Just When You Thought You Heard It All News (7-30-2016)

He better pony up for all of those drinks.

A Shetland pony named Mocha was horsing around a little too much earlier this week when it snuck into a British pub and starting drinking out of stray pint glasses, according to South West News Service.

The “unsaddling” incident happened Monday afternoon at the Ascot Arms, a pub in Kent, U.K., run by Mocha’s owner, Mihaly Herczeg.

Mocha lives in a paddock near the pub, but decided he’d rather sow his oats inside the pub.

This isn’t Mocha’s first rodeo inside his owner’s bar.

“He’s only managed to sneak into the pub twice,” Herczeg told SWNS. “Everyone loves him and the other animals here.”

That didn’t stop some patrons from making jokes like “Perhaps it was only looking for a little ‘horse-pitality’” or “I think it has a sore throat. It’s a little hoarse.” 

A man in need got a helping hand washing his feet.

Sgt. Steve Wick of the Houston Police Department cleaned the feet and clipped the toenails of a man named Quintus, who is homeless, nearly blind and sells newspapers to get by. 

The sweet moment was caught in a photo and posted to the Houston Police Officers Officers' union Facebook page earlier this month, where it has received over a thousand likes and almost 900 shares.

Wick is part of an outreach team that assists homeless people and their efforts are documented in order to keep track of their progress.

“It’s just helping your fellow man. Reaching out to your community. I think this is how we serve the community best,” Colin Mansfield, the officer who took the picture, said

Quintus is about 95 percent blind due to glaucoma.

The day the photo was taken, Wick and Mansfield saw that Quintus was having a difficult time getting around. When the pair approached Quintus, they noticed that the 75-year-old man had soiled himself. The officers took Quintus to afacility to take a shower.

When Wick noticed that Quintus’ feet could use a little TLC, he cleaned them and clipped the man’s nails.

The officers took Quintus to a shelter and are working to set him up with an eye doctor and social services.

“We are men and women of service, we took an oath to protect you and we will lay down our lives for you,” the Houston Police Officers Union wrote on Facebook. "This is who we are, this is what we stand for!”

A Compton teen has become the youngest black pilot to fly around the country.

Now that.....is......FLY!

Isaiah Cooper, 16, made history when he landed in his hometown on Monday, July 18 after a 8,000-mile flight flying from California to Maine, Washington, Florida and back to Compton-Woodley Airport.

Just two days into his roughly two-week journey, however, Cooper called his flight instructor and mentor Robin Petgrave to tell him he was ready to give up.

“It was terrifying. I was really scared, I wanted to give up and go home,” Cooper is quoted as saying. “But having conversations with Robin and other people, it calmed my nerves and I continued on with the trip.”

He encountered bad weather while in Wyoming which damaged his original plane and forced him to make an emergency landing and switch planes. 

Petgrove praised Cooper for overcoming and finishing his flight.

“It’s kinda cool when you see a kid that comes to you with this idea and this dream and then you help them to realize it,” Petgrave told Mic. “Especially when you have your setbacks like he did when Mother Nature challenged him and he had to execute emergency procedures.” 

Cooper’s recent voyage is just the start for the record-breaking teen. Next year after his 18th birthday, Cooper said he plans on becoming the youngest pilot to make a solo flight around the world, a record currently held by Matt Guthmiller who made the trip when he was 19.

The teen started a GoFundme page to help fund his around-the-world trip. His goal is to raise $45,000.

He also notes, on his fundraising page, that he enrolled in an aviation youth program at Tomorrow's Aeronautical Museum, an organization that gives at-risk youth the opportunity to become pilots, when he was 5 years old. He admitted that he dropped out and fell into the wrong crowd during his early years of adolescence, but returned thanks to the help of Petgrave. 

He wrote that his goal is “to become a productive young man with a future in aviation, and not a statistic.”

Cooper also offered some motivational words to others, especially young people who aren’t usually afforded these kind of opportunities.

“There’s a higher power that’s always there trying to have you focused so whatever you want to do, you can do it,” he said, "Just put your mind to it.”

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Horrible Candidates For President!

I can honestly say that this is the most conflicted I've ever felt about a presidential election in my life. Not because I can't decide who to vote for. But because I have an equal amount of disdain for each candidate. Both seem to be nothing more than phony, self-serving narcissists without an public service in their bodies. The only thing that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are sincere about is being racists.

I continue to be amazed by African-Americans who choose to ignore racism in the name of supporting their candidate. In my opinion, you have any sense of self-worth, dignity, or pride, racism is, and always has been a "deal breaker". It doesn't matter whether you are a Republican, a Democrat, a liberal, an independent, or even a self-loathing negro. I refuse to overlook the slightest indication of racism. Let me be clear racism is so much more that using the N-word or hurling blatant insults rooted in stereotypes. It is also passing legislation like the 1994 crime bill passed by former President Bill Clinton, which had an adverse effect on the African-American community given the fact that black male incarceration went up 55%. The bill dramatically increased manditory sentencing for crack cocaine possession. The mandatory sentencing for powder cocaine was much less. Black men accounted for the vast majority of those arrested for crack cocaine. Then Senator Hillary Clinton voted to renew the bill multiple times and in a 1996 speech referred to the bill as a tool to used against "super predators", and even went so far as to say that these so-called super-predators were a generation of guilt- and compassion-free sociopaths who, in the interest of society, simply had to be contained. 

In the past few years both Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton have admitted that the bill was "flawed". But their admission does nothing for those in the Black community who have been forced to serve lengthy prison terms because of their "mistake". I suppose it is possible to have a change of heart. But one must first have a heart to be changed.

The Republican candidate for president is a man like no other. Donald J. Trump. Trump is a pompous, arrogant charicticure of a man who is without a doubt the most unlikely Republican nominee in American history. So much so, that many prominent Republicans outwardly expressed their disdain for him. Rep. Ted Cruz even urged the faithful in his party to consider other choices during his controversial speech at the Republican National Convention, despite the fact that the vast majority of Republicans not only support Trump, but treat him as if he's some kind of demented hero. He says whatever is on his mind, and is probably the least subtle human being on the face of the earth. As a native New Yorker I have had the misfortune of having had a front row seat to Trumps antics for the vast majority of my life. Sometimes he's blatantly racist, other times he is an unapologetic misogynist, and at all times he is offensive in one way or another. In 1989 Trump took out a full page ad in a local New York "rag" calling for the death penalty for 5 African-American and Hispanic men during the Centrel Park jogger case. Years later, the young men were found not guilty. It were left up to Trump 5 innocent teenagers would have been executed. In addition to this,  Trump has made racist comments time and time again confirming his bigotry. The most telling of which is a comment that he made in May 2011, Trump pointed to the fact that an African American man, Randall Pinkett, won the fourth season of his NBC show “The Apprentice” as evidence that he is the “least racist person there is.” There is no such thing as being a little racist, or a little stupid.

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Just When Thought You Heard It All News (7-22-2016)

Oklahoma woman is recovering from third-degree burns to her thigh caused by hot pennies.

Okay, the first thing I wondered when I read this was, could she have been grinding on the pennies for some reason, and at what point did she realize she was getting burned.

The victim said a cup of spare change spilled into her seat last week, and the scalding hot pennies came in contact with her leg.

She tried icing the wound, but she went to a hospital over the weekend after the pain didn't subside. That's because a third-degree burn is the most severe on the medical scale.

According to the National Weather Service, the heat index was 104 degree on the day she was burned.

Some people really need to catch ‘em all. That's because some people need a freakin life!

A New Zealand man has quit his job to fully devote himself to hunting Pokemon.

Tom Currie24, also known as the worlds second biggest fool, Donald Trump is the biggest, was working as a barista and bartender at a restaurant on the Hibiscus Coast when he was overcome by the worlds latest nonsensical obsession, “Pokemon Go” mania.

“I wanted to have an adventure", Currie said. “I have been working for six years and I was desperate for a break. And Pokemon gave me the chance to live that dream.”

Currie plans to take a two-month trip around New Zealand in his quest to catch all the creatures in the game. As of this week, he already had at least 90 of the 151 Pokemon.

Luckily, his mother approves.

“Tom is a very spur-of-the-moment, independent kid, he always has been,” Tania Dobbs said. “His nana and I don’t understand the game but I remember him loving it in his childhood. I am just glad he is out enjoying his life and seeing so much of New Zealand. I back him 100%.”

Of course, the ambitious Pokemon trainer is having fun with his 15 minutes of fame, but for him, there is nothing like the thrill of the chase.

“When you and your friends have to physically go for a walk or run to catch a rare Pokemon in the area and you all catch it, that is definitely a highlight,” he told the BBC.

"Shake whatcha Mama gave ya"!

This koala has serious skills. 

Last year, Nikki Erickson shared a few photos on Facebook of the gray and fuzzy intruder that had walked in through an open door and managed to climb up a pole inside her home in South East Queensland, Australia.

She also posted a video of the koala trying to climb the pole, but the settings on that post made it visible only to her Facebook friends, she told The Huffington Post in a Facebook message. More recently, pole performer Michelle Shimmy asked Erickson to make the video public so that she could share it on Facebook. 

Shimmy called it “one of the most incredible and beautiful pole performances” she had ever seen when she shared it. The throwback video has now gone viral, prompting multiple news outlets to write about the “pole-dancing koala” this week.

But talented as the little one might be, Erickson realized the koala did not belong in her home, and told HuffPost she contacted Queensland’s Daisy Hill Conservation Park. Rescuers, who came out to retrieve the animal for release back into the wild, determined the koala was a female, and Erickson nicknamed her “Larissa.”

“They made sure she was ok and in good condition, then released her,” Erickson said. “They sent me an email the following day to let me know.”

But while this story has a happy ending, the increasing number of koalas that have been showing up inside Australian homes points to a conservation problem. When young koalas set off to establish their own territory, human development is getting in the way.

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Just When You Thought You Heard It All News (7-15-2016)

Egyptian kebab shop owner in New Zealand has become an internet hit after a video of him ignoring a would-be robber and continuing to serve a customer went viral, drawing more than a quarter of a million views.

Said Ahmed, owner of the Egyptian Kebab House in Christchurch, said it was simply a “lucky” reaction to ignore the masked man, who walked into his restaurant on May 28 and demanded cash while holding what appeared to be a gun.

Ahmed, who has run his kebab shop for 15 years, continued to bag up an order and handed it to a customer before walking away to call the police, the video shows, leaving the attempted robber to exit empty handed.

Canterbury Police released CCTV footage of the incident on Facebook last week in a bid to identify the would-be robber. The 27-second clip has since drawn 255,000 views and has been shared more than 1,000 times.

Ahmed, 55, who was quickly dubbed by social media as the “chillest chip shop operator”, said he was only thinking of his family and thought walking away would avoid a more serious outcome.

“I’m not a hero but, you know, I controlled my reaction,” he told New Zealand media. “Quite lucky because that reaction come to my head in that moment.” 

One man’s hard work, determination and drive got him a much-needed car.

Kyle Bigler of Belmont, New Hampshire walked a combined 16 miles a day to two minimum wage jobs and sometimes worked 20-hour shifts. But his life has changed thanks to a viral Facebook post, which has helped rally people to provide him with a car. 

“I was touched by Kyle’s work ethic and perseverance even when times were tough,” Ryan Parks, sales manager at Autoserv of Tilton ― which donated the car to Bigler said. “I feel like that’s something we don’t see as much nowadays when I compare my generation to my parents’ or my grandparents’ and it was really refreshing to see that.”

In early July, Joanna Griffiths snapped a picture of Bigler at his day job at Dunkin’ Donuts while getting her morning coffee.

“I came through the drive-thru and I took a picture of him and I said ‘I’m gonna make you famous’ and he goes ‘Yeah, right, cause of my crazy hair or something?’” 

But it wasn’t his flamboyant hair that Griffiths was interested in sharing. What she wanted to post on Facebook was the story behind the kind andpersonable man that always knows her and every customer’s coffee order.

One day, after seeing Bigler at Dunkin’ Donuts working a morning shift at 7:30 a.m., Griffiths noticed him walking to a second job at a gas station later that day. She swung by on her way home from work around 10:45 p.m. and asked Bigler if he wanted a lift home. But he politely declined, saying that he still had to work three more hours. That’s when she found out the lengths Bigler goes to just to pay his bills.

“This man walks 16 miles every day between both his jobs, making minimum wage at both,” she wrote in a July 6 Facebook post. “This man shows that if you are motivated, ambitious and WILLING to work, it IS possible.”

The post soon went viral, receiving over 20,000 shares.

One of the people who saw the post was Parks, who was moved by Bigler’s strong work ethic. 

“I asked Dennis Gaudet, one of the owners of AutoServ, if we could donate a car to him and he didn’t even flinch. He just said, “Let’s get him a car ASAP,’” Parks said.

Griffiths sums up the moral of the story.

“He persevered through two minimum wage jobs you know, it doesn’t matter what job you’re at as long as you try hard and do your best you can make it.”

Insensitive and stupid Playboy model Dani Mathers faced backlash after she secretly took a photo of a naked woman in a Los Angeles gym locker room and posted it to SnapChat.

The 2015 Playboy Playmate of the Year posted the picture to SnapChat with the caption, "If I can't unsee this then you can't either."

The posted triggered an instant uproar, calling out Mathers for body shaming the woman.

Mathers, 29, reportedly took the nude woman's picture without her knowledge at an L.A. Fitness in Los Angeles.

L.A. Fitness would not comment on the matter when reached out to by our sister station in L.A., ABC7.

The Los Angeles Police Department told ABC7 on Thursday they had no record of the incident being reported.

In another SnapChat post, Mathers apologized for the picture.

"I just wanted to acknowledge a photo I accidentally posted here on SnapChat earlier today and let you know guys know that was absolutely wrong and not what I meant to do," Mathers said.

Mathers claimed she meant to send the picture to just one friend, but accidentally posted it for all her followers on SnapChat to see.

She has since deleted the picture, and set most of her social media accounts to private.......TOO LATE!!!

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Executed At Age 14....

In March of 1944, deep in the Jim Crow South, police came and took 14-year-old George Stinney Jr. His parents were not at home and his little sister was hiding in the family's chicken coop behind the house in Alcolu, a segregated mill town in South Carolina, while officers handcuffed young George and his older brother, Johnnie, and took them away.

Two young white girls had been found brutally murdered, beaten over the head with a railroad spike and dumped in a water-logged ditch. Geoge and his little sister, who were black, were said to be the last ones to see them alive. Authorities later released the older Stinney, and directed their attention toward George.

“The police were looking for someone to blame it on, so they used my brother as a scapegoat,” his sister Amie Ruffner said earlier this year.

On June 16, 1944, he was executed, becoming the youngest person in modern times to be put to death. Almost 70 years later he was exonerated.

Stinney’s case has tormented civil rights advocates for years.

He was questioned in a small room, alone – without his parents, without an attorney. (Gideon vs. Wainwright, the landmark Supreme Court case guaranteeing the right to counsel, wouldn’t be decided until 1963.) Police claimed the boy confessed to killing Betty June Binnicker, 11, and Mary Emma Thames, 8, admitting he wanted to have sex with Betty. They rushed him to trial and railroaded him.

After a two-hour trial and a 10-minute jury deliberation, Stinney was convicted of murder on April 24 and sentenced to die by electrocution, according to a book by Mark R. Jones. At the time, 14 was the age of criminal responsibility. His lawyer, a local political figure, chose not to appeal.

Stinney’s initial trial, the evidence, or lack of it, and the speed with which he was convicted seemed to illustrate how a young black boy was railroaded by an all-white justice system. During the one-day trial, the defense called few or no witnesses. There was no written record of a confession. Today, most people who could testify are dead and most evidence is long gone.

New facts in the case prompted Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen to vacate his conviction almost a century after Stinney’s execution.

“I can think of no greater injustice than the violation of one’s Constitutional rights which has been proven to me in this case,” Mullen wrote.

Just When You Thought You Heard It All News (7-9-2016)

A weird North Carolina couple faces charges after allegedly assaulting each other, with pizza rolls..............

Samantha Brooke Canipe, 21, and Brad Scott Beard, 24, were each charged with one count of misdemeanor simple assault, and one count each of wasting perfectly good salty, processed horsdevors.

The suspects allegedly got into a fight at their Gastonia apartment and started throwing pizza rolls at each other. A motive in the incident remains uncertain.

Beard faces 60 days in jail and Canipe faces 30 days in jail.

In this photo released July 5, 2016 by the Boston Police Department, stacks of money totaling about $187,000 that were left in a taxi are displayed in Boston. 

Boston police say a man who left about $187,000 in cash in a taxi has been reunited with his money thanks to an honest cabbie.

Raymond "Buzzy" MacCausland picked up a fare on Saturday at the corner of Tremont Street and Massachusetts Avenue.

At one point the man got out of the cab to meet a friend intending to come back and left a backpack behind.

MacCausland waited 30 minutes before going to the man's hotel to look for him. When he couldn't find him, he looked in the bag for identification. His was surprised to find three bundles of $50 and $100 dollar bills. Like a moron, he immediately drove to police headquarters to turn in the cash.

It turns out the man had inherited the money.

For his trouble all Macausland got was a lousy $100 reward! SMH!

Like millions of computer geeks all over the world, James Newman has gone to great time and expense building his own computer.

But the 55-year-old British software engineer’s machine is way different than other home-built models.

Newman’s computer, actually a megaprocessor, takes up a whole room in his house in Great Shelford.

“I spent around three hours a night working on it and I’ve had to take all the books and shelves and sofas out of my lounge,” he told SWNS. “I’m lucky because it’s quite a big lounge but I’ve had to put everything else in my spare room.”

In total, it cost more than $51,000 over a five-year period.

“I didn’t plan on spending [that much money]at the start. It grew as time went by and I got a bit more ambitious,” he said.

He admits, “If I had a wife she’d probably have left me by now.”

What did he get for efforts? Not much. It’s a million times slower and has a million times less memory than a typical desktop, according to South West News Service.

Oh, and you can only play Tetris on it.

Somebody get him a woman!

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The Police Have The Right To Kill Us?!

Yesterday a white co-worker of mine told me that if a law enforcement officer shoots someone it must be because they were breaking the law. Needless to say that I was angry. In the face of all of the facts and all of the video footage both Philandro Castile and Alton Sterling deserved to be gunned down in the street like animals simply because of a perception. 

This "good, white, southern Christian fundamentalist" co-worker whom I've known for years has no doubt that these two young men deserved to be executed because an officer thought or heard that they were doing something wrong. So I asked myself. How could this "good, white, southern Christian fundamentalist" truly believe that innocent black men deserve to be shot for nothing? Well, besides the fact that he is a fake Christian and a real racist like many others, he, like the vast majority of his kind does not see black people as human. The inability to see us as valuable human beings with lives equal to those of their own is evidence of this attitude. Because if they were, in fact, capable of seperating us from our melinin then the level of outrage would be the same given the fact that a fellow human being had been executed by those who have sworn to protect us. Instead, our outrage amounts to nothing more than a series of inconvenient news cycles that they have to suffer through. The disturbing part is, many of the people with badges and guns have the exact same attitude with far more deadly results than propaganda spouted during Monday morning coffee at work.

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Guilty For Being White.

A Manhattan school is among a number of other elite private schools that teach White students to feel guilty about receiving benefits in society for the color of their skin — which is also known as “White Privelege"......................

According to local media sources, students at the Bank Street School For Children are separated by race for lessons on diversity. White students, starting from age 6, are told “they’re born racist.” Meanwhile, in other rooms, students of color are “taught to feel proud about their race” before returning to the main classroom, munching on cupcakes and other treats.

The concept is as interesting as it is controversial. But I don't believe that racism is embedded in a child's DNA. It is a learned behavior.

White parents, even liberal ones, are angry that the K-8 school makes their children feel guilty about being White. 

Some have managed to obtain the schools slide presentation, "novel approach to fighting discrimination,” operated by Bank Street’s Director of Diversity

Wahi, who has been described as a “longtime social activist,” referred questions about the program to the school’s communications office. But there has been no response to its request for comments.

A handout that Wahi sent to parents, which explained that the school gives students of color “a space to talk about shared experiences” in a society that discriminates against them.

But white guilt is something that can never be taught and even sustained because we live in a country that was designed, and built on the concept of white privelege. 

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Just When You Thought You Heard It All News (7-2-2016)

A Washington man popped half an Ambien after surgery and woke up to a nightmare.

The 75-year-old’s dream that he was in a plane crash turned into hallucinations that were so vivid, he dialed 911 to report an accident.

He told dispatchers that the small cargo aircraft in which he was traveling with three other people from his home city of Renton to Oregon had landed in a field with trees and that he was “pinned in,” reports SFGate. 

The others were unconscious and he couldn’t see out of the window, he added.

In reality, he was having hallucinations at home after taking the sedative.

“He was very calm during the call but sounded scared 911 dispatcher Becky McCracken said. “It sounds real. And I’ve listened to it a couple of times. I would never know it wasn’t real.”

I wonder how much I can get for my old Tonka trucks, circa 1976??

If ever you needed motivation to sort through your old knickknacks this is it.

A blue and white vase that was for years used as a doorstop by a family in Birmingham, central England, turned out to be a rare 18th century Chinese artifact — which sold at auction on Friday for an eye-popping £650,000 (around $860,000).

The unidentified seller inherited the 26-inch high vessel, believed to have been made during Emporor Quainlong's reign between 1735 and 1799, from his antique dealer great aunt Florence in 1978.

Florrie, as she was affectionately known, had reportedly acquired it while living in Cornwall, in southwest England, during the 1920s. 

“It is a quite spell bounding vase,” Charles Hanson, managing director of Derbyshire-based auctioneers Hansons, said via a press statement prior to the auction, adding it was possibly manufactured by the Imperial Kilns for the Emperor’s Summer Palace.”

The vase had been estimated to fetch between £300,000 and £500,000 (around $400,000 to $660,000). 

But the sale price ended up toppingthose predictions after the auction house received “significant interest” from across China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Hanson told the BBC. The buyer’s identity has not been revealed.

Quick! Somebody turn the burners on!!!! 

A snake is seen just hanging out and enjoying the sun on a backyard grill in this picture shared by the Colorado Association Of Animal Control Officers.

The large bull snake was looking for a meal, but not necessarily hot dogs or hamburgers.

“The homeowner took a picture of this large bull snake who was trying to get the baby birds in a Robin’s nest up the tree,” animal control officers wrote.

Bull snakes are non-venomous. But this image will make you never want to barbecue again!.......Well, at least for a few days!

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Bad Blacks At The Pool?!

The American Red Cross apologized Tuesday amid backlash over a racist sign it created on swim safety guidelines for children.

The apology came after a photo circulated of the poster on social media. The poster, which was seen on display at pools in at least two towns in Colorado, read at the top: "Be Cool, Follow the Rules." Below the heading were depictions of children playing. The white children were labeled as behaving "cool" while children of color were depicted as misbehaving, or "not cool," for breaking pool safety rules.

Whether this ad is intentionally racist or not, it is a sign of American culture and perception.

The Red Cross said it has discontinued the production of the poster and removed it from its website and Swim App.

"We deeply apologize for any misunderstanding, as it was absolutely not our intent to offend anyone," the organization said. "As one of the nation's oldest and largest humanitarian organizations, we are committed to diversity and inclusion in all that we do, every day."

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