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Via Facebook, former WESH-Channel 2 reporter Bob Kealing has announced his new job.

On Monday, he starts as senior public affairs administrator/PIO for Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma.

I'm honored to be the new spokesman for such a professional and progressive law enforcement agency, Kealing writes.

Lemma, also on Facebook, tells Kealing: I can't tell you how excited we all are to have you join the team. You are going to be great in this new role.

Kealing made the announcement on Wednesday, which was his 53rd birthday. In October, I wrote about him and seven other veteran reporters at WESH.

He explained then why he had stayed so long in Central Florida. We've all been bitten by the ambition bug and had some very tempting offers, he said. Ive been able to do things during my career to grow and remain challenged which did not require uprooting myself and my family. Ive reported nationally and internationally for WESH and NBC. Anyone who knows Orlando knows the next major story is never far away. Its a great news town.

Kealing and his wife, Karen, have been married 19 years. Their children are William, 16, and Kristen, 14.

Personal issues were a crucial reason for staying here, Kealing said. With a young family and a great group of friends and neighbors, that only added to the allure of staying in the City Beautiful, he said. My family loves it here.

In early May, Kealing left the NBC affiliate after nearly 25 years.

Twenty-five years is a line of demarcation, Kealing told me then. Its scary any time you try to jump off in a new venture.

At WESH, Kealing earned five Emmys and shared in two Edward R. Murrow Regional Awards. He reported on the Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman trials and the Pulse nightclub massacre.

Kealing has gained fame as an author. Tupperware Unsealed, his 2008 book on pioneering businesswoman Brownie Wise, became Life of the Party when it was re-released last year. A movie version remains in development.

His most recent book, Elvis Ignited, examines Floridas importance in the career of Elvis Presley.

Kealing also wrote "Calling Me Home: Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock," which came out in 2012, and "Kerouac in Florida: Where the Road Ends," which was published in 2004.

hboedeker@orlandosentinel.com and 407-420-5756.

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Bob Kealing to become Seminole sheriff's PIO - Orlando Sentinel

July 6, 2017

Osahon Tongo's Website: Click Here

by Matt Winkeljohn | The Good Word

Osahon Tongo circled around the other day, passing through Atlanta and stopping by Georgia Tech to revisit the roots of his flight plan -- which is by no means static -- and the former Yellow Jacket linebacker found himself connecting with several of his "light warriors."

This is not to say that the newly minted filmmaker closed any circles.

Tongo will be back, and his next visit to Tech is likely to merge profession and passion -- storytelling and the Yellow Jackets. He's hoping to help breathe life into the vision of athletics director Todd Stansbury by helping to tell the stories of Tech and its student-athletes via video, film and interactive media.

With air beneath his feet following the June 15 world premiere of his short story, "Iman and the Light Warriors," at the American Black Film Festival presented by HBO in South Beach, he returned to The Flats, where he played, studied and discovered possibilities from 2006-10. He left recently with the goal of expanding more horizons. (Photos from "Iman and the Light Warriors")

"Hopefully, I'll be back in Atlanta more often. I'm going to be able to help with some of the story telling at Georgia Tech," Tongo said. "Todd Stansbury is really trying to make Georgia Tech what it can be, and what I imagined.

"Even if you go in his room, there are quotes on his board, like, `Our responsibility is to create leaders who will change the world.' I don't know that any other ADs have that priority, just balancing budgets."

Tongo has a term, "light warrior," for those who aid, guide and even protect. Tech gave him many light warriors while he was a Jacket.

Teammates, coaches, professors and others helped the management major conquer adversity, choose prudent paths from countless options, solve problems, and even learn to assist others. Tongo wants to be a light warrior back.

He's already been one, actually, as he played a supporting role in "Iman and the Light Warriors," a fictional story he wrote about a 10-year-old boy in the dangerous post-revolution City of Aya. Iman's light warriors, who each have developing superpowers, help safeguard him on the way to school so that he can profess his love to his friend, Crystal.

Tongo, who earned a graduate degree in April, 2016, from the USC Cinematic School of Arts, originally made the film, with director, friend, and classmate Jarrett Benjamin Woo, as the final project for one of his last classes, Film 546, Production III - Fiction. Later, they polished it up, and submitted it for a spot in the Black Film Festival, which chose it and a few others from roughly 100 applications.

Motivations for his script were drawn from Tongo's personal experiences and observations of the world. Iman was borne from observation, for example, and Osiris from experience.

"I originally wrote that three years ago. I'd watched this movie (Five Broken Cameras) about a Palestinian on the border, a human story about kids walking through a war zone to go to school," Tongo explained.

"My best friend's brother, Dejavonte Moore, died growing up. He was hit by a truck. He went through gang territory going to school. It was always on my mind."

The movie's credits dedicate the film to "The Fallen Light Warriors," a combination of nine people in the lives of Tongo, Woo and other production and cast members who have passed away -- like Moore.

A 10th spot is dedicated to Trayvon Martin -- an unarmed 17-year-old African-American shot and killed in 2012 by George Zimmerman, who reported Martin as "suspicious." In the movie, Iman places a package of red Twizzlers (licorice) at a shrine to Osiris while on the way to school. Martin died with skittles.

"We cut out a [full] scene where he goes to the grocery to get Twizzlers," Tongo said. "It's an analogy to Trayvon, somebody killed because of someone else's fears."

Tongo's conquered fears, and grown them into action items.

"When I was at Tech the last semester [spring, 2010], I didn't know what I was going to do," he recalled. "I had a year of eligibility. I had a hip injury from 2009, and I had a panic attack on the practice field. I was freaking out, my hands shaking in the dirt, and I didn't see a therapist. I just slept for the rest of the day.

"I didn't talk to anybody for two days. I finished spring ball and got a job [foregoing a final season of football]."

That job, in digital marketing at CNN, came in part through networking with a Tech connection, current assistant athletics director for brand & ideation Simit Shah. A Tech graduate, Shah in 2010 was director of web operations at CNN and helped Tongo get on at CNN after graduation. Soon, he figures to again work with Tongo, at least part time, at Tech.

After nearly two years at CNN, where he grew his digital skills and did more and more video and social work, Tongo executed an internship he'd earned at Tech. Off to Greece he went, "to work in a humane society through AIESEC. We went to Greece and met Tunisian revolutionaries at a conference in Athens; it was an incredible experience."

Back in the States in 2012, Tongo worked in the office of admissions for Emory University's Gouzieta School of Business MBA program. While working at Emory, "I started working on film sets," he said. "We flew around the country to tell these stories, not just write simple stuff."

Before long, an itched developed and Tongo went to USC's SCA -- the largest school of its kind in the world -- to scratch it.

He's learned and practiced just about every aspect of film making, including sound, special effects, casting, filming, you name it. Tongo was even an assistant director on Iman for a day, filling in, and helped find film sites for the crew.

"The director and I hit it off as [screenplay] writing partners, and I kept getting pulled in directions. We were in the Scientology commune building used by [Scientology founder] L. Ron Hubbard; we shot in there for two days," said Tongo, who's directed a few short films. "That scene where [Iman's] getting out of his house, the graffiti, we painted it back the way it was before we left.

"The trains and the mural [shrine to Osiris], that was in the arts district. That's tagging territory [where L.A. graffiti artists are prevalent]. We did our graffiti, and if you tag over someone else's [graffiti], they'll tag over yours so . . . the director (Woo) and production designer slept over to make sure we didn't get tagged."

Tongo's been tagged several times, actually, called upon to assist a number of productions in a variety of capacities.

Before going to the American Black Film Festival in Miami, he was working in Hawaii on "Paradise Run," one of Nickelodeon's top shows (Click Here).

"One of my professors, [executive director] Scott A. Stone, the professor for my reality TV class, asked if I'd like to go to Hawaii and be a production assistant," Tongo said. "I got to learn on the job."

The mind of Tongo, who was at Tech from 2006-10, is a fascinating place, and it travels. His itinerary is a chore to keep up with, as are his churning dreams and visions.

Always learning on the move, he left Atlanta for a wedding in Dallas and is now spending time with his family in Naperville, Ill. Then, back to Los Angeles, where he, Woo and others are trying to convert Iman and the Light Warriors into a TV series, albeit with a more adult orientation than that of the short film.

He'll return to Tech, too, where he built memories and hatched ideas.

For all the many visions he has and the paths he takes, some of his opinions are clear and constant: keep an open mind, embrace love, remain ever on the road to discovery and work with others to make the world a better place.

Former teammates Dominique Reese, Sedric Griffin and many others, coaches, professors, academic advisors, Shah . . . they're all light warriors, lifting Tongo and others so that he might lift others in return.

That's what Iman and the Light Warriors is about, and it's Tongo to a T.

"The whole message is how do you fight fear? With love," he said. "Keep your heart open when you're dealing with adversity. We're all light warriors even though I don't understand my powers yet."

The origin of Tongo's mission is cast in celluloid (or the modern equivalent), as the movie's final credit line explains the inspirations behind it:

"Based on the fact that all my homies are super heroes on a quest to unleash their superpowers."

See the rest here:
#TGW: Tongo to a 'T' - Georgia Tech Official Athletic Site

In 1535, Sir Thomas More was executed in England for high treason.

In 1777, during the American Revolution, British forces captured Fort Ticonderoga.

In 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur tested an anti-rabies vaccine on 9-year-old Joseph Meister, who had been bitten by an infected dog; the boy did not develop rabies.

In 1917, during World War I, Arab forces led by T.E. Lawrence and Auda Abu Tayi captured the port of Aqaba from the Ottoman Turks.

In 1933, the first All-Star baseball game was played at Chicagos Comiskey Park; the American League defeated the National League, 4-2.

In 1942, Anne Frank, her parents and sister entered a secret annex in an Amsterdam building where they were later joined by four other people; they hid from Nazi occupiers for two years before being discovered and arrested.

In 1944, an estimated 168 people died in a fire that broke out during a performance in the main tent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in Hartford, Connecticut.

In 1964, the movie A Hard Days Night, starring The Beatles, had its world premiere in London. British colony Nyasaland became the independent country of Malawi.

In 1967, war erupted as Nigeria sent troops into the secessionist state of Biafra. (The Biafran War lasted 2 1/2 years and resulted in a Nigerian victory.)

In 1971, jazz trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong died in New York at age 69.

In 1988, 167 North Sea oil workers were killed when explosions and fires destroyed a drilling platform. Medical waste and other debris began washing up on New York City-area seashores, forcing the closing of several popular beaches.

In 1997, the rover Sojourner rolled down a ramp from the Mars Pathfinder lander onto the Martian landscape to begin inspecting the soil and rocks of the red planet.

Ten years ago: A man on a balcony over the New York-New York casino floor in Las Vegas opened fire on the gamblers below, wounding four people before he was tackled by off-duty military reservists. (The gunman, Steven Zegrean, was later convicted of charges including attempted murder and was sentenced to 26 to 90 years in prison; he died in April 2010 less than a year into his term.) Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, pioneer of the modern historical romance novel, died in Princeton, Minnesota, at age 68.

Five years ago: At a 100-nation conference in Paris, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hailed an accelerating wave of defections in President Bashar Assads inner circle as the United States and its international allies pleaded once again for global sanctions against the Syrian regime. Former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman was released from jail in Florida for a second time while he awaited his second-degree murder trial for fatally shooting Trayvon Martin. (Zimmerman was acquitted.)

One year ago: President Barack Obama scrapped plans to cut American forces in Afghanistan by half before leaving office. Double-amputee Olympian Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to six years in a South African prison for murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Philando Castile, a black elementary school cafeteria worker, was killed during a traffic stop in the St. Paul suburb of Falcon Heights by Officer Jeronimo Yanez, who was charged with second-degree manslaughter (Yanez was acquitted at trial). Former Fox News Channel anchor Gretchen Carlson sued network chief executive Roger Ailes, claiming she was cut loose after she had refused his sexual advances and complained about harassment in the workplace, allegations denied by Ailes. (Carlson later settled her lawsuit for a reported $20 million.) The augmented-reality game Pokemon Go made its debut in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

Todays Birthdays: Singer-actress Della Reese is 86. The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is 82. Actor Ned Beatty is 80. Singer Gene Chandler is 77. Country singer Jeannie Seely is 77. Actor Burt Ward is 72. Former President George W. Bush is 71. Actor-director Sylvester Stallone is 71. Actor Fred Dryer is 71. Actress Shelley Hack is 70. Actress Nathalie Baye is 69. Actor Geoffrey Rush is 66. Actress Allyce Beasley is 66. Rock musician John Bazz (The Blasters) is 65. Actor Grant Goodeve is 65. Country singer Nanci Griffith is 64. Retired MLB All-Star Willie Randolph is 63. Jazz musician Rick Braun is 62. Actor Casey Sander is 62. Country musician John Jorgenson is 61. Former first daughter Susan Ford Bales is 60. Hockey player and coach Ron Duguay (doo-GAY) is 60. Actress-writer Jennifer Saunders is 59. Rock musician John Keeble (Spandau Ballet) is 58. Actor Pip Torrens is 57. Actor Brian Posehn is 51. Political reporter/moderator John Dickerson (TV: Face the Nation) is 49. Actor Brian Van Holt is 48. Rapper Inspectah Deck (Wu-Tang Clan) is 47. TV host Josh Elliott is 46. Rapper 50 Cent is 42. Actress Tia Mowry is 39. Actress Tamera Mowry is 39. Comedian-actor Kevin Hart is 38. Actress Eva (EH-vuh) Green is 37. Actor Gregory Smith is 34. Rock musician Chris Woody Wood (Bastille) is 32. Rock singer Kate Nash is 30. Actor Jeremy Suarez is 27.

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This Day in History - San Mateo Daily Journal

To celebrate the Fourth of July, Alexander Bonds coolly walked up to NYPD Officer Miosotis Familias police vehicle and shot her dead.

An African-American, Bonds made his distaste for the police clear in many of his social media postings. The NYPD did not hesitate to call Familias death an assassination.

Like the man who shot Rep. Steve Scalise a few weeks ago, Bonds, a Hillary Clinton supporter, occupies a spot on the extreme end of the suggestibility curve.

What the media repeatedly suggested during the Obama years, occasionally at the presidents prompting, was that blacks were uniquely vulnerable to gratuitous abuse at the hands of white authorities. No media outlet reinforced this notion as insistently as CNN.

Although there are countless examples of the way CNN twisted the news to drive this theme home, one stands out for its sheer fakery. It unfolded a month or so after George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.

For the record, the Black Lives Matter movement began as a hashtag after Zimmermans acquittal. Those who followed CNN and the other major media had every reason to be shocked at the verdict. The media deceived them over and over again in the months following the February 2012 shooting.

Prodding CNN into action was the profane, upstart Current TV show, The Young Turks. On the night of March 19, 2012, host Cenk Uygur played the unedited Zimmerman call to the police dispatcher.

No network had played the unedited tape, in part because Zimmerman used the word fing at one point and aholes at another. On an unenhanced tape, the word fing is difficult to hear. The word that follows it is impossible to hear.

Yet like those zealots who see images of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich, some in the Young Turks viewing audience found racism in empty static and convinced themselves that Zimmerman said, fing coons.

The next evening Uygur thanked his audience for their perceptiveness. No one picked up what you guys picked up, he congratulated them. He then played the unedited tape again, the key words of which were utterly incomprehensible and declared, Thats unbelievable.

Uygur continued, Its possible he said goons. Its possible he said something else. That much conceded, Uygur concluded, but it certainly sounds like coons.' He then explained how relevant was Zimmermans use of that word given that it elevated the shooting to a hate crime.

The next day, March 21, on Anderson Coopers AC360, CNN reporter Gary Tuchman worked with audio design specialist Rick Sierra to isolate and enhance the audio from Zimmermans call to the dispatcher.

Even cleaned up, the audio was unintelligible, save, of course, to the true believers. Tuchman was one of them. It certainly sounds like that word to me, said Tuchman, that word, of course, being coons.

Media critic Tommy Christopher agreed. Said he, voicing the media consensus, The result is, at the very least, more convincing than the raw audio.

At the time, no one at CNN was asking the most fundamental questions about Zimmermans use of this word. Why, for instance, in 2012, would a young Hispanic civil rights activist and Obama supporter think to use an archaic throwback word like coons?

More basically, why would Zimmerman begin a sentence with the pronoun it if he were to complete his thought with a plural noun, as in, Its fing coons.

Not everyone was on board for this nonsense. Liberal media pundit Jon Stewart said on his show what many ordinary citizens were thinking, That doesnt sound like a word at all!

In the blogosphere, almost everyone agreed with Stewart. One suspects that there were those within CNNs legal department who did as well.

Tuchman was sent back to the studio. This time, allegedly using an even higher-tech method with the help of audio specialist Brian Stone, Tuchman admitted to CNNs Wolf Blitzer on April 4, It does sound less like that racial slur.

In fact, the word in question sounded a whole lot like cold. Again, though, Tuchman failed to mention the role that its should have played in interpreting what was said. Its fing cold makes sense, especially on a cool, damp Florida evening.

Its fing coons never made any sense either as a linguistic construct or as a reflection of Zimmermans character. Still, the damage had been done.

Despite what should have been a complete exoneration of Zimmerman, Blitzer concluded his broadcast saying, But its readily apparent there will still be controversy over what he said.

The stable members of the CNN audience moved on. The suggestible members of that audience never let go.

Jack Cashills book explains how the truth was exposed about the Trayvon case: If I Had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman

Media wishing to interview Jack Cashill, please contact media@wnd.com.

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Another cop slain, another notch on CNN's belt - WND.com

EXPAND

Photo by Gage Skidmore / Flickr

Data shows Florida's Stand Your Ground law is awful. The rule lets you kill anyone you want in self-defense, even if you're the person who started a fight. In the years since the law went into effect, the state's murder rate has shot up dramatically. The law has been used to exonerate multiple cops who have shot unarmed people and, most notably, to let George Zimmerman walk free after following, harassing, and then fatally shooting unarmed Miami teen Trayvon Martin a killing that later helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement.

Weeks ago, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill that actually makes it easierfor people who've killed others to claim they were standing their ground.

But today, a Miami-Dade County Circuit Court judge ruled that new law unconstitutional and dropped a reference to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenixin the ruling while he was at it. Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch linked to a legal paper arguing that the Ministry of Magic, the governing body in J.K. Rowling's wizarding universe, suffers from some severe cases of judicial and executive overreach and perhaps did not give Harry Potter a fair trial in the series' fifth book.

The ruling in and of itself is narrow, does not apply to the rest of the state, and will likely be overturned in the Third District Court of Appeal, which tends to be more favorable to the state in cases like this one. But it's still an important decision for justice advocates, who opposed the bill when state Sen. Rob Bradley proposed it last December.

The new rule shifts the "burden of proof" for prosecutors. Previously, if someone tried to claim a stand-your-ground defense, they would have to prove their case to a jury. Now the opposite is true. Once you claim "stand your ground," it's presumed to be true unless a prosecutor can prove otherwise. Local attorneys warned this would make it extremely difficult to prosecute many murder cases, but the bill passed through the NRA-fueled Florida Legislature anyway.

Today Judge Hirsch ruled the law unconstitutional, writing in an order that under state law, only the Florida Supreme Court, not the Legislature, can make a change of that nature.

"As a matter of constitutional separation of powers, that procedure cannot be legislatively modified," Hirsch wrote.

But Hirsch has long been known for dropping scores of literary references in his orders. Miami Heraldcourt reporter David Ovalle has long chronicled Hirsch's love for all things Shakespeare, especially Hamlet.

Hirsch wasn't able to find a way to name-drop the Bard this time around. But instead, he took a slightly more modern route, by linking to a legal paper on the separation of powers in J.K. Rowling's wizarding universe.

Late into the 14-page ruling, Hirsch offered a short lesson on the Founding Fathers' constitutional intentions when setting up the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government. He quotes Federalist Paper number 48, in which James Madison warned that the legislative branch is "everywhere extending the sphere of its activity" and eroding the nation's systems of checks and balances.

Then, in a footnote, Hirsch gave readers a more contemporary (and more than slightly frivolous) reference: a paper published in the Hertfordshire Law Journal titled "Harry Potter and the Separation of Powers: A Law and Literature Review of J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." The paper's opening summary argues that the main governing body in the Potteruniverse, the Ministry of Magic, is constitutionally flawed and suffers from some serious cases of judicial and executive overreach:

A nearly just society is influenced, if not governed, by the principle of the separation of powers. In J.K. Rowlings series of books on Harry Potter the Ministry of Magic, the wizards governing body, is ignorant to the principle and because of this natural justice and the rule of law are threatened, however Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, repeatedly ensures that the outcome of the judicial process is just, albeit it through encouraging kidnap and escape, and illustrates that natural justice can only survive when the judicial function is subject to the separation doctrine. How J.K. Rowling deals with these issues is explored in this paper.

The bulk of the paper argues that Rowling's fictional wizard universe doesn't have a particularly fair or just court system. Through much of the Order of the Phoenix, Potter sits on trial at the Ministry of Magic in London. The paper's author argues thatCornelius Fudge, chair of the Wizengamot, the highest wizarding court in Britain, is "biased against Harry Potter:"

"The trial of Harry Potter shows that through the lack of a separation of powers in the wizards constitutional system, there is a distinct disregard for the rules of natural justice, traditionally applied to judicial decisions," the paper reads. "These rules are inherent to satisfy the well-known principle that justice should not only be done but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done."

Throughout the paper, the author reminds readers that Fudge, the judge, spends his time discrediting witnesses, slandering Potter in the local wizarding newspaper, messing with Potter's hearing dates to ensure his witnesses cannot be called to testify, and even threatening to change the laws to ensure that Potter gets put in Azkaban, the wizarding jail guarded by hooded Dementors, whose mouths suck the souls out of victims.

"All of these issues show complete ignorance to the doctrine of the separation of powers," the paper's author argues. "Fudge is involved in the legislature, the judiciary, and the executive of the Ministry of Magic."

Sure, that's technically true. And the paper does a good job of explaining the basic concept of checks and balances to the sort of people who've never heard of such a thing before, like schoolchildren.

But the reference also comes across as a bit flippant, given the severity of the subject matter: Florida's Stand Your Ground law let Zimmerman murder a black child in 2012. It might be best for judges to focus on actual Florida law before we get too wrapped up in wizarding politics.

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Miami Judge References Harry Potter to Strike Down New "Stand Your Ground" Law - Miami New Times