Wtf…Hispanic values? What does that even mean? And what does that have to do with killing people?
US Marine road rage incident caught on tape
LOL, always the meatheat douchebro soldiers. Might wanna take it easy on the ‘roids, brah. Let me guess…is it shell shock from all the trauma you’ve experienced? I’m pretty sure sitting at base lifting weights and posting illiterate bullshit on Facebook all day doesn’t give you PTSD, you barbarian.
Oh and this comment is my absolute favorite:
As promised, here’s the last 30 seconds of my encounter with the cops last night. And here’s the full story of what happened:
I was about to drop off my friend off at her apartment at around 1am, and as I’m driving down her street (at the speed limit) and about to turn into her complex (with my left turn signal engaged), I saw a cop pulling up behind me with his lights on. Note for the reader: it’s always a bad idea to pull over in a secluded area, because cops are shady assholes, so ALWAYS stay within eyesight of the public. For this reason, I stopped right in the middle of the entrance to my friend’s complex.
He came up to my window and demanded my drivers’ license and vehicle registration. I asked, “what’s the purpose of this stop?”
- He responded: “I’ll tell you why I stopped you after you show me your license and registration.”
- Me: “No, you’ll tell me why you stopped me, and then I might show you my license and registration.”
- Him: “You don’t have license plates.”
- Me: “That’s not a valid reason to stop me.”
- Him: “Yes it is. Under CA law, you need to have plates.”
- Me: “Not if the car is new.”
- Him: “This car isn’t new.”
- Me: “Yes it is.”
- Him: “Well regardless, this is a legal stop.”
- Me: “I have a clearly displayed registration sticker in my window, which is legal in lieu of a license plate until I receive my license plates in the mail from the DMV. You don’t have any reasonable suspicion that I’ve committed a crime. You have no reason to suspect that the sticker in my window is expired, therefore you have no reason to stop me.”
- Him: “Sir, I’m going to need to see your license.”
- Me: “No you don’t. This isn’t a legal stop. Just like you can’t pull people over to check their drivers’ license status, you can’t pull people over to check their vehicle registration status in the absence of reasonable suspicion. But, if your purpose is to check whether my car is registered, then you can check the registration sticker, which you’ll see is valid. You don’t need to run my license for that.”
- Him: “If you don’t comply with my orders, I will escalate this situation.”
- Me: “Look, you’re wasting my time, and this is an illegal stop. Go check my registration sticker so I can be on my way.”
- Him: “You need to peel the sticker off and show me.”
- Me: “I’m not going to do that. You can walk around and look at it. It’s clearly visible in the window.”
- Him: “I need to see your license.”
- Me: “Once again, this is an illegal stop. Here’s my license and insurance.”
- *Looks at insurance card*
- Him, sarcastically: “Sir, what kind of car is this?”
- Me: “An Audi.”
- Him: “Uh-huh…and what does this say here?”
- Me: “Infiniti…because that’s my old car, because I just bought this car, exactly like I already told you.”
- Him: “So where’s your insurance for this car?”
- Me: “Do you see the name on that insurance card? That’s my name, yes? I have insurance. My car doesn’t need to be insured so long as I’m insured.”
- Him: “No, you and your car need to be insured.”
- Me: “Do you actually know the law? Because it seems you don’t. Either the car, or the driver need to be insured. Not both. My insurance policy covers me no matter what car I drive, therefore I’m insured. That’s all you need.”
- Him, sarcastically: “Oh, is that so?”
- Me: “Yes. Do you know how law works?”
- Him: “I’ll be back.”
This is the part where he wastes 20 minutes of my time sitting in his car, while another cop stands at my window staring at me the entire time. Oh, and I forgot to mention that he called for backup, so another cop car showed up.
Then you can see what happened in the video. But after that, I dropped off my friend at her apartment, and when I came back to exit her complex, the cop and his buddy were parked next to each other blocking me from leaving, just to be assholes. So I had to turn around and take the back exit.
And this is a lesson to know your rights, because if you don’t, cops will trample all over you. You can’t be afraid to refuse their searches, or to question their reason for detaining you. Always ask, “am I being detained? Am I free to go?” Because the cops will always later claim that they weren’t detaining you and you were free to leave the whole time (a.k.a. that you consented to the encounter), which is almost always a huge LIE.
Although it is worth noting that if I were black, poor, or uneducated, this situation would probably have gone very differently, and that’s probably the worst part.
Just got pulled over illegally. I made it clear to the cop that he was stopping me illegally. He threatened me that he would “escalate the situation” if I didn’t comply with his orders. So I again reminded him that it was an illegal stop. I repeated that about 6 more times. He still demanded to see my ID.
Then he tried to pull a crime out of his ass and accuse me of committing it. So I argued with him some more. Then he wasted 20 minutes of my time and finally came back and let me go without a ticket, because I was right all along: it was an illegal stop, and I didn’t violate any laws. I also recorded the last 30 seconds or so, which I’ll post tomorrow.
Choice quotes from the night:
- “This is an illegal stop.”
- “You’re wasting my time.”
- “Do you not know the law?”
- “Do you know how law works?
- “Get a real job, dude.”
Ricardo - 1; Pigs - 0
However, on an utilitarian level…
A good indicator that someone is about to say something really stupid.
One of the biggest problems with government involvement in moral issues like gay marriage is that it creates unnecessary strife between people. It seems that governments thrive on animosity between groups of people.
It’s sad to see people on both sides of the gay marriage debate ridiculing and shaming each other. If we took the politics away, and if both sides stopped trying to use the coercion of the state to force people to abide by or endorse their beliefs, then maybe we could debate these issues and have disagreements free from the resentment that comes with political battles.
Those kids holding signs describing why they’re opposed to gay marriage shouldn’t be subjected to derision and ridicule IF their views were strictly moral and not political. If instead of trite clichés that fit in a 5-second news soundbite, their signs read, “look, my view is that marriage is between one man and one woman, so I don’t recognize marriage outside of that context, but I also don’t think I have the authority to force anyone to follow my beliefs, so people should be free to make their own choices just as I’m free to lovingly persuade them to make the right choices,” then maybe we could have civil discussions about these topics and debate them on their own merits.
Society should battle out moral issues peacefully in the marketplace of ideas, rather than violently using the power of the state, which is divisive by design.
Some humor for Conza.
This is literally my least favorite topic to discuss. If you search my tags, I think you’d find that I’ve hardly made any posts about it in the 3 or 4 years I’ve been blogging. It’s so tedious and annoying, and it’s such a nuanced issue that’s impossible to discuss without things being taken out of context or misunderstood.
My political position on gay marriage is this: I have no political position because it’s not a political issue. People should not have to ask the government for a permission slip to get married…ever.
Marriage is not a state institution, it’s a religious institution that long predates the state. It’s an insult to the entire idea of marriage to turn it into something that’s granted by some government bureaucrat so that people can be eligible to pay lower taxes or whatever. The right thing is for the government to completely get out of the business of regulating marriage licenses and stop giving preferential treatment to married couples.
The more controversial thing I suppose is that I also think “marriage,” properly defined, is between a man and a woman. State “marriage” has allowed that term to evolve from its original definition because of the obvious political problems with maintaining a state institution that excludes entire classes of people, and that’s an unfortunate semantic change, but there’s nothing that can be done now, least of all by anti-gay-marriage people who would attempt to use the state to turn back the clock on something that the state probably created in the first place. Marriage is now a state institution whether they like it or not, and they have no good legal arguments against it anymore. It’s simply not a good argument to say that the government should ban something because you don’t like it.
So I think conservatives need to give up the fight, because they’re going to lose and because they’re not the moral policemen of the world, and liberals need to calm down and stop pretending to care about “liberty” and “equality,” as if they ever knew what those words meant in the first place.
Lastly, the only important part of this whole debate is not really an answer to your question, but it’s related. It’s not exclusive to gay issues, but rather pertains to all legislation of morality, and it’s this: conservative Christians who take moral positions on issues like drug use, gay marriage, polygamy, prostitution, pornography, etc. are right to do so. It’s okay to have opinions on moral issues. But just as Jesus never used coercion to force anyone to follow Him and His teachings, neither should Christians be so presumptuous as to think we can use coercion to force people to follow our beliefs. We should be tolerant and loving so that people can see Christ’s love in us and seek Him, rather than being judgmental and intolerant and driving people away or making them afraid to approach us. And on that, this writer sums it up quite well.
made rebloggable by request
Conservatives have terrible, horrible, despicable opinions. Even more so than liberals. Like, obviously it pisses me off that the state steals my money, but it pisses me off even more that the state then uses my money to murder people. On the scale of moral outrage, getting a massive boner for war is more appalling than getting a massive boner for wealth redistribution.
But despite all that, at the end of the day, given the choice between hanging out with a conservative or a liberal, 9 times out of 10 I’d still take the conservative. Putting aside their war/police boners, conservatives are much nicer as people. Liberals definitely have a monopoly on being disagreeable and generally unpleasant to be around.
A conservative friend will make you suicidal by expressing his opinions, but a liberal friend will make you suicidal by merely existing.
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