Sometimes Justice Gets Served

With rampant rate of puppycide being committed by police officers in this country it’s nice to see that once in a while karma appears to serve some sweet justice:

BLOOMFIELD, N.J. (AP) – Authorities say a northern New Jersey police officer accidentally shot himself when a dog apparently attacked him.

The history of police officers shooting dogs leads me to take the claim that the dog was attacking with a grain of salt. But even if it was attacking this is still a sweet story because, due to their behavior, police officers should be viewed by dogs as a threat to their life.

Papers Please

One of my biggest gripes with the whole “illegal” immigrant issue is that those arguing for stronger enforcement against people born outside of this country are necessarily arguing for the establishment of a police state (which we already have so they’re really arguing for an even more tyrannical police state). In order to ensure only citizens and “legal” immigrants are in this country there needs to be a way to identify them and a way to verify their identities. That necessity leads to shit like police checkpoints where everybody has to present their papers for inspection:

The speed limit drops to 35 mph, the first warning of the upcoming checkpoint. All vehicles must stop. Drivers must use low beams. Wray pulls up along a string of neon-orange cones. “Slow down, slow down,” she says. “Hmm. I don’t see anybody. Today might be a lucky day. I don’t see anybody. Maybe they are in the car? Oh, there they are.”

A stocky uniformed man emerges from a shaded hut on the edge of the road and crosses to Wray’s window.

“How you doing?” he says, peering into the pickup.

“Doing good,” she says.

“U.S. citizens here?” the Border Patrol agent questions.

“U.S. citizens,” Wray says.

The agent nods, steps back and beckons us onward.

Wray exhales deeply, loosens her grip on the steering wheel, and presses on the gas.

A frontier war is being waged in southern Arizona, but it’s many miles north of the Mexico border. People are fed up with the immigration checkpoints. A round-the-clock U.S. Border Patrol presence at the checkpoints means that American citizens must endure inspection when they commute to work or run errands; every major road has one of these blockades.

I’m old enough to remember when people used the existence of checkpoints in the former Soviet Union as evidence that the nation was suffering under a tyrannical regime. Now we have the exact same shit here. Between citizenship checkpoints, sobriety checkpoints, and random police checkpoints setup when officers are looking for a suspect we have plenty of opportunity to emulate Soviet citizens by presenting our papers to thugs with badges. I guess checkpoints have gone from tyrannical to free now that we have them because I don’t hear as many people bringing them up as evidence of tyranny anymore.

Some people less apt to bow down to authority figures my contest the legality of these citizenship checkpoints. But Tuscon exists in the “Constitution free zone” where we have even fewer privileges than normal. In all probability these checkpoints are completely legal due to where they are because this is the land of the free.

Meet the New Narrative

I remember not too long ago when everybody was beautiful. At least that’s what we were told to say. We were told to say this because eating disorders were becoming a thing of concern, predominantly with girls who believed they were fat. But the narrative has changed. Now we’re all a bunch of fat fucks who are too stupid to buy food without being patronized by our grocery carts:

The panel came up with six preferred strategies: discount coupons for SNAP recipients; rebates of up to $60 for healthy purchases on EBT cards; buy one get one free deals for SNAP recipients; a targeted marketing plan to promote healthy food; a USDA loyalty card; and new specialized shopping carts.

The “MyCart grocery cart” would provide dividers for shoppers to make sure they are selecting enough items in each “MyPlate” category, the USDA’s food icon.

“MyCart is a nonfinancial approach that would use behavioral economics to encourage healthier purchases by any consumer, including SNAP participants,” the report said.

The cart would be color-coded, physically divided, and have a system installed so that when the shopping cart reaches its healthy “threshold” it would congratulate the customer.

“The algorithm would group the purchases to classify them using the MyPlate designations and to provide consumers with a message of support or encouragement (e.g., “You achieved a MyCart healthy shopping basket!”),” the report said.

As with most things, this idea is being aimed first at people on government assistance. It’s an easy category to target since the government can justify its targeting by claiming that it’s footing the bill. But it also knows that grocery stores aren’t going to ask customers if they’re shopping with food stamps and, if so, give them a different cart. Instead grocery stores would be more apt to just make every cart a “MyCart” or whatever other stupid patronizing name the government comes up with for its program.

I often wonder if the government’s sudden push to call us all a bunch of fat fucks is causing or will cause an uptick in the number of people with eating disorders. Maybe that’s the plan. After all, the government only cares about the statistics. It doesn’t matter to the bean counters if there are less obese people due to healthier eating and more exercise or anorexia.

Prepare to Pay More for Your Subjugation

Fellow slaves I have some unfortunate news. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which enjoys a monopoly on airport security (either directly or by having to approve any alternative security system), has decided to raise its prices:

— Airline passengers at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and airports across the U.S. are going to have to pay a little more starting Monday.

KNX 1070′s Ed Mertz reports the Transportation Security Administration fees tacked on to tickets are going up to $5.60 for all flights.

After Monday $5.60 of your ticket will go towards funding the TSA’s programs to confiscate any containers that can store over 3 oz. of liquids, steal things from your checked baggage, have perverts look at your naked body with a scanner, sexually assaulting you if you don’t want to go through a scanner, and verbally harassing you if they believe you look suspicious or an agent is just having a bad day.

While $5.60 doesn’t sound like much it is an absurd charge once you actually consider what that money is going towards.

Marketing Guns to Children Canard

There are two ways to drum up strong political support for your cause: tie to to fighting terrorism or saving the children. Gun control advocates sometimes dabble in the former but their bread and butter is the latter. With their recent slew of defeats the gun control bunch have decided to play its hand at “saving the children” again but pushing legislation that would prohibit anybody from “marketing firearms to children”:

(a) Conduct Prohibited.–Not later than one year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Federal Trade Commission shall promulgate rules in accordance with section 553 of title 5, United States Code, to prohibit any person from marketing firearms to children. Such rules shall include the following:

(1) A prohibition on the use of cartoon characters to promote firearms and firearm products.

(2) A prohibition on firearm brand name merchandise marketed for children (such as hats, t-shirts, and stuffed animals).

(3) A prohibition on the use of firearm marketing campaigns with the specific intent to appeal to children.

(4) A prohibition on the manufacturing of a gun with colors or designs that are specifically designed with the purpose to appeal to children.

(5) A prohibition on the manufacturing of a gun intended for use by children that does not clearly and conspicuously note the risk posed by the firearm by labeling somewhere visible on the firearm any of the following:

(A) “Real gun, not a toy.”.

(B) “Actual firearm the use of which may result in death or serious bodily injury.”.

(C) “Dangerous weapon”.

(D) Other similar language determined by the Federal Trade Commission.

I think Tam summed it up best:

Look, if you think that the firearms industry is actually spending advertising dollars to market its products to a demographic that is going to save enough quarters from their allowance to buy a Glock, toddle into the gun shop, reach up on tiptoe and slide their piggy bank across the counter, only to be told “Sorry, kid, you gotta be 21 to buy that“…

This is just another piece of meaningless legislation. Its only purpose is to make up a currently nonexistent problem and then claim to fix it. Gun control advocates are pushing it because it gives them grounds for demonizing gun owners by pointing to the make believe problem of gun manufacturers marketing to children and then claiming that gun owners directly fund it.

It’s really just another variation of “having a gun control conversation”. When a gun control advocate says they want to “have a conversation” what they really mean is that they want a gun owner to say something that can be taken out of context and used to demonize gun owners everywhere. If a conversation doesn’t give the gun control advocates their desired sound bite they just claim that the gun owners refused to “have a conversation”, which is an insinuation that the gun owner isn’t a reasonable person and is entirely unwilling to discuss methods of keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people.

As despots through out have learned, if you can’t win with facts you try to demonize your opposition.

Minneapolis Police Department Created More Aggregate Demand for Dog Breeders

From my understanding there is a bit of a rivalry between the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments. Not wanting his department to be outdone by the St. Paul department in creating aggregate demand for dog breeders a brave soldier of the Minneapolis department stepped up to the plate and executed a family pet:

In the alley, Tito — a nearly two-year-old, 120-pound Cane Corso — approached an officer who was still hunting for the car theft suspect. The officer ended up opening fire and killing Trott and Lyczkowski’s beloved dog.

“I ran out the door and was hollering for him,” Trott tells us. “I didn’t get halfway to the gate when you could hear the officer yell, ‘Stop!’ He just yelled ‘Stop!’ and shot him and that was it.”

St. Paul is still in the lead but I’m sure another fine soldier of the Minneapolis Police Department will find a litter of puppies to execute, which would put his department ahead of St. Paul’s.

Not surprisingly the officer was quick to jump on the “You weren’t here, man. You don’t know what went down!” justification:

“The only thing [cops] kept saying is, ‘You weren’t here, you don’t know what’s going on, you don’t have time to discern pet from animal and in our mind they’re just animals,'” Trott says. “It was, shoot first, think later. You know, I understand where they’re at — I worked four years for the Illinois Department of Corrections as a correctional officer. But [Tito] had a collar, tags, and he’s clearly not a stray.”

This has become the police officers’ equivalent to the Obama supporters’ race card. And like that race card this “You weren’t there, man!” card has worn thin. The officer apparently said that he didn’t have time to discern pet from animal but if you’re using a firearm you better be 100 percent sure of your fucking target. Shooting a dog or person because you didn’t have time to discern the situation is not an acceptable excuse. If needing to identify targets before deploying lethal force is too rigorous for you then you shouldn’t be a police officer.

Whenever I mention these strange views I hold somebody invariably falls back to the polices’ other favorite excuse, officer safety. They claim that officers have to be given considerably leeway in these matters because “They’re putting their life on the line to save ours!” I’m sorry but that’s a bullshit excuse as well. Most of an officer’s time is spent extorting the citizenry by issuing speeding tickets and parking violations, arresting people participating an mutually agreed to transactions that the state has declared prohibited, and kidnapping people who have failed to give the state a cut of the action. The lives saved by police officers seems to more and more be a happy accident than purposeful action, which makes sense since saving lives seldom results in more funding for a department. Maybe if today’s police spent most of their time saving lives I’d be willing to cut them a bit of slack but they don’t so I’m not.

Hopefully our society will eventually stop shielding police officers from the consequences of bad actions. Until then aggregate demand for dog breeders will continue to increase.

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t

Damn I love government. Well, OK, I hate government but it gives me a never ending fountain of things to write about. For example, California has been suffering from major droughts (because turning a bunch of arid desert into farming land was a stellar idea). Because of this Michael Korte and Laura Whitney, wanting to be good citizens, decided to cut back on watering their grass. You would think the local government would be ecstatic about the idea. This could convince other fine citizens to stop watering their grass and save scarce water for most important uses. But that’s not how the local government responded. Instead it is planning to punish the couple because their grass isn’t green enough (must be part of the government’s green initiative):

(Reuters) – A Southern California couple who scaled back watering their lawn amid the state’s drought received a warning from the suburb where they live that they might be fined for creating an eyesore – despite emergency statewide orders to conserve.

Michael Korte and Laura Whitney, who live near Los Angeles in Glendora, said on Thursday they received a letter from the city warning they had 60 days to green up their partially brown lawn or pay a fine ranging from $100 to $500.

Talk about mixed signals. On the one hand the government is complaining that there is a drought and water needs to be conserved. On the other hand the government bitches when somebody’s grass isn’t green enough. What the fuck is a person caught in that situation supposed to do? It’s almost like the entire system is rigger so that no matter what you do the government gets to take your fucking money.

I’m Not the Only One Who Thinks Hillary is Interchangeable with Most Republicans

Let’s say you had some financial conference where George W. Bush was planned to be your keynote speaker. Now, for whatever reasons, let’s say Georgie couldn’t make it. Who would you get to replace him? Perhaps Dick Cheney? Too frightening. Maybe John McCain. But he’d just waste everybody’s time talking about how he wants to butcher every man, woman, and child in the Middle East. There’s always Mitt Romney. Then again you never know what he’s going to say with how often he changes his mind on things. I guess that leaves one well-known politician who exhibits everything that is the Republican Party; Hillary Clinton:

Former President George W. Bush was supposed to give a speech to Ameriprise Financial conference in Boston next week but had to bow out because he’s recovering from surgery on a bum knee. But the financial services firm was able to secure a prominent substitute speaker: Hillary Clinton.

Clinton’s speech, confirmed by two sources familiar with the event, is the latest in a series of paid speaking-circuit gigs for the former secretary of state and likely 2016 presidential contender, who charges upward of $200,000 to deliver remarks or take part in question-and-answer sessions.

$200,000 dollars? And she is bitching about being broke? Talk about fiscal irresponsibility, which is yet another reason she’s the perfect Republican.

But, seriously, if anybody wants a keynote speaker to talk about bombing people in the Middle East and terrorizing people at home I’d be willing to do so for much less than $200,000. I might even be willing to do it so for the price of my expenses alone if I could record it and post it on YouTube later. I’d even dress up as a fascist for full effect. My e-mail address is on the left-hand side of this blog. If you’re interested drop me an e-mail.

Monday Metal: Bushido by Hammerfall

Hammerfall is coming out with a new album and have released a new song from it titled Bushido. After the disappointment that was Infected it appears as though Hammerfall is going back to its roots, which is to say they’re trying to not suck this time around. Based on this song, and the fact that Hector is back on the art work (and looking pretty bad ass as a samurai-knight hybrid), the band is on the right track:

God I hope this album doesn’t suck because I love everything else Hammerfall has done.

You Need the State to Protect Your Rights; You Need to Fight the State to Protect Your Rights

As an anarchist that hangs out with statist libertarians I am often involved in political and philosophical debates. When I mention my belief that we humans don’t need to be ruled my more statist cohorts have to quickly jump in to tell me how wrong I am. According to them government is absolutely critical for a free society (because nothing says free like being ruled). When I ask why they almost always claim that a government is necessary to protect the rights of the citizenry.

This reason has always amused me. Governments have it easy. They get to make all of the rules, including what is considered a right under their legal system. You would think that they would write a set of rules that they intend to follow. But governments are the biggest violators of the very rights they declare. When I point this out my statist friends reply by saying that we need to stand up to the government whenever it violates our rights.

So the theory of statism goes like this. We need a government to protect our rights and we must protect our rights against the government. If we’re worried about our rights why would we want to charge the biggest violator of those rights with protecting them? That makes as much sense as charging the fox with guarding your chickens.

Being forced to choose between defending my rights against smaller groups of vicious people or one large, centralized organization with a monopoly on violence and perceived legitimacy by a sizable portion of the population I’d choose the former. It’s much easier to defend yourself against small mostly disorganized groups who nobody considered a legitimate authority. When you have to defend yourself against a government, which is nothing more than a very large gang, you end up not only having to fight the government but all of the people who believe it to be a legitimate entity (because, after all, it’s their gang so it must be the right one).