I think I’m in favor of this but I would not want to go to court for a 5- or 10-year-old and say: “You’re charged with a misdemeanor” – Lula Davis-Holmes
A little busier this week, except for videos; still, I thought you’d enjoy this lovely example of why correlation does not equal causation, contributed by Pope Shakey. Everything above it is from Radley Balko, who also wrote the last one above the video; however, I gave credit to Rick Horowitz for first calling my attention to an earlier (but less powerful) report of the incident. The video was provided by Zander Falcon, and the links above it by Clarissa (“honest”), Michael Whiteacre (“important”), Jason Kuznicki (“garbage”), Jesse Walker (“hypocrites”), Grace (“guns”), and Gideon (“throat”).
- Cop badly injures woman in crash, attempts to blame her for the wreck.
- Cop murders 93-year-old woman in “self defense”.
- Another great moment in universal criminality.
- Shit on them.
- Well, at least he was honest.
- When laws are more important than people.
- More people arrested for “stealing” garbage.
- All politicians are hypocrites, but this is ridiculous.
- Cops claim cell phones can be magically transformed into guns.
- Cops repeatedly try to arrest dead man by terrorizing his widow.
- Cops fatally slit teen’s throat to retrieve drugs they claim he swallowed.
- Two men abduct halfnaked 9-year-old from home, bind her, take photos.
From the Archives
- Wine, bacon, cops, language, censorship, pomposity, prudishness, drugs, population and a horror short.
- The newest excuse for police rape of sex workers is that Asian massage parlors are “sophisticated”.
- Crusade to impose Western norms on Nepal turns low-caste people into persecuted criminals.
- How infantilization of teenagers and adults has the opposite of its intended effect.
- Wendy Lyon does her usual thorough job ripping apart a bogus study.
- Zimbabwean cops claim whores force men to have free sex with them.
- Busybodies love the police state until their doors are smashed down.
- Thousands of Indian whores lose their life savings to Ponzi schemes.
- Tulsa, Oklahoma’s sleazy war on whores reaches a new level of evil.
- Why extrajudicial punishment of whores is a spectacularly bad idea.
- An entity so large it harms by its very existence, is much too large.
- Good-time girls and other non-professionals taking money for sex.
- Sacrifices to the myth that sex can be purified, sanctified & tamed.
- The tale of a young woman who wins a chance at her dream job.
- The FBI wants private companies to enable its spying on people.
- In which I demolish a load of total nonsense about “sex robots”.
- Lawheads delight in charging a crime victim with another crime.
- How can a woman discourage her husband from hiring whores?
- Amateur convicted of prostitution for answering a personal ad.
- White House claims 4% of American girls are “child sex slaves”.
- Fake whore pepper-sprays a teen and steals his piggy bank.
- A response to Rakhi “pop stars cause sex trafficking” Kumar.
- The first signs of the massive anti-sex pogrom in Dongguan.
- Cop claims he was framed for drugs by his girlfriend’s pimp.
- US prison officials silence prisoners’ protests with torture.
- Gonorrhea is rapidly becoming immune to all antibiotics.
- The making of the DSM and the unmaking of psychiatry.
- How the whorearchy is used as a tool of social control.
- Spain continues to turn the screws on streetwalkers.
- Reminiscing about my dear, departed friend Terry.
- Note that the word “trafficking” is entirely absent.
- Newspaper mocks and demonizes murder victim.
- Dania Suarez is interviewed on the Today show.
- A powerful statement from Filipino sex workers.
- “Rescue” NGO enslaves 76 children in Uganda.
- The first of several virginity auctions that year.
- Why Janet Jackson’s nipple won’t go away.
- R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen.
- Porn Studies.
There’s a column in today’s Observer about the cops and the ‘Breaking Bad’ city, and it mentions Pearlie Golden:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/10/albuquerque-police-shootings-violence-breaking-bad
“Officer safety is paramount”
Get this, folks. Their “safety”, not yours. It’s all about the personal safety of some sack of shit, overblown ego cop.
Other people have to take risks on their jobs. There, getting the job done is paramount. but not cops. These whiny cowards insist on putting themselves first at all times.
And they are your employees. You pay their salaries.
We can get some young person into the military, pay them a pittance, and send them to a war zone with substandard equipment, and expect them to perform their duties while risking their lives, but we can’t expect two gas bags with a badges to risk dealing with a nine year old girl.
We simply don’t need them.
[quote]“Officer safety is paramount”
Get this, folks. Their “safety”, not yours. It’s all about the personal safety of some sack of shit, overblown ego cop.
Other people have to take risks on their jobs. There, getting the job done is paramount. but not cops. These whiny cowards insist on putting themselves first at all times.[/quote]
Devil’s advocate here. Please forgive me in advance.
Since you brought up the military, with the amount of safety training military members have to put up with at home station (don’t do drugs! wear your motorcycle helmet! YOU are our most precious resource!) and the amount of safety gear military members wear to interact with goat herders, I don’t think it’s just LEOs who that accusation can be leveled at.
Since that safety quote is actually Mr. Balko’s words based off a PR spokesman’s words, I find myself wondering what were the thoughts of the two officers involved in this?
It might be enlightening to know what would happen if someone got them on objective record and simply asked “what was going through your mind at that moment?”
Would they confirm everyone’s worst suspicions (“Yeah, it was great sticking it to that little black girl! I’d do it again in a heartbeat! Just thinking about it made me a stallion that night with my wife!”)? Would they pull a Nuremberg-esque defense (“I didn’t want to do it but if I hadn’t I would have been fired and living under the overpass.”)? Or might it be something totally different and surprising (“This disgusted me and if you good people of Portland want to stop this from happening again, this is what we need to do…”)?
One other question. I read Mr. Balko’s article earlier this week when he first posted it (and for once I found some WaPo commenters that actually had some insightful things to say and suggest) and I quickly read through it again today. Unless it’s because she was described as wearing tight clothes, when was this girl ‘half naked’? Did I miss something by not watching the attached video? I realize it’s a minor quibble, but it jumped out at me and made me look twice.
Come on man – you don’t really believe that do you? The armor isn’t for the goat herders – it’s for the insurgents hiding over the hills with RPG’s ready to blow our guys up.
Also – every American military death has a political impact at home. So the government moves heaven and hell to minimize casualities because too many casualties wears away at the determination of Americans to prosecute a war. We really are a bunch of pussies … but you can’t blame this aspect on the government – it’s the voters out there, who aren’t risking their lives one good goddamn … but get all shaky when they see bloody images and body bags on TV.
Krulac! I was wondering where you’d been these past few days.
I concede the point in your first paragraph. I wasn’t picturing that particular scenario when I wrote that first reply, and I realized that after I pressed ‘post.’
I think your second paragraph, however, speaks to the point I was trying to make, at least in the context of LEOs: the effort to ‘minimize casualties’ by tipping the scales so far in favor of the police (in terms of equipment, ROEs, etc.) to where it has become counterproductive.
It’s a myth that service members are underpaid. An E-9 can make $100,000 per year if he adds up his base – and all his special pays. Additionally, military members enjoy GREAT tax benefits and a lot of what they do make is sheltered from tax. Housing allowances – are not taxed. Food subsistence allowances – are not taxed. A member in a war zone pays no federal income tax whatsoever while in the war zone. There is no cost for health care and life insurance is provided for pennies per month.
Second – the US military has the finest equipment in the field – bar none. Yeah, there’s always something else you could use – something you wished you had … but we far “out-tech” our adversaries.
If there’s something the military needs it’s (a) better leadership – especially in this White House now since it demands that warriors give their lives to execute Presidential policy – but the current resident in the oval office is unwilling to risk his poll numbers to support the warriors (i.e. Benghazi – where Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty gave their lives to evacuate consulate personnel … and killed up to 60 attackers before being killed themselves. Our President however, was unwilling to risk his poll numbers to tell Americans just what these brave men did – and, indeed – he has covered up what happened there. So the greatest improvement in the military would be to give them civilian leaders who live by the same code of honor they demand their warriors to live up to.
Second – another improvement would be to STOP using the military as a social experiment. Mark Mayo, a hero, gave his life and is now dead due to this nation’s insistence that men and women are equal at fighting. A female Petty Officer was attacked by a very large and pissed off ex-convict who attempted to board the USS MAHAN. He TOOK the gun from the female and Mark Mayo then jumped in front of the woman to take the bullets that the ex-con began firing at her. Our nation’s insistence that men and women are “equal” in physical abilities – and Mark Mayo’s deep sense of chivalry – resulted in his death. He was a good man – a young one – and he’s dead now due to this nation’s pansy-assed insistence that things that are NOT true … and have NEVER been true – are indeed somehow true because we WISH them to be.
Just fyi krulac, have a read through this—the OP is a country person of yours:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/10818652/Can-women-kill-like-men-on-the-front-line.html?placement=CB1
I think it’s bullshit – sure, there may be a few women who are capable of the kind of violence that men are – but there aren’t many and it only degrades a unit’s fighting capability to re-arrange EVERYTHING to accommodate a vanishingly small percentage of women who have the physical stature – and VIOLENT demeanor – to make them equal fighters with men.
What’s more … most GOOD men, are going to be overprotective of the females in their unit when they’re in combat. The men need to worry about aggressive attack / counterattack – and not worried about keeping the females from being captured and raped by the enemy.
And there’s also the fact that most women DO NOT want to be placed in these roles. I have experience with this because Congress forced the Navy to backfit all minesweepers to accommodate women. So we installed a certain number of female bunks in minesweeps.
One year later – the minesweeps were screaming because we had not filled those bunks with women – and, it’s complicated but we don’t just assign bunks – we assign certain billets by sex also. If we don’t fill the bunks – we don’t fill the associated billets and the minesweeps go undermanned and find it hard to accomplish their mission.
Then Congress stepped in and said “What ho! You have not filled these bunks with women – make it so!”
Well, the reason we hadn’t filled the bunks was because there were very few women who wanted to go to a minesweep. They felt they were small, cramped … dirty. They wanted ships with a more “civilized” lifestyle.
But guess what? We started calling up women and SLAMMING them into these bunks. “Don’t want to go, sister? Too bad – write your congressman.”
And some of them did … and those same congressmen that told us to fill those bunks then came back and said … “Why are you forcing women to minesweepers?”
If you ask women if they should be GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY to serve in combat they’ll say yes. Ask ’em if THEY THEMSELVES would be willing to – and the number evaporates to close to zero.
Also – let’s talk about physical standards. The mantra of the day is … “Hey we’re not changing the physical standards to accommodate women.”
Fair enough – but let me illustrate the problem. In order to be a Marine infantryman – I think the MINIMUM number of pullups required is SEVEN. Or something low like that. An OUTSTANDING – may be 17?
So in an ALL MALE Marine squad – the abilities will be arranged along a “bell curve” – with about half of the men on the bottom half, able to do fewer pullups and the other half on the top half – able to do a lot more than the minimum.
Now integrate that squad with half women – and the average physical strength on the bell curve … GOES LEFT – and skews weaker.
You cannot escape this fact – no matter how much you wishcast otherwise.
Krulac, a consider myself to be a feminist and am pretty much the opposite of you politically (though I do like you, based on what I’ve read of your comments!), but I totally agree with you on this subject.
Women are fighters-of-last-resort. Women are willing to defend their homelands from invasion, like in WWII (Eastern Front) and the Spanish Civil War, but we are, in general, inferior combatants. We’re just not cut out for it. I don’t understand why this is controversial. I’m 5’9″ 130 lbs and I work out, and I am only half as strong as a man my size. It isn’t even close.
FURTHERMORE, with how mechanized today’s military is, there are many ways for a woman to serve in the military and be a good, helpful soldier than actually serving in combat. Women can do a zillion other useful things. We don’t need to be on the front lines.
Leave the fighting to the guys. Women in combat positions just complicates shit and impeded efficacy, as you noted.
Finally–and there’s no getting around it–women get pregnant. Especially on boats. It’s not fair for the military to have to absorb that cost.
“Cop murders 93-year-old woman in “self defense”.”
If she really did have a gun, and really was waving it around, then I don’t care what age she was or what gender. A person pointing a gun at you is a person threatening to kill you. End of story.
I’m with the pigs on this one, if they are telling the truth.
Mighty big “if”.
“Carson moves to criminalize bullying for children as young as 5”
Good. Screw them. Yes, bullies start that young, and they don’t change.
I’m going to let someone else take this one.
“Bullies start young, and they don’t change”
Your a bit off here. All young children will bully when encouraged by circumstances to do so, and most kids grow out of it.
Bullies are not some inborn “evil trait”, they are a natural response of kids when they are insecure about something at home, or in the hierarchy of their friends.
Further, cops never, ever, should be involved with young children. There is no situation that would not be better served by calling parents, or in a situation with abusive parents, social services.
I see you subscribe to the ignorant and nasty belief that criminals should be punished, not rehabilitated, and all unwelcome behavior should be criminalize.
I suggest you read more of Maggies blog to cure yourself of this appalling and subhuman philosophy.
I think you are right about this but the problem is that many people take this view to justify passivity in the face of a bully.
In other word’s … “He’s just insecure and his attacks on you proove it – you’re so much the better man and you actually win the fight when you allow him to club you senselessly.”
Their are parents who are like that. “This bully beat Johnny at school today and I’M SO PROUD that Johnny never stooped to his level and answered that bully with violence.”
LOL – that’s SHEEP. In that case – I’d rather be an insecure bully than food for one.
Bullies are the greatest positive resource to child rearing – and I’m serious about that.
The world is not fair – and that is the number one lesson children need to learn when growing up. The second most important lesson is to realize that no one can save you but yourself.
Up until I was in the fifth grade – I was “bullied”. I’m not normally a violent person and so I always sought some other resolution to the conflict, even if it meant that I lost face. However, some conflicts in life DEFY resolution – and require a violent response. One day a bully came at me and I knew there was nothing I could do to dissuade him – so I took the first shot … and the second. I busted his fucking nose with the second blow … he fought back – but he was utterly shocked I was fighting back and even more shocked when he realized I bloodied his nose.
Teachers came in and broke up the fight – I got a paddling in the Principle’s office … and then they took me to my Mom – who was a teacher in the school. I explained to her what happened … she said we’d talk about it with Dad when we got home …
I went back to class – to find I was now a “rock star”. “Man, you KILLED him! You looked so pissed off! Like a mad man!”
The guy never bothered me again – I told him later that if he came within five feet of me and made eye contact I would club him – no questions asked – every single time he did it. He gave me a wide berth after that.
I learned … that it’s fine to be a “negotiator” – but the guy you’re negotiating with needs to know that you’re not “negotiating” because you fear a fight – AND – it actually helps if he THINKS you actually want to fight him. I do this as a bouncer when I resolve issues in the bar. I go up to a guy and speak to him nicely – without issuing a male challenge to him – but I also posture myself so that he knows I’m ready to proceed to the physical. This leaves him thinking that maybe I WANT a physical confrontation. And this always puts him on his best behavior. Because of this – rarely, rarely – will a guy challenge me. If I get in a fight – it’s usually in the act of breaking up a fight between two customers – and there, there is no negotiation you just jump in.
Bullys are a GIFT FROM GOD. A teaching tool – and an indefensible one.
Don’t believe me? Look at this LAUGHABLE #bringbackourgirls “hashtag campaign” for the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Islamofascists in Nigeria. Those bullies don’t GIVE A SHIT about an internet hashtag campaign – but that’s all coming from people who were raised in sheltered lives – away from bullies – or they never learned the lessons that bullies are meant to teach.
You want those girls back – you go bloody some goddamn noses and take them back.
Hashtags … so fucking laughable.
I’m somewhere between Paul and Stormdaughter on this one. Yes, life is unfair and bullies are out there, but that doesn’t mean any child should be forced to take what they dish out. Too often the biggest bad guys will have a great talent for convincing authorities (whether cops or just the principal) that they’re the good guys, and therefore you should be punished for defending yourself. And it’s not the trivial matter it would be for an adult victim, because as a child, you can’t walk out of the situation. You’re forced to stay at that school where it will happen again and again.
Yes, cops often overreact in these situations, and they need to be trained better before they’re stationed at a K-12 school. But ultimately, the victims HAVE to have both the right and the practical ability to go to the police for help and get it. If the police aren’t willing to be helpful that way, then they shouldn’t be around at all.
The only thing that surprised me about Columbine was how many decades it took to happen. If I had been able to get hold of weapons at that age, it would have happened 30 years sooner, and been fully justified.
I don’t think you could have “justified” a mass murder. You can’t blame that on a bully who calls you names, or ostracizes you, or punches you in the nose.
I always found this ironic too. If I got in a fight though at school – BOTH me and the other guy were punished equally – even if he started the fight. This didn’t make any sense to me – my Dad sorted it all out for me though. He said basically, that the school could never really play “referee” … so it was always easier to punish both kids the same. I remember him telling me … “A guy hits you and you just take it – you’re both gonna get punished the same … may as well make him pay for it – it’s not gonna cost you any more – if you’re gonna get punished – earn the punishment.”
I mean – it’s pretty easy really – even if you LOSE fights. Bully’s like to pick on guys who will back down … they don’t like to fight every time. They’re looking for easy targets. All a kid has to do is stand up for himself. I had friends who LOST every single fight they got in. However, they didn’t get bullied because they had a reputation for having a “hair trigger” and being “wild men”. That’s the way they fought – no holds barred and they wouldn’t quit once the fight started no matter how many times you knocked ’em down. And they’d fight dirty too. If you picked a fight with them and somehow tripped on your shoelaces – you’d find these guys on top of you slamming your head into the floor and they wouldn’t stop – didn’t know how to stop. So if you were unlucky enough and they (by some miracle) got the advantage – you might end up in the hospital. I STOPPED a fight one time when one of my friends did this – he was slamming the guy’s face into the pavement (this was outside on a service road by the track) … and the pavement was COURSE – and every time that guy’s face hit the pavement I could see more blood. After about the forth slam – I saw the guy going limp and that’s when I grabbed my buddy off the top of him. My buddy even took a few swings at me and CONNECTED – then I put him in a bear hug and drug him off – and he was spitting and cursing the whole time. He would have killed that guy.
After he went through the whole “punishment cycle” … he came and found me and said … “Hey Krulac, when’s the last time you ever saw me WIN a fight?” And I laughed and said … “I ain’t never seen you win a fight, bro”. “Haha! Well I won that motherfucker didn’t I?” And he was all grins.
It’s not what a bully does to you that’s harmful – it’s the response you have within that’s the most damaging. Most people hate bullies because of what the bullies TEACH them about themselves. Bullies are like flashlights – and they’ll light up a character flaw – such as lack of courage – and that’s why bullies are hated so much – for what they teach us about ourselves. But … if you react to CORRECT that flaw within yourself … which is the proper reaction … you will a great deal of self-esteem and you won’t hate that bully anymore. You’ll realize that bully did you a great favor.
“Bullies start young, and they don’t change”
Perhaps, it might be a learned behaviour. But it need not be so; as usual the answer lies in finding out why the bully acts as he/she does, and then trying to change the behaviour. Of course, if the bully isn’t re-educated, this pattern of activity might well persist; the behaviour is unchecked, the bully gets pleasure or satisfaction, and sees no reason to end it. And, rather unhappily, many of us have this innate capability—see yesterday’s thread. I’m not a great fan of manipulating kids’ minds to think like I do, but this is one area where they need to learn that to live as responsible adults, there are some behaviours that are simply unacceptable and wrong. And it’s also important to realise that bullying, or the perception of bullying, lies in the mind of the person who is being bullied. What might be perceived as sexual banter by one person (if rather coarse and unwanted) could well be seen as an assault (for that is what bullying is) by another; neither is wrong.
You will never rid the world of bullies. Bullies are a part of evolved human behavior. It’s silly to think we could ever eliminate them.
It’s a little late in the day, but I’d like to wish a happy Mother’s Day to Maggie. I’m sorry that she never got the chance to be a biological mother, but as a mentor and a spiritual mother to the rest of us, she has done a great job!
Thank you, Eddie! I really appreciate the sentiment, more than I can explain.
I hate bullying – who doesn’t? – but these insane attempts to legislate it out of existence are part of the problem.
Bullies are smart. They are excellent at working the system to spread misery. And one of their victims, who finally musters the courage to fight back, is way more likely to get labeled a “bully” under such laws, because he/she doesn’t have any experience at fooling and manipulating adults.
Thus, the bully’s torture is doubled and tripled by useful idiots, who crush his young victim with all the force of Law. What better encouragement could you give a budding sociopath?