Reality in Truth

Friday 5 July 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Good for this woman for being able to recognize her reality and do something to change it. Marjorie Romeyn-Sanabria:

As a woman of color, the Democratic Party is more of an inheritance than a choice. Questioning or disagreeing with the party we are born into is heresy. You are not allowed to fume at the people you elected into office to do their job to represent your interests: you can only mourn that the Republicans are mean. Affirmative action, despite statistical evidence that it does little to advance the plight of poor minorities in this country, is enshrined as a sacred cow, the hot iron one does not touch. If you are not a Democrat and live above the Mason-Dixon line, the assumption is you are against civil rights, social progress, women, people with disabilities, black people, immigrants, sunshine, happiness, and rainbows.

I am here to tell you that I am in favor of all these things. Except maybe rainbows (they’re overrated, anyway).

My decision to leave the Democratic Party has not been an easy one to make. Considering the alternative — joining the party whose radical fringe include the Tea Party and talking heads like former Governor Sarah Palin gave me pause. Did I want to be associated with reckless media personalities like Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck? I quickly realized, however, that my fears were unfounded. The extreme Right is to conservatism as Pat Roberston is to Christianity — certainly the loudest voices with the longest reach, but fundamentally misrepresenting the core essentials of the values they claim to espouse.

Inherited politics is the worst kind of politics.

Comments Off on Reality in Truth  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-07-05  ::  madlibertarianguy

Enraging

Thursday 4 July 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

What. The. Fuck.

Henderson police arrested a family for refusing to let officers use their homes as lookouts for a domestic violence investigation of their neighbors, the family claims in court.

[. . .]

“On the morning of July 10th, 2011, officers from the Henderson Police Department responded to a domestic violence call at a neighbor’s residence,” the Mitchells say in the complaint.

It continues: “At 10:45 a.m. defendant Officer Christopher Worley (HPD) contacted plaintiff Anthony Mitchell via his telephone. Worley told plaintiff that police needed to occupy his home in order to gain a ‘tactical advantage’ against the occupant of the neighboring house. Anthony Mitchell told the officer that he did not want to become involved and that he did not want police to enter his residence. Although Worley continued to insist that plaintiff should leave his residence, plaintiff clearly explained that he did not intend to leave his home or to allow police to occupy his home. Worley then ended the phone call.

Mitchell claims that defendant officers, including Cawthorn and Worley and Sgt. Michael Waller then “conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use.” (Waller is identified as a defendant in the body of the complaint, but not in the heading of it.)

The complaint continues: “Defendant Officer David Cawthorn outlined the defendants’ plan in his official report: ‘It was determined to move to 367 Evening Side and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.'”

At a few minutes before noon, at least five defendant officers “arrayed themselves in front of plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s house and prepared to execute their plan,” the complaint states.

It continues: “The officers banged forcefully on the door and loudly commanded Anthony Mitchell to open the door to his residence.

“Surprised and perturbed, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell immediately called his mother (plaintiff Linda Mitchell) on the phone, exclaiming to her that the police were beating on his front door.

“Seconds later, officers, including Officer Rockwell, smashed open plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s front door with a metal ram as plaintiff stood in his living room.

“As plaintiff Anthony Mitchell stood in shock, the officers aimed their weapons at Anthony Mitchell and shouted obscenities at him and ordered him to lie down on the floor.

“Fearing for his life, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell dropped his phone and prostrated himself onto the floor of his living room, covering his face and hands.

“Addressing plaintiff as ‘asshole’, officers, including Officer Snyder, shouted conflicting orders at Anthony Mitchell, commanding him to both shut off his phone, which was on the floor in front of his head, and simultaneously commanding him to ‘crawl’ toward the officers.

“Confused and terrified, plaintiff Anthony Mitchell remained curled on the floor of his living room, with his hands over his face, and made no movement.

“Although plaintiff Anthony Mitchell was lying motionless on the ground and posed no threat, officers, including Officer David Cawthorn, then fired multiple ‘pepperball’ rounds at plaintiff as he lay defenseless on the floor of his living room. Anthony Mitchell was struck at least three times by shots fired from close range, injuring him and causing him severe pain.” (Parentheses in complaint.)

Officers then arrested him for obstructing a police officer, searched the house and moved furniture without his permission and set up a place in his home for a lookout, Mitchell says in the complaint.

He says they also hurt his pet dog for no reason whatsoever: “Plaintiff Anthony Mitchell’s pet, a female dog named ‘Sam,’ was cowering in the corner when officers smashed through the front door. Although the terrified animal posed no threat to officers, they gratuitously shot it with one or more pepperball rounds. The panicked animal howled in fear and pain and fled from the residence. Sam was subsequently left trapped outside in a fenced alcove without access to water, food, or shelter from the sun for much of the day, while temperatures outside soared to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.”

I ask again: What. The. Fuck. I’m not even sure what to say about this kind of shit. There are potentially 3 Civil Rights violations of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Amendments, and all so officers could get a “tactical advantage” on looking for a shitty husband doing shitty things. There are obvious 4A violations. That one’s easy. Then there is the takings issue of the 5A where these people were deprived of property without proper compensation. And we have the rare 3A accusation of soldiers quartering themselves in a home without consent. These officers are a real piece of fucking work. All of them deserve to have been shot, and all of them ought to lose their job and any prospect of working in any law enforcement capacity ever again. And they should all be held personally liable, and made to pay claims out of their own personal wealth.

Comments Off on Enraging  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-07-04  ::  madlibertarianguy

Lost Leverage

Monday 1 July 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

All those who claim that we should be emulating Scandinavian socialism have lost all leverage.

The Left Party in Sörmland is taking a stand to ensure men take a seat when emptying their bladders in the county council’s own toilets.

You can legislate the way I fucking pee when you pry my cold, hard dick from my dead hands.

Comments Off on Lost Leverage  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-07-01  ::  madlibertarianguy

All Hail

Saturday 29 June 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

All hail the saviors of our environment!

There had been only eight recorded sightings of the white-throated needletail in the UK since 1846. So when one popped up again on British shores this week, twitchers were understandably excited.

A group of 40 enthusiasts dashed to the Hebrides to catch a glimpse of the brown, black and blue bird, which breeds in Asia and winters in Australasia.

But instead of being treated to a wildlife spectacle they were left with a horror show when it flew into a wind turbine and was killed.

Oops!

Unfortunately, wind farms killing birds is a widespread problem. A problem that is responsible for the death of tens of thousands of protected birds annually, and without suffering the same steep fines levied on traditional energy companies.

It happens about once a month here, on the barren foothills of one of America’s green-energy boomtowns: A soaring golden eagle slams into a wind farm’s spinning turbine and falls, mangled and lifeless, to the ground.

Killing these iconic birds is not just an irreplaceable loss for a vulnerable species. It’s also a federal crime, a charge that the Obama administration has used to prosecute oil companies when birds drown in their waste pits, and power companies when birds are electrocuted by their power lines.

But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly. Instead, the government is shielding the industry from liability and helping keep the scope of the deaths secret.

Wind power, a pollution-free energy intended to ease global warming, is a cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s energy plan. His administration has championed a $1 billion-a-year tax break to the industry that has nearly doubled the amount of wind power in his first term.

But like the oil industry under President George W. Bush, lobbyists and executives have used their favored status to help steer U.S. energy policy.

The result is a green industry that’s allowed to do not-so-green things. It kills protected species with impunity and conceals the environmental consequences of sprawling wind farms.

More than 573,000 birds are killed by the country’s wind farms each year, including 83,000 hunting birds such as hawks, falcons and eagles, according to an estimate published in March in the peer-reviewed Wildlife Society Bulletin.

It’s almost as if protecting the environment from real, measurable harm isn’t a real priority for greenies.

Comments Off on All Hail  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-06-29  ::  madlibertarianguy

They Told Me

Friday 28 June 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

They told me that if I didn’t vote for Obama that my children would be forced in to some funky forms of religious indoctrination in schools. They were right! Heartland:

The Los Angeles Unified School District will use a state grant to train teens to promote ObamaCare to family members. Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, announced grants of $37 million on May 14 to promote the nationally unpopular law.

LAUSD will receive $990,000. The district listed as a primary outcome for its project, “Teens trained to be messengers to family members.”

[. . .]

“We have confidence that the model LA Unified brought to the table will be successful in reaching our target population, which includes family members of students,” she said.

[. . .]

The district listed adult education students, part-time, and contract employees as its target population. Teens will be trained to be messengers not to those groups, but to their own families, to get more people enrolled in taxpayer-subsidized healthcare.

If the project is successful, Los Angeles families can expect more use of students to push government-preferred messaging.

“Teens are part of a ‘pilot’ program to test whether young people can be trained as messengers to deliver outreach and limited education to family and friends in and around their homes,” said Gayle Pollard-Terry, a LAUSD spokesman, in an email. “Teens will be educating adults that they already know (e.g., family or friends) and not other adults.”

Yeah. Our students are falling behind in world education outcomes, what’s really important is that students learn propagandize an unpopular law to their families. What the fuck.

Comments Off on They Told Me  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-06-28  ::  madlibertarianguy

It’s Almost Like

Monday 24 June 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

It’s almost like Obama is trying mightily to ensure that Team BLUE loses its ass in 2014, then loses both houses and the presidency in 2016. In a bid to appeal to his base supporters in a time when he’s being rightfully scorned by most for a series of audacious acts against the American people ranging from spying on our telephone calls to using the IRS to specifically target political groups that oppose him, he chooses to go ahead with a unilateral effort to bring about new “climate change” regulations that will further drive the economy down by significantly raising energy costs. Ed Rogers at WaPo:

On Tuesday, President Obama will announce his plan to increase everyone’s power bill. Or, as he puts it, “a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change and lead global efforts to fight it.”
If you accept the science of global warming, then you accept the fact that the president’s unilateral action on climate change will have absolutely no effect in terms of adjusting the global thermostat to a temperature Obama finds desirable. The rest of the developing world, anchored by India and China, are building carbon-burning factories, power plants and even whole new cities that will overwhelm any new rules the president may impose on Americans and our struggling economy.

Especially when one considers that

The most recent poll I could find, conducted by the Pew Research Center following the president’s inaugural address, said just 28 percent of Americans think “dealing with global warming” should be a priority for the president and Congress. Americans ranked this issue last out of 21 different priorities. And as usual, the poll identified the economy as the most important issue. Well, Obama’s obsession with global warming and his desire to inflict higher energy prices on the average American family will harm the economy and be bad for job growth.

Awesome. Higher energy prices at the whim of a man who lives opulently, traveling in jets the world around, residing in a mansion that costs over a billion dollars a year to support.

Comments Off on It’s Almost Like  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-06-24  ::  madlibertarianguy

Enough Said

Friday 21 June 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Simon Kuper on the debacle that is the 2014 World Cup:

You would have thought that people would learn from the shame of the South Africa World Cup; from the way FIFA forced a developing country to build unnecessary stadiums fancy enough for sponsors, while a few miles away people lived in corrugated-iron shacks

But they didn’t. Brazil asked for and received the World Cup despite being a ridiculously poor nation filled to the brim with those living in squalor, knowing full-well that the requirements demanded by FIFA would bankrupt the country, or at the very least divert funds designed to help the poorest people in to building fancy stadiums that meet no market requirement. The country will play host to rich and affluent people from the world over, while just outside of Maracanã, the stadium in the middle of Rio de Janeiro, is home to some of the largest and most dangerous favelas in Brazil.

None of this is to say that Brazilians themselves aren’t to blame. They have elected one government after another that moves further and further left, even after each and every one is proven to be rife with cronyism and corruption, and leads to nothing but failure to deliver on their promises of “lifting the people from poverty.” Brazilians have put themselves in a position where they rely on shoddy government services for even the most basic of necessities, and then complain when those they elect, based off of the promise of free unicorns for all, don’t deliver. Brazilians celebrated in the streets when they learned that they would be hosting next year’s cup. They didn’t question then how it would all be paid for, and are now upset when they discovered that they would be paying for it.

Comments Off on Enough Said  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-06-21  ::  madlibertarianguy

Tin Foil Hats

Thursday 20 June 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Perhaps it’s those on the left who should be donning their tin foil hats. Connor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic:

Critiques of democracy are as old as the excesses of the Athenian variety. Here’s a classic: The unmediated masses are as capable of doing an injustice as any aristocracy or tyrant. In America, it’s acceptable to say, as shorthand, that we’re living in a Western liberal democracy. But the fact is that we live in a federal, constitutional republic, because the Framers mistrusted democracy, and the vast majority of Americans retain a great part of that mistrust. We’ve extended the franchise, amended the Constitution to permit the direct election of senators, and we’re likely to eventually abandon the electoral college and elect presidents by the popular vote. But there is broad, deep support for anti-democratic features of our system, like the Bill of Rights.

All of this is totally uncontroversial — unless it is uttered by Senator Rand Paul, the national politician most likely to evoke irrational paranoia from the political press.

That sounds about right. If Rand Paul uttered that the sky is blue, those on the left would walk outside to check.

Comments Off on Tin Foil Hats  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-06-20  ::  madlibertarianguy

I Wonder How Long . . .

Thursday 20 June 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

I wonder how long it will take for Mr. Guillory to be labeled an Uncle Tom/house nigger/lawn jockey. WND:

A state senator from Louisiana who recently announced his departure from the Democratic Party to become a Republican says the party of President Obama is one of “overseers.”

State Sen. Elbert Guillory released a video Sunday explaining his reason for leaving the Democrats, citing their opposition to civil rights, their attitudes toward people and their desire for “control.”

He said the black community, which he invited to join him in the move, should quit exchanging self-reliance for the “allegiance of overseers” through government programs that are intended not to help people, but to control them.

He said in his video message that Democrats push a social justice and welfare aid strategy to manage citizens, not help them from poverty.

[. . .]

He warned that the very foundations of the Democratic Party are faulty.

“At the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful big government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the left is only concerned with one thing: control. And they disguise this control as charity.”

Liberalism in America is one big plantation, and they don’t like it when one of “theirs” runs off.

Comments Off on I Wonder How Long . . .  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-06-20  ::  madlibertarianguy

Yep

Thursday 20 June 2013 - Filed under Uncategorized

Yep. I’d say that Mr. Bunch has hit the nail on the head.

Look: No one is telling you that you can’t boycott people who vote a way you don’t care for. No one’s telling you it should be illegal for you to say you won’t support someone because they dared disagree with some stance you have decided is really super serial. What I am saying is that engaging in such behavior—politicizing every aspect of your life, allowing politics to determine your every move, and judging everyone you meet online and in person by how stridently they agree with the positions you support—is immensely, horribly destructive to the very fabric of our society. It inspires mistrust, hate, and fear. It tears apart the polity. And a polity torn asunder is a weak one indeed. A house divided, and all that.

Being politically engaged is one thing; it’s entirely another when politics informs every single decision you make.

Comments Off on Yep  ::  Share or discuss  ::  2013-06-20  ::  madlibertarianguy