foxx claimed that Matthew Shepard's death was merely the result of a robbery gone bad. While his killers Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson did rob him, they also admitted that they were well aware of his sexual orientation and pretended they were gay to lure him away from the bar he was in at the time. The most striking feature of the case, of course, is that during the course of a normal, simple robbery, the victim is not generally beaten, tied to a post, and left for dead.
Matthew Shepard's Death Was A Hate Crime, Not Simply A Robbery
Rep. Foxx: "The bill was named after a very unfortunate incident that happened, where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of robbery. It wasn't because he was gay. The bill was named for him, the hate crimes bill was named for him, but it's, it's really a hoax, that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills."[House Floor Speech, 4/29/09] All the evidence clearly indicates that this was a vicious hate crime, not a robbery gone bad...read on
A hoax? Belittling the brutal murder of a 21-year-old college student? And Republicans wonder why their angry, hateful, pathetic party is now only 20% of the US population.
Dave N: I've written about the Shepard case a great deal, including in my book Death on the Fourth of July. Probably the chief source of misinformation about his murder was a 2004 ABC News report, which I debunked at the time:
After years of brutal and what should be criminal business practices by America's credit card industry, it appears that some relief may be in sight.
WASHINGTON – Federal regulators on Thursday adopted sweeping new rules for the credit card industry that will shield consumers from increases in interest rates on existing account balances among other changes.
The new rules aren't set to take effect until 2010, but they're welcome nevertheless.
The new rules prohibit:
_Placing unfair time constraints on payments. A payment could not be deemed late unless the borrower is given a reasonable period of time, such as 21 days, to pay.
_Placing too-high fees for exceeding the credit limit solely because of a hold placed on the account.
_Unfairly computing balances in a computing tactic known as double-cycle billing.
_Unfairly adding security deposits and fees for issuing credit or making it available.
_Making deceptive offers of credit.
I've had to deal with several of the above issues in the past and know first hand how quickly credit card fees and increased interest rates can bloat your balance and spiral out of control. Luckily, I was able to stop the bleeding, but thousands of people have not been able to do so and have ended up in financial and personal ruin. These regulations are long overdue.
