Police aren't military and military aren't police, says pundit

I think it's very telling that people get so incensed when cops are threatened, but no one - until recently - seemed to think it mattered much when people felt, or were, threatened by cops. I'm a white guy, and I've been beaten severely for literally no reason whatsoever. I was sober, I wasn't belligerent, aggressive or sarcastic. I was asked a question that I did not take as rhetorical, "Who the fuck do you think you're talking to, boy?" said in an unprovoked, aggressive tone. I answered simply, and hesitantly, "You?" And the runt cop and three of his buddies dragged me out of my friend's car and proceeded to beat me mercilessly with their Mag Lights. Cops want to be feared. They proudly state now that it isn't their job to protect or serve, but to enforce the law. Since when are the two separate? In a separate case, I was at a road block and they told me to pull over to the side. I said simply, "Why am I being pulled over?" The cop at my window turned to his buddy and said, "Do we need to teach this fuck a lesson?" My own elderly mother, before she died, was protesting the cops beating the shit out of my brother, who was merely trying to protect our niece from a violent boyfriend, and they threatened to take her to jail. Furthermore, they beat him so badly that his arm got split open from the force of their baton blows. It got infected and the doctors were not able to sew it up as a result. He had to keep gauze stuffed in it for months and eventually got sepsis from it, which subsequently weakened his heart. He died a few months afterward from a massive coronary.

Looked a little something like this...only more human.

Point being, people fear cops with good reason. They're not trained to investigate anything anymore - so we can just dispense with the whole idea that they're the "investigative arm of the government" nonsense. They're hired guns, plain and simple. Worse, their training is far more akin to that received by paramilitary units than that of traditional police work. Worse still, by all evidence I've seen, they enjoy it. Most of them don't seem to be doing it because they feel like they're giving back to their communities. The few that do are the exception, not the rule. And they sure as hell aren't doing it for the pay. No, they do it because of how powerful it makes them feel. And believe me - ask any politician, business owner, or corporate executive, and if they're being honest, they'll tell you there is nothing more intoxicating or more addictive than power. And frankly, other than becoming or drug lord or the like, becoming a cop is one of the very few avenues in which a largely uneducated, middle class redneck can ever achieve power.

And before you respond with the predictable, "What the fuck do you know about it?" or "Not all cops are like that" yada yada, my brother-in-law is a cop, three close friends of mine are cops, my next door neighbor is a cop, and my ex-girlfriend's best friend dated at least five cops during the two years we dated. And those don't even number among the countless cops I have interviewed as a reporter for the last ten years. Suffice to say, I've had ample experience with them, and with the exception of my two friends (yeah, the third is pretty typical, but he's hilarious so I keep him around), my experiences have been largely negative. And while I don't fear them anymore, it's because I have spent so much time around them, and most of them in my community know who I am. The last thing any cop wants is to piss off a journalist. If he has any sense, that is.

All that to say, if a middle class white man with no criminal record has reason to fear them, you're a goddamn fool if you think blacks have no reason to fear them. Beat cops are not trained to ask questions first. They are trained to control a situation, then, if they happen to think about it, they might ask questions. But that's usually reserved for the detectives. And sadly, people in poor communities are often not only unaware that that is how cops are trained to handle a situation, they are also taught very young that cops are bad and not there to help them at all, to treat them as the enemy (which they very decidedly are) and never to trust them. Lastly, a militarily trained police force is not equipped to "police" anyone. The military is a machine designed for one purpose - to kill. Just as marines should not be required to police occupied countries because of their training - and they'll tell you quick that they aren't trained to do so - neither should police be acting as a military unit. You don't send a dentist in to treat pneumonia anymore than you would send a regular doctor in to fill a cavity. Yeah, their training is vaguely similar, but neither is qualified to do the other's job. Capiche?

Can you tell the difference?

Yeah, me neither...oh, wait, those other guys are wearing green. But isn't that army col---? Nevermind...

Tiny hands can find their way under skirts easier, boasts Trump

Trump's biggest problem - aside from being a racist, xenophobic, insecure, mean-spirited, ignorant, misogynistic, infantile, petulant little man-baby with extraordinarily tiny hands (I really noticed them that first debate. I mean, his fingers are shorter than his palms! Look at your hands. Are your fingers shorter than your palms? No! Because you're normal, lol.) - is that he cannot seem to resist hiring vapid, empty-headed, blonde pretty-girls to speak for him publicly. I'm not saying or implying that all blonde-haired pretty-girls are vapid and empty-headed. Just the ones he favors hiring.

What's that you're about to say, Dumpster? Starts with an F...

"Trump: win, lose or draw, I will be happy," the news ticker on CNN stated. Thing is, Dump, most of us don't want you to be happy. Most of us know with certainty that you are the very last person who deserves happiness. You are an evil man, Dumpster, a petty, vicious, spiteful, little man-baby who is the very definition of sociopath, who has made it plain that the only happiness with which you're concerned is your own. Again, the very definition of a sociopath. And while I admit that your low cunning has brought you to the realization that you can appeal to Man's baser motivations (i.e., fear, xenophobia, hate, misogyny, pettiness and greed) to further your own ends, what you have done for the thinkers among us is to make us more acutely aware of how much further we have to go in order to thwart despicable monsters like yourself.

Eww.....is this for real? This is sick. I mean this from the very bottom of my soul: If you believe Hillary deleting some emails somehow equates, or even bigger fishes, Trump's crotch grabbing and sexual assault, you're morally bankrupt and should be banned from voting altogether. You're just a bad person. If there is a Hell, you will certainly wind up there, without doubt. And if there is no Hell and you end up voting for Trump anyway, there is no justice in the universe. He is a BAD person, philosophically, intellectually, personally, and fundamentally. Sure, Clinton is a liar - as are literally ALL politicians - because no one, not a soul gets to that level of power without having fucked a few people over. But she isn't a rapist, to my knowledge. She isn't a pedophile, a philanderer, a grossly insecure, egomaniacal man-baby. Nor is she openly racist, nor is she xenophobic (for you Trump dummies, that means fear of anyone who "ain't lahk you..."), nor is she misogynistic, nor is she wholly insensitive to...well, every goddamn thing he disregards. The Dumpster cares about no one but The Dumpster. It is so painfully obvious that I cannot help but doubt your mental grasp on reality if that isn't also exceedingly plain to you. But go ahead and vote for that bombastic fool. If he's elected, you will get precisely what you deserve. P.S. Please, I beg of you, if "big, scary words" such as 'bombastic' and 'fundamentally' intimidate you, feel free to do a quick Internet/Google search of the terms. We smart liberals didn't go through all the trouble of making literally ALL available human knowledge accessible to your very fingertips for nothing...fucking ingrates. All politicians lie, and they get away with it. Anyone who pays even the slightest attention to politics can pick that up in just a few short moments on the evening news, and anyone who acts like it's something new or something that just cannot be tolerated is delusional. As distasteful as that is, we have unfortunately learned to live with it and, if not accept it necessarily, at least deal with it. But liars do not necessarily make bad leaders. Few can argue the advantages Americans enjoyed during the first Clinton administration, and we all know he was a liar. No, if you want to go after a true liar and criminal, why isn't George W. Bush in jail? He lied about WMD's and bogged us down in the longest war in our nation's history! Conservatives are quick to say, "Well, he really believed Hussein did have WMD's." No he didn't. And they know he didn't. He wanted to stimulate the Military Industrial Complex and the billions he and his daddy - and his VP - could make fueling that war.
No, what makes a poor leader is poor judgment, poor temperament, and a blatant disregard for anyone who thinks or believes differently from he or she. What makes a fascist leader is someone who threatens to silence the press, as you have done repeatedly, Dumpster. What makes a dictator is someone who would jail - or even kill - his or her opposition once he or she has reached power, which you have threatened to do. People who would vote for such a man for the highest political office in the world are either woefully ignorant of facts, history and basic ethical principles, or are so steeped in right wing religious dogma that they literally cannot see beyond it . . . or they're simply evil. They may not even know they're evil - few people believe they're actually evil, even those African dictators in the Congo and elsewhere who torture and castrate anyone even suspected of opposing them. Most people in that vein believe that what they're doing is right and good, or at least they are very good at convincing themselves that that is the case.

 Trump is an evil man, plain and simple. A truly ugly man, both inside and out. And I sincerely believe he knows it, which is likely part of the reason he is the way he is. But I don't think he believes he is evil - indeed, he has convinced himself, or he would like us to believe at least, that literally every single thing he does is deliberate, great, and without flaw in result or execution. Again, he is a textbook sociopath who, if he single-handedly launched World War III, could easily convince himself of the righteousness of his actions and the perfection of his plans, and try heartily to make everyone love him still - which is notable in particular, because he spends such an inordinate amount of time telling everyone how great he is, how great his business is, how successful he is, how many beautiful women he's slept with, how flawless he is in general, that it all just screams of his crippling insecurity. Maybe it all stems from those tiny little hands . . . and that other tiny appendage generally associated with short fingers and small hands. Who knows? Who actually cares, at this point? He has hit the self-destruct button on his Oval Office designs (thank all the gods throughout time), sabotaged any chance he might have had for a political career in the future (let us hope), all because he could not stop being Trump long enough for Trump to win. He is his own worst enemy, but he literally cannot stop himself. His insecurity simply won't allow for it.

Update: I regretfully, woefully, and tragically must eat my words. Ignorant Americans got just what they deserved. Good luck with that. I'm moving to Canada.

Homosexuality is part of natural selection, religious objection is sick, expert says

The only logical argument against homosexuality is that two men or two women cannot produce children together. Proliferation of the species. I get that. But as I have stated before, our planet is currently overpopulated. We are rapidly running out of resources. And just as most of us men were born with an innate attraction to women, so were homosexuals born with an innate attraction to their same sex. It isn't perverted, it isn't wrong, and it isn't an aberration. In fact, it's natural selection at its most acute. Evolution has a way of balancing itself out, and what is more plainly evidence of that fact than homosexuality? 

We were not, every single one of us, put on this planet to procreate. If that were the case, we would have hit ten billion of us 100 years ago. A full 10% of the world's population is homosexual. So to say it is a sin is to say that God erred, because homosexuals are born that way. It isn't - it never has been for any of them - a choice. 

My friend, who is a lesbian, said she started to feel attracted to women at age five, long before she even understood what it meant to be sexually attracted to anyone. And despite her parents best efforts, she remains that way to this day. She didn't choose to be attracted to women. My God, who would willingly choose to be a pariah? I am myself a pariah, through no fault of my own, simply because I am not a Christian in an overwhelmingly Christian-dominated region. It sucks being a pariah. It's not fun. Hell, I didn't choose to think the way I think. I didn't ask anyone for the clarity I now have. I didn't pray for "discernment," as the Charismatic Christians called it back in the church where I grew up. But boy, howdy, did I get it! In spades! And the attention isn't anything approaching positive attention . . . that might actually be desirable. But the current version, let me assure you, sure as hell ain't fun. And my quickly-dwindling friends list on Facebook tells me loud and clear that my stances and ideas make people uncomfortable (which is kinda sorta fun, actually).

I don't say all this just to see my own words in print. I don't say it because people want to hear what I have to say. But clearly they/you desperately need to hear it. "Hate the sin, not the sinner," my ass. That's pretzel logic. Because what you deem to be sin is only sinful in your eyes. What you think is sin cannot even be agreed upon by your fellow Christians, much less taken as a universal truth. Thus, your idea of sin is relative! 

The Christian Bible is the most hypocritical religious tome ever penned, yet somehow scholars and leaders for the last 1500 years have managed to use it to their ends unfailingly and unflinchingly, and even worse, a U.S. politician cannot even hope to get elected without professing affiliation and allegiance to Christianity. And all any of it has brought us is ruin. Were it not for religious fear of the unknown, science and technology would be far more advanced than it currently is; re: Coepernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Newton, et. al., all of whom were persecuted for thinking outside the box, as it were. 

Again, I did not choose to think the way I think. Logic and rationale made me what I am. It is a miserable acceptance of being, who I am today. I am not a happy person, likely because I cannot un-know the things I now know . . . among other things. It would be far more pleasant to accept the hypothesis that some divine, all-knowing, omnipotent being existed who could evaporate all my problems with a nod and a smile. I wanted more than anyone I know to be a good Christian, to praise God and be accepted among my brethren. Instead, what happened is when I got turned inward, which is where religious thought invariably leads a thinking person, I realized that the things that were being preached to me were inherently wrong. I could not accept the idea that I was a member of some special club and that everyone with whom I identified and called friend who didn't happen to be in that same club were condemned to eternal suffering. That's what really killed it for me. Eternal. Not just a year or two. Forever. For all time. For the really dumb reason that they were not raised the same way as I was. As my best friend, Anleigh, would happily interject here, "That's sick."

And so it is . . . sick, that is. It is effectively saying that a man raised in an African tribe his whole life, never having known the religion of the White Man, believing in his native gods and traditions as anyone would who is raised in a particular religious culture, is doomed to suffer an eternity in hell-fire. What kind of sick, twisted, psychotic god would inflict that kind of punishment on one of his creations? This same man who has done nothing but work hard and provide for his family, who's done exactly as he was expected to do by his community . . . he's screwed because he doesn't belong to the same club as me? That's some sick shit. 

And that same, sick belief is encased in a religious tome which says expressly that. I cannot get behind that kind of belief structure. I understand those who do so out of fear. I understand those who do so because they were raised that way. But I will never understand someone who comes to that kind of belief clear-eyed and cognizant of all the consequences.

Trump will appoint self as cabinet members, says Trump

"I have a good brain. I've said a lot of things." Trump on who he will consult once he's president. More later.

Hat Thomas - Knight in Shining Armor