46% Want Stephanopoulos Banned From Campaign Coverage

[Ubiquitous]

George Stephanopoulos, a senior ABC News anchor, was caught last week
hiding $75,000 in donations to the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation
just after he grilled on air the author of a book critical of the
foundation and Mrs. Clinton. He also was scheduled to moderate a
presidential campaign debate before the media found out about the
donations.

Forty-six percent (46%) of Likely U.S. Voters think ABC should ban
Stephanopoulos from any programming related to the presidential
campaign since Hillary Clinton is running for president. The latest
Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 36% disagree and
oppose banning him from presidential campaign coverage. Eighteen
percent (18%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click
here.)

Sixty-six percent (66%) of Republicans and unaffiliated voters by a
narrower 45% to 38% margin think the one-time senior Clinton White
House official should be banned from presidential campaign coverage.
Among Democrats, 30% say Stephanopoulos should be banned from covering
the presidential race, but 50% disagree; 20% are undecided.

Thirty-four percent (34%) of all voters say they are less likely to
believe the reporting on ABC News because Stephanopoulos failed to
disclose this seeming conflict of interest. Sixteen percent (16%) say
they are more likely to believe in ABC News’ reporting. Forty-two
percent (42%) say the Stephanopoulos incident will have no impact on
their confidence in ABC’s reporting.

In February, 40% of Americans said NBC News anchor Brian Williams had
to go for being caught in a lie. Just as many (40%) said they are less
likely to believe the reporting on NBC News because Williams didn’t
tell the truth.

Thirty-four percent (34%) of voters share a favorable opinion of
Stephanopoulos. This is down from 45% in February and includes 11% with
a Very Favorable opinion. Thirty-nine percent (39%) view him
unfavorably, with 18% who hold a Very Unfavorable view. Twenty-seven
percent (27%) don’t know enough about the senior ABC anchor to venture
any kind of opinion of him.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our
polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or
Facebook.

The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 17-18,
2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3
percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all
Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC.
See methodology.

Just 19% of Americans say they get most of their news from one of the
three traditional news networks – ABC, CBS and NBC. Sixty-nine percent
(69%) regard the news reported by the media as at least somewhat
trustworthy, but that includes only 20% who think it is Very
Trustworthy.

Democrats have a more favorable opinion of Stephanopoulos than GOP and
unaffiliated voters do.

Forty-one percent (41%) of Republicans are less likely now to trust
ABC’s reporting, compared to 32% of Democrats and 30% of unaffiliated
voters.

Voters have long believed that journalists who serve as debate
moderators show bias in their questioning.

Forty-eight percent (48%) think media bias is a bigger problem in
politics today than big campaign contributions, but nearly as many
(44%) see campaign cash as the larger problem.

Thirty-seven percent (37%) of Americans believe the average media
reporter is more liberal than they are. Eighteen percent (18%)
consider that reporter more conservative.

Sixty-three percent (63%) think it’s likely some actions Hillary
Clinton took as secretary of State were influenced by donations made to
the Clinton Foundation. This includes 42% who say it’s Very Likely.

As Obama administration officials wrestle with the news media and
congressional investigators over releasing Clinton’s e-mail from her
days as secretary of State, voters are growing more suspicious that she
has something to hide.

Still, 57% say Clinton is likely to be the next president.

--
Despite her long, long, long record of corruption, scandal, and
ineptitude, people will vote for her because "it's time for a woman to
be president." Well, it isn't time for a woman to be president. It also
isn't time for a man. It isn't "time" for any particular race,
ethnicity, or gender. It's time, instead, for an honest and competent
adult of any gender and any race and, at this point, any species.

[clairbear]

Shooting Hasn't Stopped in Baltimore Since Freddie Gray

http://www.newsweek.com/shooting-hasnt-stopped-baltimore-freddie-gray-
333083

It’s been weeks since the protests and rioting in Baltimore tied to the
death in police custody of Freddie Gray, but the city is plagued by
increased violence. More than 40 shootings have been reported in
Baltimore in that time, and the police department is investigating
dozens of homicides.

Between April 25 and May 14 there were been 25 killings, just shy of
Baltimore’s deadliest month last year: 26 killings in January 2014, the
local ABC affiliate found.

Over the weekend, that mark was eclipsed, as there were several more
shootings. Four people were shot only hours ahead of the Preakness, one
of the most important horse races of the year and an extremely popular
event in Baltimore.

By the time the horses began running, Baltimore was up to 35 homicides
in the last month by the Baltimore Sun’s count, blowing past the top
month last year. As of Monday morning, the count had risen once again:
three shootings occurred overnight and two people were killed in broad
daylight on Sunday.

Reached by phone, a public information officer with the Baltimore Police
Department told Newsweek there had been 96 homicides since the beginning
of this year. By this time in 2014, there were 69 homicides. Freddie
Gray’s death, for the record, is considered a homicide.








Too Late for a Basketball Prodigy, Paterson Seeks a Truce
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/too-late-for-a-basketball-prodigy-
paterson-seeks-a-truce/ar-BBk3OMk

PATERSON, N.J. — The combatants agreed to meet in a law office, in one
of those ancient brick mills that cast shadows of Paterson’s flourishing
past over its hard streets. This beef between up the hill and down the
hill had to end, now that another child had died of gunfire. A
basketball prodigy. A boy.

Street-smart elders had demanded the meeting, so here came teenagers and
young adults from both neighborhoods last Monday night, slouching in the
conference room’s red-leather chairs, leaning against a wall featuring a
portrait of John Lennon. They quickly squared off like aggrieved
litigants.

The tension between pockets of the these up-and-down neighborhoods in
Paterson, considered one of the most violent small cities in the
country, goes so far back that no one remembers how it began. But knives
had replaced fists, and guns had replaced knives, and now Armoni Sexton,
15, a silky 6-foot-7 player with a shot at a world beyond, was dead.

“Why this kid?” Kenyatta Stewart, a lawyer who helped arrange the
meeting, said, echoing the question that nagged those in the room. “Why
do you pick the most talented, the tallest — the kid we all expected to
be the next one?”




Armoni Sexton was killed in a drive-by shooting on Rosa Parks
Boulevard..


Teammates placed Sexton’s coffin into a hearse after a funeral service
in April.


Stewart at the meeting on Monday.


The meeting brought together members of rival gangs in Paterson.


Rashad Dixon is the leader of an anti-violence group called Street
Keepers.


Stevens, 17, and Xavier, 17, both from Paterson, attended the meeting.


Paterson’s picturesque gorge, a geographical divide that helps create
separation among neighborhoods.

Previous SlideNext Slide

Armoni Sexton was killed in a drive-by shooting on Rosa Parks
Boulevard..
Teammates placed Sexton’s coffin into a hearse after a funeral service
in April.
Stewart at the meeting on Monday.
The meeting brought together members of rival gangs in Paterson.
Rashad Dixon is the leader of an anti-violence group called Street
Keepers.
Stevens, 17, and Xavier, 17, both from Paterson, attended the meeting.
Paterson’s picturesque gorge, a geographical divide that helps create
separation among neighborhoods.






We could go on and on Why is the only black lives that matter are those
the garner cops and racial exploiters like Sharpton and the rest of his
ilk?


















































































Armoni continues to light it up only on YouTube now, an exclamation
point in a yellow jersey, dribbling with Kevin Durant assuredness,
twirling his body for layups and dunks, safe in his hardwood home.

This city of 146,000 has a geographical divide in its famously
picturesque gorge, and a territorial divide in the decades-long battles
between groups from neighborhoods known as down the hill and up the
hill. “This goes all the way back to ‘Hurricane’ Carter,” Jerry
Speziale, the police director, said, referring to the Paterson boxer who
was notoriously, and wrongly, convicted of murder in the 1960s.

While these groups sometimes go by nicknames — the 230 Boys, the Glock
Boys, the Brick Squad — they are more neighborhood clusters than
traditional gangs, Speziale said. This does not mean they are any less
violent.

A humming heroin trade has taken root at a time when budget cuts have
drastically reduced the police presence. Paterson had two dozen
homicides last year, and has had six so far this year, including that of
Armoni.

The tribal dispute that killed Armoni had no hold on him in life. He
spent his first years down the hill, then moved up the hill. You could
always find him on a court somewhere, his allegiance only to the game.
He joined the elite Playaz Basketball Club, became a standout on the
Amateur Athletic Union circuit, and emerged as one of the top players in
the country’s class of 2018.

Off the court, Armoni could be an attentive older brother, a boy
interested in cooking, a competitor willing to accept the challenge of
25, 50, 100 push-ups to build his body. On the court, though, his temper
often got him in so much trouble that he was nicknamed Live Wire.

This may explain why Armoni didn’t go to one of the Catholic high
schools regarded as basketball powerhouses; no one wanted to touch the
live wire. He played, instead, for the Paterson Charter School for
Science and Technology, whose coach, Tommie Patterson, had been watching
Armoni on the court for years.

“Like a live wire,” Patterson said. “It fit him perfectly.”

To help the boy mature, Patterson would have other players subject
Armoni to shoves and trash-talking. Then he’d blow the whistle and say:
This is what it’s going to be like, Moni. You have to prepare.

Armoni prepared. As a freshman last season, he averaged 18 points and 9
rebounds a game, leading his team. In one game, against Saddle Brook, he
had 41 points, 10 rebounds, 6 blocked shots and 5 steals.

He was a talent, but he was also just a kid from Paterson. “He wasn’t an
angel, he wasn’t an A student,” Stewart, the lawyer-mentor, said. “But
he was just like me.”

When Armoni was arrested this year for trying to sell drugs, his mother,
Lawanda Sexton, who grew up down the hill, yanked him from Paterson
Charter and sent him to a prep school in North Carolina.

Coach Patterson was taken aback, in part because there were still
several games on the team’s schedule. But he also understood, since he
had already recommended that Armoni’s mother send him to a prep school.


A funeral was held on April 27 for Armoni Sexton, a standout high school
basketball player who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Paterson. ?
© Mel Evans/Associated Press A funeral was held on April 27 for Armoni
Sexton, a standout high school basketball player who was killed in a
drive-by shooting in Paterson.
Why? Because, in the coach’s mind, the Paterson of his youth, tough but
protective of its promising children, no longer existed. “I started to
realize that people didn’t care,” he said. “You’re a basketball player?
We don’t care. You ain’t nothing, and I ain’t nothing.”

Last September, a young basketball player named Nazerah Bugg was shot to
death while walking down a street; she was 14. Two months earlier, a
girl named Genesis Rincon was killed by gunfire while riding her
scooter; she was 12.

Armoni, on probation for that drug case, lasted only a few weeks at the
prep school in North Carolina. He was homesick for Paterson, where,
those close to him say, he wanted to improve his grades, his dribbling
and his academic focus.

He returned to the basketball courts up and down the hill, to the push-
and-pull of street temptations and earnest mentors. And at around 8:30
on a Saturday night in mid-April, a half-hour before his curfew, he was
killed in a drive-by shooting on Rosa Parks Boulevard — a shooting the
police attribute to that age-old quarrel between two neighborhoods.

Teammates carried his coffin. Classmates adorned his locker with flowers
and a basketball jersey. Friends posted memorial tributes on YouTube,
where Live Wire soars in slow motion toward another dunk.

Lawanda Sexton publicly forgave the young man arrested in the shooting,
someone known to her family. “Forgiveness is power,” she said.

That still left the animus between up the hill and down the hill, whose
representatives gathered now in a law firm’s conference room. Here,
among others, were Kenyatta Stewart, the lawyer, and Casey Melvin, the
barber and community leader, and Rahshon Dixon, the leader of an anti-
violence group called Street Keepers, all telling them: Put the guns
down and let’s end this.

According to Stewart, someone suggested fighting it out in Montgomery
Park. Then someone else said if we’re going to fight again, it’ll be
with guns, so …

It’s over.

The word went out. The next night, a few hundred people from both
neighborhoods came together in Montgomery Park for a party. When
photographs of the celebration circulated on social media, people in
Paterson thought the pictures had been manipulated, so improbable was
the scene.

Still, those street-wise elders knew that something more formal, and
more constructive, had to be done. They called another meeting for last
Thursday night at Passaic County Community College, and sent the message
that the young men from up and down the hill had better show up.

Organizers reserved the first several rows of the auditorium for their
guests, both to praise them and to make sure they didn’t nod off or lose
themselves in their cellphones. By the appointed hour of 6, though,
those seats were empty.

“They’re not too excited to be here,” said a large man at the door named
Teddie Martinez. He did several years in federal prison for drug-related
offenses, he said, but now he and his wife, Barbara, run a community-
outreach program called Project Connect. He also helped to broker this
tentative peace, which the police say has been aided by their increased
presence.

“They want to make sure they’re not being set up,” Martinez added. “So
they’ll send their leaders down first.”

Sure enough, a few wary teenagers soon appeared. Others then followed to
fill more than 50 seats, their faces masks of smoldering boredom.

They listened as community leaders tried to both scare and encourage
them, one minute talking about prison (“Who wants to be there?” Martinez
said. “Stand up.”) and the next job opportunities. They were given forms
and advice about getting proper identification, a high school degree and
off the streets.

After nearly two hours, the meeting ended. The young men rose from their
seats, none interested in talking much to reporters. When asked where he
lived, a boy who called himself Xavier said: “Up the hill. Don’t forget
it. That’s important.”

Also rising from her seat was a woman with a rueful smile and a T-shirt
that said, “Just a Kid From Paterson.” Her presence had not been
acknowledged, but maybe that was because everyone felt it anyway.
Armoni’s mother.

Lawanda Sexton and the others from up the hill, down the hill and all
around filed back out to the streets of Paterson, where a truce has been
declared — and, so far, held — now that a boy with a gift for a game is
gone.