kimmy

#$%@, Pliny! Get it together! Physics certainly can and does explain why the magnet is not generating an endless supply of energy (or any energy at all) by sticking to your fridge. It's been explained for you several times already. The issue is not that science can not explain it. The issue is that you refuse to accept the explanation. While both you and Mr McCutcheon insist otherwise, force and energy have different definitions. Mr McCutcheon dupes the uninformed reader, not to name names, by calling magnetic attraction and gravity "energy", while in fact they are not energy but force. That's it. That's his entire thesis, destroyed, by pointing out an error in terminology that anybody who passed a high-school physics course could have pointed out. If I let Mr McCutcheon redefine terms to his liking, then of course he could find faults in the laws of physics. And if you let me redefine terms to my liking, I could prove that I am the Pope. But the terms are not open to redefinition; I'm not the Pope, force is not energy, and Mr McCutcheon has not found faults in modern physics. I mean, come on, Pliny. The law of conservation of energy a foundational principle of almost every aspect of not just modern physics, but classical physics as well. Do you really think that Mr McCutcheon has discovered something that fundamentally destroys all the rules of physics by looking at his fridge? No physicist in the past 200 years ever saw a magnet? -k

Leaked by the National Transportation Safety Board. Should the station have broadcast this information? You be the judge: I assume that these names were leaked to the station by Haywood Jablomie. -k

Another blood-curdling excerpt from "Rise of the Warrior Cop" was published today. The incident: in July 2008, a SWAT team smashes down the door of a man's home, shot his dogs, put a gun to his mother-in-law's head and put her face-down on the floor. When he reached the scene, they bound his hands and put him on the floor too. Then they ransacked the house, tracking dog blood all over everything, and kept the man and his mother-in-law cuffed on the floor for hours while they interrogated them and trashed the house. They were looking for evidence of drugs. The man, coincidentally, was the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. And it really was coincidence that he was the victim of this debacle; it could have been anybody. The reason the SWAT team attacked this particular home had nothing to do with the occupants. It had to do with a drug smuggling scheme in which drugs were mailed by FedEx to unsuspecting recipients; the shipments were supposed to be intercepted by a FedEx employee who was part of the scheme. The drugs were never supposed to reach the people they were addressed to. However, the police caught wind of the scheme and the drugs were delivered by an undercover cop to the address on the package-- mayor Cheye Calvo's home. The police later cleared mayor Calvo and his wife and mother-in-law of any involvement in drug smuggling; they arrested the FedEx driver who'd been pulled off-duty so that the undercover cop could deliver the drugs. In the aftermath, we find many themes that are common with stories like this. The police told a series of lies in attempting to explain the incident. Once again we find the police lying about the behavior of the "suspects"-- they initially claimed that Calvo had slammed the door in their face when they requested entry, even though he was upstairs at the time. They claimed to have a "no-knock warrant", even though they had no such things. They claimed to have shot the dogs because they were "aggressive", when in fact ballistics determined that the dogs had been shot in the back. And, like other stories like this, the police themselves weren't accountable; the taxpayers were on the hook for this recklessness. Calvo filed a lawsuit; two years later they received an out-of-court settlement for some amount of money. -k

Long time no see, you! -k

As Hudson points out, the case of Bradley Manning is an example of what would have happened to Snowden if he had decided to "face the music". Manning endured over 2 years of cruel and unusual punishment before his trial; I doubt any of you "face the music" people would volunteer for 2 years of psychological abuse. And "legal channels" is BS; the legal channels are entirely in the control of the people who cooked up this scam in the first place. -k

Scotty's timing in starting this thread is most fortuitous, as a book is just being released, called "Rise of the Warrior Cop: the militarization of America's police forces." The ACLU website has posted an article by the book's author, talking about the subject. Salon published an excerpt from the book earlier this week, describing a SWAT team shooting an unarmed man to death in Fairfax Virginia. They were going to arrest him for betting on football games. I realize that they take football very seriously in some parts of the United States, but even so calling in a SWAT team seems excessive. -k

I think the videos Gosthacked posted are good illustrations of the kind of mentality that some of us are complaining about and others seem to be defending or dismissing. -the one with the cop tazering an already-compliant suspect is reminiscent of the slaying of Robert Dziekanski, or the actions of Geoff Mantler, the RCMP officer who kicked a compliant and cooperative suspect in the face while he was on his hands and knees. -the one with the cop demanding that the men open their door so she can look into their home illustrates an authoritarian attitude. She had no legal authority to demand access to the home, but for refusing to do something she had no authority to demand, he is charged with "obstructing an officer"? Amazingly she is actually boasting about this on a TV program. It is especially worth pointing out that this is the exact same strategy employed by the Henderson Nevada police to arrest the people whose homes they wanted to invade to use for their stake-out. -the behavior of the cop at the check-stop is interesting, first off in that it is similar to the police woman attempting to deceive the men into giving her access to their home and his refusal to answer the question "am I being detained". The trick of getting the "drug dog" to give them an "alert" to justify access to the car was instructive. And the cops' reaction to discovering the video recorder... you could almost picture an "aw, crap" thought-bubble above his head. -and I don't even know what to say about the Omaha video. Here is an article explaining the aftermath. 4 officers fired, 3 placed on "administrative leave", 1 "reassigned from regular duty." And here is another article discussing a possible conspiracy by police involved to destroy the video-recording that they knew about and to cover up the incident. "The information that we've been privy to is that there was evidence that was mishandled in that residence by Omaha police officers," said County Attorney Don Kleine. And the video accompanying this story explains that one of the cops, James Kinsella, is charged with destroying the video in the cell phone, and another Aaron von Behren, is charged with helping cover it up. Specific charges against Kinsella are "Tampering with Evidence", "Obstructing Government Operations", and "Unlawful Theft By Taking". Charges against von Behren are "Obstructing Government Operations" and "Accessory to a Felony". You have 20 officers swarming into the house because a guy video recorded another cop beating up a suspect. You've got 2 of them charged with destroying evidence and conspiring to cover it up. And as with other police situations, the only reason they're being held accountable is that a third party recorded the incident, showed it to the public, and generated sufficient public outrage to demand the police be held accountable. -k

Excellent news, Pliny! Mark McCutcheon's theory is finally getting the mainstream attention it deserves! Cracked Magazine's list of the 6 most unintentionally hilarious websites on the internet: Mark McCutcheon's "Final Theory" at #3. -k

What an inane turn this thread took. In Henderson Nevada, police are being sued for arresting a family so that they could use their homes to stake out a neighbor. Police contacted a resident and informed him that they wanted to use the home in a stake-out. When he refused, they went to his home, smashed the door down with a battering ram, pointed guns at him, and shot him and his dog repeatedly with "pepper balls" while hurling obscenities at him. They also lured his parents out of their home (which is on the same street) so that they could use their home as well. They were arrested when they attempted to return to their home. This case has sparked some additional interest because aside from the stuff you'd expect, the plaintiffs are also claiming that their Third Amendment rights have been violated. That amendment says that the government can't use your home as a quarters for soldiers without your consent, except by legal process during time of war. It's apparently almost unheard of that this amendment is actually applied, for obvious reasons. While the police officers are not soldiers, I think the larger principle is that the government can't simply demand to use your home at their convenience. I hope the family wins; the police clearly have the impression that they're entitled to do whatever they like in pursuit of "bad guys" and that if you're not with them you're the enemy too. -k

Yourself, Tim, and Shady, as well as many others outside this forum who blame consumers for borrowing rather than the lenders who lent them the money. They advertised heavily. I'm sure word-of-mouth played a role too. Who cares? What does it matter? Unqualified buyers went into the mortgage offices of their own volition. I'm not arguing that they didn't.I'm just asking you why mortgage brokers didn't say "no" when unqualified buyers showed up in their offices. I'll repeat the point: 10 million unqualified people could apply for mortgages and it wouldn't make a lick of difference to the health of the financial sector or the housing market. The damage only occurred because millions of unqualified people *received* mortgages. Why did they lend to millions of unqualified buyers? You people seem unwilling to think about the answer to that question. The answer is that at every stage of the process, somebody got a reward if they just approved more mortgages. That goes from the agent at the office all the way to Angelo Mozilo and Dick Fuld. Companies like Countrywide knew that they were approving large numbers of crap mortgages, but they didn't care because they knew that companies like Lehman Brothers were going to buy them. Companies like Lehman Brothers knew that they were buying crap mortgages; internally they referred to their pools of high-risk mortgages by colorful nicknames like "Nuclear Holocaust", "Subprime Meltdown", and "Mike Tyson's Punch-Out". But they didn't care either, because they knew that they could just turn these mortgages into MBS products, get S&P to stamp an "AAA" rating on them, and sell them. It all boils down to this: if you've found a way to spin straw into gold, you're going to need a hell of a lot of straw. That's why originators like Countrywide approved everybody who walked in their door no matter how unqualified, and that's why securitizers like Lehman Brothers bought stacks of mortgages no matter how crappy. And that's why your search for ways to blame consumers government Barney Frank GSEs people other than the industry itself is futile. -k

Or perhaps some amongst the police would just prefer people not to be videotaping them as they are trying to do their job.Such people are perfectly free to find another profession.Actually, they are perfectly free to stay in their profession and express their opinion and lobby for what they believe is best. If the officer in the video had simply expressed his opinion and lobbied for what he believes is best, that would have been fine. However, the officer in the video confiscates the cell phone under false pretenses. That's not fine. That's an abuse of authority. So are other tactics police have used to suppress cell-phone videos, like charging people with bogus offenses to justify taking their phones or preventing them from filming. Courts all over America have ruled repeatedly that citizens have the right to film police in public places. That's a fact that police will have to live with, whether they "prefer" it or not. So, as Scotty said, policemen who don't wish to be filmed while on the job should either learn to deal with it or find a new job. -k

I'm still asking the same question as earlier in this thread: why is it that the states who are so concerned about voter ID laws apparently have no concern at all over things like day-long line-ups at polls in "minority" areas, or indiscriminate voter-roll purges that inexplicably wipe minorities off the rolls at higher rates than the rest of the population, or attempts to make it difficult for college students to vote? If Defending Democracy!!! ™ is the objective, it seems like all of those things should be higher priority than statistically insignificant numbers of people casting multiple ballots or voting at the wrong polling station. -k

There seems to be a widespread misconception about what Entrapment actually means. In the legal sense, entrapment means that the police *induced* someone to commit a crime. Let me provide some examples so that you can see the difference. Entrapment: An undercover officer is standing on the street corner dressed like a hooker, and says "hey, you wanna date? You looking for a date? How 'bout a date?" Somebody attempts to offer her money for sex, and she arrests him for soliciting. He has an entrapment defense, because he can make a credible argument that he wouldn't have attempted to solicit her services if she hadn't encouraged him. Not entrapment: An undercover Officer is standing on the street corner dressed like a hooker, and says nothing. Somebody attempts to offer her money for sex, and she arrests him for soliciting. He has no entrapment defense. Entrapment: An undercover officer approaches you and offers to sell you some drugs. You have an entrapment defense. Not entrapment: you approach an undercover officer and ask him to sell you some drugs. You don't have an entrapment defense because he didn't invite you to commit a crime; you decided to on your own. Entrapment: an undercover officer says "hey, wouldn't it be cool if we stole that car over there and took it for a ride?" Not entrapment: you attempt to steal a "bait car" . A bait car is intended to capture would-be car thieves, but the act of parking a car on the street is not an inducement to commit a crime. The fact that it turned out to be a bait car doesn't change the fact that you attempted to steal a car. You chose to do it; the police just put a car on the street. Entrapment: an undercover CSIS agent joins your circle of friends and convinces your group that you should "stick it to the man" by planting a bomb near a pipeline. It's entrapment because you and your friends can make a credible argument that none of you would have even thought of bombing a pipeline until the undercover agent convinced you to do it. Not entrapment: you and your circle of friends decide to blow up a pipeline, and you buy 2 tons of fertilizer from someone who happens to be an undercover CSIS agent, and the purchase of the fertilizer is used as evidence at your trial. This is not entrapment. You and your buddies came up with the plan on your own. You wouldn't have been attempting to buy 2 tons of fertilizer from the undercover agent if you hadn't already decided to commit a crime. These two buffoons made the decision to build a pressure cooker bomb on their own. There's no entrapment. End of story. Are you saying these two hapless clowns have been framed? I am reading several people saying that "these two idiots weren't capable of pulling this off." I'd suggest to all of you that, first off, they *didn't* pull it off. They were caught, probably in large measure because they're not very smart. Secondly, I'd suggest that the same would have been said of the Tsarnaev brothers if they had been nabbed prior to the Boston bombing. -k

As I listen to this being discussed on the radio right now, they are describing it as "Al Qaeda inspired". The dude isn't an Al Qaeda member, although he is a Muslim convert. "Al Qaeda inspired" apparently means they saw the Boston bombing and said "cool, we could do that! He apparently has a long history of drug abuse and violence, and from what I am listening to, he sounds more or less like a burned-out heavy metal musician. I'm fascinated that like the kids from London Ontario who decided to become Muslim terrorists abroad, this guy is a guy with no previous connection to Islam or the Arab world who seems to have looked at the terrorists and said "you know what? That's for me. I'm signing up." -k

Here's a video from a thread I started a while back: http://boingboing.net/2013/04/19/san-diego-cop-smashes-phone.html ...in which a cop is angry at being recorded and proceeds to smash the phone and kick the guy's ass. The policeman attempted to justify seizing the man's cell-phone by claiming that cell-phones can be converted into dangerous weapons, a strategy attempted by policemen in other jurisdictions as well. It seems apparent that some amongst the police would prefer to find ways of suppressing cell-phone video than improve their behavior. -k

I didn't feel compelled to spend time searching for cites to support a claim that I assumed would be widely accepted and non-controversial, Michael. -k

Of course there are. A couple of very well known ones right here in B.C. But I believe the statistics would show that police brutality disproportionately affects non-white victims. -k

Ok, fine, Willard's *marginal* tax rate is lower than his employees. Why should it be? Willard's required taxes were lower than what he actually paid; he left deductions on the table to bring his taxes up to 14% so that he wouldn't look like a complete deadbeat. Reminder: Willard's running-mate's famed Ryan Budget would have reduced taxes for people like Willard to practically zero-- so tell me who's picking winners and losers. As for GE, they paid zero taxes because of deferred tax deductions. What about all the other big corporations? Google pays practically no taxes because they have a mailbox office in Ireland the Netherlands the Bahamas somewhere on god's green earth. So do lots of other big corporations. More wildly profitable corporations get massive subsidies and tax breaks. Again, tell me who's really picking winners and losers. -k

Since these incidents often involve white cops and black victims, I think pointing out the squirrel's ethnicity was highly relevant. -k

Here's a police officer pepper-spraying a squirrel. In his defense, it appears that the squirrel may have been black non-compliant. -k

Maybe they do if they have Archie and Jughead doing their accounting... The winners and losers have already been picked, and when frickin' Willard is paying less tax than his employees and when the most profitable companies in America aren't paying any tax at all, it's seems to me like they've been picked wrong. -k

I'm not sure whether Scott was positing that policemen have changed, or that the friendly and helpful police we see on TV or meet at school events are an accurate reflection of how cops conduct themselves when they think they're not being watched. I'm not sure it really matters; the main point, clearly, is that they're out of control. I'm not actually sure that police misconduct is on the rise; I think the fact that almost everybody has a video recorder in their pocket makes it much easier to catch them in the act. Personally I used to be one to assume that claims of police brutality were usually exaggerated and tended to result from criminals who wanted their cases thrown out or wanted money from the government, and that sort of thing. Now that we have this endless stream of police misconduct being caught on video, it's no longer possible to ignore it. -k

It's sort of hard to tax the unsuccessful ones, Mr Cheney. -k

You want the things government does that you personally support to continue, but you don't think people should have to pay taxes because you're under the silly illusion that all of these good things will be done by magic for free in the absence of public management. Rich-guys support government acting in ways that directly benefit them, like maintaining the roads that get their goods to market, or the police forces that protect their property, or the legal system that enforces contracts and ensures they keep getting paid. But functions of government that benefit other people-- labor standards, public education, environmental regulations, whatever-- that stuff, that's "social engineering" for "vested interests". Got it. The future doesn't hold greed at bay because people who have hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal don't need to fear the future. I don't even care how you want to define "community". If you don't feel that "community" is the right word, you can substitute "society" or some other word you find more appropriate. It's a distraction from the relevant point, which is this: successful businesses benefit greatly from working in *our* system as opposed to one like Mogadishu. As such, successful businesses have an obligation to participate in the upkeep of that system. I find it odd that you keep complaining about crony capitalism, and yet you're basically acting as a spokesman for crony capitalists. -k

I'm confused. Are you asking me to flood the thread with examples of outrageous police incidents? How about a video of these policemen arresting a man and shooting his dog because he was legally filming them? -k