johnzo

Have you ever seen Arrested Development? That takes place in Orange County.

I remember when all the Bush II creeps were so into waterboarding...

it's brick, so blue and gold would be tough, but I did get some vintage Jets and Blue Bombers pennants from ebay and get those hung up in my office. Off topic but the Bombers don't have much in the way of official 2019 Grey Cup Champion merch you can hang on your walls. Disappointing.

I am way way way way way way way more concerned about the covid than I am about any danger from antifa or black lives matter. Still sheltering my high-risk tuckus in place. Have been doing a ton of home improvement projects and redecorating, though, my place looks pretty spiffy now.

Hey folks, you may be hearing all kinds of crap about how Seattle is a lawless hellscape of gun-totings anarchist checkpoints. That is some Goebbels level horseshit. Here is some drone footage of the CHAZ:

the electoral college makes this more complicated than it looks. There's more dems but they are clustered in cities. Clinton had a four-point popular vote win and still lost in the electoral college because she ran up the score in places like California and New York and lost the midwest by a few tens of thousands of votes. Basically, land gets to vote for president, and land generally votes GOP. I feel okay about Biden's chances, but damn Trump pulled a rabbit out of his hat the first time and the vote suppression machine is revved up and with corona chaos and a massive surge in absentee ballots and a democratic nominee who doesn't inspire a lot of passion and the massive surprise of 2016 still hanging in the air ... everything is uncertain.

man, that sucks he made you wait a full year after Election Day before cutting a cheque. Dude could pay his people faster, is all I'm saying.

no, that is a joke. my point was that this seizure kinda puts the lie to the idea that protesters and vandals are the same bunch. and I couldn't help poking fun at all the Secret Soros Army nonsense that you read from the usual suspects. Actually, if you go back a few months in the U.S. Politics thread, you'll find out that many MBB posters are cashing checks from Soros .... though I regret the jokes I made about the coronavirus vaccine that the SorosForce people got.

holy **** are you folks hearing what's happening out here? Seattle cops abandoned the East Precinct, protesters have set up an damn autonomous zone there with barricades. Somehow all of the surrounding businesses and homes are intact. There is plenty to wreck there -- this is smack dab in the middle of the densest neighborhood on the West Coast. And also, somehow, the precinct house is unburnt! it is strange how these protesters who have been out in the streets for days and days did not take advantage of the cops' sudden retreat to indulge in the animal anarchy that Soros buys with his paychecks. All kinds of chatter about how this was a trap, that the Seattle cops want a new east precinct building anyway and if they get this one burned they win the war. Protesters are not taking them up on it, and I hear anti-provocateur security is in place. I wouldn't have believed something like this could happen even just six months ago, but here we are. This image is not a photoshop.

Believe it when you see it. The mainstream media loves loves loves posting hope porn like this. Jennifer Rubin of the WaPo has basically written the same column every working day of Trump's presidency. Not saying those hyenas couldn't go cannibal, but it won't be heralded by the mainstream media; it will come very quietly and then all at once.

I remember a large wave of stories about the poor police dogs who had to be unemployed because of dope legalization. example: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/may/29/oregon-police-dogs-drug-problem-marijuana it's weird that all of these "won't someone think of the doggos?" stories popped up at the same time. love dogs as much as the next guy but imprisoning people should not be a goddamn make-work program for genius dogs with amazing noses. (boy, that'd be a dog that'd have trouble moving on to civilian life in Seattle. You couldn't walk that dog anywhere where there are people, she would be constantly finding the dope and confused why that wasn't a thing she should do anymore)

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.