Wall of Fame Assholes – Page 20

Dumbest Thing You’ll Read All Day

Salon has a long running track record of trying to disagree with libertarians on everything. Sometimes this causes it problem. For example, due to the publication’s idiotic claims that Rand Paul is a libertarian (he’s not by any definition I use) it has to disagree with everything he does. Rand has been claiming he opposes the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program and that means Salon has had to find a reason to back peddle on its previous opposition of the same so it doesn’t find itself on the same side as Rand. Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the dumbest thing you’ll read all day:

Perhaps to those like Sen. Rand Paul who’ve never had to fight assumptions based on one’s ethnicity or the color of one’s skin, the thought of cell phone data being pooled and analyzed is disconcerting. However, as someone who regularly puts up with extra scrutiny, whether it’s at an airport or a shopping mall, I welcome the leveling of the playing field that bulk data collection brings. I urge our government not to follow the Russian method of profiling, but, instead, to use bulk data collection to arrive at objective analyses.

That’s right, opposing surveillance is now white privilege. I’m not sure how that is since persecuted minorities have the most to lose from the NSA’s surveillance. The data it collects isn’t used to clear anybody, it’s only used when it can lead to somebody’s prosecution. With everything being illegal in this country anything you say at any point is likely incriminating to the right prosecutor. If you’re part of a targeted minority, such as Muslims, the last thing you want to do is have the NSA collect your phone calls because something you said could very well be used to fabricate charges to justify putting you in a cage.

Minneapolis’ Finest Mace a 10 Year-Old

Officer safety is a huge concern for the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). When you’re a cop you can never been too careful. For example, if you come across a 10 year-old boy at a protests can you be certain that kid isn’t going to rough you up? Of course not! That’s why you need to mace him:

Minneapolis authorities launched an investigation into police response during a downtown street protest that turned unruly Wednesday night in which chemical spray used by officers hit a 10-year-old boy.

Police Chief Janeé Harteau and Mayor Betsy Hodges called a news conference Thursday asking witnesses to come forward.

“It is critical for everyone involved that we complete a thorough investigation, so I need the public’s help,” the chief said. “We must have the full set of facts.”

I’m betting this is going to be another case of “we investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong.” But this shows that the officers of the MPD are either so pathetic that they’re afraid of a 10 year-old boy or are so sadistic that they like to cause children great deals of pain.

Croatia Declares War on Liberland

That didn’t take long. Not even two weeks since Liberland declared independence the Croatian government has decided to declare war on the small country by kidnapping its president:

Croatian authorities could not be reached for comment to confirm the arrest of Vít Jedlička, a libertarian politician from the Czech Republic. A group calling itself the Liberland Press Association, which has spoken in the past for Jedlička, made the announcement in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com.

“The president of the self-proclaimed micro-nation of the Free Republic of Liberland, Vít Jedlička, has been arrested by Croatian police for illegally trespassing an international border,” read the statement. “The arrest may have taken place on no man’s land territory. This would raise issues on the Croatian-Serbian border and could start a new crisis in the Balkans.”

What was his crime? Occupying an unclaimed chunk of land apparently. I was kind of curious whether Serbia or Croatia would be the first country to declare war on the small nation. After all, the inhabitants of a 2.7 square-mile piece of unclaimed territory are quite the threat to established nations such as Serbia and Croatia. Perhaps Croatia was concerned its serfs would migrate to the small nation to enjoy the voluntary taxes.

Children Are Property of the State

Many parents mistakenly believe that they are the legal guardians of their children. I say mistakenly because they are merely enjoying the temporary privilege of being the legal guardian of their children. That privilege, like all privileges, can be revoked at any moment by the state. One may wonder what would convince the state to revoke such a privilege. Most people would likely answer things such as letting a child starve or beating the child. Perhaps that was the case at some point in the past but more and more the state is revoke the permission of parents to be legal guardians of their children for asinine reasons. Now the state has gone so far as to rule that parents need not be at fault of anything to lose their guardian privileges:

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The state can remove an out-of-control child from the custody of a parent even if the mother or father is not to blame for the child’s behavior, a California appeals court said Thursday.

If children face substantial risk of harming themselves, it doesn’t matter whether the parent did anything intentional to put them in that position, the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled.

When you see the words “substantial risk of harming themselves” you may think about suicidal children and parents not properly securing things like knives, guns, or pills. That’s not the case here:

Thursday’s ruling came in the case of a Los Angeles County mother whose teen daughter repeatedly ran away from home and had a child at the age of 15. The appellate court said the girl remained incorrigible despite her mother’s best efforts, which included looking for her each time she left home, sending her to live with her grandparents and calling the police and Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services for help. The mother was identified in court documents only as “Lisa E.” and her daughter as “R.T.”

“(The) mother in this case was neither neglectful nor blameworthy in being unable to supervise or protect her daughter,” the court said.

Fortunately the state decided to swoop in, revoke the mother’s guardian privileges, and kidnap the child. In the end the state decided to grant guardianship privileges to the child’s grandparents but it could have just as easily decided to be less benevolent and placed the child in foster care or even prison (since the intention was to prevent the child from running away). This case just demonstrates what us anarchist already know; children are the property of the state.

Customer Service with a Middle Finger

The worst part about monopolies is if you don’t like their service you have no alternatives. When it comes to monopolies the state is the biggest one of them all and it shows. For example, the state has declared a monopoly for itself in gang-style protection schemes. That is to say if you don’t want to be roughed up, kidnapped, or have your business stolen from you you only have one protection racket you can pay off, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Since the IRS has no competition it can demand you pay it off under the penalty of having armed thugs sent to kidnap you and still refuse to answer any of the questions you have about its overly complicated extortion structure:

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said Tuesday that service at his agency has gotten so bad that they are ignoring more than 60 percent of taxpayers’ phone calls during this tax season.

Speaking at the National Press Club, Mr. Koskinen pleaded with more money, saying a budget boost would help them staff their overwhelmed customer service lines. He also said it would help reverse staffing cuts in their compliance division, where he said the government will lose $2 billion this year in money it would otherwise have been able to collect if it had better staffing.

Just because the IRS refuses to take your call doesn’t mean your exempted from or receive an automatic delay for paying your extortion bill. And since the IRS has no competition it has no motivation whatsoever to improve its service. After all, if you don’t pay you’re still going to rot in a cage and your assets will be stolen from you.

Killing is the Only Thing the State Excels At

European manufactures of drugs used in lethal injection have been holding out on the United States. This has many states very concerned because they’re running out of the drugs but not people to kill. To solve this problem Virginia has been looking into bringing a classing killing instrument back. Utah, not wanting to be outdone, is bringing back the firing squad:

Utah became the only state that allows firing squads for executions when Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law Monday approving the method for use when no lethal injection drugs are available, even though he has called it “a little bit gruesome.”

The Republican governor has said Utah is a capital punishment state and needs a backup execution method in case a shortage of the drugs persists.

Do you know what else Utah could do if it ran out of lethal injection drugs? Stop killing people. Numerous people sentenced to death have later been exonerated. That means those sentenced to death are not guaranteed to actually be guilty. Since guilt can’t be guaranteed the death sentence should be entirely unacceptable as a person should have the right to continue fighting their case as they very well may be innocent.

But the state is only good at one thing and that’s killing people. It’s not going to let anything interfere with that, especially pesky people who think prisoners have rights and shouldn’t be executed.

California Attorney Wants to Legalize Murdering Homosexuals

I guess bigotry is going to be the theme today. First Larry Pratt says Gun Owners of America is a Muslim-free zone and now I have an attorney that wants to make it legal to murder homosexuals:

An attorney from Huntington Beach, McLaughlin in late February spent $200 to propose a ballot measure that authorizes the killing of gays and lesbians by “bullets to the head,” or “any other convenient method.”

McLaughlin’s “Sodomite Suppression Act” now is testing the limits of free speech and raising the question: Why can’t the state’s initiative process screen out blatantly illegal ideas?

The Legislature’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus wrote a letter to the State Bar, asking for an investigation into McLaughlin’s fitness to practice law. More than 3,800 people signed a petition to State Bar President Craig Holden asking that McLaughlin lose his law license for advocating to “legalize the murder” of gays and lesbians.

The petition requests McLaughlin be disbarred for advocating to legalize murdering homosexuals. One could make an argument that McLaughlin has the right to free speech and this is merely an exercise of that right. However I see another reason for disbarring McLaughlin. I believe an attorney, in order to be considered competent, should demonstrate knowledge of legal matters. For example, an attorney should know what the legal definition of sodomy is. Sodomy, legally, is any act of anal or oral sex. But McLaughlin’s proposed law, which has sodomy in the title, is targeted specifically at homosexuals.

If McLaughlin doesn’t even understand the legal definition of sodomy yet feels inclined to write a law with sodomy in the title then he probably shouldn’t be practicing law. I’d also point out that he’s a fucking asshole but that’s never prevented anybody from practicing law.

Obey or Die

Franklin Graham, the son of Bill Graham (who made a hilarious guest appearance in The Illuminatus! Trilogy), is your typical religious zealot. He espouses a belief in god, hates everybody who isn’t a cisgender heterosexual, and becomes sexually aroused when in the presence of authority. That last part really confuses me though. As a Christian I would think he would find it sinful to worship the false idol of the state. After all, Jesus was about as anti-state as one could get and ended up being killed by the Roman state because of it. But Graham loves the state so much that he took time out of his busy day of judging everybody (which is also something I thought Christians were supposed to refrain) to write a very important message on his Facebook wall:

In other words as long as you’re an obedient little slave you (probably) won’t get hurt! This is one of the sickest messages imaginable. He just justified any police action taken if somebody refuses to get down on their knees and kiss an officer’s boot. I though this was supposed to be the freest goddamn country on Earth and a nation of laws. In a free state (I know that’s an oxymoron) one would be free to disobey unlawful orders regardless of who barked them. And a nation of laws would hold everybody to the same standard regardless if they wear a shiny badge and a silly looking costume or not.

This is an attitude shared by most of the touch on crime fuckwits. Not only is it an endorsement of fascism but it’s also blatant victim blaming. Blaming somebody who was shot dead by a cop for refusing to obey an unlawful order is right up there with blaming a woman who was raped for wearing too short of a skirt. If a cop acts unlawfully they are the wrongdoer. Period. There is no situation where a cop shooting somebody that doesn’t comply with an unlawful order is OK.

Franklin Graham is one of those people on my very long list of psychopaths who should be shipped to a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific to isolate their wickedness from civilized society.

As an aside, I wonder how Graham copes with his belief that homosexuality is a sin and getting a raging erection every time he’s in the presence of a male police officer.

Tom Cotton Hates Due Process

Is the Republican Party holding some kind of contest to see who can make the biggest public display of asshattery? If it is it seems like Tom Cotton isn’t holding back. While his supporters have been busy touting him as a hero and fighter for liberty due to his military service as it turns out he isn’t a fan of liberty. In fact Cotton appears to be a rather big fan of torture without so much as a trail:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Monday said the U.S. should be “proud” of how it treats the “savages” it detains at the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

“Terrorists need no excuse to attack us here. They’ve shown that for decades and decades,” Cotton said on Fox News’ “The Kelly File.” “We should be proud for the way we treated these savages at Guantanamo Bay and the way our soldiers conduct themselves all around the world to include the people doing the very hard work at Guantanamo Bay.”

Let me translate what he said into layman’s terms:

Individuals who have been suspected of terrorism, sometimes on as little evidence as owning a specific wristwatch, need no due process. We should be proud of the way we’ve tortured these human beings at Guantanamo Bay without so much as a trail to establish their guilt. Our pride for our soldiers’ conduct around the world should be unconditional. Just because a soldier has been complicit in war crimes doesn’t mean we can’t take pride in their actions!

That’s what Cotton said and it’s a terrible statement that could make him a shoo-in for any contest of asshattery. Needless to say anybody who supports this fuckwit from here on out cannot be taken seriously if they claim to be a supporter of liberty. Due process is necessary for liberty to exist. Without establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt there is no way to justify, at least in a free society, the imposition of punishment.

She Should Have Been a Security Expert

As you can expect from a man who has a blog just so he can bitch about whatever he feels like, there are a lot of things that really piss me off. One of the things at the top of the list of things that piss me off is blaming victims of rape fore being raped. Oftentimes such blame comes in the form of people claiming a woman shouldn’t have worn revealing clothing or gotten drunk at a party. But the Arizona Attorney General’s Office may have just taken the cake. A woman is suing the state because she was raped by a prisoner while working at the prison. The Attorney General’s Office is claiming she was at fault because the prison failed at provider her effective security:

“Plaintiff is an ADOC (Arizona Department of Corrections) employee who routinely worked at the prison complex,” Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Weisbard wrote in his motion to dismiss. “By being placed in a classroom at the complex, the officers were not placing Plaintiff in any type of situation that she would not normally face. The risk of harm, including assault, always existed at a prison like Eyman.”

[…]

Normally, such tests are given in the visitation room, which is monitored by security cameras and corrections officers. But on that day, because of a special event, she was sent to an unmonitored classroom, handed a radio and told to use it if there was any trouble, her lawsuit says.

The test lasted 90 minutes during which not a single corrections officer checked on her or radioed to ask if everything was OK. As they finished, six inmates left, returning unescorted to their dorm. One, Jacob Harvey, lingered.

According to the lawsuit, the 20-year-old inmate grabbed her from behind and took her to the ground as she struggled. He then stabbed her repeatedly in the head with a pen, choked her, slammed her head into the floor, tore away her clothes and raped her, the lawsuit says.

The teacher told investigators she screamed for help, but no one came. After the attack, Harvey tried to use her radio to call for help but it was tuned to a channel the guards didn’t even use. Eventually, Harvey allowed her to phone for help.

In other words the Attorney General’s Office is saying she should have known the room was unmonitored and therefore demanded a different room and to verify the radio given to her was set to the proper channel. Its defense is literally claiming she was at fault for being raped because she wasn’t a trained security expert. I don’t even have words for how disgusting that claim is.

Prisons are supposed to be completely controlled facilities. That’s why there are walls, fences, bars, and guards literally everywhere. But even in these tightly controlled environments the state can’t protect people. It really makes you wonder why anybody expects the state to protect them. This also shows that the state will sink to some really goddamn awful levels to dodge responsibilities for its failures.