Sigh. This happened yesterday in Fayetteville yesterday. And only a couple of days before, a Greensboro reporter was kicked to the ground by another McCain/Palin patriot at a Bible Spice rally at Elon.
Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.
Sheriff’s deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.
Sarah Revis, who lives on Wilkes Road, said the slashed tires left several women, including a single mother and a toddler, stranded and upset. At least four tow trucks were sent to move the vehicles from the Crown, Revis said. “This is an embarrassment to this city and to me as a citizen,” Revis said. “I’ve seen women out here crying and men cussing. This is a crying shame.”
Lynne Steenstra said she thought that the slashings were scare tactics designed to keep her and others from supporting Obama. Even though it cost her roughly $120 to get her Dodge Caravan towed and fixed, Steenstra said the act would not intimidate her from voting.
“It hasn’t deterred us one bit,” Steenstra said. “It has only encouraged us more. I just hope whoever did this pays the price.”
You know this wasn’t the work of one lone whack job. Unlike most of the recent McCain mobsters, these cretins are cowards who are unable to show their faces when they do their vile deeds.
UPDATE: More of The McCain Base—people heckling early voters in NC
Photographer Joe Eddins and I headed over to the closest one and found a steady line of voters hoping to cast ballots early. Most seemed to be Obama supporters and several had come from the rally. Nearly all the voters were black.
Also at the polling site was a group of loud and angry protesters who shouted and mocked the voters as they walked in. Nearly all were white.
As you can see from these videos, no one held anything back. People were shouting about Obama’s acknowledged cocaine use as a young man, abortion and one man used the word “terrorist.” They also were complaining that Sundays are for church, not voting.
And get a load of the reception Obama received from another high-class McCain/Palin supporter while the candidate was at Cape Fear BBQ and Chicken in Fayetteville. It’s below the fold.
And here I thought only bloodthirsty Muslims did such things:
Police in Italy are looking into reports that the Naples mafia plans to carry out its threat to kill the author of the best-selling book “Gomorra,” which has been made into a hit movie about mafia brutality, by Christmas.
The purpose of this thread is to help Freepers and lurkers decide upon what the best mode of self defense would be in the case of the breakdown in social order such as happened with the Rodney King riots.
Joe Brower owns one of the RKBA (Right to Keep and Bear Arms) ping lists. I tried to convince him to open this vanity because he and his friends are more knowledgeable about guns. He says, “there have already been threads on the subject you mention right here on FR, although I can’t locate them now. Tell you what—you start the thread and then ping me, and I’ll then flag my RKBA list for comments. I’m sure some folks in that group would be able to provide links, as well as plenty of timely advice. “
This scenario is called the SHTF scenario, where the acronym stands for $#|+ Hits The Fan. So this will be the SHTF gun thread for November 2008… Of course, gun ownership isn’t for everyone. But it is the most accessible safety measure under our constitution, which is as our founding fathers intended. Recall where the police were when the Rodney King riots started: they left the scene for their own safety. If that were to happen in your neighborhood, what is your plan?
And what were the comments like on this thread? View some below the fold.
What are these people thinking, given the evidence out there that grown adults are getting Tased to death by trigger-happy, poorly trained law enforcement who electrocute first and ask questions later?
Uniontown school officials intend to draft a Taser policy for their school police officers that might be discussed as soon as the school board’s Aug. 18 meeting and could be considered for adoption next month.
The school’s director of security says giving the district’s three officers the option of using a Taser is more about providing the safest possible conditions for children, staff and visitors than as a weapon “directed at the students.”
Concerned parents and residents questioned the necessity of the devices at a public meeting Wednesday night, but a Cleveland consultant said in an interview Thursday that a Taser can be a “useful extra tool” for authorities as an alternative to a firearm in gaining control in a tense situation.
Well-known forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht gave a thumbs-up to sizzling teens into submission:
“Once you have the Taser and it’s been accepted and legitimized ... I see nothing wrong with officers being able to use it on teenager.”
The problem here is that over and over as we’ve seen in so many posts on the matter, is that situations that used to be contained by deft negotiation now result in a Tasing; officers simply whip out the stun gun to order compliance, not to stop a truly dangerous situation where a gun might have been used. Imagine school police responding to anti-LGBT bullying in the halls of a school out in Red State America; who do you think is going to be on the receiving end of the electro-shock?
Let’s go to the videotape of one of the latest egregious situations, a teen with a broken back Tased 19 times by police:
1. “Just be glad you live in a country where you can gather together for a political movement without being arrested” is the last refuge of the obfuscator. Especially when the issue you’re responding to (telecom immunity) has direct bearing on whether this country remains one where you can gather together for a political movement.
2. He did have a point, however: Several of the candidates (if not the majority; it was hard to tell) the Netroots hand-selected for Congressional races in 2006, and beyond, voted for the FISA compromise; DLC congresspeople and other centrists are certainly not solely to blame.
3. However: No, Harold, I don’t believe that if the Justice Department asks me to do something, I’m automatically justified in doing it. I understand the pressures that are on businesspeople if they fear political reprisal, but these are national conglomerates we’re talking about. This isn’t Cliff Johnson from Ames worried about how his family will eat if his corner drugstore closes. The telecoms made a cynical choice to be complicit in clear breaches of the law and privacy, and should have been held responsible.
Update: Blogging while listening to panels contributes to forgetfulness; let me add that in Ford’s example, he talked about a business owner consulting with an outside law firm to (paraphrasing) “see if we can do this.” This is a faulty assumption. The question for the law firms should have been “can we refuse?”
I blogged about the Transportation Security Administration’s invasive screening devices back in 2006, but they are in the news again because the technology is being deployed in even more airports.
The booths close around the passenger and emit “millimeter waves” that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics, chemical materials and explosives, according to the TSA.
While it allows the security screeners—looking at the images in a separate room—to clearly see the passenger’s sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger’s face is blurred, TSA said in a statement on its website. The scan only takes seconds and is to replace the physical pat-downs of people that is currently widespread in airports.
...The installation is picking up this month, with machines in place or planned for airports in Washington (Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International), Dallas, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Miami and Detroit.
...The ACLU said in a statement that passengers expecting privacy underneath their clothing “should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies, colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane.”
I’m sure that every one of the TSA security screeners at any given airport are dedicated, highly trained individuals. But I’ve seen some pretty creepy dudes (and dudettes) manning the checkpoints. There is no way - no way - that I want one of these folks randomly pulling me out of a line and checking out my, errrr, details. But I’m just a middle aged man, not remarkable in my appearance, so I wouldn’t expect to be pulled out of line to satisfy some pornophile security screener’s prurient curiosity.
But I can see it happening to a young, buxom woman. Or a strapping, physically ripped gentleman. And I can already hear the stories being told in the TSA screener breakroom.
~~~~~The following note was added by one of the Blend’s contributors, Autumn Sandeen:~~~~~
These scanners mentioned above are real concerns for traveling male-to-female, pre-operative/non-operative transsexuals due in large part to a variation of the perpetrator discussion we’ve been having at PHB related to public restrooms.
Law enforcement officers are trained to look for things that are unusual and out of the ordinary—when transgender people’s outward appearance doesn’t match the genitalia that’s visible on a scanner screen, that will be out of the ordinary. Going back to September 04, 2003’s DHS Advisory to Security Personnel:
Previous attacks underscore Al-Qaeda’s ability to employ suicide bombers - a tactic which can be used against soft targets and VIP’s. Terrorists will employ novel methods to artfully conceal suicide devices. Male bombers may dress as females in order to discourage scrutiny.
Male-to-female transgender people, under that model, are presumed to be perpetrators...terrorists. Given the perpetrator presupposition of the DHS’s unrescinded memorandum, I know I’d be very concerned about having a genitalia related, airport backroom talk with government agents.
I blogged about the Transportation Security Administration’s invasive screening devices