Message from my friend Carol, in her own words....
"Thanks a million to all of those who supported me and who continue to support me after I was raped. It's still hard sometimes. This is more or less my way of saying ENOUGH to being a victim.
I was raped three times. First by my actual attacker, who continues to walk around scot free to this day. He keeps pestering me and I really think the police need to keep AN EYE ON HIM, I think the only way they are going to do anything is if he rapes someone else... and that is the LAST thing I or anyone in their right mind wants to happen. The second time was by the cop. While he never laid a hand on me, I still felt betrayed by the way he handled the whole thing. Arresting me when I caved to the pressure of his demands to recant and say it was consensual, leaving out the part where I kept saying "NO, NO" and pulling my pants back up and moving away from the rapist, and returning the evidence unopened (including the semen stained paper towel he left in the garbage can.) All because "he didn't believe me". Thirdly, by the judicial system, I refuse to call it a justice system. While they couldn't make the misdemeanor charge of false reporting stick, I was nevertheless fined $120 for the disorderly conduct charge the public defender had me plead guilty to all in the name of getting rid of me. I paid it immediately, to get them the hell out of my life. But this is not going to go away and neither will I. To the last two I say. THANKS FOR NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!! If you cannot do your jobs, or if your definition of the job is telling victims to shut up and go away, why the hell are you there to begin with?????
While the legal assault against me is now ended I wish to share with you what I am going through in the hopes that someone out there will be helped and have the courage to get help even if the legal system won't provide it. (I know I am NOT the first one this has happened to) My marriage sucked before... its practically decimated now, as I can't even stand my husband touching me. I used to enjoy being in the house all by myself, it was a place to relax. That's all over now... being alone in the house is a major trigger for me, and if it weren't a very real possibility that my rapist might come back I might chide myself for being paranoid he might do so. Every time his IM has popped up on my screen my blood runs cold. The first night he contacted me in October I went into a full blown panic attack followed by a COPD exacerbation and damn near wound up in the hospital. Everywhere I look there is some reminder of that day. Justice I now know to be a complete joke. The same for the police department, the prosecuting attorney, and the defense lawyer. I wonder what they would all say if I showed them the admission I got from him? At least he apologized for what he did to me, that is more than I will ever get from the cops, for which I will never again have any use.
Even my sleep is troubled with nightmares. I can't even get away from this shit in my sleep. At one point I thought about getting rid of my German Shepherd, now there isn't any chance of that happening. No one in their right mind would get rid of a 125 lbs animal who sleeps in your lap if it were their only defense against an attacker. Every time I think about what happened whether its being raped or falsely arrested, that dog is always RIGHT there. She knows I am telling the truth, she's not dumb.
I leave all of these people to God. He will deal with all of you, and to be honest, I don't want to be anywhere NEAR any of you when He does!
I am doing better, I still have my days... still tempted to stomp a box of donuts and stick it on Youtube for this cop to see... if nothing else.... but i owe so much to those who aren't dumb, those who know me, and who know I am not in the habit of "bringing boyfriends to the house" or making phony rape fabrications or bullshit calls to the cops. I owe you my very sanity and I thank God your on this planet. Rape has changed my life forever, that isn't a lie, but I am not going to let it define me. I will however say ENOUGH OF THE BULLSHIT... to any law enforcement and prosecutors who read this... you need to DO YOUR JOB and PROSECUTE THESE GUYS... stop kidding yourselves. I did not ask for this, I did not "have it coming", and I will not shut up and go away."
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Occupy Wall Street
It was with a certain amount of interest that I read of a bunch of protesters antagonizing the banks. Great!!! Well let's check into this one.
The more I found out, the more I was like... uhhhhh.... who are these guys and what exactly are they protesting?
From http://www.openmarket.org/2011/10/05/occupy-wall-street-protesters-make-demands/ :
Let’s take a quick look at each of the demands. I have left his grammatical errors intact:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
He’s being far too moderate here. Take as true that importing goods across international borders kills jobs. Well, as a matter of logic, importing goods across state borders is no different. Oregonians should be forbidden from importing goods from Californians. Inter-city free trade has the same harmful effects. Consistency demands banning that, too. Even inter-household trade kills jobs under this line of thought.
If the protesters arbitrarily draw the line at the national level, then there is an inconsistency in their thought. And economists from the left and the right have been openly poking fun at that inconsistency for over 200 years.
And why only a $20 minimum wage? Think big. If Congress can raise living standards simply by mandating higher wages, why not $200 per hour? Why not $2,000 per hour?
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Because monopolies work so well.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
This isn’t worded clearly. Does this mean a $20 minimum wage for all workers, as in Demand One? Or does it mean giving unemployment benefits equivalent to a living wage, however defined? If it’s the second case, it’s pretty easy to see that fewer people would choose to work if this demand was met. As any economist will tell you, incentives matter.
Demand four: Free college education.
This should be re-worded as “Demand Four: The poor and uneducated must give money to the rich and educated.” This just sounds like the protesters, many of them students, don’t want to pay their tuition and their student loans (see also Demand Eleven).
This demand is fundamentally regressive. Wealth redistribution from rich to poor is one thing. But asking the poor to subsidize the rich strikes this writer as morally wrong.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
This day will come. I look forward to it. Progress is a beautiful thing to behold. But these kinds of transitions can only happen from the bottom up. He is demanding that it be top-down, which is the same thing as demanding that it never happen at all. Top-down is how Solyndra happened. Top-down is how ethanol happened.
Top-down is also an open invitation to the exact kind of cronyism that the Occupy Wall Street crowd – and this writer – despise. Again, think results, not intentions. The best way to achieve this policy goal is to make entrepreneurship and innovation easier. It’s a bottom-up world. Policies must acknowledge that if they are to succeed.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
He must be unfamiliar with the data. Government infrastructure spending is about 2.5 percent of GDP right now. That’s the highest it’s been since the 1950s, when the interstate highway system was being built. And today’s 2.5 percent is sliced from a pie that’s nearly 7 times larger in real terms. That puts current spending on par with about 17 percent of 1950 GDP. That is hardly austere.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.
More unfamiliarity with the data. The EPA’s budget is currently a little over $10 billion. He demands a century’s worth of EPA spending over what one assumes is a period of years, not decades. That’s a lot of money that we don’t have.
Meanwhile, forest acreage today is roughly what it was a hundred years ago, despite U.S. population growing four-fold. And getting rid of dams and nuclear power plants means using more coal and natural gas. That’s what economists call a tradeoff. And that tradeoff directly contradicts Demand Five.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Just such an Amendment passed on July 9, 1868. The Fourteenth Amendment reads, in part, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Emphasis added, though the egalitarian language is clear enough on its own. Perhaps he should press for more consistent enforcement of that language. That certainly has been lacking.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Yes. I don’t have a problem with background checks to keep out recidivist criminals or terrorists who, while rare, would hurt other people. And screening people for communicable diseases is a reasonable public health measure. But, like the Occupy Wall Street crowd, I don’t think anyone should presume the moral authority to tell other people where they may live, work, or travel. Right on.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Mandatory recounts are a bit much; most Congressional elections are 60-40 or 70-30 affairs. But there’s not much to object to here. Though there will come a time when computerized voting machines will be harder to corrupt than paper ballots. He should instead demand honest vote counts, whatever the medium.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Do this and no one will ever lend again. This demand has so little understanding of basic human nature, let alone basic economics, that it frankly doesn’t deserve serious scrutiny. It just sounds like he wants all the trappings of a modern first-world lifestyle without paying for them. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey would say: no, dear.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Moody’s and the other ratings agencies played a starring role in inflating the housing bubble. Oh, they deserve plenty of blame. But the solution isn’t to outlaw them. It’s to outlaw Congress from giving them special treatment. Congressional coddling allowed them to lie to their customers and not get punished by market mechanisms. Their legally protected oligopoly is an outsized example of crony capitalism. Don’t confuse it with the real thing.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
Government policy should be neutral towards labor unions. Not hostile, not favorable. Neutral. Part of that neutrality means ensuring secret ballot elections when workers are deciding whether to unionize. If the ballots are open, it’s pretty easy to imagine both management and unions putting pressure on workers to sign with their side. Better to preserve anonymity. Let workers express their true feelings without fear of reprisal from either side.
This demand’s wording is unclear on neutrality, and unclear on secret ballots. Hard to tell what to make of it.
So there you have it.
Like almost any list of demands, there is good and bad here. Two common themes animate the list. One is that the writer clearly hasn’t studied economics. Free trade promotes wealth and peace, and has almost zero net effect on employment in the long-run. High minimum wages price the lowest-skilled employees out of work, and hurt them. There is no free lunch. Nobody will lend money if they aren’t going to be paid back.
None of those statements are controversial inside the profession, only out of it. Regardless of one’s political leanings.
The second theme is entitlement. Other people should pay for my health care. Other people should pay for my college education. I shouldn’t have to pay back my credit card balance. In short, gimme. How millennial.
The tea party movement’s uninformed populism is embarrassing to many on the right. No wonder Brendan O’Neill, seeing the same phenomenon on the left, wrote in The Telegraph that “The teenage moralism of the Occupy Wall Street hipsters almost makes me ashamed to be Left-wing.”
I agree with some of their demands, but it’s hard to see the Occupy Wall Street crowd being taken seriously. For that, they must first be able to be taken seriously. Given the movement’s lack of policy knowledge, its unseemly thirst for other people’s money, and the fact that some of them actually think that standing in the middle of a bridge invalidates their opponents’ arguments (!), they have a ways to go.
For being in their 20's they sure have a lot of "grievances". I could think of a few of my own... the way we got booted due to a landlord foreclosure for example. Who to blame? I personally blame the guy collecting the rent money who blew it on himself, instead of paying the freakin mortgage. No, these kids think its easier to blame banks... and who wouldn't be mad at the way banks charge this fee and that fee? I once cut my card up and mailed it back to Key after closing my account because of this.
Was I on the public dole? NO!!!! I was WORKING!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe not as many hours as I wanted but I was WORKING. Who was my boss? Uncle Sam. Think he would have smiled and patted me on my ass if I had shown up to work with a picket sign? Um... not bloody likely.
Show up at a protest or rally? Who me??? Not unless it really truly was something that mattered to me, and right now its making sure that the 99% say what THEY have to say, not what a bunch of twenty something picketers say they have to say.
Old Synapse is going to be here LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG after these college dropouts head back to mommy and daddy's basements. I just dont have a lot of sympathy for people beaten by the cops, that took out a bunch of student loans for a useless education, then were aghast that their weed smoking would not help them pay it back.
If they truly hoped to make a difference they could start protesting where it mattered. The White House and both houses of Congress... whose members took the campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists to begin with. And now that the Democraps are wanting to slip into bed with these guys plus the American Nazi and Communist parties.... it's starting to look irrelevant.
That, or its simply a bunch of paid agitators hired to give the impression that Big Brother needs to crack down on all of us. Maybe not a bad thing, lets give the Police something to do other than let rapists go free????
Anyway... if these protests end with the first 15 foot snowfall... I called it ;)
The more I found out, the more I was like... uhhhhh.... who are these guys and what exactly are they protesting?
From http://www.openmarket.org/2011/10/05/occupy-wall-street-protesters-make-demands/ :
Let’s take a quick look at each of the demands. I have left his grammatical errors intact:
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
He’s being far too moderate here. Take as true that importing goods across international borders kills jobs. Well, as a matter of logic, importing goods across state borders is no different. Oregonians should be forbidden from importing goods from Californians. Inter-city free trade has the same harmful effects. Consistency demands banning that, too. Even inter-household trade kills jobs under this line of thought.
If the protesters arbitrarily draw the line at the national level, then there is an inconsistency in their thought. And economists from the left and the right have been openly poking fun at that inconsistency for over 200 years.
And why only a $20 minimum wage? Think big. If Congress can raise living standards simply by mandating higher wages, why not $200 per hour? Why not $2,000 per hour?
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Because monopolies work so well.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
This isn’t worded clearly. Does this mean a $20 minimum wage for all workers, as in Demand One? Or does it mean giving unemployment benefits equivalent to a living wage, however defined? If it’s the second case, it’s pretty easy to see that fewer people would choose to work if this demand was met. As any economist will tell you, incentives matter.
Demand four: Free college education.
This should be re-worded as “Demand Four: The poor and uneducated must give money to the rich and educated.” This just sounds like the protesters, many of them students, don’t want to pay their tuition and their student loans (see also Demand Eleven).
This demand is fundamentally regressive. Wealth redistribution from rich to poor is one thing. But asking the poor to subsidize the rich strikes this writer as morally wrong.
Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
This day will come. I look forward to it. Progress is a beautiful thing to behold. But these kinds of transitions can only happen from the bottom up. He is demanding that it be top-down, which is the same thing as demanding that it never happen at all. Top-down is how Solyndra happened. Top-down is how ethanol happened.
Top-down is also an open invitation to the exact kind of cronyism that the Occupy Wall Street crowd – and this writer – despise. Again, think results, not intentions. The best way to achieve this policy goal is to make entrepreneurship and innovation easier. It’s a bottom-up world. Policies must acknowledge that if they are to succeed.
Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
He must be unfamiliar with the data. Government infrastructure spending is about 2.5 percent of GDP right now. That’s the highest it’s been since the 1950s, when the interstate highway system was being built. And today’s 2.5 percent is sliced from a pie that’s nearly 7 times larger in real terms. That puts current spending on par with about 17 percent of 1950 GDP. That is hardly austere.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America’s nuclear power plants.
More unfamiliarity with the data. The EPA’s budget is currently a little over $10 billion. He demands a century’s worth of EPA spending over what one assumes is a period of years, not decades. That’s a lot of money that we don’t have.
Meanwhile, forest acreage today is roughly what it was a hundred years ago, despite U.S. population growing four-fold. And getting rid of dams and nuclear power plants means using more coal and natural gas. That’s what economists call a tradeoff. And that tradeoff directly contradicts Demand Five.
Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
Just such an Amendment passed on July 9, 1868. The Fourteenth Amendment reads, in part, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Emphasis added, though the egalitarian language is clear enough on its own. Perhaps he should press for more consistent enforcement of that language. That certainly has been lacking.
Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
Yes. I don’t have a problem with background checks to keep out recidivist criminals or terrorists who, while rare, would hurt other people. And screening people for communicable diseases is a reasonable public health measure. But, like the Occupy Wall Street crowd, I don’t think anyone should presume the moral authority to tell other people where they may live, work, or travel. Right on.
Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
Mandatory recounts are a bit much; most Congressional elections are 60-40 or 70-30 affairs. But there’s not much to object to here. Though there will come a time when computerized voting machines will be harder to corrupt than paper ballots. He should instead demand honest vote counts, whatever the medium.
Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the “Books.” World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the “Books.” And I don’t mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Do this and no one will ever lend again. This demand has so little understanding of basic human nature, let alone basic economics, that it frankly doesn’t deserve serious scrutiny. It just sounds like he wants all the trappings of a modern first-world lifestyle without paying for them. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey would say: no, dear.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
Moody’s and the other ratings agencies played a starring role in inflating the housing bubble. Oh, they deserve plenty of blame. But the solution isn’t to outlaw them. It’s to outlaw Congress from giving them special treatment. Congressional coddling allowed them to lie to their customers and not get punished by market mechanisms. Their legally protected oligopoly is an outsized example of crony capitalism. Don’t confuse it with the real thing.
Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.
Government policy should be neutral towards labor unions. Not hostile, not favorable. Neutral. Part of that neutrality means ensuring secret ballot elections when workers are deciding whether to unionize. If the ballots are open, it’s pretty easy to imagine both management and unions putting pressure on workers to sign with their side. Better to preserve anonymity. Let workers express their true feelings without fear of reprisal from either side.
This demand’s wording is unclear on neutrality, and unclear on secret ballots. Hard to tell what to make of it.
So there you have it.
Like almost any list of demands, there is good and bad here. Two common themes animate the list. One is that the writer clearly hasn’t studied economics. Free trade promotes wealth and peace, and has almost zero net effect on employment in the long-run. High minimum wages price the lowest-skilled employees out of work, and hurt them. There is no free lunch. Nobody will lend money if they aren’t going to be paid back.
None of those statements are controversial inside the profession, only out of it. Regardless of one’s political leanings.
The second theme is entitlement. Other people should pay for my health care. Other people should pay for my college education. I shouldn’t have to pay back my credit card balance. In short, gimme. How millennial.
The tea party movement’s uninformed populism is embarrassing to many on the right. No wonder Brendan O’Neill, seeing the same phenomenon on the left, wrote in The Telegraph that “The teenage moralism of the Occupy Wall Street hipsters almost makes me ashamed to be Left-wing.”
I agree with some of their demands, but it’s hard to see the Occupy Wall Street crowd being taken seriously. For that, they must first be able to be taken seriously. Given the movement’s lack of policy knowledge, its unseemly thirst for other people’s money, and the fact that some of them actually think that standing in the middle of a bridge invalidates their opponents’ arguments (!), they have a ways to go.
For being in their 20's they sure have a lot of "grievances". I could think of a few of my own... the way we got booted due to a landlord foreclosure for example. Who to blame? I personally blame the guy collecting the rent money who blew it on himself, instead of paying the freakin mortgage. No, these kids think its easier to blame banks... and who wouldn't be mad at the way banks charge this fee and that fee? I once cut my card up and mailed it back to Key after closing my account because of this.
Was I on the public dole? NO!!!! I was WORKING!!!!!!!!!!! Maybe not as many hours as I wanted but I was WORKING. Who was my boss? Uncle Sam. Think he would have smiled and patted me on my ass if I had shown up to work with a picket sign? Um... not bloody likely.
Show up at a protest or rally? Who me??? Not unless it really truly was something that mattered to me, and right now its making sure that the 99% say what THEY have to say, not what a bunch of twenty something picketers say they have to say.
Old Synapse is going to be here LOOOOOOOOOOOOONG after these college dropouts head back to mommy and daddy's basements. I just dont have a lot of sympathy for people beaten by the cops, that took out a bunch of student loans for a useless education, then were aghast that their weed smoking would not help them pay it back.
If they truly hoped to make a difference they could start protesting where it mattered. The White House and both houses of Congress... whose members took the campaign contributions from corporate lobbyists to begin with. And now that the Democraps are wanting to slip into bed with these guys plus the American Nazi and Communist parties.... it's starting to look irrelevant.
That, or its simply a bunch of paid agitators hired to give the impression that Big Brother needs to crack down on all of us. Maybe not a bad thing, lets give the Police something to do other than let rapists go free????
Anyway... if these protests end with the first 15 foot snowfall... I called it ;)
Sunday, October 9, 2011
STUPID COPS PART TWO
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/10/an_open_and_shut_case_against.html
Mastho Davis always knew.
He knew that in January 1996 he wandered into a stranger’s apartment in Clay and pounded Christina Gristwood in the head three times with a hammer he found on the counter. He left her brain-damaged and paralyzed on one side.
Seven years later, he tried to confess to Onondaga County jail deputies while he was held on a different assault. Later, he tried to admit in open court that he beat Gristwood, but the judge kept resisting the confession.
Davis was crazed and violent, but he had a conscience. In August 2003, he tried again. He walked into the Syracuse Police Department late one night and again told officers he’d beaten a woman with a hammer in 1996.
It’d be another two years before a judge finally accepted what Davis knew all along.
But for all those years, someone else knew the truth, too.
Christina’s husband, Daniel Gristwood, seethed in prison. A judge, jury and prosecutor had sent him there for the crime, persuaded by a false confession coerced by state police investigators.
“I’ve lost everything in my life – my wife, my children, my job, my freedom, everything,” Daniel Gristwood wrote in a letter from prison. “Why am I being railroaded like this?”
Mastho Davis always knew.
He knew that in January 1996 he wandered into a stranger’s apartment in Clay and pounded Christina Gristwood in the head three times with a hammer he found on the counter. He left her brain-damaged and paralyzed on one side.
Seven years later, he tried to confess to Onondaga County jail deputies while he was held on a different assault. Later, he tried to admit in open court that he beat Gristwood, but the judge kept resisting the confession.
Davis was crazed and violent, but he had a conscience. In August 2003, he tried again. He walked into the Syracuse Police Department late one night and again told officers he’d beaten a woman with a hammer in 1996.
It’d be another two years before a judge finally accepted what Davis knew all along.
But for all those years, someone else knew the truth, too.
Christina’s husband, Daniel Gristwood, seethed in prison. A judge, jury and prosecutor had sent him there for the crime, persuaded by a false confession coerced by state police investigators.
“I’ve lost everything in my life – my wife, my children, my job, my freedom, everything,” Daniel Gristwood wrote in a letter from prison. “Why am I being railroaded like this?”
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Hurricane Irene
Well, its here. Irene is on our back doorstep folks.
In 24 hours its been downgraded to a tropical storm since hitting the Big Apple. Right now, its just a steady gentle rain with a few wind gusts. We caught the western fringe of it as New York City was cowering in terror. I filled up water bottles 24 hours in advance, brought in the garbage cans and grill, and got medication stocked up for myself and food for the rug rats. Nope, not sorry about this in the least. Better to prepare and have it be nothing than not prepare and find yourself up shit creek without a canoe.
Synapse noticed something else about Irene. Even as it's withering away into a tropical depression, its ignited a storm of another sort... the degeneration of American society. People are actually complaining that it was only a Category one and not a three or four. They're disappointed that it wasn't alot more destructive. And only 10 or 11 deaths what the hell is that? One hapless Weather Channel reporter was giving a televised report on the storm only to have a group of tards flounce past in their bathing trunks... one mooned the camera. Then he "sunned" it. I'll leave the rest to the imagination :D
Maybe there is no saving this country's politics after all. There is no electing officials who are reasonable and honest when the rest of the population leans away from those trends.
At this point, I can only witness the stunning spectacle of the downfall of humanity while munching on my popcorn... in amazement. And it's going to keep downpouring stupidity long after Irene dissipates...
In 24 hours its been downgraded to a tropical storm since hitting the Big Apple. Right now, its just a steady gentle rain with a few wind gusts. We caught the western fringe of it as New York City was cowering in terror. I filled up water bottles 24 hours in advance, brought in the garbage cans and grill, and got medication stocked up for myself and food for the rug rats. Nope, not sorry about this in the least. Better to prepare and have it be nothing than not prepare and find yourself up shit creek without a canoe.
Synapse noticed something else about Irene. Even as it's withering away into a tropical depression, its ignited a storm of another sort... the degeneration of American society. People are actually complaining that it was only a Category one and not a three or four. They're disappointed that it wasn't alot more destructive. And only 10 or 11 deaths what the hell is that? One hapless Weather Channel reporter was giving a televised report on the storm only to have a group of tards flounce past in their bathing trunks... one mooned the camera. Then he "sunned" it. I'll leave the rest to the imagination :D
Maybe there is no saving this country's politics after all. There is no electing officials who are reasonable and honest when the rest of the population leans away from those trends.
At this point, I can only witness the stunning spectacle of the downfall of humanity while munching on my popcorn... in amazement. And it's going to keep downpouring stupidity long after Irene dissipates...
Friday, August 26, 2011
Random BlogBits and a Supercane???
Well, old Synapse knows that Hurricane Irene is coming to town. The shoulders ache with arthritis or is it overexertion from making all these preparations?
Living way the hell inland, I don't foresee too much of a problem aside from heavy rains and gusty winds, and if the power goes out, you might not see another post until it comes back on. But it can never hurt to have some bottled water on hand...
Some of the projections place Central New York in the fray, others place it to the sidelines. Whichever one it is, we're prepared for just about anything, save the random hurricane-spawned tornado that blasts a tree through a second story window and hits my roommate in the head, and when he wakes up from his coma some 17 days later he's fluent in Chinese. Heh.
Yelling at kids doesn't do anything to ease the tension in my shoulders either. Nor does picking up after two slobs who refuse to lift a finger or do anything other than run off to fuck around with their little friends and only pop in to eat when they feel so inclined. And a policeman showing up at my door to ask whether my kid was a thief did little to improve my disposition... especially since this police department employs some of the most useless fuckers on earth.
Watching the news doesn't help all that much, or reading it for that matter. Picking up my paper to see my friend's name in the paper in connection with her arrest only made it seem as if she definitely has a winnable lawsuit... after all if it wasn't a real rape because the rapist never used a weapon, then it wasn't a real arrest either because the cop never handcuffed her... I just wonder how that would hold up in court.
In any case, Synapse feels like working on a device that will unleash supercanes and earthquakes on whoever he decides pisses him the fuck off. Oh yeah we felt one of those too, two actually.
But I have to sleep on it first... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz X-)
Living way the hell inland, I don't foresee too much of a problem aside from heavy rains and gusty winds, and if the power goes out, you might not see another post until it comes back on. But it can never hurt to have some bottled water on hand...
Some of the projections place Central New York in the fray, others place it to the sidelines. Whichever one it is, we're prepared for just about anything, save the random hurricane-spawned tornado that blasts a tree through a second story window and hits my roommate in the head, and when he wakes up from his coma some 17 days later he's fluent in Chinese. Heh.
Yelling at kids doesn't do anything to ease the tension in my shoulders either. Nor does picking up after two slobs who refuse to lift a finger or do anything other than run off to fuck around with their little friends and only pop in to eat when they feel so inclined. And a policeman showing up at my door to ask whether my kid was a thief did little to improve my disposition... especially since this police department employs some of the most useless fuckers on earth.
Watching the news doesn't help all that much, or reading it for that matter. Picking up my paper to see my friend's name in the paper in connection with her arrest only made it seem as if she definitely has a winnable lawsuit... after all if it wasn't a real rape because the rapist never used a weapon, then it wasn't a real arrest either because the cop never handcuffed her... I just wonder how that would hold up in court.
In any case, Synapse feels like working on a device that will unleash supercanes and earthquakes on whoever he decides pisses him the fuck off. Oh yeah we felt one of those too, two actually.
But I have to sleep on it first... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz X-)
Monday, August 8, 2011
Stupid Cops
Normally Synapse bags on stupid criminals. This week, he's going to bag on dumb cops. A friend of mine, Carol (Names and some details have been changed to protect the innocent) was raped in her home in broad daylight. Her normally sharp judgment had been clouded by stress and anxiety about her husbands health and lack of sleep. The fellow kept hammering away at her to give out her address until she relented. When he came to the home, he ended up raping her. The only way she was able to get rid of him was to cough up a lung until he became so repulsed he left the house.
When she finally called the police some four hours later (after trying to regain some of her wits, making sure someone could take the kids so she could deal with the aftermath, etc) They came to the house, took her to the station, and over five hours period of time, they had her write it. Then, after having read it, the (male) officer stated he didn't believe her story and had her rewrite the deposition to his liking (i.e. the sex was consensual) The case was dropped, and the whole time, she states, he was calling her "Sweetie" and "Honey" and completely just badgering her to say it was consensual. Now, Carol is facing charges of filing a false report. (A class A misdemeanor)
Now, common sense dictates what is consensual and what isn't. If the woman keeps saying "no" and trying to move away, chances are it wasn't consensual, no matter what the woman's past history or anything else was. If the police actually did their jobs as opposed to trying to rid themselves of paperwork, we might actually get a few problem people off the streets. Rape kit = not done. Asking for a description of the assailant = not done. Allowing another female or support person in the police interview = not done. Treating the victim with respect = not done. And the insinuation the cop made that she should have just loosened up and gotten into it = COMPLETE AND TOTAL GIBBERISH. And why is a male cop allowed alone in a room with a female victim???
Carol is seriously considering suing the department, as their treatment of her was completely atrocious. And, she adds, "I will never again look to the police for their help, and I want my tax money back."
Thursday, July 28, 2011
The Debt Crunch.
By Carrie Budoff Brown, Ben White | Politico – Wed, Jul 27, 2011It’s not the default that strikes the most fear in the White House and Congress these days. It’s the downgrade.
Even Republican leaders say the country can’t go into default, and they’ll do everything possible to raise the debt limit by Aug. 2.
But what really haunts the administration is the very real prospect, stoked two weeks ago by Standard & Poor’s, that Barack Obama could go down in history as the president who presided over his country’s loss of its gold-plated, triple-A bond rating.
Obama could win and lose at the same time, striking a deal to avoid default but failing to pass muster on the substance of that deal with credit agencies, which could go ahead and downgrade the rating anyway.
Financial analysts say such a move would hit Americans with more than $100 billion a year in higher borrowing costs, but it’s not just that. It would be a psychic blow to a nation that already looks over its shoulder at rising economic powers like China and wonders, what’s gone wrong? And it would give the president’s Republican rivals a ready-made line of attack that he’s dragging the country in the wrong direction.
It’s what drives his Treasury Department into cajoling and pleading with the bond ratings agencies to be patient, like a harried coach working the refs from the sidelines.
It’s a factor influencing Obama’s rejection of a short-term deal: The administration believes the ratings agencies won’t like it.
And it’s what gives these little-known firms a powerful club that they’re wielding with gusto over Washington policy-makers. They hope to force a deal that not only raises the debt ceiling but also makes deep cuts in government spending and eats into the nation’s deficit.
The threat of a downgrade “is very damaging to all of us, and that would be a product of the dysfunction of Congress” said Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who led a faction of House Democrats who argued for a “clean” debt-limit increase early in the process, only to watch escalating chatter about the “Armageddon” of a missed deal feed scrutiny of the nation’s fiscal health.
S&P raised the threat of a downgrade July 14 by declaring that raising the debt limit alone might not be enough. It wanted to see an enforceable agreement to cut $4 trillion over 10 years to affirm the triple-A rating.
Administration officials were shocked by the move. They suggested privately that it did not seem to square with prior S&P reports, which said the nation’s larger budget problems could be dealt with over several years. Some administration officials dismissed the S&P report as little more than amateur political prognostication by people with limited understanding of how Washington works.
But the White House’s statements in the past week show a downgrade is now top of mind. Obama himself invoked the country’s triple-A rating in a rare prime-time address Monday as he outlined the consequences of default.
“For the first time in history, our country’s triple-A credit rating would be downgraded, leaving investors around the world to wonder whether the United States is still a good bet,” Obama said. “Interest rates would skyrocket on credit cards, on mortgages and on car loans, which amounts to a huge tax hike on the American people. We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis — this one caused almost entirely by Washington.”
Nearly every debt-limit conversation on Capitol Hill is infused with debate over the potential for either a downgrade, a default, or both. Democrats have embraced the argument of the White House: A short-term plan could result in a debilitating downgrade even if default is avoided.
Republicans are moving forward with their two-phase plan, but they’ve shown some concern about the possibility of ratings agencies scarring America’s creditworthiness. There’s significant disagreement in the GOP about the prospects of default and downgrade, and some lawmakers believe the administration and congressional leaders have created a false panic to box them into voting to raise the debt ceiling.
“The reality is these rating agencies have no idea how to rate a $17 trillion economy like the United States,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told radio host Don Imus on Monday. “They have no idea how to rate the debt worthiness of a $14 trillion debt like the United States.”
The truth is that Capitol Hill has less insight into the workings of the marketplace than the investment gurus on Wall Street, and even they have varying views on the potential for a downgrade.
There is also no clear sense of how the ratings agencies would ultimately judge the two major plans in the mix.
The Senate Democratic proposal calls for a one-time increase in the debt limit through the 2012 elections coupled with $1.7 trillion in spending cuts and about $1 trillion in savings from winding down the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The House Republican bill would raise the debt limit in two phases and mandate a deficit cut of $3 trillion.
But the second debt limit increase next year would depend on Congress adopting the recommendations of new 12-member legislative committee for $1.8 trillion in cuts — far from certain, given the polarized political environment. That lack of certainty could raise concerns with the ratings agencies, Democrats said.
Aiming for any ounce of advantage, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) argued Tuesday that his plan would shield the country from a ratings drop, while Boehner’s plan would not — a statement Boehner’s office contested.
“The $3 trillion House plan is the only one on the table that forces Congress to take on the drivers of our debt,” said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck, adding that the Reid plan relies on war savings, “an accounting gimmick that will have zero real-world impact on our deficit.”
On a Tuesday conference call with reporters, bank analysts predicted the odds of a default are close to zero, but warned that a downgrade is a growing possibility.
An agreement that sustains a top-notch rating would have to include $3 trillion to $4 trillion in budget deficit cuts over the next decade, said Terry Belton, global head of fixed income strategy at JPMorgan Chase.
Not just that, said Mike Hanson, senior U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, but credit agencies also want the ultimate plan to have strong bipartisan backing.
“It really is important that we need to have a deal that is fairly comprehensive and has fairly broad support,” Hanson stressed.
A single downgrade might have limited market impact. But a move by all three main ratings agencies — S&P, Moody’s Investor Service and Fitch Ratings — would likely force huge investment funds that must hold only the safest of bonds to sell en masse. The scary headlines associated with a first-in-history downgrade also could cause smaller investors to panic and dump stocks.
In a recent interview with POLITICO, David T. Beers, head of sovereign ratings at S&P, said the July 14th report was not a major shift and simply reflected an increased concern that there is no clear path to significant deficit reduction.
“What we are focused on is not the debt ceiling but the underlying state of public finances,” said Beers, a London-based executive who has conducted multiple meetings with administration officials.
In order to maintain a triple-A rating, Beers said, “what would have to emerge would be something that has a material impact on the underlying fiscal issues.”
“None of us know what this agreement is going to look like,” Beers said. “For us to think it is credible it would first of all have to show some choices about what the fiscal priorities are and be actionable in ways that would give us confidence that it is going to be implemented.”
Josh Boak and Jonathan Allen contributed to this report. (Editor's Note: So Mr. Obama... how's that hope and change coming along????)
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