News Sensationalism … again

The anarchists are here!!!

The anarchists are here!!!

Well, it’s actually just a band from Europe that decided to get a better view of the city from an old abandoned school building on Polish Hill. Granted, the decision was after a party held in their honor, so I’m sure the decision making process of the band members was slightly under full capacity.

Even taking that into consideration …

Andrew Stocky of the famed WTAE news, decided they were G-20 anarchists scouting out training sites.  Albeit untrue and fictional, as any professional would do – Andrew held to his story.

Thankfully the City Paper had enough sense to shed a little light on the truth as seen here.  It’s amazing that the free magazine initially seen as a Pittsburgh smut rag, is the one sporting legitimate news, and the professionals are … well … selling out.

Well, keep with the smut rags, and occasionally us bloggers (we may do things to get hits, but we at least hold on to one or two sentences of truth in a posting) … and you may find actual news.

-SWB

PS – Yup, mainstream news makes shows like TMZ seem legit.

Kudos to The City Paper for keeping up good reporting.

Parental Capability Testing

Alright … at this point I think we need to seriously consider doing some type of “Parental Capability Testing” before we allow certain human being to procreate or even handle children.

Click Here to read an article on The Pittsburgh Channel’s website as reported by Janelle Hall.

I’m not saying that we should do like some other countries and limit the amount or sex of the children being born, but merely test the want to be parents to make sure they are going to treat their future children to a complete life of hell.

This parent left her young child, supposedly alone with her 15 y.o. brother (who wasn’t there either) in a house with no utilities, etc and completely uninhabitable. The child was so scared at one point she was screaming out the window for help.  A neighbor stepped in an called the police.  Considering we are hearing about stories like this in a regular basis … some action needs taken.  Obviously families have stopped teaching the basics and common sense of humane treatment of children to their children.

Sad.

-SWB

Officers killed posting updated

This is just an FYI posting to notify readers that the original post (click here) for the Stanton Heights shooting was updated (on 04/07/09).

WPXI has also made some recent announcements on Pittsburgh Channel 11 News TV/Cable, so SWB is assuming at some point soon that information will also appear on the website updates for the news station. If you want to make donations to the officers families, the news station also has announced they have placed that info on their site.

The second post from SWB also contains some additional links for stories by various internet, print, and TV news sites that are covering the story.

-SWB

PS – Again … please keep all of the families in your prayers.

Richard Poplawski – an issue that needs dealt with

More on the issue:

Three officers unnecessarily died due to an idiot with issues. Do I know he had issues – yes. How? Let’s see: 1. He was walking around at 1am in ony his pajama pants, 2. The PFA against him from a former girlfriend, 3. His stating to multiple people that he was distressed about losing his job, 4.The fact that he was worried about Obama taking away guns, 5. He began stockpiling guns after being kicked out of the marines because he thought the police could no longer protect us with hte bd economy. Well, all he did on the last point was give Obama more firepower to take away guns even to those very responsible. After shooting officers, Poplawski held off officers from get to their wounded – even enemies in a way don’t go that low. His Mother is now actually threatening the Post-Gazette with a lawsuit if they don’t stop reporting.

The Pittsburgh Police and Swat team showed an amount of restraint not seen anywhere. Consider the amount of well placed snipers and good shots they probably had on the incident that did not open fire when Poplawski finally gave up and was brought out. All of these officers, not just he ones that died, need to be commended and decorated as fully as possible.

With everyone else involved with Poplawski – did anyone bother to speak up – except on he news shots?? Think about it – where I grew up, if I did anything remotely like what was mentioned about Poplawski (walking at 1 am in my PJ pants), I would have been soon greeted by a police officer in a car asking me it if I needed help (or taking me home and telling my family I needed help). Am I blaming the community? No, but I am noting that we have gone to a lifestyle of too much about the individual, and not enough about the community we live it. Staying out of people’s business is good – but ignoring dangerous buildups in the community is worse than not being liked for showing concern. Family ignores family now too … this isn’t a good thing.

Is there a possibility that Poplawski asked for help and it was ignored? … sure. He was out of a job, so that means the possibility of not having medical coverage for mental health issues (which he obviously had many) – and if he confided in friends, there is the issue of those friends just not wanting to deal with it.

Here links to current articles for a complete overview:

The Post-Gazette article by Jon Smitz

KDKA Channel 2 Pitsburgh

WTAE Channel 4 Pittsburgh (more info on Richard P)

On The Officers from The Tribune-Review

Do the following if you can:

• Pray for all of the families involved (even the Poplawski’s – how would you feel if your family name was all over the news associated with something this intense).
• Drop few flowers at a police station in memory of the officers.
• Get to know your community again and actually listen to the people in it.
• Leave all involved families alone.
• Let the police and the courts sort this one out – they have proven they can handle this by the restraint they showed on the scene. If to many rumors and false info’s get created, it could harm the outcome of the situation greatly allowing those officer’s deaths to be in vain.

-SWB

PS – “Self” isn’t everything … which is the issues that really needs to be dealt with.

** All comments are welcome for information sharing – anything hateful or potentially untrue will not be approved.

Pittsburgh Stanton Heights Shooting Officer Tribute Post

Updated (04/07/09) – see below

Normally SWB would rant on heavily about the shooter that killed three Pittsburgh Police Officers (Eric Kelly, Paul Sciullo, and Stephen Mayhle), but in honor to the service these officers have given (along with their lives) we will simply provide the following link for those not familiar with the happening and do/request the following listed below that link:

———–

Click Here for a link to the story from WTAE Channel 4 News Pittsburgh.

• SWB will ask that you place comments and wishes to the families on this post (we moderate, so it may take a few hours until we can approve the comments, so please have patience). We are not sure any of the families will read it, but we will print a copy and forward it to the Pittsburgh Police Department hoping that the comments will get to the families.
• Please also place any prayer requests for the officers and their families here and the main author will forward them to the prayer groups at the church he goes to.
• SWB will observe the remainder of the day post-free in honor of the officers and their families (we feel that posting a rant about the shooter at this time is not what the families of the officers need – they needs our support and prayers)
• SWB asks that you personally pray for the families of the officers.
• We kindly request that the other local bloggers post a similar tribute page regardless of religious beliefs.

Update (04/06/09):

• The three officers were awarded the Purple Heart and Medal Of Valor from city. Please Click Here for the article from The Tribune-Review. It also contains public and pivate viewing times.
• Click Here for an additional posting from SWB.
• Update as of 5:45pm: WPXI announced a discovery that Poplawski had been posting on white supremacy sites one of the quotes being “God is in your garden, God is in your gun”. Announcement was on TV news – no website link at this time.

Update (04/07/09):

• City Council honors slain officers. Click Here for the article from The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
• 911 Did not tell officers that the actor had guns in his possession. Click Here for the article from The Tribune-Review.
• Honor the fallen officers with Project Blue Light.
• Donate to the Fallen Heroes Fund.

-SWB

Things Getting Ready to go Boom in Mt Washington

We haven’t had an utter nonsense post in a while (by the way those ARE coffee stains in the image on the left).

Why is it listed as “utter nonsense and such”?

Well, two reasons:

The first one being that it’s just stupid to endanger innocent others with things like pipe bombs – I mean, how do you know a five year old won’t pick it up??

The second reason is that the Pittsburgh Bomb Squad didn’t call me so that I could see the cool bomb moving robot in operation.  Geez … you’d think they’d have some priorities set.

Anyways – Click Here for a snippet from WTAE on the discovery.

-SWB

PS – That robot is cool — it reminds me of “Number 5” from “Short Circuit”.