I suppose this could be by someone else, just written to discredit the named guy.

Whatever. Too good not to post.

[Name redacted] and I were forced to move our home-office [redacted], following another attempt on [name redacted]'s life that landed him in intensive care in a [redacted] hospital. He survived the poison gas attack but continues to suffer high blood pressure, extreme fatigue, itching under the scalp, shortness of breath and other symptoms of the bio-toxin/poison gas that was injected into his home just prior to hospitalization.

In unrelated news, almost all of these symptoms -- a weak constitution, fatigue, headlice -- are associated with loser dweebs who sit in front of their fucking computers all day long and never see the light of day.

(This is true of me, too, but I'm quitting smoking, so that's something.)

These attempted murders, stalking, harassment, illegal surveillance and oppression continue to be ignored by law enforcement authorities at all levels of U.S. government. Although, since we made our initial disclosures about the "9-11 inside job"---trememendously great evidence has surfaced proving the truth of our allegations. The "9-11" Truth Movement continues to grow and expose the rogues within the U.S. government who planned and executed the "false flag" murders of neary 3,000 Americans on this terrible day.

We are now aware of two dozen good Americans---including other "Whistleblowers"---who have suffered suspicious deaths, been "suicided" and otherwise covertly "taken out" by Black Op (or Black Op-contracted) SPOOKS operating domestically in the U.S. The murders of two teenage females that we investigated continue to be feloniously ignored and "covered-up." At no other time in history has America suffered such internal crime and corruption as is the case today. Our country is on a nose-dive to utter ruin and, sadly, most people remain willfully ignorant or apathetic to this destruction.

Wow. He not only determined (apparently without medical confirmation, as we'd have heard about that) that this was a "poison," but on top of it, a "bio-toxin poison."

Who knew these Truthers are so hella-competent at identifying exotic black-ops poison types?

Need I say for the thousandth time that almost all of this is the ego-driven need of an intellectually and socially insecure person to convince himself that not only does he possess "secret knowlege" that "the sheeple" don't, but that he is, by virtue of such intellectual might, an extraordinarily important person meriting attempts on his very life by the US government?

There's a thin line between ordinary jagoff conspiracy-mongering and diagnosable paranoid schizophrenia (with a touch of megalomania tossed in for good measure), and most of these nasty creeps seem to have crossed it.

I wouldn't mind tasering these sonsabitches back to sanity.

PS: And again, I restate my firm belief that a schizophrenic can be diagonsed in five minutes just by counting the "number" of "quotation marks" he feels "required" to "use" in order to "express" "himself."

Caps-locking perfectly normal words doesn't HELP much, EITHER.

Posted by: Ace at 02:10 PM | Comments (35)
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(Notice I keep upping the stakes.)

pHenry notes:

the Sullen one is missing one other possible reason that black people as a group are less inclined towards his extremist homosexual agenda: The majority of them tend to be church going true believing Christians. (Though I doubt he includes them as 'christianist'). And the simple fact is that Christianity condemns the practicing gay lifestyle.

I know, if Andy wishes it were not so, then dogma and belief should bow to his grand vision. But what value is a religion that changes its definition of right and wrong according to social whim?

God's word USED to say it was a sin, but now we are more enlightened and have superceded the original meaning.

Maybe Mr. Sullivan could just go ahead and rewrite the bible for us, so we know what is acceptable belief today.

I think that plays into it too, although I wouldn't msyelf link belief in Christianity -- whoops! I meant "Christianism" -- with actual anti-gay animus.

It's possible, I think, to hate the sin, love the sinner, though, of course, many people use the sin as a reason to hate the sinner. It's also possible to disagree with the more radical parts of the gay agenda without actually hating, or even disliking, gays.

Except for that homo camp thing, which really needs to go.

But I think even when we add in the religious factor -- blacks probably feel less pressure to smooth out the rough edges of their religiously-derived beliefs (here, being against homosexuality) because they've largely been excused from the White Liberal Tolerance Brigade's constant mau-mauing.

And, as I've said before, I don't think that mau-mauing is all bad; a lot of good has come from it. People really are less likely to be racist or whatever-ist today than they were in the past; saying something racist or homophobic or whatever quickly brings to bear a coercive social scorn.

Of course, I also dislike charges of "racsim" where none exists.

But, good or no, really, only whites are subject to the high level of pressure from the White Liberal PC Police, and especially straight white males. Blacks and other minorities simply have not had anything like the full force of the New PC brought down upon them.

Posted by: Ace at 01:38 PM | Comments (27)
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An ill wind chilling dissent is blowing, as Tim Robbins would say.

Mike Kelly -- who was pretty close to being a true moderate -- once observed that whenever Republicans begin threatening to actually become the popular, majority party in the country, they start doing very unpopular things, like (he said) giving tax breaks to millionaires.

Why? Well, he said, because that's what they believe in.

Well, good to see that Democrats actually believe in some things themselves -- and partisan payback is at the top of that list.

The thought of a repulsive toad like Leahy attempting to cross-examine a charming and articulate (not racist; she's white) woman like Laura Ingraham is just delicious.

That should work.

Thanks to Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 01:19 PM | Comments (41)
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Shhh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. The media is, as usual, conservative-hunting, and and is censoring information that might hurt the (anti-) war effort.

Just days after the election, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei referred to the GOP losses in the congressional elections a “victory for Iran."

Officials from Iran and Syria (Jerusalem(CNSNews.com) said that a Democrat-controlled Congress could help relieve pressure that had been put on them by the current administration.

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, leader of IraqÂ’s al Qaeda wing (DUBAI, Nov 10 (Reuters) said the Democrat victory was a step in the right direction. Then he said, "I swear by God we shall not rest from jihad until we ... blow up the filthiest house known as the White House." I guess the prospect of possible impeachment just wasnÂ’t quite sufficient.

Lorie Byrd notes that promises of Democratic "moderation" and "consensus-building" seem to have been abandoned rather quickly.

Think the media will hold them to task for being "dividers," rather than "uniters," as they just promised?

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (12)
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Not sure I can actually give Bush credit, because a big reason for that fall in price is his supine posture vis a vis the Iranians, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Genuine action against them = much higher prices.

Still, I suppose it's cowbell-ish.

Here's a cute CG thing of farm equipment made into a Rube Goldberg-esque mechanical orchestra. Including, yes, prominent cowbell.

Thanks to "Ort." I never know how to hat-tip people when they don't provide a screenname or alias. So, he's "Ort."

Posted by: Ace at 01:09 PM | Comments (7)
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Preening and smearing.

It's interesting how Olbermann veers so suddenly from condemnation of guilty-by-association attacks into enthusiastic embrace of that selfsame tactic.

Depends upon whose ox is being gored, I guess.

Or whose ox is being hamstrung.

Making his own threat.

He does, reluctantly, apologize after the break, and make the point that such joking is "beyond the pale."

Still, it's an interesting contrast.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Michelle Malkin, of course, has never said anything like this, joking or not. Still, she gets blamed by Olberman for an unhinged man's actions, whereas Keith Olbermann is all-too-eager to excuse himself for actually suggesting violence against his partisan enemies.

Yes, he specifically retracted his statements and gave what appears to be a quite-sincere lecture about the evil of political violence.

Then again, Michelle Malkin has given such lectures a dozen times. And she never had to give such a lecture due to her own "jokey" suggestion of maiming a political opponent.

More links at Hot Air.

Posted by: Ace at 12:40 PM | Comments (37)
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I'd give a hat-tip, but I can't, because I got it from a racist hate-site run by a militant gay English writer who sometimes degenerates into National Front style racial denigration.

Sorry, Andrew. Conscience precludes me from linking you.

Eh, I'm sure he stole it from someone else anyway. Without attribution, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (6)
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So sayeth the True Conservative:

African-Americans are easily the ethnic group most hostile toward gay rights. The reasons may have more to do with education and class than race.

"May have more to do with education and class than race." May. On the other hand, I suppose, he's saying that it might just be that blacks are genetically, racially programmed to hate gays. Inherently racially inferior on this score, I suppose he's saying.

Also, of course: Assuming that blacks lack education and class.

I won't go bananas, here. Blacks, as a group, are not very fond of gays. Yes, that may have to do with the fact that tolerance for gays increases (group-wide) as a group becomes richer and more educated. In elite circles, homosexuality isn't "tolerated" so much as it's celebrated and encouraged.

Since blacks are disproportionately represented in the lower quintiles of wealth and education, it is not necessarily racist to postulate that has something to do with this phenomenon. (But it is kind of close, according to the rules of "you're not allowed to say that" "racism"-rules.)

I'm sure Harry Belafonte just loves the homos.

There's another reason for this, though. Blacks have largely been excused from the Tolerance Campaign liberals have been fighting for fifty years. Whites, of course, are expected to be tolerant of all races, religions, and sexual orientations, and if they're not (or even if they just disagree politically with group-identity agendas) they're condemned.

Blacks have been excused from this -- largely due to white liberal condescension. You can hear a hell of a lot more naked, 1930's style not-even-being-crafty-about-it anti-semitism from blacks, even prominent black leaders, than from just about everyone else.

Why? Because the social mau-mauing towards "tolerating other religions and races and sexual orientations" has simply not been applied, by and large, to the black community. They get a pass, mostly, either because Guilty White Liberals feel blacks have more important things to worry about, or because Condescending Closet-Racist White Liberals figure you can't expect more from them.

And, as a last point, I'd posit that blacks aren't necessarily the group that's the most overtly anti-gay (as opposed to anti-gay-agenda or anti-gay-sex).

Can anyone think of any other ethnic groups that don't seem to dig on queer very much?

Altogether, another shrill, stupid post from "The Most Influential Writer In America," as Sullivan once declared himself.

Thanks to pHenry.

Posted by: Ace at 11:38 AM | Comments (55)
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Resistor. Get it?

This wasn't a pre-planned protest. When officers serving as security guards for a UCLA library began checking (per policy) that everyone in the library after 11pm was a UCLA student (or would have to leave at that point), a member of the Religion of Eternal Grievances refused to show his ID, claiming "racial profiling." The cops then demanded he leave.

Apparently he was leaving, but a cop refused to take his hand off him as he was heading for the door. The student shouted at the officer to take his hand off him, and then decided to go limp to the floor and refuse to exit under his own power.

That's when it gets ugly (lots of profanity and screaming, little you can actually see).

Put aside the fact he's a crying, screaming little hysterical bitch who, I'd say, probably could have used a lot more tasing in his earlier development. Forget the rather trill and effeminate demands by students the cops show tell them their badge numbers.

There really doesn't seem to be any good reason for the cops to have escalated this to the point of tasing an apparently nonthreatening loiterer. As is common, I guess -- and sort of unavaoidable -- the cops' egos became involved in this situation. He was giving them grief and defying their lawful orders; they decided they would impose their will on him one way or another.

The right course of action? Letting the little shit sit there, calling in back-up, and then, having enough men to physically remove him, doing so without incident.

Not having the manpower to carry out his body's dead-weight (I guess), they attempt to coerce him into leaving under his own power.

You can't inflict pain on a nonviolent resistor just to save you the trouble of carrying his fat ass out of a library. You can't torture him, basically, into compliance.

I think this sort of thing is inevitable in these situations; I give the cops a break because I know human nature, and I know they're not somehow immunized against human nature just because they wear a badge. Stuff like this gets personal. It's hard to keep one's objectivity when something escalates into a physical confrontation or a battle of wills.

Still: They did wrong, and the LAPD and the city will end up paying a lot of money for it. And I don't think the city can afford to give them a pass. Lose your cool one time as a cop and your career is probably over. A more realistic view of human nature might support the idea that every cop should get one mulligan on a losing his objectivity (well, with a suspension and retraining and a black mark on his record), but that's not how the game works. Lose it once -- on video! -- and you're all done.

More from Allah.

The short range of the "tasing" attack, by the way, suggests to me it wasn't what I call a "taser" (that is, a gun which fires out electrical leads up to a distance of 15 feet or so) but rather a stun gun (which isn't a gun, just an, um, "electric blackjack"). Are all the cool kids calling a stun gun a "taser" these days?

Oh... The cops' defense is extremely weak -- they claim the little bastard was "inciting" other students, thus, I guess, justifying taking immediate, coercive action rather than waiting for backup.

That's not going to fly. The prick wasn't "inciting" an uprising that had to be put down immediately lest mass violence ensue. He was just being an obnoxious little screaming sissyboy.

Stop the ACLU... diagrees, and asks "What part of 'stand up' didn't he understand?"

Well, that's just arguing the cops gave a lawful order. Which I agree with. The question is what level of violence they're allowed to use in order to secure compliance with a lawful order.

If someone's using deadly force, or armed, and doesn't comply, you can use deadly force. If someone's physically resisting (as in attempting to escape or fighting back without a weapon) you can use nondeadly force.

If someone's not resisting with any force at all -- just going limp and refusing to leave under his own power, and doesn't present any immediate danger -- I don't think you can use force at all, except the fairly minor force of carrying him against his will.

It's possible the kid was resisting being carried -- squirming away, pushing hands off of him, etc. That is a sort of physical resistance, but not one that presents any sort of danger to the cops, or any other students. If such a strategy means you can't carry him out with the number of cops you have, call in more cops. Six people can carry a squirming little shit out whether he likes it or not without harming him.

Well, except for the bruises he'll get from strong grips on his arms and legs.

But I think that's about as much force as you can justifiably use in what is, basically, a nonviolent dead-weight go-limp resistance to a nonviolent misdemeanor.

Eyewitness: He Was Begging For A Little Taser Daddy-Time: Over at Allah's:

et me start off by saying that the guy DEFINITELY was asking to get his ass kicked. He was being extremely rude with the campus patrol guys (who are college studentsÂ…this was before the real UCPD got called in). He was not complying with their requests to leave the premises, and he was definitely itching for a fight. I actually know the guy and a few of his friends, and I can tell you that heÂ’s the kind of guy that loves to make trouble.

Just as a little backstory, one of the quotes the guy has on his facebook (which he now has taken down) was “I like to find the most difficult solutions to the simplest of problems”.

He definitely taunted the UCPD into behaving the way they did with him.

He aslo answers my question about the taser -- it was used in "drive-stun" mode, which I guess is a nonfiring mode (i.e., physical contact required) and furthermore a lighter charge than full tasing.

Allah says this doesn't change the equation. I don't think it does either.

We have to separate three separate questions:

1) Did the cops issue a lawful order which the kid was legally obligated to comply with?

2) Did the kid's refusal to comply make his eligible for arrest?

3) Was the cops' use of force/coercion to effect that arrest -- when less violent means were available -- justifiably?

The answers are Yes, Yes, and No.

Yeah, the kid "deserved" it. But cops can't use a greater level of force than necessary just because someone "deserves" it. We wink at that sometimes, but it's not proper procedure, and it can't be winked at when it's all on videotape.

An extreme example of the Yes Yes No thing is if someone committing a low-level, non-threatening crime (say, loitering, or public drunkenness) runs from police when they attempt to arrest him. Do they have the right to draw their pistols and begin firing on him to effect that arrest? Of course not.

That's an extreme case, yes, but offered to put the basic idea into sharp relief.

The "Escalating Situation Demanded Escalating Force" Argument: is offered by many. The idea, I take it, is that the other students were in danger of becoming violent, so the cause for violence had to be removed immediately, by painful taser-coercion if necessary.

Sorry, I don't buy it. It's quite clear the other students were not "incited" -- to the extent they were "incited" at all, which they weren't -- into violence by this kid's idiotic dead-weight "resistance," but by the cops' quick-on-the-taser-trigger response.

They could have just cuffed the kid and let him lie on the floor until other cops came. Then they could have easily carried him out.

No "incitement" in that situation.

Yes, nonlethal (or "less lethal," as cops call them) means are to be employed much more freely than lethal means. Part of the theory there is that a good macing or pepper-spraying or billy-clubbing can help you avoid the use of deadly force.

However, look at this situation. Was there some pressing exigency requiring any real infliction of pain?

I don't see it. I see someone acting like a total asshole and going limp to the ground, as lefty protestors do when police attempt to clear them from a road they've decided to block.

And what is the typical police response in that situation? Macing and tasering them until they exit under their own power?

No. It's to get four or six guys on each protestor, lift them up, deposit them in the paddy-wagon, and ferry them off to jail (where a judge will sentence them to "time served," thus freeing them immediately).

Monty Says...

I've been following this discussion and wanted to comment on "force elevation" and "threat level" because that's one of the things you learn in the military for dealing with (possibly hostile) crowds. The first and golden rule is: don't escalate unless they do first. The second rule is: only escalate as far as you need to in order to reduce the threat level to yourself and other civilians.

The kid was pretty clearly resisting, though, so some escalation was called for. If you're a cop and you tell someone to move, and they don't move, you make them move. You cannot lose authority in a situation like that. A perception of weakness is almost a guarantee for the subject to get more, not less, violent. (Whether that's true in this case is not relevant -- if you're a cop, you follow your training.)

So I must agree that these cops over-reacted. The kid was being a total shithead, but much more could have been accomplished by speaking politely, waiting for backup, and then physically removing him from the premises. But letting the kid get away with it would have been equally wrong. He should have been politely but firmly escorted from the premises, and carried if he refused to cooperate.

Well, if someone's cuffed and held on the floor, awaiting additional cops to carry him away to jail, he's plainly "not getting away with it."

What was the situation here? A tinderbox situation with this fuckhead was lighting matches?

If this were the case of an escalating riot after a big school sports win, such tactics would be justified -- because that's really a situation where the situation is degenerating, and can get wildly out of control, and deadly, if not stopped as quickly as possible. When college kids start smashing windows and overturning cars and lighting things on fire, and you catch one, and he drops limp to the ground -- fine, taser him until he gets into the paddywagon. In that situation, you neither have the time (the situation is worsening0 nor the manpower (any riot will quickly have far more perps than cops) for any fucking about.

But this was a libarary, with Ivy-league-equivalent grinders studying late-night.

Was this a crowd likely to begin rioting?

No.

Were there any signs of an imminent riot? Of course not. The most aggressive action the "hostiles" took against the cops was to whine, "I want your badge numbers."

All the "incitement" -- to the extent there was incitement at all, which there doesn't seem to have been much of -- was not in response to the obnoxious screaming-baby sissymary on the floor, but in response to the cops' unecessary and unwarranted escalation into pain-coercion techniques.

Cuff him, have a guy put his knee into his back (lightly but firmly) to keep him pinned to the ground, wait for a couple more cops to carry him away.

Quite frankly -- I'm not sure that the cops present couldn't have managed to carry this sissy out themselves. Cops tend to be bigger than average and fairly strong; unless this kid was obese, I have to figure he was a skinny little pussy. I'm not sure why they couldn't have just cuffed him and dragged him out.

Except, perhaps, they didn't feel like doing such heavy lifting.

"My back is kind of tired and I've been on my feet all day" is hardly a reason to break out weapons that are supposed to be used against actual threats.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (204)
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If you missed this, as I did, here's your second chance.

Posted by: Ace at 10:14 AM | Comments (17)
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