July, 2015 | The Bitchy Pundit

Sandra Bland Was “Resisting Arrest”

July 22, 2015 by Bitchy

So we finally got the dascham footage for the incident that led to Sandra Bland’s arrest. Well, sort of but not exactly.

As Crooks And Liars reported, the video is heavily edited. Here’s what they noticed (from the article);

In the video, which is more than 52 minutes long, there are several spots where cars and people disappear and reappear. When it released the video, the department did not mention any editing. The audio ends more than a minute before the video images do.

One of the more conspicuous spots comes 25 minutes and 5 seconds into the video, when a man walks from a truck off screen and then reappears suddenly at the spot where he began walking. The image flutters for a moment before resuming.

There are no breaks in the audio during this time. People are heard talking through the video gaps.

In another spot, at 32:37, a white car appears on the right side of the screen and then disappears. A moment later, what appears to be the same car comes back into the frame and turns left. During this time, Encinia is talking about what occurred during the arrest. There are no breaks in his speech.

What look like the same cars keep appear in the same locations, following their same paths, beginning at 33:04.

Again, the audio continues uninterrupted.

I noticed several more things. First, let’s just start with the video and the editing. In the first part of the video, the sound is crystal clear. You can hear officer dickhead opening Bland’s car door clearly at the 9:32 point in the video. Oddly, at 19:32 when the female officer is opening the doors and the trunk and closing the doors, all you get is white noise. White noise which, by the way, appears to be exponentially louder than it was in the beginning of the video. Just go from 4:00 straight to 18:30. You can hear how white noise has inartfully been dubbed into the tape. There are so many gaps of the audio where you can only hear white noise, it’s almost comical the way they edited it. At one point, officer dickhead’s conversation ends in mid sentence and all you can hear is white noise for several minutes. You can’t hear officer dickhead moving Bland from the ground and putting her in the car. There’s no sound of the car door opening or closing. Strange, since (as I already pointed out) the sound of Bland’s car door was clearly picked up by the dashcam microphone.

I think that we can all agree that the missing parts of the audio did not contain sounds that would incriminate Bland and bolster officer dickhead’s story. Speaking of which, here’s his affidavit;

I had Bland exit the vehicle to further conduct a safe traffic investigation. Bland became combative and uncooperative. Numerous commands were given to Bland ordering her to exit the vehicle. Bland was removed from the ear but became more combative. Bland was placed in handcuffs for officer safety. Bland began swinging her elbows at me and then kicked my right leg in the shin. I had a pain in my right leg and suffered small cuts on my right hand. Force was used to subdue Bland to the ground to which Bland continued to fight back. Bland was placed under arrest for Assault on Public Servant (TXPC 22.91 (B)) The vehicie was inventoried and reieased to Crown Towing. Bland was transported and booked into the Walter County Jail for Assault on Public Servant (TXPC 22.01)

Bullshit. He demanded that she step out of the vehicle because he didn’t like her tone.

Now to the substance of the video.

At 25:42, you hear him start to try and work on what the charge will be with (I assume) his boss. That’s the fucking problem with the tape. There was no assault. Wanna know how I know? Officer dickhead described what the legal definition of assault is at 25:38 (his words);

“Assault is if a person commits an (couldn’t make out the next few words) intentionally knowing they are causing bodily injury to another.”

She never did anything remotely resembling assault at the time he was attempting to pull her out of the car. She pushed his hands off her. That doesn’t sound to me like she was intending to cause him harm. After he pulls his taser on her, she voluntarily gets out of the car. There are no punches, kicks, slaps, or anything coming from her that would fall under his stated definition of assault. In fact, none of those things happen before we can see that he has her in handcuffs. We see no evidence of any of these things after she’s in handcuffs.

At 12:36, officer dickhead calls in saying that he has her under control. She’s in fucking handcuffs, wearing a summer dress and sandals. You never hear him say anything to her other than “stop moving” before she says, “you’re about to break my wrist”. So who is being combative? Who is committing assault? Then she starts crying out. That’s when you hear the female cop. At 14:19, you hear officer dickhead tell the bystander who taped the event that they had to leave so we know that she’s on the ground with his back on her knee at that point.

At 14:51, he says, “…you’re going to jail for resisting arrest”.

And there’s the problem. Cops incessantly use “resisting arrest” as a reason to arrest people. There needs to be an underlying charge in order for there to be an arrest to resist. There was no underlying charge. In fact, he and his boss are clearly heard pulling a charge of “assault” out of their collective asses in order to figure out a reason for why this woman is in handcuffs for not using her turn signal and smoking a cigarette in her own damned car.

There should never be “resisting arrest” charges without an underlying reason for the arrest. No arrest; no resisting arrest. I don’t even know why they’re allowed to bring someone in on just a “resisting arrest” charge. That’s complete bullshit. It enables any asshole cop whose ego has been bruised by someone exercising their first amendment rights to call them a motherfucker to make an arrest, just to prove a point. And that’s how they use “resisting arrest” charges. Yes, you do have a first amendment right to be as profane as your little heart desires with a cop.

“Resisting arrest” enables cops to abuse their power and flush taxpayer money down the toilet because they got their fee fees hurt.

That’s the biggest problem I see in this video, and anyone focusing on anything else has missed the most important part of this incident.

Donald Trump Is Andy Kaufman

July 21, 2015 by Bitchy

He has to be. There’s no other explanation. Every time the Donald opens his mouth and deep throats his foot, I become more and more convinced of this.

He’s running for president as Tony Clifton, and he’s going to leave the republican party in ruins before he’s done not becoming president. Tony Clifton is the ID of the republican party. That’s why the establishment can’t stop him. He is the center of the republican onion after you’ve peeled off the layers of Luntz.

Trump doesn’t do Luntz. So when the rest of the party refers to Obama as “the food stamp president”, Trump just goes for the gold by insisting that he’s Kenyan. Trump can’t be bothered to veil himself in the “anti colonialism” pretense. He’s Tony Clifton. He’s the republican party in its truest form.

That’s why we haven’t seen the republican establishment say a peep about any of his outrageous comments over the past decade. They didn’t say anything when he called our president a Kenyan for the better part of a year (most republicans “weren’t sure” if he was born in America). They didn’t say anything when he called black people lazy ( but he does have a great relationship with “the blacks”). They didn’t say anything when he referred to most Mexicans as rapists (except for the few who he thinks may be decent people). They didn’t say anything when Trump shared the idea that Jeb didn’t cosign the “Mexicans are rapists” idea because he has a Mexican wife.

But now they’re finally saying something. What is is that finally has republicans pushing back on Trump? A comment he made about John McCain;

“He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK?”

They’re outraged that he would denigrate a war veteran in such a disrespectful way! OUTRAGED, I tell you! Here’s the problem the republicans attacking Trump on this are going to have; they built a presidential convention on denigrating a vet eleven years ago. Remember how John Kerry wasn’t a real war hero? Remember all the purple band aids the crowd were wearing with delight at the convention?

When Andy Kaufman pretended he knew nothing of Tony Clifton, it was high-larious, and it still is. Here’s the thing; the republican base like Tony Clifton way more than they like Andy Kaufman. Sure, Andy makes them feel good, but Tony gives them multiple orgasms on a daily basis. Attacking Tony Clifton is not a winning strategy for republicans, since they created him.

They can’t lay a finger on Trump because they created Trump. And I have some very sad news for the republican establishment; Tony Clifton is just getting warmed up. He’s going to leave the republican party bruised, battered, and burned before he’s done. Because of Trump, we’re finally getting around to talking about how outrageous the swiftboating of John Kerry was. Finally.

Trump is everything the republican base adores because the republican establishment taught them to adore this. He’s a straight talking republican, and the Luntzian language is no longer acceptable to the base. They’re tired of the veneer and the coded language. Trump calls it like they’ve all been conditioned to see it.

Trump is Andy Kaufman. And like Andy Kaufman, he’s not dead until enough people believe he’s dead. That’s not going to happen for a few months.

Hillary Derangement Syndrome

July 19, 2015July 16, 2015 by Bitchy

It’s already happening. To be more accurate, I should say that the volume is already being turned up to 11. There’s always been a faction of people in this country who suffer from derangement when it comes to the Clintons. People forget what it was like in the 90s because of what we’ve had to endure in regard to the right wing’s treatment of president Obama, but it was bad. I’m not sure that the derangement toward Obama is any worse than it is toward the Clintons. It’s just lazier since he’s black, and blowing a racist dog whistle is easier than concocting a murder conspiracy. They had to get more creative with Bubba. They called him a rapist, drug dealer, murder, and a slew of other things that were too stupid to be stored in my memory banks. The attacks were relentless against both Bill and Hillary.

Yes, they despised Hillary for being married to Bill, but they also despised her for having a brain and using it to help her husband and his presidency. They were enraged when Bill put Hillary in charge of coming up with a health insurance reform plan. Republicans like first ladies to be of the stepford variety. Laura Bush was everything that a first lady should be. Nancy Reagan got a pass because they loved everything that Ronnie was. Randi Rhodes used to refer to Laura Bush as “crazy eyes Lala”. I refer to her as “Pfizer Lala”. She always looks like she’s one Xanax away from an overdose. I digress.

When Hillary referred to the “vast right wing conspiracy” against her husband, the media treated her as if she was paranoid. And then a few years later, David Brock (who went on to found Media Matters) wrote a book about the conspiracy and his part in it.

I’m not going to list the accusations of scandal that have been lobbed at both Bill and Hillary. You can find plenty of right wing whackadoodle sites for that. I will say that precisely none of those accusations have any merit to them. I can’t think of two people who have been investigated by congress more than the Clintons. American taxpayers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars investigating the Clintons, to no avail. There’s no corruption. There’s no scandal, and there’s no trace of improper or illegal actions by either Clinton. That’s just a fact.

There are no congressional reports that even suggest that a Clinton acted improperly, other than Ken Starr’s soft core porn report about the Lewinsky situation. That’s all there is. There’s no evidence that Hillary has ever done anything wrong as a senator, Secretary of State, first lady, or private citizen.

And yet, I hear insane accusations against her coming from both liberals and conservatives. The right doesn’t need evidence for anything they believe, so that part isn’t confusing. But the allegations of corruption from Bernie Sanders supporters is thoroughly confusing to me.

I do not support Hillary in the primary. I’ve said this repeatedly on my various social media sites; I’m with Bernie for as long as Bernie is in this race. I do not need to make shit up in order to rationalize my reasons for not supporting Hillary. I don’t need to throw out accusations of corruption in order to support Bernie. She’s never been proven to be corrupt. All that crap about the donors to the Clinton Foundation concluded a quid pro quo, based on the rich and powerful donor list. They found the “quid” and just assumed the “pro quo” even though no one ever found it. Of course the donor list to The Clinton Foundation includes rich and powerful people from all around the world. It’s probably nearly identical to the Gates Foundation donor list. That in itself is not a smoking gun, and anyone who believes it does, needs to go back to high school to take a debate class and learn some critical thinking.

I don’t need to make the comical assertion that she’s not qualified to be president to rationalize why I don’t support her. She’s as qualified to be president as Barack Obama + Thomas Jefferson and then some. She’s the most qualified candidate who has ever sought the presidency. No other candidate has ever held the offices she’s held and already spent eight years in the white house. I’m sorry, but she’s empirically and objectively more than qualified to be president.

She definitely has a deeper understanding of foreign policy nuances than Bernie Sanders could possibly have. That’s also a fact. I happen to align with Bernie’s foreign policy stance more than Hillary’s even though I know that she knows more than he does. She’s too hawkish for me, and I’m aware that a certain shift toward hawkishness is the inevitable result of actually being in the trenches. I just prefer for someone to start off from a position where they’re less prone toward military intervention so that their inevitable pull toward intervention still leaves them less hawkish than someone who starts off more prone to war. That’s a calculation I’ve made without having to underestimate or dismiss her experience in foreign policy.

Let me pause the Hillary talk for a minute to address my fellow Bernie supporters. He’s not perfect, and he’s not going to save the world if we can just get him into the white house. Stop lionizing him. That’s a childish approach to politics, and it needs to end. I don’t like Bernie’s record on guns. I actually despise his record on guns. Cliff Schecter, for whom gun policy is a top priority, lays out in great detail, Bernie’s rhetoric and record on guns here. Let me give you some of what most bothers me.

In 2005, he voted to indemnify gun manufacturers and dealers from being sued by people who were killed by their product. In 2009, he voted to allow Amtrak passengers to have firearms in their checked bags. That just makes it easier for people from Philadelphia to bring guns into NYC, where we have stricter laws. I love it when the ammosexuals bring up Chicago as an example of how gun laws don’t work. Chicago is literally just a few miles away from Indiana, or as I like to refer to it; ammosexualpalooza. Last time I checked, I’ve never shown ID or been searched when crossing state lines. If you want to have an intellectually honest discussion about the efficacy of strict gun laws, you need to talk about Hawaii, where your binkie would need to go through a metal detector to get into the state. At any rate, Bernie thinks it’s swell to help guns travel from state to state.

But as Cliff points out in his piece, Bernie’s rhetoric is worse than his voting record. I’m not going to excerpt it because it’s a great piece and you should take a minute (it’s short) to read it. My point is that Bernie’s record on guns does not make me happy. Cliff got pummeled by Bernie supporters over that piece. Those people would be idiots. You should not need to create a perfect candidate for yourself, in order to feel good about your choice.

Let me add something for the Hillary supporters. Her strategy of not taking questions from journalists, or from average citizens should have you seriously concerned, given her performance in 2007. If her strategists have decided that not talking is the way to go, you need to be very concerned about her past implosion on the campaign trail. You should want to see proof that she’s upped her game before the general election. Remaining silent and only doing negotiated interviews should not give you confidence in her campaign. Think. Bernie is taking questions from any random journalist or citizens who ask them. You should need for Hillary to do the same. Reverse Hillary derangement syndrome isn’t a good thing either.

Think. Make informed decisions. Don’t be children. Critical thinking is the most valuable skill you can teach yourselves. I support Bernie knowing that I vehemently disagree with him on guns, and knowing that Hillary is infinitely more versed on foreign policy than Bernie is. These are calculations I’ve made like a grown up.

Back to Hillary, and why I don’t support her despite all of the strengths I’ve listed here. I don’t like where her campaign funds are coming from. I just don’t. I’m not a child. I know that you need at least one planet-and-people-raping industry to win the presidency in the US. I now that. I know that the next president of the United States will likely have received at least 50% of their funding from Wall Street, big pharma, or the energy industry. I’m aware of this. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like it, and it doesn’t mean that I have to passively accept it. You can’t acknowledge how corrosive Citizen’s United was for out system and be totally comfortable with Hillary’s funding sources. These two things are diametrically opposed to each other, and it’s not possible to be intellectually honest while holding both thoughts in your head

Regular readers of this blog know that I believe that we need to change our campaign funding system before we can hope to get anything resembling good and effective government. You also know that I believe there’s only one way to do this; by amending the constitution to get corporate money (and personhood) out of the system. I don’t trust congress to get it done, so I’ve been working with Wolf PAC on an Article V amendment. I lay out my case here.

I believe that supporting Bernie in the primaries helps to send the message that we don’t like corporate money buying out our politicians, but not if we suffer from Hillary derangement syndrome. The single biggest reason why I don’t support Hillary is to reinforce my disdain for Citizen’s United and any candidate who’s good at negotiating a Citizen’s United political climate. But that message doesn’t work if everyone else who doesn’t support her is focused in on fabricating bullshit for why she’s awful and Bernie’s awesome. Neither of these things are true, and they’re both diluting our ability to send a real message here.

Approaching politics like a simpleton is destructive in ways that you can’t even imagine (probably cause people who do it, haven’t learned to think critically). The Hillary derangement syndrome that is taking hold in this election is destructive, and it squanders an opportunity to send a message about a real issue that really effects you. These lionizers and demonizers are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. These efforts to make decisions simple in the short term, are making everything worse in the long term.

We all need to start weighing information again. In politics, there’s always something to weigh. People who support Bernie and are for stricter gun control need to stop abdicating their duty to weigh issues because nuance is just too hard. If thinking about the politician you’ve chosen to vote for doesn’t hurt your brain a little, you’re doing it wrong.

I know why I’ve made my choice. I wish I could say that about the electorate at large.

Background Check Loophole In SC

July 11, 2015 by Bitchy

That’s how the South Carolina shooter was able to obtain his gun. Contrary to the way the story is being reported, the FBI didn’t screw up. The system was set up with a loophole that the shooter was able to exploit.

Here’s what happened. The shooter went to buy the gun on a Saturday (April 11th). According to South Carolina law, if you go to a legal gun dealer and they instigate a background check (as they’re legally required to do), you get a gun in three days unless the FBI comes up with a felony that would prevent you from getting one. Three days. You must get your gun in three days, whether the FBI has released you to get a gun or not. In other words, if they don’t have all of the information they need, and don’t explicitly tell the dealer that the applicant isn’t allowed to purchase a gun, the applicant gets the gun. An incomplete background check means that an applicant gets their gun. The FBI never explicitly told the dealer to release the gun to the shooter, so the dealer was perfectly in his legal (not so much moral) right to make a dollar and sell the gun. The dealer doesn’t have to sell the gun, but can if they want. This gun dealer is a giant piece of ammosexual crap. Big gun dealers like WalMart won’t sell the gun until the background check process is complete.

What type of person has to get a gun in three days? The paranoid, or the crazy who intend to kill a lot of people. That’s who. Normal people can wait 30 days.

Because the shooter triggered the background check on a Saturday, the FBI effectively had one business day to determine if he was a felon. The FBI were able to determine, within the three day waiting period, that the shooter had been arrested on a felony drug charge this year but an arrest isn’t enough (under federal gun laws) to prevent someone from getting a gun. The arrest prompted the FBI to reach out to the the county where he was arrested, but didn’t get a reply from that court house before the three days were up. They didn’t get the information that the shooter had plead guilty to felony drug possession in time.

When the law says that “we haven’t completed the background check” means “go ahead and release the gun”, that’s not a bug. That’s a feature. A clean record comes back quickly. “No arrests” can be determined in minutes. So anytime the FBI can’t beat the three day clock, it’s always because there’s something that warrants obtaining further information. And that’s precisely when a rational system of gun laws would slow the process down.

But not in Ammosexamerica. In America, “we can’t give you the thumbs up to sell a gun” means “sell the gun”. That is batshit crazy.

Don’t let anyone tell you that this instance of the South Carolina shooter obtaining a gun was just a fuck up, and that the laws don’t need to be changed. That’s just pure bullshit. But I’m sure that felons all over South Carolina are delighted to hear that some people think the current system is just swell. Do you think some of them don’t now know how to beat the system?