Category Archives: Dumbasses and Authoritarians

Overheated Rhetoric or Terroristic Threats?

Democrats, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Multimedia, Political Correctness, Politics, Tea Party, The Welfare State, Unions

Just about this time a month ago, Tea Partiers and those of us who support things like cutting spending were accused of using “overheated rhetoric” in the immediate aftermath of the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords among others. Sarah Palin was blamed by Leftwing pundits for inspiring the gunman because she had “crosshairs” on a campaign map which included Giffords’ district in Tucson, AZ. Remember that?

Now fast forward to the public sector union protests in Wisconsin which overwhelmingly supports Democrats. I think Andrew Klavan of Pajamasmedia captures the violence and overheated rhetoric by these union members quite nicely in this video.

Remember, these are some of the very people who lectured Sarah Palin and the Tea Party just a month ago.

It gets better.

Republican Senators in Wisconsin have also started receiving death threats for daring to stand up against the union thugs. The following is one such e-mail:

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for
more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many
others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel
that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!
Reply Reply to all Forward

What do glass houses and catapults sell for these days?

Hat tip: Boortz

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Lessons from Atlas Shrugged

Culture, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Media, Multimedia, Political Correctness, Socialism, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas

Turned on the news recently? It seems the looters (i.e. collectivists) are everywhere and more active than ever. The big story over recent weeks of course has been the special interest government employee union looters in Wisconsin who call themselves “ the working people” who say they have a “human right” to collective bargaining. Meanwhile in Georgia, college and high school students are protesting reforms to the HOPE scholarship that would require higher GPAs to qualify. As in most states, Georgia is in a financial bind and is looking for budget cuts. Due to the high number of students qualifying for these scholarships, some Georgia lawmakers say that there isn’t enough money* to continue to fund it because of rising education costs. Never mind that though, according to some of these protesters, the State of Georgia has “no right” to “take away” these scholarships for those who can’t quite meet the stricter GPA requirements. In both of the above cases, lawmakers bestowed benefits via wealth redistribution to certain people; these people then started referring to these benefits as “entitlements,” “rights,” and even “human rights.”

Then there is Michael Moore, the real life Ellsworth Toohey of our time, with his usual Socialistic tripe explaining that money is a “national resource” and jobs are “collectively owned” by the workers. Click here if you care to hear it.

As if none of this was enough, NFL officials have decided to rename the proposed “Industry Stadium” in Los Angeles to “Grand Crossing” because the word “industry” has a “negative connotation” to it. Apparently the word “industry” can be added to the word “profit” as dirty words in the lexicon of our increasingly collectivist culture.

After all of this, I needed to find something to remind me that there still are sane people in this country who haven’t bought into the collectivist mentality. The video below is the winning entry from a “Atlas Shrugged” video contest.

I’m seriously thinking about looking for a “Galt/Roark 2012” bumper sticker for my vehicle. It’s time for those who value the concept of the individual to be heard.

*The HOPE scholarship’s only source of funds is the Georgia Lottery and my original point that HOPE was an example of wealth redistribution was in error. I continue to stand by my overall point I was making about the entitlement mentality on the part of some of the protesters, however.

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

“Don’t Forget Your Homework…or Your Miranda Card”

Civil Liberties, Constitution, Crime and Punishment, Culture, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Individual Rights, Know Your Rights, Legal, Media, Multimedia, Police Watch, Security, The Nanny State

I don’t know how much play if any this story has received in the national media but it has been a subject of local news and talk shows here in the Denver media market. Basically, an 11 year old boy drew a disturbing picture for his school counselor and later that evening, the boy was hauled off to jail in handcuffs and booked – fingerprints, mug shots, and all as if he were a hardened adult criminal. The video below goes into more detail.

 

Local Denver talk show host Peter Boyles, as a result of this case and others like this case, has concluded that perhaps it would be prudent for school students of all ages to bring some sort of “Miranda Card” like the one shown below to be presented to school administrators or even (especially) the police. Boyles said that until just a few years ago, he was of the opinion that kids should be taught to trust the police and answer any questions they might have – just as the parents of this young boy did. Now he says that perhaps we should teach our children the exact opposite.

Is this really what it’s coming to now – having to teach our elementary age children the “10 Rules for Dealing with Police” even before they are taught the facts of life?

Maybe so. But there is also another lesson that might be useful for children and hopefully this boy has learned this lesson: don’t be afraid to question authority figures. In the case of this boy, all the authority figures failed him. His counselor failed him by encouraging to draw the picture in the first place without offering any words of caution. The school administrators should have coordinated their approach with the counselor rather than involving the police. The boy’s parents encouraged him to speak openly with the police who then used unnecessary heavy handed tactics that undoubtedly traumatized the child. His trust was betrayed by them all.

Clearly, this is a troubled boy who needs help and was already receiving therapy before government intervention. Why not let those professionals who actually know what they are doing do their jobs?

Now as a parent, I am put in a difficult position. What am I supposed to tell my kids about how to deal with the police? I don’t want them to disrespect the police but at the same time, I don’t want them to grow up having the false notion that the police will always act in their best interests if only they “cooperate.”

It’s a very sad commentary to be sure.

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Mike Huckabee’s American History Lesson

Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Election '12, History, Huckabee Watch, Multimedia, Politics, Republicans

Or to be more accurate, alternative American history lesson. Mike Huckabee, who is leading ABC’s latest G.O.P. presidential poll, informed George Stephanopoulos that President Obama will be very difficult to beat because “only one time since 1868 has an incumbent president been taken out who ran for reelection and that’s when Jimmy Carter ran in 1980.” (At the 1:17 mark)

Oh yeah, I forgot – George H.W. Bush won reelection in 1992 (despite violating his “no new taxes” pledge) and Bill Clinton ran again later to beat Dan Quayle in 1996.

What’s a little surprising to me is how little play this has received so far and that Stephanopoulos, who worked on Bill Clinton’s successful campaign to defeat the incumbent President Bush, didn’t call him on it! Why did he let Huckabee get by with this blatant historical error?

Okay, so he got his facts wrong, how is this different from other faux pas of presidential candidates of recent memory?

This one is different. This wasn’t a hasty misstatement of how many states are in the union or a slip of the tongue, Huckabee apparently has spent some time contemplating how Jimmy Carter is the only incumbent president to be voted out of office since 1868. He wanted very much to “remind” the viewers of this historical “fact.”

This is a man who would be president.

A big deal?

You tell me.

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Exonerated After 18 Years on Death Row, Anthony Graves Will Not Be Compensated on a Legal Technicality

Crime and Punishment, Criminal Justice Reform, Death Penalty, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Hubris, Human Rights, Legal

Anthony Graves, the 12th death row inmate to be exonerated in Texas, will not receive his $1.4 million compensation for serving 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. The sum of $1.4 million might sound like a lot of money until one considers all the years of lost income potential, time pursuing his dreams, time with family and friends, and basically enjoying the everyday freedoms most of us take for granted. When considering what Anthony Graves has lost, $1.4 million is a mere pittance of what he deserves and an insult to any notion of justice.

But Anthony Graves will not get $1.4 million pittance from the State of Texas despite this injustice.

Why?

The Texas Comptroller’s office’s rationale is that the phrase “actual innocence” is nowhere to be found in the judge’s ruling that set Graves free. Apparently, none of the other combinations of words to which most reasonable people would reach that very conclusion in the judge’s ruling doesn’t matter. As Donald Pennington put it writing for Yahoo! News, Anthony Graves has been “Twice Robbed by the State of Texas.”

Pennington writes:

Why weren’t state employees, such as the prosecutor, as adamant about following the rules when they were trying the case? It was discovered by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006 that prosecutors had withheld evidence and elicited false testimony in their case against Anthony Graves from 1994. If the “rule of law” is so important to these sorts of bureaucrats, why are those rules so subjectively applied?

For that matter, when prosecutors commit these sorts of abuses, why aren’t they brought up on charges? Isn’t this sort of case a perfect example of unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, and felony conspiracy? Since Anthony Graves was, in fact, on death row for something he did not do, shouldn’t those people working in the prosecutor’s office (at the time) be charged with attempted murder?

I couldn’t agree more with Pennington’s sentiments here. Why can’t the prosecutor and those working for him be charged with these above crimes? I imagine that if prosecutors were actually held criminally responsible for what would be crimes if committed by anyone else, we might then (finally) hear some talk of reforming the system. Let one prosecutor receive a death sentence for falsely putting someone else on death row, just one…

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/
1 … 23 24 25 26 27 … 102