US police brutality item

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Just imagine how much prison space could be freed up by decriminalizing drugs.

The mind wobbles.

Boru

How positively Libertarian of you...

That idea has been a plank on the party platform since the 1980s...

I did not know that. I suppose even Libertarians get things right every now and again.

Boru

[onlinebiker]

How positively Libertarian of you...

That idea has been a plank on the party platform since the 1980s...

I did not know that. I suppose even Libertarians get things right every now and again.

Boru

How about border security?

You might be surprised at some of the things they espouse....

The ( D )s and the ( R )s have a vested interest into marginalizing and limiting political access by third parties...

They like their duopoly....

[The Architect Of Fate]

Entering a country should not be crime .Only what you do within that country should be a crime if it is in fact a crime .Then the punishment should be jail not deportation ,And every effort should be made to try and offer a pth to full citizenship .

[The Grand Nudger]

The way we've legalized actually set up cartels, and they're about as keen on paying their taxes as any other.

[TaraJo]

How positively Libertarian of you...

That idea has been a plank on the party platform since the 1980s...

I did not know that. I suppose even Libertarians get things right every now and again.

Boru

There are left libertarians out there.  Admittedly, the loudest "libertarians" get the most attention and they're the obnoxious, abrasive assholes, but not all are like that.  

I have a facebook friend whose path down libertarianism started out as a big Ron Paul fan.  Over time, he's become increasingly more and more left-wing.  Hell, last time I asked, he's fully calling himself a communist, which is an interesting little transformation.

As for cops, it really says something when the same political people who insist they need to be armed to the teeth to fight government tyranny don't think anything is wrong with cops killing innocent, compliant people at a whim.  And when the case goes to court, they never seem to go to jail or lose their job or even lose any pay after their suspension is appealed.  That's what it's been like for cops: needlessly kill someone and get a paid vacation.  Might want to ask the "I'm-gonna-fight-the-government" crowd who exactly they're going to be shooting at when they actually do that fighting.  Do they think they're going to be putting accountants from the IRS on the front lines?  Do you think social workers are going to be the ones coming into your homes to take your guns?  Oh, no, it will be police and military that you're going to fight.  They are government agents and because of cop apologists, they have no accountability or restraint.

[The Grand Nudger]

They plan to kill you, not the government. That's the target of their ire. That's the tyranny they believe in.

[Rev. Rye]

Okay, so one of the movies I got out of the library just before it closed for the pandemic is Cutter's Way (I also got a Blu-Ray from Twilight Time's liquidation sale a few months ago on the off chance that the library actually lets me return their copy at some point), and this scene in particular strikes me as relevant:





The first time I heard about cops getting away with shooting innocent black people (I think it was Amadou Diallo), I wound up at the "I hate the USA" phase Cutter's talking about. Eventually, more cases came to light, and I get to "there is no God." Then year after year, reports of black people being shot by cops for arbitrary reasons and their killers getting off with little more than a suspension, I find out how, even in the most morally-defensible of scenarios, the line separating a legit threat and just some punk with no intention to kill can be gossamer-thin, and becoming more acutely aware of how intertwined race and class are in America, (poor people are more likely to commit crimes, black people are more likely to be poor) and how difficult it would be to effect changes even if Congress was actually able to pass laws, and even noticing that the only thing that's been accomplished from the protests is retribution, it becomes inevitable for me to slide into "I'm hungry."

A case like this, with so few mitigating factors, a long, lingering death inflicted on a man who might have passed off a counterfeit $20 to buy smokes, a death that happened in full view of a crowd, with several onlookers either filming it (with nobody stopping them) or pleading with the cop to stop doing it (pleas which fell on deaf ears), it's becoming easier to see why this, of all cases, is helping people slide back to the earlier stages, especially after we at least get some police reforms. Fuck knows if that's going to mean much in the  long run, but at least it's more progress than has happened in the past few years.

[Duty]

One interesting recent development in my perception of Mr Floyd's death is that Chauvin, the "neck kneeler" police officer, probably did, in fact, not cause his death, but rather the officers who were standing/ kneeling on his back. That was the pressure location which killed Tony Tempi, and is it really plausible that the neck kneeling closed the trachea? Of course not. Truly, appearances can be deceptive.

[The Architect Of Fate]

And that makes him less dead how?

[Mister Agenda]

One interesting recent development in my perception of Mr Floyd's death is that Chauvin, the "neck kneeler" police officer, probably did, in fact, not cause his death, but rather the officers who were standing/ kneeling on his back. That was the pressure location which killed Tony Tempi, and is it really plausible that the neck kneeling closed the trachea? Of course not. Truly, appearances can be deceptive.

It was the pressure on the carotid artery cutting off blood flow to the brain (which is what the neck kneel is supposed to do) and the back pressure that impaired his breathing that is believed to have triggered the cardiopulmonary event that killed Floyd. A closed trachea had nothing to do with it, and this is information that has been available since the second autopsy commissioned by Floyd's family.