August 25, 2016

Stop me if you've heard this story before:

Black Indianapolis man shot by cops after calling police to report robbery

Few cases typify everything that is wrong with gun rights, police brutality and racial profiling like this one.

Early Tuesday in Indianapolis, an African-American woman was being carjacked in front of her home in her working class neighborhood. She ran back in the house, told her husband, who is also black, and they called the police to report the robbery. That seemed to be the right and safe thing to do.

As the police pulled up, the husband, who was later identified as 48-year-old Carl Williams, opened the garage to their home and was immediately shot in the gut by police.

They claim they believed he was the robber and that because he had a firearm of his own, he was shot in self-defense. Officials identified the officer who shot Williams as nine-year veteran cop Christopher Mills.

He, of course, was not the robber. In fact, police have yet to even say if they caught the robber. Since they dusted the car for fingerprints, it appears that the actual man committing a crime got away and the man who wanted to protect his wife and family was instead shot and currently fighting for his own life in the hospital.

"I think that's really crazy. What do we have, trigger-happy police officers out here now?" asked Angela Parrot, who lives in the neighborhood told the Indy Star.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/king-black-man-shot-cops-calling-report-robbery-article-1.2762748

August 23, 2016

FBI investigating Russian hack of New York Times reporters, others

Source: CNN

Hackers thought to be working for Russian intelligence have carried out a series of cyber breaches targeting reporters at the New York Times and other US news organizations, according to US officials briefed on the matter.

The intrusions, detected in recent months, are under investigation by the FBI and other US security agencies. Investigators so far believe that Russian intelligence is likely behind the attacks and that Russian hackers are targeting news organizations as part of a broader series of hacks that also have focused on Democratic Party organizations, the officials said.

The FBI declined to comment and a spokesperson for The New York Times would not confirm the attacks or the investigation.
"Like most news organizations we are vigilant about guarding against attempts to hack into our systems," said New York Times Co. spokeswoman Eileen Murphy. "There are a variety of approaches we take up to and including working with outside investigators and law enforcement. We won't comment on any specific attempt to gain unauthorized access to The Times."

The breaches targeting reporters and news organizations are part of an apparent surge in cyber attacks in the past year against entities beyond US government agencies.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/russia-hack-new-york-times-fbi/index.html

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Greenwald, Snowden and Assange were unavail- Yeah, yeah, you know the rest...

Seriously -- Greenwald, Assange and certain DUers here would be having rage orgasms if the U.S. was hacking foreign news orgs, so I heartily await their statements...

August 22, 2016

Voter registration help needed

Volunteering for local Dems, twice I've gone out in public places trying to register new voters, and twice I've gotten nothing but heatstroke for my efforts... Any ideas or suggestions?

August 19, 2016

10 words that sound rude but really, genuinely aren't

1. cock-a-bendy
2. titbow
3. panshit
4. bumfiddlery
5. bumbailiff
6. butt-shaft
7. sexangle
8. skiddy-cock
9. assapanick
10. fanny-blower

And my bonus favorite: Cummingtonite

August 18, 2016

Amnesty International releases their latest report on Syrian prisons (TRIGGER WARNING)

@Amnesty documents *absolute minimum* 17,723 people murdered in #Assad's custody: "anyone who could be perceived to be opposing the gov't".

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/08/harrowing-accounts-of-torture-inhuman-conditions-and-mass-deaths-in-syrias-prisons/

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/08/syria-torture-prisons/


Choice excepts from the report, thanks to @KyleWOrton:


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https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde24/4508/2016/en/

August 16, 2016

MEANWHILE, in Sweden...

Tiny Insjön in central Sweden isn't known for pig mask-wearing couples shooting lasers at Pokémon hunters before having sex by a waterwheel. But that could be about to change.

It was Friday night in the village of 2,000 souls when two teenage siblings wandered out with their smartphones to play Pokémon Go. But instead of finding Pikachu or Squirtle they soon came face to face in the park with a couple who must have seemed scarcely more real.

The teenagers’ mother, who reported the incident to the police, told newspaper Dalarnas Tidningar:

“They wore rubber masks depicting pigs’ heads and they started screaming and waving a green laser.”

A laser beam hit one of the teens in the face and the children rushed back home, shaken but luckily unharmed. The masked shooters, who also wore T-shirts labeled ‘King’ and ‘Queen’, were next spotted by incredulous motorists as they had sex beside the hamlet’s waterwheel.

Traffic backed up on the highway as some drivers slowed down and others clambered out of their cars to behold the bizarre spectacle, one motorist told the paper. The police didn’t care so much about the traffic jam, she said, but officer Daniel Hagthorpe was concerned about the alleged laser attack and public sex.

http://www.thelocal.se/20160816/pig-mask-pair-enjoy-waterwheel-sex-after-pokmon-hunter-attack


Damn... Talk about kink...

August 9, 2016

Why Angry White Men Love Calling People “Cucks”

If you’ve been on Twitter in the last few months, chances are you’ve come across “cuck,” a word that you’d previously only seen while your browser was in Incognito Mode.

Its literal meaning references a submissive man sexually cuckolded by a woman. Now, it is a catch-all among the alt-right, in the dark corners of the internet where #feminismisacancer hashtags are a badge of pride and the real enemy is PC culture, where “cuck” has become shorthand for any perceived weakness, or rather, perceived reluctance to exploit strength.

The word gained political potency during the 2016 election in the portmanteau “cuckservative” (cuck + conservative) used to imply that the mainstream conservatives of the Jeb Bush variety are weak and effeminate. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is not a cuckservative. He says what he wants and doesn’t care if it’s offensive. In reference to Trump’s comments about Megyn Kelly having “blood coming out of her wherever,” radio host Rush Limbaugh snarked, “If Trump were your average, ordinary, cuckolded Republican, he would have apologized by now.”

But Donald Trump doesn’t apologize. He went on to win the Republican presidential nomination as Jeb Bush, the one-time favorite, was irrevocably set back by a simple insult from Trump delivered with an invisible wink: “low-energy.”

Since The Donald bested the field of cuckservatives with his manly virility and full head of hair, those who couldn’t see a good insult go to waste have continued to use it in its shortened form—cuck—which applies first to anyone supporting Hillary, but also anyone who would challenge Donald Trump on his spelling, his logic, or his facts.

So now that a word previously only used for pornography or in 4chan has achieved mainstream political significance, it’s time to ask the question: Why has the word “cuck” resonated with so many angry white men?

An insult is, by nature, telling of its source: you never insult with something that you don’t think is insulting. A woman would never sneer that another woman is fat if she herself would be comfortable with her body at any size, if “fatness” weren’t something she feared. A man mocking the size of another man’s genitals broadcasts his own belief that the length of one’s penis is something to be either proud or embarrassed about.

The cultural importance of the cuckold in America is rooted in racism: in pornography, the wife of the cuckolded (almost exclusively white) husband is most commonly sleeping with African-American men, meant to provide an additional layer of humiliation if the white husband sees that man as “inferior.” In the world of pornography meant to elicit humiliation as an erotic sentiment, cuckold porn takes advantage of its viewers’ racist perceptions.

http://www.gq.com/story/why-angry-white-men-love-calling-people-cucks

August 9, 2016

With Roger Stone and Assange in cahoots, Hillary should prepare for an "October surprise"

With Roger Stone and Julian Assange in cahoots, Hillary Clinton should prepare for an October surprise.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has made no secret of his distaste for Clinton. As Robert Mackey noted in The Intercept, “In recent months, the WikiLeaks Twitter feed has started to look more like the stream of an opposition research firm working mainly to undermine Hillary Clinton than the updates of a non-partisan platform for whistleblowers.” If Assange is acting like an oppo researcher, then it’s not a surprise that he’s hooked up with someone who knows all the secrets of playing dirty political tricks: Roger Stone, who is Donald Trump’s unofficial adviser and a legendary “rat-fucker” with a history of campaign shenanigans going back to the Nixon years.

As Media Matters reports, in a speech at the Southwest Broward Republican Organization yesterday, the following exchange took place between Roger Stone and an audience member:

QUESTIONER: With regard to the October surprise, what would be your forecast on that given what Julian Assange has intimated he’s going to do?

ROGER STONE: Well, it could be any number of things. I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.

WikiLeaks is good at ferreting out information and Roger Stone is good at presenting that information in the worst possible light. The alliance between Assange and Stone should keep the Clinton campaign worried until election day.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/135932/roger-stone-julian-assange-cahoots-hillary-clinton-prepare-october-surprise

https://mediamatters.org/video/2016/08/09/roger-stone-confirms-hes-communication-julian-assange/212261


Anytime DUers want to tell me I've been right about Assange and his cronies all along, just go right ahead!

EDIT: And the irony of the Intercept talking about Assange's Hillary Derangement Syndrome is too much for me to digest... FWIW, that writer is brand new, so he may not realize Greenwald's twitter account is just as bad, if not worse at times...

August 9, 2016

MEANWHILE, in Iowa...

Train car derails in Charles City, hits bar called DeRailed


CHARLES CITY, Ia. — Police say a freight train car that derailed in northern Iowa rolled into and damaged a trackside tavern called DeRailed.

Police Chief Hugh Anderson says the accident occurred around 4 a.m. Tuesday as crews moved rail cars and changed connections in Charles City. He says it appears that the track separated and the grain car tipped about 45 degrees into the back of the bar.

Anderson says a patrol officer called him to say a train car had derailed into Derailed, adding that "it's not every day you get to say that."

No one was injured. The bar owner estimates damage at $10,000.

Charles City is about 140 miles northeast of Des Moines.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2016/08/09/train-car-derails-charles-city-hits-bar-called-derailed-iowa/88449022/

August 8, 2016

Arizona DUers:

Just spent a week in Phoenix and I had a unique chance to meet and chat with Ann Kirkpatrick, who is going up against McCain...

I was very impressed, and hope the party backs her with everything they have... AZ might just be in play this fall...