johnzo

do traffic cops need to be armed? you see it all the time in the USA, as a traffic cop approaches a vehicle they've pulled over, they are ready on their gun or maybe even have their gun drawn. How many traffic stops legit need that show of force? I am whitey mcwhiterson and I still get nervous when a gunned-up cop pulls me over and I describe every move I'm going to make to the cop before I do it, and I ask for permission. "I'm reaching into my pants pocket to get my license out, is that ok officer?" And my hands are on the wheel throughout the entire encounter unless i specifically ask for permission to move them off. ...which I guess is the point, a nervous / intimidated me is less likely to talk **** back or otherwise cause problems, but that ain't the way a government should treat one of its people and it's not one that makes me trust cops more, it pisses me off. and plus, not everyone reacts well to that show of force.

just want to point out the the shakedowns in Ferguson MO were not about speed trap robots and red light cameras, they were all about armed cops hitting people up in public for BS fines. red light cameras, we got a real problem with jackwagons running stale reds in Seattle and I'm all for ticketing those guys. that's so damn dangerous.

I think your first and third paragraphs put together make a tremendous point. You look at the federal report on Ferguson MO, which exxonnerated the shooter, but which also pointed out that the Ferguson police force is a shakedown crew plugging holes in the city budget by levying fines that people can't pay, and you can guess the kinds of people that burden landed disproportionally upon. Then you add asset forfeiture in on top of that and you've turned police departments into tax collectors with guns. Yet another bad use of the cops. USA hates taxation, starves the beast, suddenly local governments are turning tax collection over to the goon squad. And then you wonder why people hate cops? Who likes tax collectors?

I've been thinking about this a lot and while we in the USA point fingers at bad cops, I think that failure in civilian leadership is a huge part of the root cause. The USA prioritizes heroes over caretakers. This means that as every other social service has been defunded, cop departments have gotten fatter and fatter and have taken on responsibilities that are really not responsibilities that call for heroic armed response. Like a wellness check. You're worried about the senior next door, the person you send shouldn't be armed unless that senior is setting up a sniper nest. You got a jumper ready to jump off a bridge? Response doesn't need to be armed. You got a traffic accident or a speeding ticket? Response doesn't need to be armed. Anyone from the lowest sinner to the saintliest saint is going to get cynical when they're asked to do an impossible job. A modern American big-city cop has to be a social worker, EMT, a peacekeeper, and a peacemaker, a dozen other things. That's too many goddamn jobs. And the cynicism that rightfully evolves from that is a great place for bad bad **** -- from roided out Spartan thin blue line cops to white supremacy -- to grow. And note that domestics, esp. violent ones, are a special ******* nightmare, because those are at a really hard intersection of social work and public safety work. Got no answer for that. So yeah, we gotta weed out some bad hombres in the police department -- but we also have to change the job description. I do want the state to have the ability to confront people who are armed and who are hurting civilians. But I don't want the state armed response agency to be the single universal number to call when there's something going on that's a little weird or unusual -- or when someone runs a stop sign.

thousands of people rallying in THUNDER BAY? whoah https://www.tbnewswatch.com/video/tbt-newshour/video-june-5-2020-black-lives-matter-rally-draws-thousands-2414516

holy ****, Winnipeg! Amazing!

"Simply executing orders." That is some baller PR right there.

Breonna Taylor, damnit. least I can do is spell her name right.

Check out the story of Breanna Taylor. Fuckup Kentucky cops no-knocked her apartment by mistake -- they were after a suspect who was already in custody and their target address was about ten miles away. Her boyfriend stood his ground and shot at them, and so the cops riddled her with gunfire. She was shot eight times. When they say "light 'em up" I guess that's what they mean. The essence of warrior copdom in the USA is "**** with us and die." You fight back against a cop, they will escalate like a mobster. Maybe you win in court afterwards, but maybe you're dead.

This is a forelorn hope. If Trump loses big, the GOP will be too busy trying to confirm as many judges as they can during the lame-duck session. The GOP is full of people who hate each other, but the ties that bind them are stronger than the ties that push them apart.

:meanwhile in Seattle.. watch the second video -- can anyone explain to me what that cop was trying to accomplish besides just being a violent clown? reminds me of a drunken jerk in a bar looking for a fight.

this is the highest and best use of Wayne and Shuster... (nothing against those guys, I just really like this song)

another giant youtube concert. there are no words, these guys were out-of-their-minds good.

glorious, I've never seen the whole thing. impressed with the other Joey Elliott, the guy from Def Leppard. Roger Daltrey sounds pretty good too. hey, Tony Iommi! Stone Cold Crazy ... the very first thrash metal song .. and who comes out to sing it but motherfucking James Hetfield. a perfect moment in time. damn Seal takes that Freddy anguish from Who Wants To Live Forever and makes it smooove. gorgeous. I would've paid my eye teeth to have seen Queen hit the road with George Michael after this. He's one of the few at Freddy's level. Lost him too early too. And that orange blazer is so dope.

hey canada, c'mere let me give you a big sloppy hug you magnificent feelgoodsad friday night gen-x comfort mutt. listen to how they pop the current singer slightly in the mix so they get a moment! 1:24 is such wholesomeness. TAKE THE SOLO WHISTLE GUY! to the guy playing in the plasma ball somewhere around 4:19, he's at 9o'clock in the mosaic

Here's an interesting quote from a judge hearing a lockdown-related case in Wisconsin. You can guess who the meatpackers are and who the regular folks are. more: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/americas-racial-contract-showing/611389/ #alllivesmatter

just dropped this on Youtube. couple friends helped out on bass and sax. It's astonishing what people with iphones can do without ever leaving the house. you want some super chill reggae trip-hop pumped up with some French absurdist despair, here ya go:

Straight out of the Republican playbook. Inconvenient facts are legislated away. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-northcarolina/north-carolina-lawmakers-reject-sea-level-rise-predictions-idUSBRE86217I20120703

Pence acts like someone who was severely bullied by the smart kids at his high school.

Y2K was definitely not a conspiracy theory -- it was a massive and largely successful effort by IT folks to upgrade systems to deal with a very real bug. If we'd done nothing we would have been in some trouble. I was at Nortel in the late nineties and the phone switch folks took Y2K very very seriously. The power grid was legit a big worry, what with its continental scope and tricky-to-understand cascading failure modes. The 2003 eastern North American power outage was caused by a single failure at a single utility in Ohio .. and that knocked everything from Maryland to Thunder Bay down. Multiple utilities going down unexpectedly could have put us in serious uh-oh territory. Some of the reaction to CV19 reminds me of the reaction to Y2K -- since it wasn't as bad as it could have been, the threat was imaginary.

You could get a great bunch of Onion headlines with the mad lib "Susan Collins is very concerned about ___________________"

Re 6: my understanding is that oil prices are plummeting due to a Saudi price war campaign. I have read that the Saudis are pumping their cheap oil at bottom dollar and no one can compete. Wouldn't that really jack up the market for expensive Canadian tar sands oil? (I bet someone on this forum knows way more about this than I do.)

We're a hobby thing, we're not serious about touring and recording and so forth, pretty much everyone in the band has kids. We recorded this EP a couple years ago after we got a little cash windfall but we haven't marketed it at all ... though if Noeller was interested in playing us we would def. take his call... https://iandtheboys.bandcamp.com/track/nimrod (forget the 'I and the Boys" name, that's kind of an old name we don't use anymore, we are Free Candy for the most part now) We play together every week, a mix of jamming and covers and originals, and we gig in small places and house parties around town a couple times a year. It's a great situation, pretty low stress for the most part but occasionally we put our noses to the grindstone and put a show together and invite all our friends. Nothing compares to playing live for people but holy cow it can be stressful... All of us (except the sax player) are trying to write songs, so our originals are all over the map, we have country songs and romantic pop songs and my stomping folk/blues songs, we don't really have a sound that's "ours" if you know what I mean. it makes it more fun for me but sometimes we give the audience whiplash when we go from INXS to Blue Oyster Cult to disco in the space of three songs (I also sing Godzilla and I Will Survive in our set, though I do those from behind the drums)