Another great example of USA education system! Double negative means HE DID KILL SOMEBODY?

Suspected Ill. serial killer Sonny Pierce told mom he "never killed nobody"

Sonny Pierce

(Credit: Cook County Sheriff's Office)

(CBS/WBBM) CHICAGO - The mother of Sonny Pierce, a man who is currently sitting behind bars and being accused of the rape and murder of three women, is convinced that the authorities have the wrong man.
"It hurts," said Pierce's mother, Esther Pierce-Pearson to CBS station WBBM. "It hurts."
Pierce-Pearson believes her son is innocent because he told her so, the station reports.
She said she asked her son point-blank, "'Are you a murderer? Have you ever murdered anybody? You be honest with me,' and he told me, he said, 'Mama, I swear to the living God, I never murdered anybody. I never killed nobody,'" she explained to WBBM.
Pierce, 27, has been in jail since August of last year on charges of raping a 15-year-old girl, reports the station.
The 15-year-old girl survived, but according to authorities in the three other cases, Pierce not only raped the women, but then strangled them after meeting them on phone chat lines, reports the station.
Pierce has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Kiara Windom, 18, Kimika Coleman, 18, and Mariah Edwards, 17, the station reports.
Investigators found 20 calls between Windom's cell phone and Pierce the night before her body was found, prosecutors said. He met her on a singles party line in August 2009, they said according to the station.
DNA evidence linked Pierce to Windom, and video evidence refuted his alibis for the times of the crime, police said.
Police also discovered a videotape linking Pierce to Edwards' murder in July 2010.
Edwards' body has not been recovered, but she was reported missing and hasn't been seen alive since July 2010.
Pierce's mother said while she believes her son and will stand by him, she grieves over what happened to the three teenage girls, reports the station.
"I feel for those that lost their loved ones, because I'm a mother," Pierce-Pearson said to the station. "I have nine children; six daughters."
Pierce was ordered held without bond at the Markham Courthouse Wednesday.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I guess it’s over."
- Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on ABC's "Good Morning America" discussing the false claim made by Donald Trump and others that President Obama was not born in the United States.

---

COMMENT OF THE DAY

"Combined service cuts & tax hikes are the only way. Everything else is as silly as a diet plan that doesn't involve exercise & eating less."
- Comment from "SageThrasher" on "Poll: Americans oppose entitlement cuts to slash debt"
Join the Discussion

---

Q&A DISCUSSIONS

Q: DEBT
Why didn't S&P talk about Bush deficits when Bush was president? Aren't the Bush tax cuts for EVERYONE set to expire on January 1st, 2013? Won't that have a major effect on the deficit when they do expire if Congress does nothing?
A: DAVID WYSS :
We did talk about the Bush deficits and the introduction of both tax cuts and Medicare part D. However, back then no one was paying attention. We started in 2006 pointing out that the US budget was on an unsusatainable course and that either spending had to be cut or taxes increased to keep debt within realistic bounds. The difference now is that we are running out of time. In 2006, we had 8 years to fix the problem; now we have 2 or 3. The deficit now is three times the last Bush deficit, but the tax cuts and spending increases in the last administration were also unaffordable.
Read the full discussion with David A. Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s

---

Poll finds most Americans can't name a GOP presidential candidate

Most recent polls suggest that there's no clear frontrunner in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. A new poll suggests that may have something to do with the fact that most people can't even name any of the candidates.

About half of all Americans -- 53 percent -- could not name anyone when asked which Republican candidate they've been hearing the most about, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.

The lack of knowledge about the several potential Republican candidates could account for Donald Trump's recent rise in the polls. The business magnate and television personality already benefited from widespread name recognition, and in recent weeks he has dominated news headlines with his presidential flirtation.

Twenty-six percent of Americans surveyed by Pew named Trump as the candidate they've heard the most about lately -- a larger portion than those who named Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty combined.

The poll suggests the public knows little about the potential GOP candidates because they lack interest and because of relatively little news coverage on the subject.

Just 20 percent of Americans said they followed news about possible GOP candidates very closely in the last week, and coverage of the presidential race only made up 2 percent of news coverage in the past week, according to Pew.

The debate in Washington over deficit reduction, by contrast, accounted for 31 percent of last week's news coverage, and 36 percent said they followed that story very closely.

While Americans may not be paying too much attention to the upcoming elections at this point, other polls suggest they have strong ideas when it comes to proposed deficit reduction plans.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 78 percent oppose cutting spending on Medicare to reduce the debt, and 69 percent oppose cutting spending on Medicaid. Additionally, 56 percent oppose cuts in military spending to reduce the debt.

While Americans oppose cutting spending in those three particular areas, as many as 72 percent approved of the idea of raising taxes on the rich to reduce the national debt.

The Post-ABC poll also specifically asked people if "Medicare should be changed so that people over 65 would receive a check or voucher from the government each year for a fixed amount they can use to shop for their own private health insurance policy." The question referred to the 2012 budget plan put forward by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan. Sixty-four percent of Americans oppose the idea, while 34 percent approve.

The Post poll results mirror other recent polls. A CBS News poll released last month found that 76 percent of Americans are not willing to reduce spending on Medicare to address the budget deficit. And last week, Gallup released a poll showing that even a plurality of Republicans -- 33 percent -- believe the government should not do anything to try to control the costs of Medicare.

Obama, Before Facebook Crowd, Presses G.O.P. on Budget

By JACKIE CALMES

PALO ALTO, Calif. — President Obama on Wednesday opened a Western front in his war against House Republicans’ budget, telling an appreciative audience at Facebook headquarters here that the plan is radical, short-sighted and would reduce annual federal deficits at the expense of the nation’s poor and powerless.
In a town-hall-style forum with the 26-year-old Facebook chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. Obama seized on a question about the House-passed budget to mount a long, withering indictment. The questioner, an employee of the social networking company, noted that some news media accounts suggested that the sponsor of the Republican budget, Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, is “bold and brave” for proposing the deep spending cuts.
“The Republican budget that was put forward I would say is fairly radical,” Mr. Obama said. “And I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous.” He added: “I do think Mr. Ryan is sincere. I think he’s a patriot. I think he wants to solve a real problem, which is our long-term deficit. But I think that what he and the other Republicans in the House of Representatives also want to do is change our social compact in a pretty fundamental way.”
“Nothing is easier,” Mr. Obama said, “than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor, or people who are powerless and don’t have lobbyists or don’t have clout.”
Mr. Obama’s critique in many ways echoed his speech at George Washington University a week ago, two days before the House passed the plan without any Democratic votes. There he first called for a more balanced approach for reducing deficits by $4 trillion in 10 to 12 years, with spending cuts and tax increases. But here he grew particularly exercised in contrasting his and Republicans’ visions for reducing annual deficits, with his energy and the enthusiasm of the estimated 1,200 mostly young people giving the event a campaignlike partisan air.
While Mr. Obama’s new energy in criticizing Republican policies has stirred supporters, it is infuriating Republicans even as he is calling for bipartisan talks with them to reach a compromise framework in time for Congress’s vote before July on raising the $14.2 trillion debt limit.
In a statement just before Mr. Obama’s appearance here, the House majority leader, Representative Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, reiterated that if the president and Congressional Democrats “refuse to accept serious reforms that immediately reduce federal spending and end the culture of debt in Washington, we will not grant their request for a debt limit increase.”
Early in his remarks, Mr. Obama recounted the origins of the current debt, recalling the trillions of dollars added in the past decade when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress and cut taxes, opened two wars, and created a new Medicare prescription drug benefit — all without offsetting spending cuts or tax increases.
He joked to the billionaire Facebook founder that wealthy Americans — “people like me and, frankly, you, Mark” — should pay higher taxes to reduce deficits. But Republicans, he said, would further reduce taxes for rich taxpayers and corporations and cut deeply from clean energy, education and transportation programs “to make his numbers work."
“I guess you could call that bold. I would call it short-sighted,” Mr. Obama said, provoking another burst of applause.
He said the Republican proposals to shrink projected health spending, by eventually turning Medicare into a voucher system and Medicaid into a limited block grant to the states, would not curb the rise of health care costs.
Mr. Zuckerberg, who posed questions to Mr. Obama from his employees and from Facebook users nationwide, as both men sat on stools in a cavernous hall, wore a sport coat and tie for the occasion, along with jeans and jogging shoes. But at the end he brought out his trademark hoodie, in purple, and presented it to the president.
From the Facebook campus, Mr. Obama headed to nearby San Francisco for the first of several fund-raising events over two days, including in Reno, Nev., and Los Angeles on Thursday.

Mubarak Leaves an Air of Wistfulness

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

CAIRO — Hosni Mubarak is the only leader most Egyptians have ever really known, so while he remains disliked for how he ran the country, there is an undercurrent of discomfort here with how he has been treated since being forced from power.
There is no survey to prove this, and those who feel a touch of sympathy for the former president tend to say so under their breath, like Salma Sowellem, as she visited an art show recently: “Shhh, I don’t want my boyfriend to hear, he’ll get mad. But Mubarak, he’s an old man. He’s sick. His sons are in prison. That’s enough.”
But the sentiment is very much part of the complex mix of emotions that have overwhelmed this nation as it struggles to reconcile with the past and move into the future, to balance calls for revenge against demands for justice. Egyptians are still not sure if they should pursue South African-style reconciliation, an Eastern European-style hunt for collaborators or just try to forget it all and press on.
They know they have to start at the top.
“He was like God, and we still keep saying that he is ruling Egypt, even though he has been arrested,” said Hussein Hanafy, 44, as he stood with a group of friends near downtown one day discussing the situation. “I have not seen anyone but him for 30 years. I won’t just forget him overnight.”
And then summing up a sentiment repeated over three days of interviews here he said: “I feel sorry for him. But he is not innocent.”
Mr. Mubarak was president for nearly 30 years, and in that time he engaged in the alchemy of a typical autocrat, transforming his mortal identity to that of near deity — or in the Egyptian context, pharaoh. His picture was not only posted everywhere, but to destroy or deface it was a crime.
And then he was gone, and even some who cheered his fall found themselves disoriented by the loss of the most familiar feature of their national landscape.
“Nobody is happy with what he did,” said Mona Yousef, as she left her dentist’s office near the center of the city on Sunday. “But we grew up with him there. He was there my entire life. It is difficult to just move on.”
One artist, Ali Ali, decided to challenge and provoke discussion about Mr. Mubarak, hoping that would lead to “closure.” He made “Thirty Hosnis,” for Mr. Mubarak’s three decades in power, silk-screen images using well-known photographs of the former president, cast in subdued tones beside pop culture images like Darth Vader and the dot-gulping creature in the video game Pac-Man.
“This is after all the most iconic image of our generation,” the artist said in a flier distributed at his opening show in the Articulate Baboon gallery. “At a time when images of Hosni Mubarak are being taken down all over the country there has never been a better time to put them up.”
But instead of closure what he provoked — or, perhaps, revealed — was the confusion that Egyptians now wrestle with.
“I’m upset; they shouldn’t put pictures of Mubarak,” said Ahmed Taha, 24, at first unsure what to make of the show. “When I look at him I remember humiliation, I remember unemployment, I remember inflation, I remember corruption, I remember the country’s bad reputation abroad. He reminds me of everything that is bad in this country.”
For all that, Mr. Taha does not want to see Mr. Mubarak put on trial. “I just want to forget,” he said.
But Mena Hashem, 25, a banker at the show, disagreed.
“It’s a good thing that Mubarak is being tried,” she said. “But then, exactly how will he be tried? By the same corrupt people who are protecting him?”
Mr. Mubarak is 82 years old, almost 83. He had appeared to be in relatively solid health right until the prosecutor announced that he would be questioned about corruption and his role in the deaths of more than 800 people killed during the protests that unseated him. Then he felt chest pains. He has been taken to a military hospital, where he is being detained while undergoing questioning. His fall accelerated as public pressure forced the military rulers of Egypt to take steps against him.
“The tragedy was not necessarily like Sadat’s assassination or Nasser dropping dead,” said Salama Ahmed Salama, head of the editorial board at the independent newspaper Sharouk. “The tragedy for Mubarak was how he fell from the height and pinnacle of power in a matter of days or hours. Who would have thought that such a powerful man would have to say goodbye just like that?”
Mr. Mubarak is all gray now, Egyptian newspapers reported, no longer taking the trouble to dye his hair jet black. And he has told prosecutors that they can do anything to him, but to release his sons, Gamal and Alaa, who are in jail while being investigated for corruption.
But most Egyptians are delighted to see his widely despised sons in jail while many cringe at the thought of their former leader behind bars.
His very public humbling has satisfied fears that he was behind the scenes orchestrating plans for a counterrevolution. But it also has raised questions about where to go next and how far to go. Many people have called for his execution — particularly if he is found to have ordered the security forces to fire on protesters — while many more have said he should just be forgotten and left alone.
“The whole country is Hosni Mubarak,” said Adel el-Sayed as he stood on a sidewalk corner with four friends talking about current events on Sunday. “That’s why it’s hard to get Hosni Mubarak out of Egypt.”
For the moment, it appears that Mr. Mubarak is headed to some kind of accounting, probably a trial, assuming his health holds up. While that is not a certainty, it could in itself offer the answer for how to proceed. A fair public trial could satisfy calls for justice — and revenge.
“Mubarak’s trial will be a turning point in Egypt’s history and the history of the region,” said Alaa Al Aswany, the best-selling author and social commentator. “This is a the civilized part of the revolution and the kind of justice that Mubarak did not do for the Egyptian people.”