The Bitchy Pundit - Part 10

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?

Retrograde Republicans

June 25, 2015 by Bitchy

So we’ve watched republican pundits and politicians support the confederate flag for a week now. The obvious motivation is that the republican party is home to the lion’s share of racists in America. But I think there’s actually a more dominant motivator here beyond racism.

Watch this Bill O’Reilly clip (via The Young Turks);

I love The Turks, but I think they missed an important part of that clip. At one point, O’Reilly says, “We don’t have a system where racism is acceptable at all. We don’t.” Then he goes on to say, “The world is being told by anti-American haters, that we are a rank racist society, and that is a lie”.

This is about exceptionalism and the glory days (in his mind), when America was the envy of the world.

Conservatives by definition, hate it when things change. It doesn’t matter what the change is. Change in and unto itself is viscerally abhorrent to conservatives. They like for things to stay the way they are, regardless of how they are. I think that people like Bill O’Reilly genuinely don’t see themselves as racist. I think O’Reilly sees himself as a “traditionalist” who has great regard for the traditions established in the glory days of the United States. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Bill O’Reilly is a giant bigot, but that’s how he sees himself.

We’re in a time now when things are changing at lightning speed so conservatives are more frustrated than ever. No one was talking about marriage equality in 2000. In fact, that push didn’t really start until after the hate-the-gays platform of the 2004 elections. In ten short years, we have marriage equality in more states than not, and hateful bakers are chained to their kitchens and forced to bake gay wedding cakes for twelve hours a day, seven days a week. By next week, we will have equality in all fifty states (yes, I have confidence in how Kennedy is going to go on this one).

Conservative heads are exploding. They’re being left behind by the country whose traditions they so love.

And now the flag tornado. In one short week, that flag has come down in Alabama and been pulled from several retail outlets. Eight days. And it’s going to come down in several more statehouses. Yes, losing a symbol of racism is painful to republicans, but not as painful as so much change in so short a period of time.

That fucking flag didn’t start going up in statehouses in the south until one hundred years after the confederates surrendered to the United States and ended their quest for a treasonous exit from this country. Why one hundred years later? Because it was a racist middle finger to the civil rights movement, which was winning. This isn’t a time honored tradition. It’s a fifty year old tradition of resisting change.

To rub salt in the tradition-loving conservatives’ wounds, every single change they’ve resisted was a positive change for the country. From ending slavery, to labor laws to women’s suffrage, implementing social security and medicare, taxing the fuck out of the rich to end the depression, and marriage equality. Liberals have always won, and liberals have always been right. The one and only “idea” conservatives have ever had, beyond leaving things the way they are, is going down inflames because Americans largely understand that trickle down economics is complete bullshit. The being wrong part doesn’t much seem to bother conservatives, but the constant (and now rapid) change is causing them great consternation.

Bill Kristol, the wrongiest republican ever, is pissed off that retailers are kowtowing to liberals and removing their confederate hate merchandise. That’s the free market, baby. But he (and a lot of other republicans) can’t stand it. They despise a Pope who actually espouses Christian values, rather than the bastardized version they worked so hard to create. He’s breaking with right wing Pope tradition, and they can’t stand that he’s on the same page with Jesus when it comes to the rich and when it comes to consuming the resources on this planet. They hate their own ideals and institutions when those ideals and institutions help to bring about change.

This is just too much change for them to deal with, and it’s coming in rapid fire. We have cell phone cameras finally showing America what black people have been telling us for decades about the brutality that police have been inflicting on them. Republicans hate that. They like things the way they were, when they didn’t have to be confronted with the institutional racism that produces the privilege they enjoy, and used to be able to deny they had.

This is about more than racism. This is about losing the country they once had to an ideology they’ve always despised. They see the desire to force change by taking action and criticizing injustice as being unpatriotic to the country. If you don’t love the United States just the way it is, then you hate it and you’re unpatriotic. That’s why they hate liberals, and that’s why they get irrationally pissed off over something as trivial as “liberal light bulbs”.

Bill O’Reilly said it in the clip I shared above:

“The world is being told by anti-American haters, that we are a rank racist society, and that is a lie”.

Implying that the US is imperfect is unacceptable to republicans and to a lesser degree, conservatives. In my opinion, that’s what the heart of this hate flag controversy is about for them. No rational person honors losers, not even if they had enough courage in their unjust and fucked up convictions to die for them. The confederacy was on the wrong side of history but beyond that, they were losers, wholly undeserving of any respect. Republicans don’t like losers. But they like these losers. Why?

Yes, it’s about racism but I don’t think that’s the heart of the issue here. Al Franken nailed the heart of this issue twelve years ago in his book, “Lies And The Lying Liars That Tell Them” when he said the following;

“We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world. That’s why we liberals want America to do the right thing. We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well.”

That’s the issue. And no matter how fucked up the wrongs liberals want to change are, conservatives will fight against us tooth and nail. And they will continue to lose 100% of the time.

Mass Murder In Charleston

June 19, 2015 by Bitchy

This piece is going to be long. I have a lot to say. Deal with it. This post may seem to be all over the place. I have a lot of points I want to cover. Deal with it. I will make every effort to organize my points in a coherent way, in order to help you deal with it.

The Event

You already know what happened, but let’s briefly recap. A white shooter (I refuse to use these assholes names because they don’t deserve fame for what they do) walked into a historic black church in Charleston, SC on Wednesday night. He sat in that church and watched the congregants study the bible while looking all of them in the eye for an hour before deciding that they all must die. He murdered nine people.

The Shooter

According to his roommate, he had been;

“planning something like that for six months”.

The roommate also said,

“He was big into segregation and other stuff. He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.”

But I guess that in South Carolina, this doesn’t seem abnormal enough to raise any warning flags, so the roommate never alerted the authorities to this apparently totally normal and culturally acceptable behavior (more on this later).

At the age of 19, this whackadoodle had no job, no driver’s license, and no habit of ever leaving his house. Naturally, this behavior told his father that buying him a gun for his birthday was a totally responsible thing to do.

That piece of crap father bought the gun for his nutbag son in April, but didn’t let him take it home until a week before the shooting.

Heeelllllooooo, crazy ammosexual. Perhaps using your brain rather than your ammosexual programming would have been good here. You don’t give your obviously disturbed, loser of a son a gun for his goddamned birthday. You give him therapy sessions. If South Carolina has a capital murder charge on the books, I want the father arrested on capital murder charges for being complicit in these murders.

Several sources said that he said that he “planned to kill a bunch of people” a week before the shooting. Again, this must seem totally normal in the fucked up culture in those parts of Charleston, since no one thought to call the authorities (who were busy murdering and framing Walter Scott anyway, so they might not have had the time to deal with it). More on the fucked up culture in South Carolina later.

Here’s what the shooter’s friend (from the trailer park) relayed about what the shooter said (from The Daily News):

The 21-year-old suspected gunman told his friends at the trailer park last week that he wanted to kill people at a local college — but no one took him seriously because of his deadpan sense of humor, his friend Christon Scriven told the Daily News.

“He flat out told us he was going to do this stuff,” said Scriven.Roof moved close to the Lexington, S.C., trailer park about two months ago, he said.

Last Wednesday — exactly one week before the Charleston church massacre — Roof told his friends and neighbors at the park that “he was looking to kill a bunch of people on Wednesday” at the College of Charleston, Scriven said.

The friends assumed Roof, known for his dry sense of humor, was joking.

There are apparently no social media pictures of the shooter that don’t include an overtly racist element (confederate flag or a YAY apartheid! patch). But again, this is apparently not a thing in his community so he felt really comfortable letting his racist freak flag fly. As well he should, since the confederate flag flies over South Carolina’s state house right at this very moment.

The Fucked Up Culture In South Carolina

I know I’m going to get shit for saying this, but I most certainly am not going to get shit for not making my case; South Carolina has a culture that aids and abets these kinds of terrorists. In fact, it has a long and rich history of racism and violence.

Here’s the state capital after the shooting:

Do you notice anything? Perhaps about the positions of the flags in relation to the staffs they’re on? Interesting. Two flags are paying their respects to the dead, and the one is proudly and defiantly letting its hatred wave from atop it’s perch.

Let me be very clear about this; the confederacy committed treason against this country. Period. There’s no rational way to deny that without redefining treason. And they committed that treason in order to preserve their “state’s rights” to own human beings. And in the end, they got their asses handed to them by the north.

There is no source of pride in this event; treason, slavery, ass kicking. That’s the story of the confederacy. And yet, the south is the only place in the world where an ass kicking is celebrated and memorialized. I wasn’t in Nashville for 45 minutes before I saw my first monument of some treasonous confederate douchebag. The normal human reaction to getting your ass handed to you, is to do everything you can to forget it. Not southerners. They celebrate their ass kicking. Can you imagine if Germany were this fucking stupid, and had Nazi flags all over their state houses? YEAH, we got CRUSHED! We’re the proudest LOSERS ever!

By the way, losers – when are you going to overthrow the tyrannical government that still has its boot on your throat? I mean, we’re still suppressing your states’ right to own people. You’re armed to the teeth. When is this overthrowing of the government going to happen? What are you waiting for? I mean, every day that you keep stockpiling the guns (we have less than 40m households with over 300m guns), and not overthrowing the government, just makes us think that you’re spineless chicken hawks who just like to play with guns. The fact that you can only seem to use those guns to shoot off your own teenie weenies doesn’t help your stupid confederacy pride rhetoric. Practice what you preach already. Go ahead, members of the confederacy; finish what your loser predecessors couldn’t. Or stop celebrating them, cause you’re just pathetic.

The confederate flag is just part of the fucked up culture in South Carolina, that thinks nothing of people spewing racist remarks. Cause hey, who doesn’t?

South Carolina does not have a hate crimes provision on its books. It’s one of only six states who apparently feel that prosecuting people for terrorizing a community based on race is just too “big governmenty”. Besides, what’s the big deal about targeting someone based on nothing other than race? Plus, how can you tell who a hater is, when the whole fucking state thinks the confederate flag is a source of pride? It’s just white pride, right? So the federal government is stepping in to take care of the hate crimes portion of litigating this mass murder. That’s more tyranny for you confederates to suck on. Enjoy.

South Carolina has a population of 4.8 million people. That’s a little over half the size of New York city and yet, they have two different factions of the KKK and four white nationalist organizations.

There is a cultural problem in South Carolina. In 2010, they actually held a “succession ball” in Charleston. I’m not kidding. People dressed up in their “YAY, we’re LOSERS” costumes and celebrated treason.

Look at this stupid twit:

If she cared at all about history and honoring it authentically, the dress would be all burned up and there would have been a bullet hole somewhere in it because her side LOST.

Okay, enough of that.

Fucking Fox And Their Foul Racist Mouths

Fox is very concerned about not jumping to conclusions;

Oh my fucking god, there’s so much bullshit going on here, that I fear my head will explode before I can get it all out. I’m going to try and be brief in my unpacking of this, so as not to be as agitated as I was in the last section.

An attack on our churches? Yeah, this was about the religious beliefs of the congregants, rather than their skin color. Did I miss the part where the shooter proclaimed, “fuck leviticus and fuck Jesus”?

This is part of a rising hostility among Christians because of their biblical views? I just can’t.

Pastors should arm themselves? What kind of sick fuck uses this as an opportunity to sell more guns?

People are jumping to conclusions about this shooting, just because a white guy shot up a black church? In addition to his copious racist comments before the shooting, he said (during the shooting), “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” No asshole, there’s no jumping to do here. He told you why he did it.

It’s a tragedy beyond human comprehension? Listen, uncle Ruckus; some of us have been comprehending this since the beginning of time. I’m not sure why “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go” is confusing to you, but your ancestors probably wouldn’t be flummoxed by what’s going on here. Racism isn’t beyond human comprehension. It’s beyond your paid, phony shill ass’s comprehension, but the rest of us get it.

I’m going to wrap up this very long post by saying one last thing. I haven’t heard of anyone referring to this mass murder of nine people as a thug, the way Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner were referred to. I’ve heard a lot of talk of mental illness, which I never hear when referring to a black person suspected of anything.

But I know, I know….we’re living in post racial America.

The Sociopathology Of Wealth

June 18, 2015 by Bitchy

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s a drought in California, and there are only a years worth of water reserves on hand. As a result, water prices have skyrocketed and residents have been asked (nicely) to reduce their consumption by 25%. Since that request to lower water consumption came from the governor, a charming town in southern California called Rancho Santa Fe has increased its water consumption by 9%.

Why? Because they have golf courses that need to stay lush and green, and a population who feels they’re entitled to live in the pretty, green place they signed on for. You may have guessed by now, that this is a very affluent area, where the median income is $189,000 per year (compared to the national median income of $50,000 a year). Earning four times more than the average American isn’t enough to keep the residents of Rancho Santa Fe happy if they can’t have all of the water in California too. They feel that, since they can afford to pay for all the water they need, they shouldn’t have to conserve a drop.

Steve Yuhas, a charming resident of Rancho Santa Fe says, “If you can pay for it, you should get your water.” He’s impervious to being shamed for his flagrant disregard for his state’s state of water emergency because, “[people] should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful”. He said something that particularly inflamed my bitchy muscle, but let’s hear what some other people had to say before I get to that.

Gay Butler (another resident of Rancho Santa Fe) said (from atop her show horse), “I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world. It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture. What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?”

Awwww, you poor baby with your four acres.

Brett Barbre, who lives in a very affluent part of Orange County said, “I call it the war on suburbia”.

No asshole, it’s called a drought.

Because that last comment wasn’t douchey and clueless enough, he added, “California used to be the land of opportunity and freedom. It’s slowly becoming the land of one group telling everybody else how they think everybody should live their lives.”

Let me repeat; it’s called a drought, you idiot.

Jurgen Gramckow, a farmer in Ventura county agrees with Barbre’s douchey assessment and adds (comparing water to buying gasoline), “Some people have a Prius; others have a Suburban. Once the water goes through the meter, it’s yours.”

Until the water runs out because of the drought, asshole.

Let’s get back to Steve Yuhas, the first douche in this piece. Here’s another gem from him:

“I’m a conservative, so this is strange, but I defend Barbra Streisand’s right to have a green lawn. When we bought, we didn’t plan on getting a place that looks like we’re living in an African savanna.”

So much douchey in just two sentences. First of all, if you think that defending someone with different political beliefs than yours is strange, you have a humanity problem that you need to deal with immediately. Secondly, she has cut back her water usage because she’s capable of feeling shame and (I hope) recognizing that she’s part of a larger community, so you’re defending nothing other than your own abhorrent behavior. Thirdly, people whose homes are hit by tornadoes didn’t sign up for being the proud owners of a pile of rubble, but nature happens and grownups deal with it. Petulent children whine about their entitlement.

But here is the most obnoxious thing that Yuhas had to say;

“We pay significant property taxes based on where we live. And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

I’m not going to address the second sentence in that pile of poop he hurled at us. But that first part about the property taxes really steams my beans. Since that asshole lives in California, he’s getting away with property tax highway robbery because of Prop 13. This motherfucker’s property tax rate is capped at 1%, and his increases are capped at 2% regardless of the valuation of his estate. Compared to NJ, where property taxes are 1.89%, NH, where they’re at 1.86% or Texas, where they’re 1.81%.

So spare me the whining about how much you’re being taxes, you greedy fuck. You live in a mansion, and you have a great public education system funded by your property taxes (has anyone ever heard of a failing public school in a wealthy neighborhood?). You’re getting more than what you’re entitled to.

But let me move on before I get myself too worked up. I have a point here, beyond putting rich assholes on display. In listening to them and hearing what they think, it’s clear that there really are two Americas, and that these people don’t feel like members of society at all. There’s no sense of community and no sense of duty going on among the rich. They really live in a dog eat dog world where nothing matters beyond their desires. There is a fucking drought happening in their state, and they really think that if they’re paying for the water, they can use all of it they want. The less water the state has, the more everyone will be paying for it. That means that the cost also goes up for households making $15,000 a year.

The rich don’t care about their state, country, or community beyond protecting what they feel they’re owed.

In a study published last year, The Chronicle of Philanthropy found that wealthy people give less (as a percentage) of their income than low income people do, especially in times of recession. Here are the key points (from the Forbes article);

Americans who earned at least $200,000 gave nearly 5% less to charity in 2012 than in 2006.
Unlike their wealthier counterparts, low- and middle-income Americans — those who made less than $100,000 — gave 5% more in 2012 than in 2006.
The poorest Americans — those who took home $25,000 or less — increased their giving by nearly 17%.

Why? Because when times are tough, people with less think about their communities and others who may be suffering. Wealthy people think less about their communities and more about hoarding. Dog eat dog.

Studies have shown that wealthy people are less compassionate. From the article;

The researchers asked participants to spend a few minutes comparing themselves either to people better off or worse off than themselves financially. Afterwards, participants were shown a jar of candy and told that they could take home as much as they wanted. They were also told that the leftover candy would be given to children in a nearby laboratory. Those participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves–leaving less behind for the children.

This is the psychopathy of entitlement.

Rich Donors Don’t Influence Politics, Silly!

June 17, 2015 by Bitchy

Listen to Marco Rubio lay a giant turd out there with no shame and a completely straight face;

He’s never had a donor come to his office, looking for anything from him. Interesting. Maybe he just doesn’t have big, billionaire donors, so that’s the reason he’s never been asked to do anything special? Did I mention that he said this during the swimsuit competition of the Koch presidential primary beauty pageant?

Who believes this? Is he representing the views of the American people here?

Hardly.

A CBS/ New York Times poll conducted in the beginning of May has 80% of Americans in favor of limiting campaign donations. Only 17% think that our current system of unlimited spending is just swell.

Here’s another poll from October, 2012 where Americans are even more opposed to the massive corporate spending on elections. In this poll;

Nearly 9 out of 10 Americans think there’s too much corporate money in politics (51% strongly agree).
81 percent of Americans agree that companies should only spend money on political campaigns if they disclose their spending immediately. 80 percent agree that companies should only spend money on political campaigns if they get prior shareholder approval.
Requiring corporations to get shareholder approval before spending money on politics is supported by 73 percent of both Republicans and Democrats, and 71 percent of Independents.
84 percent of Americans agree that corporate political spending drowns out the voices of average Americans, and 83 percent believe that corporations and corporate CEOs have too much political power and influence.
More than 8 in 10 Americans (81%) believe that the secret flow of campaign spending is bad for democracy.
87 percent agree that prompt disclosure of political spending would help voters, customers and shareholders hold companies accountable for political behavior.
77% of Americans support a requirement that companies publicly disclose their contributions to groups that funnel money into politics.
• 74% of Americans support a plan allowing candidates to run for Congress without raising large contributions by collecting small contributions and receiving limited public funds.
• 74% of Americans favor requiring that the name of the company and its CEO appear in ads paid for by corporate political spending.

Here’s a poll from Gallup in 2013 that says that half of all Americans support publicly financed campaigns. Here’s what Americans said about voting on limiting campaign contributions;

I can post a dozen more polls that produce the same results. I can also produce dozens of republicans that agree with Marco Rubio.

Wanna know what I can’t produce? A democrat that thinks corporate money flowing into elections is awesome.

When someone tells you who they are, you should believe them.

You think Hillary is too corporatist, and likely to serve her financial industry donors if elected? I think you’re probably right, but republicans are flat out telling you they will.

At least Hillary is speaking out against Citizen’s United and says she supports a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics. Is she lying? Maybe. Is Marco Rubio lying? Definitely not. Is it possible to want to reform the system while being really effective at working with it? Yes. It’s inconceivable to me that we’re going to ever get a president who isn’t a money raising machine ever again, without reforming campaign finance. The fact that she’s very good at doing what needs to be done in order to become president doesn’t necessarily mean she’s happy about it. It doesn’t. And if you’re positive that it does, you’re either projecting or you need to seek mental help to treat your delusions of clairvoyance.

We know where Bernie stands. We also know that his chances of becoming president are not great. Is it possible? Everything is possible. I’m hanging in with him for as long as he hangs in, but we’ve never seen a candidate with less money win a presidential election. In congress, the odds of winning an election without having the most amount of money is 6%. That’s right, 94% of the time, the candidate with the most money wins. Those are pre-Citizen’s United and McKutcheon statistics. They’re most certainly worse now.

If given the option between someone who tells me they’re definitely not going to be representing me (and they like it that way), and someone who tells me that they would like to make it possible for them to work for me, I’m going to pick the latter. I would be a rube not to.

At least with democrats, there’s a teenie, tiny chance they believe what they say. Unfortunately for America, republicans definitely mean what they say.

Both parties are not the same, and all you have to do to realize that, is to pay attention to what they’re telling you about themselves.

The DNC Is Excited About The Donald

June 16, 2015 by Bitchy

This is fantastic! Here’s the official statement from the DNC regarding Donald Trump’s entry into the republican primary field;

This would be the best troll ever, especially since The Donald is so narcissistic as to believe it’s earnest.

I and the internet at large have been having a lot of fun with Trump’s entry into the republican clown car. But in all seriousness, Trump made a giant mistake today. His only talent is that he has is the ability to market himself to low class, low income assholes who dream of the day that they have so much money that their assholishness has to be accepted by those around them. He’s about to get torn apart by the media, by his opponents, and by the billionaires who have other ideas about who they plan on selecting to be the nominee.

If the Fox debate were going to be held tomorrow, Trump would be in because he meets the “top ten” in the polls candidate threshold they established. If he’s still holding on to a top ten spot come mid July, sit back and pop some popcorn because this is going to get mighty amusing. Sheldon Adelson and the Kochs, who have decided to join forces (this is a very bad turn of events) are going to punch him hard with more money than he could possibly hope to ever inherit. And when someone throws a punch at Trump, Trump turns into a roid rage kind of asshole.

Mark my words, Trump won’t have much left to market after this presidential run. His brand is about to become damaged beyond repair.

I couldn’t be happier.

Jamie Dimon Mansplainin

June 12, 2015 by Bitchy

Jamie Dimon on May 10, 2011 explaining a two billion dollar loss to his shareholders on a conference call:

“In hindsight, the new strategy was flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed, and poorly monitored.”

“It was a bad strategy. It was badly executed. It became more complex. It was poorly monitored.”

“We’re willing to bear volatility, and um, that’s life.”

“This trading may not have violated the Volker Rule, but it violated the Dimon principle.”

“We’re not in a business where we are not going to make mistakes. We are going to make mistakes… I could never promise you no mistakes.”

“Even hindsight’s not 20/20, but with hindsight, yes, obviously we should have been paying more attention to it.”

Jamie Dimon at Davos in 2009 speaking about the financial crisis:

“Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everybody else was.”

That was after taxpayers needed to pony up $100 billion dollars to create the capitol he didn’t think he was going to need in order to run his casino. He was trying to make the point that regulations aren’t necessary, simply because he was a total fucking moron.

Jamie Dimon on the London Whale debacle:

“It’s a tempest in a teapot.”

“[It] plays right into the hands of a whole bunch of pundits out there … These were grievous mistakes, they were self-inflicted.”

“We made a terrible, egregious mistake … There’s almost no excuse for it.”

“We made a stupid error. Businesses make mistakes, they learn from it and get better. Only when I come to Washington do people act like making a mistake should never happen. Only with academics and politicians is it not allowed.”

“The London Whale was the stupidest and most embarrassing situation I have ever been a part of.”

From an article in The International Business Times (regarding the London Whale):

The bank has been criticised for allegedly holding back information from regulators during the London Whale saga, but Dimon said nothing was withheld and “we didn’t know ourselves sometimes” as JPMorgan tried to mop up in the aftermath.

So you’re running a company in a fashion that allows for you to not know what the fuck is going on? And you’re still employed, why?

Why am I revisiting Jamie Dimon’s greatest hits? Because this arrogant and demonstrably incompetent ass had the audacity to say about Elizabeth Warren, “I don’t know if she fully understands the global banking system.”

Really? You don’t know if she understands? You’ve repeatedly told us that you don’t understand what the hell is going on (usually after one of your giant fuck ups), and we’re supposed to care that you don’t know if Elizabeth Warren understands what you clearly don’t?

Oh for fuck’s sake, can’t you just rob the world in silence? Must you take our money and subject us to your arrogant bloviating?

Honestly, what this idiot lacks in intelligence and morality, he makes up for on audacity. You don’t get to mansplain things to someone who has been right about damned near everything she’s said in the past twenty-five years without me bitchily pointing out what a stupid, greedy, arrogant fuck you are.

That’s it. Short and sweet bitching this time.