Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Sometimes the War Against the Homeless Becomes Literal

Usually when I talk about the state’s war against the homeless I’m speaking figuratively. But from time to time the state’s figurative war becomes a very real one:

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has released a disturbing video of a police shooting. It shows eight officers of the Saginaw, Michigan Police Department lined up against Milton Hall, a mentally ill homeless man. There’s a brief stand-off in a vacant parking lot, in which Hall pulls out a pocketknife, then the law enforcement agents fire 45 bullets at Hall, hitting him 14 times, even as he drops to the pavement, but it doesn’t end there.

“One policeman, after [Hall] was on the ground, turned him over, handcuffed him, and put his foot on his back,” says Jewel Hall, the mother of the 45-year-old homeless man. “And his blood is running down the street like water.”

A knife is a deadly weapon, there’s no denying that. But us tax payers are forced to pay for a lot of less-likely-to-be-lethal weaponry for police officers so you would think they would humor us by attempting to use it from time to time on somebody other than small children. Especially when there are eight officers so if something like a Taser fails to be effective you still have seven sets of hands free to either bring in another Taser or a firearm.

As a side note we should also take a moment to look at the hit ratio. 14 out of 45 rounds is approximately a 31 percent hit ratio, which is pretty terrible. Criticizing their poor marksmanship isn’t just my attempt at taking a cheap shot at the officers. Having that poor of marksmanship in a town is dangerous since it means 31 rounds went who knows where. That’s a sizable risk to the people the police are supposedly there to protect.

If You Want Limited Government You’re Not Getting it By Voting

November 4th is almost here (and almost over, thank the gods; I can’t wait until people are being nicer to one another again), which means the political rhetoric is in high gear and most people deeply involved in politics are being insufferable dicks to anybody who isn’t going to vote their way.

Since this isn’t a presidential election few people really give a damn. But there is one group of people who care very much, the small group of presidential hopefuls. These scumbag politicians are spewing some of the dumbest rhetoric out there in the hopes of drumming up a base of gullible suckers who will work furiously, for free, on their campaigns. Elizabeth Warren already beat on the rhetoric drum when she claimed that the Republicans are responsible for everything bad in this country. So it’s time for a Republicans to claim that the Democrats are responsible for all of this country’s ills. Who better to spew such rhetoric than Rand Paul:

Our Founder’s would be ashamed at what our government has become. Micromanaging the daily lives of citizens is not the duty of government. But the GOP is taking a stand—we are saying enough is enough.

It is the Republican party that is trying to limit government power and this is an ideal that all libertarians firmly believe in and support. If we want to protect our civil liberties, we must come together. And it’s no secret that the Republican party desperately need libertarian support.

This is what Rand has reduced himself to, being a mindless party shill in the hopes he will be given a chance at the presidency (he won’t). But it’s amazing how much cognitive dissonance this man maintains. The Republican Party, according to his article, will protect our civil liberties. I must have missed the asterisk that indicates your civil liberties won’t be protected if they involve wanting to marry somebody of the same gender, transition genders, smoke cannabis, avoid being spied on by the government, keep your assets from being randomly seized by police officers, stop this “tough on crime” bullshit this has made this country a total police state, freely cross the imaginary line between the United States and Mexico, go through the airport without being sexually molested, or practice the Muslim faith without being labeled at terrorist. Basically if the civil liberties you want to enjoy fall without a very small subset then the Republican Party may throw you bone if you beg really hard.

You’re not going to vote yourself a limited government. In fact a limited government is a pipe dream. Once a group of individuals has the power to declare what is legal and illegal and has the capacity for violence to beat down or kill anybody who disagrees the idea of limited control is thrown out the window. The only limitation you may enjoy are the ones approved by the state. As we have seen in this country every politicians is interested in curtailing your liberties. Some of them want to curtail one subset while others want to curtail another subset. In the end both subsets get restricted because both groups of politicians manage to wield some of the state’s power.

If you want limited government voting Republican isn’t going to get it. In fact it won’t even slow down the state’s grabbing for power. Republicans want to restrict your liberties just as much as Democrats. That’s why voting isn’t going to deliver the goods. The only candidates that have a shot of winning (because the Republican and Democrats used their duopoly to lockout other parties for all intents and purposes) want to expand the state’s powers.

Anyways I will try to avoid wasting your time with too many political articles between now and November 4th and focus on things that actually matter.

When You Phish it’s Illegal, When the FBI Phishes it’s Law Enforcement

The biggest problem I have with law enforcers is that they enjoy a level of privileges above the rest of us. Whereas it’s illegal for you or I to lie to a law enforcement agent they can lie to us with impunity. Heck, it’s considered part of their job. But that differences in legally permissible actions doesn’t stop there. Let’s consider the act of phishing, which is an attempt to acquire personal information from a target using a fake version of a legitimate website. It’s illegal in the United States. Unless, of course, if you have a badge:

The FBI in Seattle created a fake news story on a bogus Seattle Times web page to plant software in the computer of a suspect in a series of bomb threats to Lacey’s Timberline High School in 2007, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco.

[…]

The EFF documents reveal that the FBI dummied up a story with an Associated Press byline about the Thurston County bomb threats with an email link “in the style of The Seattle Times,” including details about subscriber and advertiser information.

The link was sent to the suspect’s MySpace account. When the suspect clicked on the link, the hidden FBI software sent his location and Internet Protocol information to the agents. A juvenile suspect was identified and arrested June 14.

Double standards are fun! The problem with allowing law enforcers to perform illegal actions without repercussions is that it sets a bad precedence. We’re witnessing these repercussions today as police officers use levels of force far and above what any sane person could justify, confiscate property of people who haven’t even been convicted of a crime, and hack into computers in order to obtain evidence, often against suspected hackers. Allowing law enforcers to act illegally also attracts people who want to perform illegal acts to the job, which is part of my theory of why we have so many violent individuals staffing many modern police departments.

Like You and Me, Only Better

Gun control loons always seem to make an exception for their hatred of guns when it comes to police. As far as many of them are concerned the police are paragons of all that is good and wholesome. You and I? We’re scum that can’t be trusted with a firearm. If allowed to carry a firearm we would pull it on whoever made us even slight perturbed. Meanwhile police officers, because of their advanced training and upstanding moral character, would never act irresponsibly with a firearm. Well except maybe this guy:

(KUTV) The passenger, who allegedly pointed a gun at the head of an Uber driver, is a federal police officer with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

[…]

Brothers said he picked up McDonald and three other people from a downtown Salt Lake bar that night, after they called for a lift. He says he dropped off three passengers first, then drove McDonald to his hotel as he had a disagreement with one of the other passengers. Right after he pulled into the hotel entrance, Brothers said McDonald looked at him and said, “Do you want to live or die?” At first, Brothers said he thought it was a joke because McDonald appeared drunk. Then his passenger asked him the question again and pulled out a gun and pointed it at his head. Brothers said he tried to run but McDonald grabbed him by the collar and pulled him so hard he ripped his shirt and jacket and left scratch marks. Brothers pulled away, ran out of the car and called 911.

The District Attorney said surveillance video from the hotel supports Brothers’ story. McDonald was arrested in the hotel.

But that’s just one exception. The rest are all super upstanding. In fact they’re so upstanding that they are the only ones we could trust to be in possession of firearms. That will ensure incidents like this one will never happen again… who am I kidding? I can’t even keep up this level of sarcasm. Seriously though, be cautions of who you give a ride to.

Suicide Assistance Hotline

There are few things, at least in my opinion, more tragic than somebody being pushed to the brink of suicide. It seems I am not alone in my thinking since resources have been set aside for things like suicide hotlines where people contemplating suicide can call and hopefully get talked out of it. Unfortunately a call to a suicide hotline can result in police officers being dispatched to your location. At that point the suicide hotline may very well become the suicide assistance hotline:

The 35 year old man, who neighbors describe the as a quiet, friendly man, was divorced and now lived in the home with his girlfriend and her children. According to Detective Matthew Gwynn of the Roy City Police Department, the man called a suicide hotline around 4 a.m. and threatened to kill himself. The Weber County Consolidated Dispatch Center sent officers to the resident.

“There were people in the home at the time the call was placed,” Det. Gwynn told ABC4 News. “They left the home shortly thereafter.”

Roy City Police and the Weber Metro SWAT Team tried to convince the man to surrender and get help but seven hours after the initial call, something dramatic occurred in the garage causing SWAT officers to open fire.

People whose training mostly focuses on using force are probably not the type of people you want to send to a person who just declared that they are suicidal. What is interesting about this case though is that the police are investigating it as a suicide by cop incident. In order for that to be a possible reason for the call it would require the caller to know that the suicide hotline would dispatch police officers. Furthermore it would be reliant on having officers dispatched that are more prone to shoot a suicidal man than attempt to dissuade him on committing suicide. It’s also interesting that the police, so far, haven’t released any information regarding the actions the caller took that instigate the police opening fire (or, for that matter, what a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team was dispatched instead of regular police officers).

Hopefully the media actually covers the details of this case because I believe they could be very interesting.

Wet Willies Now Felony Assault

Wet willies are a schoolyard prank that are likely older than schools themselves. As far as I know nobody has actually been injured, killed, or made ill as a result of a wet willy. But none of that matters because the rules in this country are made up and the punishments never match the crime. A Mankato man gave an officer a wet willy and is now facing felony assault charges:

A wet-willy has landed a man in trouble with police.

Police told our sister station in Mankato that 24-year-old Riley Swearingen put his pointer finger in an officer’s ear while waiting in line for a bus early Saturday morning.

Since it involved bodily fluids, police say it rises to the level of felony assault.

I’m surprised the officer didn’t simply stream “Office safety!” and gun the man down. I guess arresting him and charging him with felony assault does count as restraint in this wonderful police state of a country.

Representative Mike Rogers Wants Edward Snowden Charged With Murder

When you find out that you government is doing something unlawful and tell the world in the hopes of getting it to change its behavior what do you end up getting? If you said deserved reward for uncovering unlawful activity you are incorrect. If you said being accused of murder by a Congress critter you are correct:

Republican Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, told an meeting in the House of Commons in London on Tuesday evening that Snowden was a “traitor” who was now living in the “loving arms” of Russian spies.

“The [US] government has pressed charges on Mr Snowden,” he said. “We are treating him, as I would argue, the traitor that he is.” Rogers added: “And by the way, and this is important, I would charge him for murder.”

“He took information that allows force protection, not only for British soldiers, but for US soldiers, and made it more difficult for us to track those activities. Meaning it is more likely that one of those soldiers is going to get their legs blown off or killed because of his actions,” he said. “Anybody that provides information to the enemy is a traitor, period, pure and simple.”

By supposedly removing protection from American soldiers he is responsible for their deaths? By that logic every member of Congress and the president should be charged with murder. They are the ones that have removed the protection of the oceans that lie between this country and the Middle East from the country’s military personnel and put them directly in harm’s way.

Again I will reiterate that Snowden did the right thing. The United States government has been on a “If you see something, say something” kick since 9/11. Snowden saw something and he said something. The problem was he saw something that the government didn’t want him to say anything about and it therefore changed its mind and should have changed its motto to “If you see something illegal being done by the government shut the fuck up, slave.”

Yoshitomo Imura Will Spend Two Years In a Cage

Yoshitomo Imura decided to create some firearms using a 3D printer. What made his attempt different than most of the attempts we hear about is that he lives in Japan, a country known for its strict weapon control laws. What made his attempt stupid was that he bragged about doing so on the Internet. Because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut is will not spend two years of his life rotting in a cage:

Yesterday, a Japanese man was sentenced to two years in prison for manufacturing 3D-printed guns. Yoshitomo Imura, a 28-year-old from Kawasaki, was arrested in May after posting a video of himself assembling his very illegal firearm to YouTube, which probably wasn’t the best idea on his part.

The right to bear DIY weaponry is still a contentious issue in most of the world. But if guns are illegal in your country—as they mostly are in Japan—then it makes sense that the law isn’t suddenly going to side with you when you decide to have a crack at making one in your garage. Imura appears to be the first person in the world to receive a prison sentence for making 3D-printed guns.

I applaud Imura for what he did. His act of defiance demonstrated that gun control laws are ineffective. However, when you’re breaking the law you shouldn’t brag about it unless you plan to make a big scene in a courtroom because that’s where you’ll likely end up.

What does surprise me is the sentence. Considering Japan’s weapon control laws I’d have imagined a longer sentence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he’s not going to spend more time in a cage but when he was arrested I was expecting the sentence to be longer.

There’s an Election On, Which Means Politicians are Politicians are Pandering to Their Bases

There’s an election on November 4th. Dozens of people (it’s not a presidential election) will travel to their polling place to select the master they would most like to obey. But before we can get the meaningless voting ceremony out of the way we must listen to politicians pander to their bases as they participate in a country wide circlejerk. Elizabeth Warren, who has her sights set on the Oval Office judging by how hard she’s pandering, was recently in Minnesota to participate in a circlejerk with Al Franken. As expected this circlejerk involved blaming the Republicans for everything wrong in the country:

“The game is rigged, and the Republicans rigged it,” Warren said to loud cheers.

The amount of irony in this single statement cannot be measure by currently existing ironymeters. Warren is correct, the game is rigged. But the Republicans didn’t rig it alone; they had a lot of help from the Democrats. To play on Warren’s most famous speech:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful politicians who agree with me—because they want to take even more. They know they didn’t—look, if you’ve obtained power, you didn’t get there on your own… If you are powerful, somebody in your party gave you some help. There was a party convention somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to get your foot into this unbelievable political system that we have that allows you to rule. Somebody invested in campaigns and political alliances. If you’ve got an oligarchy—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Everybody who currently enjoys the benefits of political office got there by pandering to a lot of outer party officials and blowing inner party officials in one of the two major parties. There were a lot of promises kept to lobbyists and broken to voters. It doesn’t matter which party your decided to ally yourself with since they both rule in the same oligarchy. The only thing that does matter is that you now sit in a position where you get to rig the game for the proles.

Stand Your Ground Should Apply to the Home

South Carolina passed a law that removed people’s duty to retreat when attack in a place they have a right to be at. This law, common referred to as stand your ground, is usually seen as a companion to the law that says you do not have to retreat from your home if somebody breaks in, which is usually referred to as castle doctrine. Whitlee Jones, a woman residing in South Carolina, recently made the news because she stabbed her abusive boyfriend and was eventually charged with murder. Her lawyer attempted to use the stand your ground law to argue that her actions were self-defense:

Whitlee Jones screamed for help as her boyfriend pulled her down the street by her hair. Her weave fell from her head and onto the pavement.

A neighbor heard Jones’ cries and dialed 911 on that night in November 2012.

But the scuffle ended before a North Charleston policeman arrived and asked Jones’ boyfriend what happened. Eric Lee, 29, said their argument over a cellphone had never turned physical. The officer left.

A short time later, Jones went back to the home where she lived with Lee. She planned to pack up and leave for good.

But after Jones gathered her things, Lee stepped in front of her. Though authorities later contended that Lee didn’t attack her, Jones said he shook her and blocked her way out, so she pulled a knife and stabbed him once. Lee died, and Jones was arrested for murder.

Nearly two years later, a judge found earlier this month that Jones, now 25, had a right to kill Lee under the S.C. Protection of Persons and Property Act, which allows people in certain situations to use force when faced with serious injury. But to the 9th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, Jones is not the kind of person legislators had in mind when they passed the “stand your ground” law in 2006. It does not apply to housemates in episodes of domestic violence, the prosecutors argued.

Stand your ground laws dictate that one has a right to defend themselves from aggression wherever they have a right to be. I would argue that one has a right to be in their home so understand stand your ground laws should have a right to defend themselves. Furthermore I’ve never seen a stand your ground law that made an exception if your attacker was a husband, boyfriend, or housemate. Based on her boyfriend’s earlier actions that precipitated their neighbor calling 911 I would say she had reason to believe he meant her further harm when he attempted to block her exit.

In truth self-defense shouldn’t be location or aggressor dependent. It shouldn’t matter if you’re at home, at work, or out and about and it shouldn’t matter if your attacker is a complete stranger, a neighbor, or a significant other. If you are attacked you should have a legal right to defend yourself.