Lesson 2 On How Not to Get Shot by the Police or Authorities

From Chicago Tribune Aug, 9th:
Boy's shooting angers crowd
Cabrini-Green neighbors protest police action, tell of the frustration of gentrification

Cry me a river. The other day Cabrini Green Public Housing residents protested the shooting of an armed robbery suspect who refused to drop his weapon. Ok, so the weapon happened to be a BB gun that looked like a .45 caliber handgun and the suspect happened to be a 14 year old boy.

There was no way the police could know that the gun was a BB gun or that the boy was only 14 years old. Neither of these really matter if you ask me. First of all, it doesn't matter how old you are if you are pointing a gun at someone you are likely to get shot. Second, BB guns are also illegal in the city of Chicago for this very reason and even BB guns can harm or maim another person. Third, what the hell does gentrification have to do with anything?

Gentrification sucks for people whose property taxes skyrocket over a years time and they have to move out to make way for yuppies and their Starbucks laden strip malls but we are talking about people who live in public housing. This means they either have a fixed rent of let’s say $40 per month or they pay nothing at all. If someone is going to give you next to nothing housing don't bitch about it when they say you have to live somewhere else for free. Beggars can't be choosers. So let's just drop the whole gentrification frustrations for now.

If you do not want to get shot by the police, adhere to the following rules:

1.Don't carry illegal weapons such as handguns or BB guns
2.If you do carry one of these weapons and a cop tells you to drop it then do it
3.Don't point your BB gun or any other type of a gun at a cop who is pointing his gun at you
4.Don't commit cribes such as robbing someone at gunpoint, even if it's with a BB gun
5.Don't commit crimes 60 feet away from a brand new police station
6.Don't commit crimes underneath or in the view of CPD surveillance cameras
7.Instead of standing on the corner robbing people, hang out at the library which is a block away and air conditioned
8.If you live in a crime ridden housing project and think cops are racist, don't do things that make them want to shoot you such as robbing people and pointing guns at them.
9. Choose someone positive as a role model; don't choose Tu Pac or 50 cent as they also got shot
10.Parents, don't buy your kids guns and don't raise them to be someone who robs little kids

Most importantly: DON'T BRING A TOY TO A GUN FIGHT!

Neither being 14, complaining about having to move away from your free housing or carrying weapons, will ever keep you from getting shot from the cops; my rules however, will.

The kid is still alive and when he comes out of it I can assure you he will tell you the same things I am telling you. I'll bet the next time a cop tells him to drop his weapon he does it. So there is some silver lining to all this as I am sure he has learned his lesson. I too have learned a lesson; a lesson in Darwinism.

There is no charge for this consultation. I hope it has been helpful and will keep you and your kids from getting shot by the police.

Kansas: Waking Up and Joining the 21st Century

From CNN:Wednesday, August 2, 2006; Posted: 9:21 a.m. EDT
TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) -- Conservative Republicans who pushed anti-evolution standards back into Kansas schools last year have lost control of the state Board of Education once again.

Let me be the first to welcome Kansas into the 21st century. That's right, the cavemen of Kansas' school board who voted to allow "intelligent" design to be taught alongside evolution have been voted out of office. The School Board is now stacked 6-4 in favor of evolution as opposed to 6-4 against evolution as it was before the election.

One of the board members who were replaced was Connie Morris who was once quoted describing evolution as, "an age-old fairy tale" and "a nice bedtime story unsupported by science". That’s funny, that's exactly what I say about I.D. and creationism. In reality, do you know what isn't supported by science? The story that the Earth was created in 6 days 10,000 years ago.

Welcome home Kansas. Now you can move on by giving women and minorities the right to vote or what ever else it was you missed over the last 150 years.

Stupid Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Insane

Unbelievable. Andrea Yates, the housewife who "thought her kids were evil" and therefore killed all 5 of them, has just been found not guilty by reason of insanity in 3 of their murders.

Even if she is a nut bag, she's still guilty, she still killed those kids; who cares why or how? How does that matter. She has killed 5 people and crazy or not, she is capable of having more children and killing them too. Should it really matter if she did it because she's just an asshole, or because she thinks her kids are Satan, or any other reason? Those kids are dead and she is the reason, period. Therefore, she must pay that price. Do you really think a poor, crazy, black, crack-head mother would have gotten off this easy if she did the same? Of course not. I'm not trying to turn this into a race thing I am merely bringing up a point. I guess my main point is that why is no one in our society responsible for their own actions?

Hopefully for the people of Texas, the prosecutors will still charge her in the murders of her other two kids and may actually get a jury with brains the next time around.

I am dumbfounded.

Really? Thanks. And What's With Israel?

Apparently, my paper shredder doesn't recommend sticking hands and ties through its blades. Paper, however, is ok. I suppose that explains why the box it came in had the words "Paper Shredder" written all over it. I wonder if hand and tie shredders have warnings about not putting paper through them. Is this something they have had problems with in the past and really thought needed to be addressed?

That’s all I have for now other than the issue of Israel thinking that a "buffer zone" in Lebanon is a good idea. Ya, it seems to have worked out well for them in the West Bank and in Gaza.

The other things I notice about this conflict is that they always refer to Hezbollah as "funded and armed by Syria and Iran" but they don't ever describe Israel as "funded and armed by the U.S.".

Also, I heard some fellow liberals saying that Israel needed to quit targeting civilians. I would have to agree with them but the statement sounds incomplete without calling for Hezbollah and Hamas to quit targeting civilians as well. Although, one must point out that the last two actions of Hezbollah and Hamas that started all this was the kidnapping of IDF soldiers, not the bombing of Israeli civilians. Maybe that should be viewed as progress. That being said, why does Israel only respond this harshly to attacks against their military and not to the attacks against its civilians? Anyone have any ideas on this?

Religious Conservatives Want Women to Die of Cancer

Thursday, June 29, 2006; Posted: 12:11 p.m. EDT
From CNN Health:

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- An influential government advisory committee Thursday recommended the routine vaccination of 11- and 12-year-old girls against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

The Family Research Council (who also thinks condoms are a bad Idea) has this to say: “Because parents have an inherent right to be the primary educator and decision maker regarding their children’s health, we would oppose any measures to legally require vaccination." Apparently, death and disease is better than pre-marital sex.

Bridget Maher, also from the Family Research Council also had this informative "fact" to share:"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex." Yes, because no one is afraid of getting pregnant or getting AIDS and Herpes. Most people don't even know what HPV is, especially most teenagers. Hell, I didn't even know what HPV was until I dated a girl who worked for the Society of Gynecological Oncologists and I am a sexually active 32 year old man. I don't think that when they hand out this vaccination there is going to be a prescription with it telling 15 year old girls to fuck as many boys as they can because they are now immune to just one of the ten major STD's. I should also mention that some types of HPV can also be spread through non-sexual contact such as clothing.

Here is what the FDA has to say about it: "The vaccine appears to be 100% effective at protecting against the most prevalent viruses that cause cervical cancer."

Over 50% of all sexually active people in the US will be infected with HPV within their lifetime. According to Planned Parenthood , HPV is present in 93% of all cases of cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is the second most prevalent cancer killer among women in America, affecting nearly 14,000 each year. Twenty-eight percent (4000) of the women affected with cervical cancer die every year. If parents really cared about their children, wouldn't they want to protect them from cancer if they had the chance and there were no known risks in doing so? Protecting a teenager from having sex is like trying to protect a fish from getting wet; that is what their bodies are designed to do. What do you think puberty is all about?

Again, educated and liberal people, doctors and drug companies are not all involved in a conspiracy to get your 16 year old daughter to have sex. That is not liberal doctrine, it's not even Planned Parenthoods doctrine. They simply do not have their heads up their ass and realize that you are a shitty parent and that your 16 year old daughter has probably had more sexual partners than you ever dreamed of having. They also realize that kids who pledge abstinence still have the same rate of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, as the ones who don't.

Does the Flu vaccine make people run out into the street kissing homeless men in the middle of winter? No. If we were all given rabies vaccinations do you think people would start attacking raccoons and wild dogs? Of course not.

When it comes to health and science listen to the experts. Don't take medical advice from people who think women come from men's ribs.

My Predictions About "An Inconvenient Truth"

Al Gore is releasing a new movie about global warming and climate change called "An Inconvenient Truth". My guess is that this will be a highly researched endeavor including analysis from the world’s top scientists citing irrefutable facts that the Earth is getting warmer, that man is at least partly responsible for this and that the affects of this could change life on Earth as we know it.

My other guess is that like Fahrenheit 9/11, Conservatives and Republicans will line up talking about all the lies and inaccuracies and all the studies contradicting Gore's findings without actually citing any references. What they won't do, like Fahrenheit 9/11, is address each issue individually until every point is proven wrong in a scientific manner.

My guess is that because the American public is gullible and too stupid to read and research anything on their own, other than how many kids Brangelina are adopting, that this counter hype may just work. People will continue to buy SUV's and act as if melting ice caps wont affect them even though the majority of the worlds population and economies rest largely in coastal areas.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

WMD's Found in Iraq!!

This just in, Mikes America has found WMD's in Iraq. Of course he won't tell us what, when, where or how but trust me, he knows they are there because Bush told him so.

Go to the comments section of this post http://mikesamerica.blogspot.com/2006/05/left-embraces-christianity-as-basis.html to find out about all the WMD's the liberal media never reported and the Bush administration decided to keep secrete even amongst all the backlash and a record low approval rating.

Ask Mike to show you proof of the Army finding plutonium, uranium, anthrax, mustard gas and of course the nuclear missiles that were sure to doom the U.S.

The mind truly is a powerful thing. If you tell yourself something over and over again before long you actually start to believe it.

A Paradox for Conservatives

From CNN Tuesday, May 9, 2006; Posted: 12:37 p.m. EDT:
An estimated 2 million babies die within their first 24 hours each year worldwide and the United States has the second worst newborn mortality rate in the developed world, according to a new report.

"American babies are three times more likely to die in their first month as children born in Japan, and newborn mortality is 2.5 times higher in the United States than in Finland, Iceland or Norway, Save the Children researchers found."

Japan offers free health care services for all pregnant women and babies while only the rich and insured get adequate health care in the United States.

This poses a paradox for conservative types who claim they are pro-life yet don't seem to care about life after it has been born. After that point, it seems like if the mother is poor, it's the babies fault and therefore should have to suffer due to the laziness of it's uneducated, unwed, teenage mother. If the United States, due to its stingy conservative capitalist leanings, allows 5 out of every 1000 of it's babies to die within a year after birth, how can that be labeled as pro-life? Why aren't "pro-lifers" out protesting in front of Capital Hill to get equal funding for neo-natal care? Aren't the planned parenthoods the wrong place for these people? Shouldn't they quit worrying about a morning after pill which blocks life before it even begins and start worrying about the babies that are alive now yet dying? Why isn't this issue on the top of the pro-life movements agenda? Why haven't the Republicans told the pro-lifers that they don't care about life after it has been born and if it happens to be poor and or black?

Here is a list of some of the top 10 "Socialist" countries with the lowest infant mortality rates:

Japan
Norway
Finland
Iceland
Czech Republic
Austria
France
Germany
Sweden
Italy

These will also be the same countries you see talked about on conservative blogs as being "Socialist" because they don't have the room for all their people to live in gated suburban sprawl communities and they have low rates of poverty where the rich have to pay a higher rate of taxes than the rich in the U.S.

If you were a baby who had no say in what kind of family you were born into, would you prefer to be born in one of the countries from the list above or in the United States?

May Day

Today is May 1st which is also known as May Day. May Day is an observance of the gains made by unions and the labor movement in general which resulted in our 40 hour work week among other things.

The labor movement has always been frowned upon by conservatives and corporations and even a lot of governments. Conservative Republicans and conservative talk show hosts have long blamed unions, along with gays and environmentalists, for all of America's problems.

Once again, here are all the crazy ideas we can blame on those hippie/commie liberals:

The freedom to write this blog
40 hour work weeks
The weekend
Overtime pay
Holidays and Holiday pay (such as Labor Day)
Emancipation of the slaves
Child welfare laws
Child labor laws
Homeless shelters
Clean air
Clean water
National Parks
Forest Preserves
Unemployment benefits
Social Security
Drug treatment centers
Tenant rights
Historical preservation societies
Free Libraries
Food Stamps
Campaign laws
After school programs
Antitrust laws
Desegregation
Equal opportunity
And most importantly the 1st, 4th, 5th,6th,7th,8th,9th,13th,14th,15th,16th,19th,21st and 24th amendments and everything they include such as the abolition of slavery and women’s rights.

What have conservative movements gotten us besides tax breaks for rich people who don't need them and restrictions on our rights and freedoms?

Why I am a 9/11 Democrat

Ok, so technically I am a registered Independent but that's beside the point.

I was talking to this girl the other day who wasn't overly conservative but called herself a 9/11 Republican. I have heard Dennis Miller and others use this term before but I have always been somewhat confused by this statement. What does 9/11 Republican mean? How do the events of 9/11 make people want to turn Republican since it’s essentially the Republicans who allowed something like 9/11 to happen?

I also heard people after 9/11 saying: "thank God Bush was President and not Gore". Again, what would have Gore done that Bush didn't do other than not invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. Do you really think Gore would have turned over the eastern seaboard to Bin Laden and made everyone start praying towards Mecca five times a day? Do you really think he would have just let it all go and done nothing? Or, do you think maybe he would have put a massive amount of troops, whose pay and benefits he wouldn't have cut, into Afghanistan and actually capture Bin Laden, something Bush has yet to accomplish.

Here is why I am a 9/11 Democrat:

1: 9/11 happened on the Republicans watch. They had the warnings, they knew it was coming; they read children’s books and dressed up as cowboys on vacation.

2: The main reason the Arab world hates us is because of our lopsided financial and military support of Israel. Who are the biggest supporters of Zionist settlers and the funding of Israel? Conservative Republicans. George Bush even once advocated moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem which is claimed by the Palestinians as their capital and not recognized by the UN as the capital of Israel.

3. The other reason Bin Laden hates us is that we staged troops on Muslim Holy land in efforts to invade another Muslim country. Right or wrong, that was a Republican President who was responsible.

4. The Democrats, as mentioned before, would have never invaded a random country just because they had Muslims. They would have only gone after the real enemy and given the military enough troops and support to complete the mission.

5. We all know that in 2000 the oil and gas industry contributed 7 million dollars to Democratic candidates compared to 26.7 million (78%) that went towards Republican candidates. We also know that the oil extracted by these companies comes from the Middle East where Muslim Arabs live. We also know that the war in Iraq was motivated by corporate (mostly oil) profits who all have ties to this administration and other Republicans. We all know that before the Iraq war a barrel of oil was under $30 and that now it is at $72 a barrel. We know that because of Republican ties to the oil industry that the Republicans are indirectly responsible for the corruption in the Middle East as well as all the puppet regimes that have been set up there that exploit their people to serve our best interests. These actions create unrest in the Muslim world which incites violence and attacks against the US.

These are the reasons you should cock punch the next person who tells you they are a 9/11 Republican.

Our (Their) Priorities

By now, I am sure everyone has seen my cost of war in Iraq banner in my sidebar. What you may not have done is click on it to see how the cost of this war stacks up against the budgets of some other efforts for which this money could have been used.

According to nationalpriorities.org we have spent over 272 billion on Operation Iraqi Liberation. The US Department of Education's budget for 2005 was a mere 57.3 Billion dollars.

As of today, according to this website, instead of paying for this war in which only oil executives and Halliburton have benefited from, we could have done the following:

Hired 4,725,229 public school teachers for one year
Paid for 36,113,976 children to attend a year of Head Start
Provided insurance 163,269,509 children for one year
Given full 4 year, public university scholarships for 13,217,988 kids
Built an additional 2,445,054 public housing units
Fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 11 years
Fully funded world-wide AIDS programs for 27 years
Provided basic immunizations for every child on the planet for the next 90 years


I know, just giving someone money is Socialism, diverting money from the poor and general public so rich people can get richer is Capitalism.

Can anyone give me an example of how this war has made their life better? I know a college scholarship would have made my life better.



Next Post: Why I am a 9/11 Democrat.

Hey Hey Hey Good Bye

Tom DeLay, the corrupt Republican Congressman from Texas, has resigned after his recent scandals and indictments. Of course, this is all liberal Democrats fault for using the system of checks and balances which don't allow Congressmen to do as they please.

What kind of country do we live in where the people in power are held accountable by the same rules as everyone else? I guess this proves that just because the Republicans say something is true, that doesn't necessarily make it so. It kind of reminds me of that whole WMD thing.



P.S.

Oh, and sign this to increase the minimum wage:
http://www.democrats.org/page/petition/fairwage/fugdty

Lottery Players Suck!

Seriously, how many times have you had to stand in line at 7-11 for an extra hour because some loser is returning his tickets in exchange for his 2 dollars, or making the clerk play specific numbers which are probably the date one which this person last got laid? The state should pay someone to be on site at all times in order to man the lotto machine for these people who coincidentally have already bought their other items with state funded food stamps. All they would have to do is take the money out of the jack pot in order to pay these people; it's pretty simple.

The other thing about these idiots is well, for one, they will never hit the jack pot. The second thing that kills me is that when Powerball is at like 3 million no one cares but as soon as it hits 300 million people are standing in line for the tickets. The problem with this is that your odds of wining the 3 million are a hundred times greater than you wining the 300 million. Are you saying that you aren't interested in 3 million but you are interested in throwing 50 dollars out the window?

Just go to the Casino with all the other losers and let’s keep the time that it takes to buy a frozen pizza under the amount of time that it takes to make one myself.

Yes, I know my blog suck as of late. Bear with me as I am going through some life changes and have had other things on my mind. No, I am not becoming a woman or anything like that.

"They Hate Us For Our Freedom"

From CNN Tuesday, March 14, 2006; Posted: 12:36 p.m. EST
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The Bush administration is renewing its effort to find out what people have been looking for on Google Inc.'s Internet-leading search engine, continuing a legal showdown over how much of the Web's vast databases should be shared with the government.

If Bush and the United States Government is so concerned with "spreading freedom" (AKA oil profits) in other parts of the world why are they trying to restrict freedoms within the United States?

This one isn't even about terrorism; it's about bad lazy parenting. This is all in efforts to keep children from looking at internet porn. I have a great idea, put a password on you computer and don't let your children use it unless you are in the room with them. If you can't take care of and keep your children safe on your own then you just shouldn’t have kids. It's not the government’s job to raise your kids. Let them focus on keeping us safe from another terrorist attack, not babysitting your kids!

New Fundamentalist Town to be Exempt from Constitution and Restrict Freedoms. No, It's not in Saudi Arabia, it's in Florida!

From CNN: Thursday, March 2, 2006; Posted: 11:36 a.m. EST (16:36 GMT)
NAPLES, Florida (AP) -- If Domino's Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan has his way, a new town being built in Florida will be governed according to strict Roman Catholic principles, with no place to get an abortion, pornography or birth control.

So does this mean that I can build a town that won't allow anyone to sell Bibles, practice Christianity, go to Church, preach on the streets or protest Planned Parenthoods and adult book stores? Can I build a town that will make guns, free speech and religion illegal? In this town, can I also make prostitution, heroin, same sex marriages, drunk driving, racial discrimination and poll taxes legal? I think my town I will also pass out condoms to elementary school kids and offer free abortions to anyone who had premarital sex. Apparently this town in Florida is already handing out free lobotomies.

Catholics already have their own city, it’s called Vatican City. I would suggest moving there where the laws and the constitution may be a little less intrusive to your ultimate goal.

Of course, Jeb Bush, the Governor of Florida, was at the groundbreaking and lauded Monaghan’s vision. What a jackass! At first, it sounded like they were trying to create a town without bush.