January 1, 2013 - Happy New Year to everyone. May you find peace, heatlth, happiness and safety. May you find your true home. Enjoy "Homeward Bound," by Simon & Garfunkel.
I am not a gambling man. In fact, I run away from poker games when money is on the table. I'm in no hurry to give my money away after being humiliating by a display of my own card playing inadequacies. HOWEVER, here are "10 bets you will never lose." That's not my promise, and it's not a guarantee. It's the title of the video below. If it's legal to gamble where you are, you might want to practice these tricks. Who knows? You might start winning cash. Just watch your back as you walk off with your pile of winnings.
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| The Youngsters |
It's called "Christmas In Jail" and was released in 1956 as the flip side of "Dreamy Eyes." More about The Youngers at ColorRadio.com. You can check out the video of Dreamy Eyes here.
"The Youngsters didn't make much of a dent in the Los Angeles R&B scene," notes Marv Goldberg, "in spite of having some half-dozen releases (under four different group names)." But man, they had a fun sound.
Oct. 15, 2012 - A homeless man was brutally beaten by officers of NYPD's 71st Precinct on October 8 when they assumed wrongly that he was trespassing at the Aliya (Alternative Learning Institute for Young Adults). The learning center is an outreach center for troubled youth in a synagogue located in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The officers assumed that the homeless man, Ehud H. Halevi, did not have permission to be on Aliya's property - even though he did.
"Confused as to why he was being accosted by police, the man refused the officers’ attempts to escort him outside, insisting that he had permission to be there and asking that they allow him to prove it. His pleas fell on deaf ears, and they proceeded to place him under arrest."
Eventually, as you see in the video, four officers were involved in the beating and the arrest of Halevi. Once subdued (see 3:25 into the video) by the four, seven more officers run into the room, for a total of 11 cops. At about 4:05, Halevi is handcuffed and lifted from the floor to stand up. He was then led out of the room.
"When he resisted arrest," says CrownHeights.info, "the male officer flew into a rage and began to beat the defenseless man. As can be seen in the video below, the officer assumed a boxing stance and then lurched towards his victim, pummeling him from all sides."
I hope there is a full and thorough investigation of this incident and that the officers get the punishment they deserve. The video clearly shows an overreaction by the police. Think of this: If you are defending yourself in a fight, the law will punished you if you use excessive force. The police should be held to the same standard.
Oct. 13, 2012 - Illinois says it will give away $1 million worth of surplus clothing and other items to homeless people. The surplus items will be distributed to organizations that help homeless people. The AP reports today that the Illinois Department of Central Management Services will donate items that "include boots, coats, sleeping bags and other winter gear. The department is responsible for disposing of surplus state and federal property. Details of the clothing donation will be announced next week."
CONFUSING NUMBERS:
The AP report included a puzzling figure. It said that "Officials say there are more than 15,000 homeless people in Illinois. The figure is based on a 2011 federal report." AP did not name that report, and the number sounded low to Homeless Patriot, so we sniffed around a bit.
The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) website says that Chicago Public Schools (CPS) "identified a record 17,255 homeless students in 2011-12, a 10.7% increase from the prior year’s record."
WOW. That's confusing: AP says that its unnamed "federal report" said there are "15,000 homeless people in Illinois" but that's 2,255 fewer than CPS says there were in Chicago alone. CCH also says that, according to the Illinois State Board of Education, public schools across the state "identified 42,800 homeless students" in the 2010-11 school year. That's a whopping 27,800 more the total number of homeless in Illinois that AP reported.
Bottom Line: Information about the numbers of homeless people are (a) difficult to find, (b) probably misreported sometimes for political reasons, (c) constantly changing as people go into and out of homelessness, (d) defined differently by different entities, sometimes for political reasons.
