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Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
I’d just like to know when Mr. Bracken hacked into my brain. If you’re living in a city, you’re nuts. If you’re doing so without a comprehensive bug-out plan ready to go, you’re begging for whatever evils may befall you.
Green Acres is the place to be…
For those of us who don’t do the twitter thing, what started this latest iteration of Jeff Goldstein: heretic?
Rush Limbaugh. The other Devil. heh.
Well, that’s depressing.
You know what could cheer me up? Some armadillo pictures. Does the little fella have a bug-out plan?
I think the Armadillo plans on becoming The A-Number-One Guy.
You guys are finally making me think of buying a pump-action Mossberg. Because racism, of course.
You guys are finally making me think of buying a pump-action Mossberg.
Woot! Another convert!
Model 500A–can’t go wrong.
As to Bracken’ flash-mob rioting, my guess is by the second or third one, the authorities will have figured out that the first thing they need to do is shut down the wireless networks.
And I’m not sure Uncle Sugar turning off the EBT spigot is the most likely scenario for food riots.
A revelation, Ernst.
“As to Bracken’ flash-mob rioting, my guess is by the second or third one, the authorities will have figured out that the first thing they need to do is shut down the wireless networks.”
That just means we’ll all be killed by mobs of bored tweens who can’t get their texts.
– Relax everyone. With a third of a milliom people dropping off the unemployment roles each month, somehow the Bummble-fuck squad will be able to keep those welfare checks and food stamps going (and growing) to buy off the trouble makers and keep them from rioting, as long as Jug ears gets reelected, oe until the well runs dry.
– If/when either of those two things happen then you better be well armed, and if you live in a city you’ll need to save a round for yourself.
– Welcome to Utopia.
BB’s videos are pretty good, but he keeps forgetting to add the ending…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osYEW3Q-mSY&feature=player_embedded
I think the trigger will be when all the illegal Mexicans start beating the shit out of the entitlement whores for killing the job market.
Honestly, I’m not sure what’s more unsettling, Bracken’s essay, or the comments reacting to his essay.
Anyone check out the video of Pastor Manning, I think that name was Pastor Manning, talking about how whites are going to get tired of getting pushed around and he doesn’t blame them? I bet that went over well.
The EBT card fiasco video is also illuminating. One gal is on tape ranting on about her 7 children going hungry because her EBT card wasn’t working. The gal in question doesn’t look to be that old and has that many kids? And yet the welfare state rolls on with no accountability…
“The scoops are coming!”
How America’s Cities May Explode In Violence
I hope the “May” in the title refers to the “How,” and not the implied “Whether.” Otherwise, I’d say the author is being too modest.
I think it is more likely than may, Squid.
I was a little too close for comfort to the Rodney King riots and the only guys with their eye on the ball and their businesses were the Koreans who camped out on their roofs and blew all comers to smitherines.
Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. Step out of line, the man come and take you
awayout.There’s some seriously disturbed people in that comment thread actively wishing for a firefight.
You picked up on the “bring it” vibe too?
I don’t know if I should have read all of that, it makes me closer to falling completely down the prepper rabbit hole.
My parents just bought big buckets to store rice and beans. I feel like I need a couple more years to prepare, and maybe it’s too late.
I don’t know how you could miss it. Between that and the dick measuring about gunwonkery, I quit reading about 15 or so comments in.
I’m not sure how to take that article yet. If it’s correct, I’m dead, as I live in a mixed-race neighborhood, and there are plenty of poor people within a few blocks.
Some lessons need to be learned the hard way. Nothing hurts like pain.
Not all discussions of the relative merits of given firearms are dick-measuring gunwonkery.
It’s our curse; one cannot always choose one’s allies. You can have very reasonable arguments against affirmative action, but your opponents will always point at the racists standing next to you, since it’s an easy excuse not to address your arguments.
The gunwankery is what it is. Just wait ’til somebody figures out a way to install Linux in an AR…
– The drums of war beat in the distance, here and abroad.
– On the other thread I posted the accurate unemployment figures. As an aside, I dimly recall reading some tome on world history long ago where the author talked about basic conditions for civil unrest/war, and prominent on the list was joblessness. Anything over 35-40%, and it was practically a given.
– He also gave the odds in terms of “Number of meals away from civil order breakdown”. At one time, during the decades of economic boom, we were two weeks away. I wouldn’t want to guess how many meals away we are now as things stamd.
– Its also note worthy that ~36.4% is an average. Given that low population areas like Montana, etc., will tend too single digits, whereas the real numbers in metro centers has to be off the charts, you can see where its going.
– When the Israeli/Iranian thing finally boils over, they better hope America isn’t doing the Watts wattusi, because its not clear how much of a help we’d be if we’re preoccupied here at home with our own wars..
If it’s correct, I’m dead, as I live in a mixed-race neighborhood, and there are plenty of poor people within a few blocks.
You and me both, brother. Our only chance is to see it coming ahead of time, and be well out of town when the fecal matter impacts the rotary ventilator.
The gunwankery is what it is. Just wait ’til somebody figures out a way to install Linux in an AR…
Gah! My brain hurts already.
You and me both cranky. Though I only live in a small city rather than a large urban center, so maybe I’m not entirely fucked.
And here’s my problem with the piece (well, not so much the piece itself, but in the various reactions to the piece):
When we’re hoping for the best and planning for the worst, what is it that we’re expecting exactly?
gunwankery worth reading.
Think of it as a palate cleanser.
I better stock up on popcorn.
I take solace from knowing that those of us who survive will splinter into caliber-based sects and continue our warring indefinitely.
– Is it too late to succeed from the Union?
*smack* …Whaaat?…..oh, sorry.
.45-55 an unexpected darkhorse!
What was Frey doing with Barrett Brown again?
Frey had the feds investigate him?
He asked Anonymous to bury Jeff?
WTF?
I wonder how the sudden-hunger scenario (whatever the trigger) will play out in Utah, where every third house is LDS, where there’s food storage. Plus, Welfare Square.
I live in a neighborhood with lots of multiple-immigrant families (10 cars for 13 inhabitants) who are not in the habit of stocking up, unless they themselves are LDS (but they often don’t have the scratch to do it).
I can see, in the event of such an emergency, the Church using its hierarchical structure to rapidly communicate to the bishops that it’s time for the members to bring all their stored food to the meetinghouses, where it will be doled out to anyone who needs it.
Plus, the Church itself has tons of food and other supplies saved up for when/wherever an emergency breaks out. We might get temporary riots in the poorer areas, but efficient food distribution will calm it all right quick.
Good luck walking to Utah on an empty stomach, ye hordes.
Oh yes, there will be armed guards at all points of ingress to keep out the troublemakers. Everyone else will be allowed in as long as they promise to behave themselves.
Also to the point, #IfObamaDontWin, which I found at this Wretchard post, “The Opposite of Loneliness.”
– di….thats the first time I’ve looked at Kos in ages. What the hell is that all about and is Brietbart aware of this?
No need for Kos.
– I thought that whole SWAT thing had sort of pettered out. These dorks really don’t know when to quit.
I dunno who else knows.
I followed Pablo’s link upthread. (BTW, enigmatic lead-ins are fun to create, but I usually won’t click unless you provide more.)
It looks like it just broke. Jeff modestly acknowledged it a couple threads back, in the I’m The Devil post. I knew Patterico was capable of going to unreasonable lengths to avenge himself, but he’s worse than I thought.
It’s one thing for a DDA to engage in obscure blog-wars and whisper campaigns; it’s another to attempt to bring in actual muscle to sink someone who insulted you on an obscure blog (obscure compared to HuffPo or NRO, I mean).
Unless this is a BB special made up out of whole cloth. Hang with hackers and any “evidence” on the intertubes needs good provenance.
And here I figured the riots would start in earnest the night (if not mid-afternoon) of November 6.
– The outlaw Josey Wales fides again in Tampa.
– If you haven’t already read it this one’s for you Leigh.
BB is a lunatic, but the way the Patrick J. Frey, Esq. we all know and laugh at behind his back was behaving here back then, I’ve been wondering if BB wasn’t the only one giving a tailed simian piggyback rides.
Thanks, BBH. I heard Rush talking about it today but I haven’t read it yet.
Jeff, I well remember 2009. It’s when I first began reading you because of what Stacy McCain was posting about you versus Patterico.
It was at that time I stopped reading him because of the vile stuff he wrote about you and Stacy.
I have been linking him since the whole Kimberlin/Rauhauser Cell was exposed in May, but my feelings towards him have not changed. He’s a first-class jerk. It’s a relationship of convenience until the K/R Cell is exposed and, hopefully, jailed.
– The lede over at Huff’n’Poop is classic Lefturd disconnect.
– We get endless euoligizing the wonderfulness of his holy Wonce, including a swoonfest of a DNC convention of crazies, and then they turn aound the next day and post:
“SAVE US”
…with a pic of Bernenke holding his hands like he’s praying.
– Apparently for all his wonder Jug ears isn’t parting the waters quite as fast and as well as they’d hoped. The irony is lost on them as usual.
WHI: The VP candidate back in ’88. The debate with Quayle. Bush I era. Look it up.
UM: Know who Bentson was. But regarding Obama and the DNC????
WHI: Look it up. The “I knew JFK and you’re no JFK” part. That is what Bill did this week. A version of it. Reminded everyone of what was but what hasn’t been these last four years. Trust me. Don’t buy the liberal spin. That is what he did. And by the end of that speech, Obama knew it. Things were pretty icy backstage.
UM: Explain. How so?
WHI: Bill’s speech was double the time they gave him. Had Obama waiting. Kept the current POTUS waiting for almost an hour. Handlers not happy. Jarrett pissed. They do that little shake at the end when Obama walks out. Backstage, Bill says something like, “He wanted to break my hand.” He’s laughing it off. Knows what he wanted to do was done. Obama storms off. The two were all smiles onstage. Backstage, they parted. Bill’s getting congratulated and Obama is gone. Told somebody, was a woman so assume Jarrett but didn’t ask for clarification, took Bill aside and was shaking her finger in his face for a moment. Bill leaned down and whispered something to her and she walks off. He goes back to smiling and the handshakes. Classic Clinton. The smiling assassin. And what is the feedback today? That Obama’s speech was not as good as Clintons. That he isn’t Clinton. Look up the Bentsen reference. That’s what we saw Clinton pull off this week.
link
Obama is a goner. I don’t care what Gallup is saying about him getting a bounce from the convention. Do tell, a candidate just spent all week getting called the Christ and he gets a bounce? Whoda thunk it? And it’s not a giant bounce. He’s only barely breaking 50% and still within the margin of error.
Dead cat bounce, say I.
nr, I’ve been saying the same thing as the WHI since Wednesday. Bill stuck it to the Wonce good and hard, and we like to say here in Outlawland.
– Klugman is waffling and damning by faint praise ( for all the wrong rreasons of course), but when you’ve lost the economic Garu of bottom up servitude Socialists, you’re pretty much wood chips.
Asimov had a ‘Future History’ scenario, but Bracken’s is much closer to home, and is far more likely to occur, unfortunately. Not exactly as he’s predicted; I’d guess the larger ‘burgs will burn, baby, burn; burn you long time. Hungry, people? Hate it for dogs and house cats, really.
The Soviet Union collapsed without much bloodshed, relatively speaking. US? Not so placid. What do you think those millions of rounds of ammo various agencies have purchased are for? They’ve professional future historians, and know much more than Braken, who is but a piker.
Again, unfortunately.
Mr. pf looks around, sees himself in a predicament brought on by…himself. He’s reaping Karma.
Can’t say he wasn’t warned. The Real World doesn’t have a sitting Judge minding everyone’s participation, enforcing conduct to the rules. And Mr. pf seems to need constant minding in and out of the courtroom, for his own good.
I was kind of hoping that was an inefficient, expensive back-door de facto ammunition ban! I had no idea they actually planned to use it.
Then all your worries are over.
…
…
…
other than Mitt Romney.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that he cannot possibly be worse than Obama, Ernst.
That’s a pretty low bar.
Sadly yes.
And if he attains the hitherto-unimaginable feat of being worse than BO, at least he’ll almost certainly do it in Exciting New Ways.
Variety is the spice of life!
According to the UC model Romney is going to stomp Obama.
That’s a pretty low bar.
– As things stand Mo, we’re lucky to have any bar left.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that he cannot possibly be worse than Obama,
mittens will do things like consolidate 45 “jobs training” programs from 8 depts into one. i doubt he will question whether the fed gov’t should be in that endeavor.
mittens will do things like
added mittens will do stuff the proggtards will have trouble politically attacking. the overton window will shift but the proggtard philosophy of fed gov’t will remain.
We don’t know what he’s going to do yet. Luckily, he’ll tell us in the next 52 days.
After second in family killed, family may return to Africa
Will he?
I’d say he’s got a sure thing going with the “I’m not him” campaign. Why potentially screw the pooch by taking a discernable position on something? It might scare the Most Holy and Sainted “moderates”.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that fixing that abscess in two months cannot possibly be worse than doing it Monday.
90M are not working, half the country is on the dole, the Fed is pumping again — this out of obvious and utter terror — the end of this system is clearly nigh, and you expect the Welfare State to not believe what Jesus is selling?
….cannot possibly be worse than doing it Monday.
– Thats getting a bit old JHo, and a bit insulting as well.
– Do you imagine if we had a tangible alternative that most here wouldn’t jump on it? Who? Barr?
– Even if Romney wins theres no damn evidence he’ll be able to attract investment fast enough to solidly turn things around. That much damage has been done. But regardless, we sure as hell know what we’ll get with another round of brown shoes, and I’m doing nothing to help that happen, nothing.
Maybe the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will ride on down and all these pixels will have gone for naught.
Just so’s you know, the pressure was laid on me tonight (on Twitter) to take the prosecution to the woodshed. But I did for it what it NEVER would have done for me. I didn’t bite. Which is just going to make it hate me more.
But which is perfectly in keeping with who I am.
The Devil. In case you haven’t heard.
Deal with it, those who backed the wrong horse.
I am who I’ve always been.
Where’s the pressure coming from?
– Well we can point for a win in November, but that’s just a third of the Equation. Then I have to hope for a happy birthday brunch, and then that R&R can get it at least partially right.
– If the first two don’t happen then it probably doesn’t matter.
Brunch on one’s birthday is paramount. Your order of operations is skewed.
Let ’em stew in their own juice, Jeff. He hates being ignored more than anything.
Jeff, you’re so evil, you don’t even laugh at it behind its back like us mere mortals.
From the Rauhauser, Kimberlin, et al., camp.
As I said on day one: Just because Frey was wrong and a huge butthurt douche wrt me doesn’t mean I support his being targeted by others unfairly.
It’s one of things that makes me me. And makes me not like some others.
Ugh. The internet sucks beyond suckage.
You have no idea, sdferr.
This is true.
Consider that you have the good sense not to get any of that on you. Frey, not so much. Lie down with dogs, etc…
NiceGood guys finish last.For what it’s worth I think it’s a good decision moral-wise, Jeff.
That and a nickel, I know.
Ehhh, I still remember talking to you on the phone when this was first going on and you were concerned about how I was doing. If such things matter in the end, that and this will.
– The net is pure anarchy, no rulz, no ethics, no principles, not even ident. Thus if you understand the net you understand the Progressives.
I’ll watch myself.
Not sure there’s anything more I could get on me, Pablo. Turns out all it takes to have your record of being forthright, honest, and dedicated to the cause of classical liberalism completely destroyed is, on our side, for someone with a position more elevated than “house dad” to level some dishonest charges against you.
Then you’re persona non grata.
Trust me. I’ve seen it happen!
“Nice Good guys finish last.” Ah, but the real trick is to finish and not be finished.
I empathize.
Thanks, bh. And thanks all of you here for sticking with me. I get the sense that you know who I am — I mean, really — and that it makes a difference to you. Which is why we can disagree vehemently on occasion and still come out of it okay.
Been there too, but not online. That I know.
I’m talking about yourself, not your Q rating. As for that, I hear rehab does wonders.
I’ll watch myself.
– You’d have to be McGehee saying that to gain my sympathy, but knock yourself out.
“Then you’re persona non grata.” Thank God they don’t need a kidney, or a vote, for that matter.
Gulermo! How’s things down south? Heard you had a bit of excitement.
You’ve called yourself an asshole. Some have called me one (or insulting in the context of complete societal devolution).
I prefer to call it a swift and vigorous reaction to bullshit.
Gulermo! What’s the word?
Actually, that record still stands, mostly.*
*Fucking hackers should all die in a fire.
– Light that candle JHo, might make you feel a little better. There will be time enough for remorse if it comes to that. More than enough time.
When I read stuff like this, I’m glad that I gave up blogging. I don’t know how you can stand it, Jeff.
Same , same. “Heard you had a bit of excitement.” Living at the base of a volcano is the true definition of excitement.
Which one Gulermo, Irazu? or another?
We are all doing well. Thanks for your concern. It was interesting, but not the first time I’ve been scrambled.
Well at least this thread finally clarifies who BB is. The entire day I thought Jeff an Stacy were referring Brooks Bayne. I mean, he’s an odd duck himself, but this makes a bit more sense.
Tres Rios de San Juan, Cartago. Irazu.
We were all worried about you, Gulermo. I’m pleased that you are not hurt.
BBH, he’d rather curse the darkness than light a single candle.
Always looking for a cloud behind any silver lining makes one grouchy.
Playing their patented “Let’s you and him fight” game, no doubt. Even the Patrick J. Frey, Esq. we all know and laugh at behind his back laughs at them behind their backs.
Dang, I thought the candle to be lit was a Roman candle. Those are fun.
They are only reporting two deaths and one was an infarcto. We are many miles from the epi-center. Off of Playa Samara and deep, like five miles deep. Mel Gibson has a place near there.
Could be Arenal decides to squirt a bit in a few months.
“Could be Arenal decides to squirt a bit in a few months.” Arenal doesn’t “squirt”. It chucks taters.
– Nah Leigh. As a practucal matter JHo is right. Things are fucked up beyond belief, but you have to suck it up and dig in somewhere. Otherwise you might as well cash it in, and grumpy maybe, but he’s no quitter, anymore than any of us are.
– Apparently 9/11 hurt us much deepwe than any of us knew. Hopefully it isn’t a mortal wound.
Infarcto = heart attack in the colloquial sense?
No really, leigh, it might be better if Obama wins again and inherits what he’s made, especially against a huge majority all the way down to the local level.
On the other hand Romney is exquisitely, perfectly poised to take the mother of all falls once this whole thing goes south. The press will make certain he does.
The notion a cantaloupe is better than Obama is faulty. Think a longer game.
Jeff, if you weren’t so damn consistent and, instead, would let loose the dogs of pragmatism, you might just get the crease of your pants noticed by those that care about such things.
That’s no way to talk about Biden.
Then you’re persona non grata.
My French isn’t what it could be, but I think that translates to “dude without breadcrumbs” — right?
To which, damn! It’s bad enough they won’t link you any more, but to take away your crispy topping such that you no longer bake up golden brown and delicious? An overly moist and colorless Jeff? The fiends! Have they no shred of decency?
McGehee, however, it does prove JHowards point.
How does Obama win against a huge majority?
Maybe, JHo. Things are certainly poised to go spectacularly wrong and it can be laid at the feet of many, not just Obama although he should be roundly hooted at and treated like the douchebag that he is.
2nd terms are always bad. This one would be especially bad. I don’t want to live out the rest of my life in a Beyond Thunderdome scenario.
People are ready for a change and R/R would have coattails for the down-ticket fellows.
I think it’s entirely sensible to worry about Romney winning but that is not to say that it’s better for Obama to win a second term.
(For what it’s worth, I’ve been worried about Romney winning for months now while others were still saying such things were impossible in a Tocqueville sense.)
Michelle Obama would make a great Aunty Entity.
[The] press will make certain he does.
– I agree he’s really shooting for the moon in some ways, but the press? They’ve spent the last 20 years showing their true spots. They’re running out of Mojo. Not worried about them anymore.
– The most likely senarios all depend if we also take both houses. Without that, then theres little hope for a significant turn around.
– Take all three and the stage could be set for a Reaganesqe recovery. anything less will be weak at best.
An isolated Obama has to double-down on EOs, further dividing the political status quo. Pressure on Dem Congressmen goes up exponentially in a second O term, and impeachment becomes a possibility. I want to see that division because I hope they all fail, deeply, painfully, and visibly and because we haven;t learned enough yet.
A Romney presiding over a split House and Senate, and facing the constant din of the fucks in the press in this country, is in trouble from the oath on. Every time a sink backs up he’s going to lose five points. He’ll be at 35% approval in 14 months.
The bigger problems are not partisan. They don’t know Party lines. Those issues are money, the failed Welfare State, catastrophic insolvency, social unrest, and per PW, the looney reality that paints artificial stop-gaps and federal malfeasance as natural and effective and right and good. Economically see Paul Krugman et al. We still lap that crap up.
Romney is fish wrap against that. Obama is its blood kin. One more Administration in its first (or next) term is likely all that stands between us and collapse. Who looks like he did it did it and this country doesn’t begin to have the stones to face what all the wreckage really means. Not until it comes home in a personal way. By his occupancy O will force that revaluation.
“Infarcto = heart attack in the colloquial sense?” Si. I am stuck in an alternate universe between spanish and english.
That. This country doesn’t do that and elect the same Party’s president. Not happening.
outside of space policy, just reverse everything baracky has done.(probability that idiots get somethings right). >recovery. it ain’t hard
I could live with that scenario, BBH.
There’s no reason it couldn’t happen again. Hell, I’ve lived through two Jimmuh Carter’s. At least Romney and Ryan’s initials make up RR.
It’s a start. Ryan has vision. Romney is competent.
We’ll see soon enough.
oh, and by money I mean the dollar, fiat, Keynesian, printed, welfared, Fed, derivative, stimulated, centralized, World Banked, ESF’d, global, Wall Street, etc, etc, etc.
In other words, not money but the currency of the entirely corrupted State. The grease on the ways to losing classical liberalism forever.
Thanks, Gulermo. My Spanish isn’t terrible unless it’s written or spoken.
Absolutely also that: The most important job any Administration or Congress could possibly do at this point is — with the exception of national defense, sound currency, and a just federal legal system — to sunset every damn law on the books by any means possible. Keep new Congresses busy just keeping the bulbs in the Capitol changed and the terrazzo buffed.
– Generally I might agree with you JHo. I’ve considered such a path. I simply don’t think we’d survive another 4 years, and impeachment is a long term game that wouldn’t do a thing to plug the dam.
– Look at Chicago. They’re basically letting them kill each other off. Spme f the cities are a hot weekend away from total breakdown. I’ll be surprised if we even make it to the elections without something breaking out.
– If not that, who knows how much longer before Israel has to make a move. You have Syria.
– Exacrly what would be the plan for getting through even one more year of this?
I’m coming around to the notion that it might have been something of a warning about the wounds we’ve busily been self inflicting. This used to be the safest place on Earth. Not so much anymore.
I would encourage people to investigate Milton Friedman and his response to the economic policies of his age.
Under what scenario do you see us surviving it?
The hardest point to make is that losing slowly is losing. Insolvency is insolvency. Things are going asymptotic, BBH. Romney has to contend with a national debt that’s virtually unpayable in interest alone yet would take an entire annual GDP to pay off. That’s without at least ten times that amount owed to social programs it’s illegal to unfund.
Under what scenario do you see us surviving this? No friendly fire intended but you’re making the same assumption leigh apparently is, which is that an incrementally slower loss is a win. It is not.
Look at Chicago, Exactly bbh, as bad as the movie massacre was, in Chicago they call that Saturday night. Obama has sold out Israel, the only Democracy in the middle east and everyone knows that they have free reign to do what they want. We sell out our friends to appease our enemies.
You’re going to HATE this but Ron Paul it. Pull everything back you possibly can, announce a no-questions, your city or nation dies if you harm a hair on our ambassador ‘s head foreign policy, and at home intelligently chip away anything whatsoever it takes to eliminate all deficits inside of 90 days.
The entire debt paid in five years. All social programs ended in five years. Abolish everything federal and social that exists inside these borders.
No good? It’s the only way to cut out this cancer.
Never. Fucking. Happen. We don’t have 5% of the will. So, instead we go under. Under the Republican.
The notion that Ryan’s budget does anything significant is absurd. It cannot. At the least the Press will destroy him and his boss before mid-term.
I recently upped my food stores and will be adding more ammunition after the 1st of the month. I’m just hoping to stay in the saddle long enough for the bronc to tire out, so to speak.
I’m not expecting mad max, but I am expecting shortages and localized breakdowns in law and order.
So, it’s your opinion that we’re definitely fucked, JHo?
[that] an incrementally slower loss is a win. It is not.
– As poor of a choice as it may be, at this pont simple survival is a win. You live to keep on fighting to gain another day.
– I’d love to see the Marxixt bastard and each and everyone of his moron followers totally humiliated. So badly it might be 100 years before anyone does anything but laugh at them when they try to sell another Utopia.
– Unfortunately Obama’s not Carter. Its so bad we can’t afford the luxury if stopping and drop kicking his ass. We just don’t have the time any more. Its that bad.
Sure we are, bh. We’re numerically screwed and the system those numbers live in is not only wholly corrupt and managed by what amounts to the planet’s biggest Proggs, but it’s inherently unstable.
The Fed is out of tools. The buck is three cents. That is why.
What’s the point then?
There was a reason when Thersites piped up in assembly Odysseus cracked him over his hump with the speaking stick. Sooner or later the public will start treating the media thus.
Not “what’s the point of wine, women and song” but what’s the point of our continuing to meet here everyday then?
No you do not. The numbers have caught up with us. It is they who threaten us and unless you have the willingness to haircut the planet — which is the same as collapse — they shall rule and are ruling our choices. They never stop ticking.
In a supreme irony the Fed may just be the finest asset the US has. It’s played a superlative game of chicken the end result of which may be that when Thunderdome comes the US version will be the most powerful. China caves first; game over.
– The deficit can just die. Just like what should have happened with GM. What the fuck are our creditors like China going to do, yell at us. They can’t afford to lose us as a market.
To rebuild. To rebuild without chaos when the overstretched and demoralized Feds lose local influence. In other words barter, homesteading, off-gridding, and John Galting. Whether by plan or by need.
DC’s escalating insanity is driven by it’s desperation.
I really, really, really, really don’t want to have this fight but you gotta stop saying that the dollar is worth three cents and that sort of thing.
It leaves the notion that I should have 33x more buying power and I’m quite sure I shouldn’t.
– You’re dreaming if thats your plan JHo. We’re not a log cabin nation anymore. 90% of the population wouldn’t last for a week, left to their own devices. Unless thats the end game you think is the only choice, in which case you better hope your enemies are all busy with their own set of problems.
I think the idea is that power devolves back to the States and they’re the building blocks for putting the country back together.
– Ok.Lets be generous and say they’d last two weeks, or even a month. You think all this rebuilding and power shift would be anywhere near effective in a month?
I’m completely down with that Blake. Fiscal cliff or no, that’s the proper form of our government as originally envisioned. Also, it’s a thing that could actually work.
I hesitate though when I think people are saying that’s the natural outcome of a giant train crash. I figure local warlords or foreign subjugation are the natural outcomes.
I think that’s the most likely scenario.
It’s also choosing to lose more slowly, because choosing to try to win a real mandate for change is too risky.
bbh, I’m not saying there won’t be problems, (master of the understatement, I know) however, once the Fed gravy train collapses, the States will have no choice but to deal with the problems.
And if I’d have been scrolling up instead of scrolling down I wouldn’t have weighed in. Wow.
Don Boudreaux: Countless Wonders [1999]
bh, I think a lot of States are self sufficient to the point local excess can be traded with other States for whatever goods cannot be produced locally.
As for foreign invasion, when everyone else in the world is worse off, fiscally, doesn’t really leave the resources for an expensive invasion across a couple of large oceans.
the States will have no choice but to deal with the problems.
– Agreed, and the same with what bh said. But the problem is, before everything else, temporal.
– You’ve got a huge portion of your population that has to get fed, and services, and medicals. Fail on too much of any of that and a pandemic could be the least of your problems.
– People can’t live without power. The grid is a;ready a piece of tissue paper just waiting for a crash.
– In other words, other than a small percentage of our population, America, as great as it is in some ways, is uniquely badly suited for a pioneering restart.
but what’s the point of our continuing to meet here everyday then?
i’m here for the hf culinary suggestions
bbh, I’m not claiming it will be pretty and there may very well be fortified checkpoints between States, but, in the end, each State will wind up being responsible for their own riffraff.
People seem to think hordes will swarm out of the large cities, laying waste to the country side. The reality is that most major cities have 4 major routes out, which means it’s not hard to bottle up any craziness. (LA, for instance, really only has 3 routes out, because of the Pacific)
Sdferr links a good piece from Boudreaux. I should address it.
So, thusly, yes, my purchasing power has increased radically. Air conditioning. Refrigeration. Healthy food. Yes. It’s increased greatly.
Our productivity gains have been incredible. My ability to purchase those gains has been relatively stable for quite awhile now.
Let’s hope it’s always thus.
– I don’t think the hoard thing would be long term. People will find oasis reasonably quickly or they’ll fall sick and perish or something will do them in.
– The cities will be done for. When we had that
Western grid blackout, within 1 day the shelves of the local supermarkets were picked almost clean, plus the loss from lack of refrigeration.
The Boudreaux piece speaks to a number of current issues I think. It talks back at dumbassed Obama’s “you didn’t build that”. It points the direction toward growth, and the requirements to allow that growth. And it speaks to value and how we might measure that. As to politics, it speaks only indirectly I reckon, but softly, nevertheless.
I hear what you’re saying, Blake.
I have my own thoughts this way or the other but as no one really knows I should probably be a bit more humble instead of arguing. There’s a good deal that we agree on here and I’m quite certain you’re as concerned about future dangers as I am.
bh, great article, thanks for the tip. Yeah, we’re sitting here conversing across 2,000 miles and think nothing of it, yet a kings ransom couldn’t have purchased this kind of luxury 100 years ago.
But Capitalism is evil. Or is Capitalism the Devil?
bh, I didn’t think it was an argument, rather a rational discussion about possible scenarios based on the fact that government is broke and once the government cheese ends, things will very well get, shall we say, interesting?
Capitalism is an unfortunate named cooked up by Karl Marx and pinned on economic liberty as a means of diminishing the same. Yet we persist to use it. Weird.
Shouldn’t have characterized it as arguing, Blake.
My mistake.
I’d like to think Romney and Ryan get it. I’d like to think that Romney picking Ryan, whose budget, whatever its shortcomings, wasn’t exactly popular with the orange-tinged wing of the House caucus (to say nothing of the Senate!) was a sign that he gets it. I’d like to think that Romney running on he’s nice but incompetent, and I’m nice and competent is just Romney listening to the traditional professional republican mantra of “say what you have to say to get elected so you can govern.” I’d like to think that if elected, Romney is going to govern like he gets it —despite the fact that not running like he gets it means its going to be that much harder to do what those who get it know needs to be done.
But then I remember I’m not thinking —I’m hoping
So I’m more or less where JHo is. If we’re not going to have a choice —and by that I mean a real choice, not a I can deliver the bennies to the takers at a lower cost to the makers that our fiscal policy debates so often devolve into— then I think it’s preferable that the Democrats be in charge. That way, people know who to blame, even if they don’t entirely understand why they deserve it.
– If you’re broke and perpetually envious, that’s called Socialism. If you have a full belly and a warm bed, thats called Capitalism.
– I’m jiggy wit dat.
bh, all I can say is “fuck all.” This shit isn’t pretty and I’m glad to be able to discuss this kind of thing with someone.
It’s discouraging because so many people refuse to admit just how deep the old kimche is.
heh: “. . . people know who to blame . . .”
Or at least they’ll always know not to blame themselves.
but what’s the point of our continuing to meet here everyday then?
The pie? Doy?
I always thought it was for the ornithology.
Starvation won’t make people focus. I’ve done it. So has Africa.
later bh.
I’m freaking worn out.
I don’t mean to put such a fine point on it but I’ve lived this world and while some of you are making it your kids aren’t.
It’s coming so it doesn’t matter? 5 or 12 matters.
Later, Blake.
People won’t so much fall ill and die as they’ll not get their insulin and die. Or the power will go out and with it the respirators and dialysis machines.
All of the people who would have surely died 100 years ago will now surely die.
This will happen long, long before anyone starves to death, but prolly after lots of people are shot in the streets.
Few families will be untouched by death after only the first couple of months. It will be like the Black Plague, like Camus’s La peste, but with overwhelming rage and outrage at us—us—the U.S. of A.—being subjected to such primitive and regressive hardship.
Part of me wants us to collapse now and just get it over with, to make all of the current madness stop.
But even with Obama in office and the MSM having abandoned all pretense of truth-telling, we’re still living the life of Riley compared to what must inevitably come.
I’ve never bought into best-case or worst-case scenarios. There are too many people whose decisions have to all fall one way for either of those to happen, and all are at cross purposes.
Nor can you offset the well-intentioned entirely by arguing that they’re making decisions on bad information, for one simple reason: by that standard there is no such thing as GOOD information — yet somehow we’re still here.
Historically the sky doesn’t fall very often, yet historically the most popular thing to say is that it’s about to. The world has been predicted to end, literally end, hundreds of times just while I’ve been alive.
How many times has it actually happened?
Starvation won’t make people focus on what? Whose to blame?
If that’s what you meant, you’re probably right, but that only gets us back to your original question (what are we doing here then?), since the Democrats, because the control the amen chorus, are, and will remain, more adept at demagoguery than Republicans.
[what] must inevitably come.
– The deepest irony of all is that it isn’t at all enevitable. We, or at least a fairly large segment of “us”, will have brought this on ourselves.
– There are any number of things that could have interveined, given a reasonably stable set of long term conditions. But not if we continue to hasten our own demise.
– FDR’s old admonition has changed. It now would seem that we have nothing to fear but ourselves.
I’m not sure how you’re positing a better outcome here, Ernst. Are you?
Depends on the scale your talking about McGehee.
The World as We (They) Know It ends about once every twenty years for somebody somewhere in the world, I’d estimate.
But yeah, total civilizational collapses are incredibly rare.
On the other hand, we’e much more complex, civilization-wise, than any other civilization in human history, so we have that going against us.
No bh, I’m not. I’m thinking politically instead of humanely and I think your 5-12 years matters trumps my partisan desire to see the fucking Left own the fail.
To answer that earlier question, I’m saying that’s a flawed assumption to believe that phoenixes lay in every pile of ash as a matter of course.
Normally it’s just Lord Humongous.
Let’s not pretend that laying the blame at at the feet of the Dems will matter if we’re going eschatological/there’s nothing we can do.
Okay, my comment at 11:48 came a hair too late for your comment at 11:48, Ernst.
We, or at least a fairly large segment of “us”, will have brought this on ourselves.
Bringing the inevitable upon oneself is still “inevitable,” if for no other reason than when you get to a certain point, you can’t undo things fast enough to stop the consequences of your past stupidity.
Historically the sky doesn’t fall very often, yet historically the most popular thing to say is that it’s about to. The world has been predicted to end, literally end, hundreds of times just while I’ve been alive.
It doesn’t have to be The End Times to be the end of what we currently have. If you lived in Europe, especially Germany, in the 1930s, the world did come to an end, and a messy, violent, deadly, apocalyptic end at that.
The United States as we know it could very well dissolve into a helluvua mess, once the Gods of the Copybook Headings finish with us. That doesn’t mean that it’s over forever, just that we’ll have to start over.
It also means that some things will be lost for good, like the Ottoman Empire and the Romanovs and Prussia.
It’s all Jeff’s fault for sticking us with this slow-ass site-host.
Which is to say it’s our fault for not ponying up more coin.
I’d say that Heinlein called this bad luck, McG.
It’s possible that it’ll go to shit. After this stretch of time? It might be entirely possible.
We have a blurb for next month!
In keeping with Darleen’s point, if it’s more Great Depression than Aufsteing und Neidergang mit Völkerwanderungen, then yeah there will be enough continuity to assign blame and ostracize politically those who need to be cast out of the body politic.
For the curious and/or trivia obssessed, the most complete and utter civilizational collapse happened in the 13th century
B.C.
We know it happened, but not what happened or why it happened.
It was that bad.
That is a sobering.
Why is it sobering? Because I sorta assumed the pw historians had this sort of thing covered, Ernst.
Ernst, I’m assuming this is what you are referring to.
Does that collapse have anything to do with those complex sites they’re digging up in Southern Turkey Ernst?
Yup geoff and dunno sdferr.
I looked it up and it certainly doesn’t. The dealio I’m thinking of dates to 10,000
Okay, this might be a dumb question but don’t the Mayans count here?
10,000 B.P. or 10,000 B.C. sdferr?
bh, the Mayans only count if Obama is reelected.
On a more serious note, I would categorize the Mayan collapse as more local/regional. At the end of the Bronze Age, every complex society between the Aegean and the Indus collapsed with the exception of the Egyptians. The Mayans didn’t take their neighbors with them.
B.C., it says right here.
The Mayans might count as semi-decent ornithologists anyhow. They chased them some birds I think.
cool link sdferr
The Wiki page on the Göbekli Tepe quotes Schmidt as writing the ruins were deliberately backfilled at around 8000 BCE, but offers no reasons for it. So, instead of destroying those neolithic stone creations, great work and care was taken to preserve them, for…what reason?
Also, speculation that the stone works are but a grave site; that the animal etchings were intended as a ward against animals, protecting the burials. That, on the same page as presenting evidence that those neolithic people practiced ‘sky burials’, presenting bodies to the vultures and beasts for consumption (but preserving the heads).
Fascinating stuff.
It seems to me that, in reviewing some of these formative collapses, there’s at least one commonality…each civilization was attacked (or fell from within) only after a, perhaps peak, regional population marker was reached.
How many people are living in the USA, the world, today? More than yesterday. That’s a fact that could be correctly stated every day for how many centuries now?
serr8d, Japan is probably a prime candidate for complete collapse. Japan does not have the natural resources to survive any sort of extended disruption in trade. The Euro Zone may very well have the same problem.
The US has enough local resources to take care of its own population, for the most part. I think population is only a factor if the population is only able to survive through extensive trade with other countries.
Shoot, I think I just suggested the US is uniquely situated to survive a global collapse.
The US can’t survive without some foreign imports, at least not at it’s current level of technologically-enhanced civilized society. Oil is key to keeping us civilized. We’ve 314 M souls aboard for the ride; an energy loss (lose a few electrical grids…it’d be difficult to keep nuclear and hydro plants operating correctly during any civil meltdown) would precipitate further catastrophe. Things will go offline, pipelines and infrastructure will be compromised, furthering more shutdowns, and more civil meltdowns. That large number of living souls will suffer and decline dramatically, and likely very quickly.
We, and our thin-veneered civilization, are operating as a carefully orchestrated dance that’s run off a power grid: a must-have free-flow of electrical energy. That’s required, and also easily disrupted. A flaw I find in Mr. Bracken’s piece was his assumption that these magical grids will stay up and running.
Well, you folks are energetic. I gave up and went to sleep only to wake up and find you’re still at it. It’s why I love PW and all y’all.
Respectfully, JHo going Ron Paul is as Utopian a desire as the Left’s fever dream of taking over ever breath we take. We simply aren’t cut out for subsistance living any longer. Food, shelter, and sex are the first three in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and it will translate into brute force to obtain all three.
BBH is right about our needing the power grid. There are what? five power grids that cover the whole nation. Collapse even one on the coasts and it’s mayhem. If anyone else was living on the Eastern Seaboard in January of 1996, you too will remember how paralyzed the tri-state region became for the three-four days it took to get the power stations back on line. Tom Ridge was Governor of PA at the time and we were told not to drive for the next three days while the crews got the roads cleared. There was no mail delivery. People were freaking out. Compound that across the contiguous US in the dead of winter.
Likewise, dicentra has a point about medicines. Even medicines that are not dependent on a delivery system that is powered by electricity will be at a premium. Insulin degrades if it is not refrigerated. Opiates will be stolen. (I’m going to personalize this part) Persons like my father and my youngest son who have glaucoma will slowly go blind. I’ll probably die from an epileptic seizure a few weeks after my meds are exhausted. Asthmatics will suffocate and anaphlylaxis will take care of those with food allergies or allergies to insect bite or stings.
I’ll lose more slowly and you all can just put my name in the loser pile.
And on that cheery note, I’m going grocery shopping. BBL.
When things get bad will there be cake? I like cake.
I think parts of the grid will stay up, or go back up. The parts where enterprising local officials cut the feeds to the regional distribution networks in order to provide for their own community.
But that only lasts for as long as the coal or natural gas holds out in most of those places.
What about the nuclear plants?
At the end of Lucifer’s Hammer, the enclave lends its men in the defense of a nearby newly constructed nuclear power plant that survives hammer fall.
Aspects of our civilization are more complex. We depend more on communications technology for whatever cohesion we have, and on other forms of technology for our standard of living. The civilization itself is made up of the same stuff as any other, going back to the first: human beings.
I’ll ask the commenters here who build things: to what degree of possible failure do you design what you build? How badly do you assume things might get during the life of what you’re building, so that you can either design it to withstand a crisis, or plan for a response that will mitigate the damage?
For most of the things we build as individuals, the cost of completely rebuilding again from scratch is relatively negligible compared to the alternative, so we don’t worry too far down the SHTF trail in designing or planning. But what if we were building on a civilizational scale, the technological infrastructure that actually runs The World As We Know It? You have to think past SHTF if you want what you’ve built to serve its purpose.
Complexity is one thing, but flexibility is another. Civilizations that depend on top-down decisionmaking and central planning are less flexible and less able to design and plan for the worst case — because usually the worst case is caused by the planners, who somehow never think to plan for that.
We’re a long way from what America was envisioned to be by the Founders, but we’re also still a long way from the top-down centrally planned civilization our political elites want to turn us into. Tea Party rallies and Chick-fil-A eat-ins and the audiences to 2016 demonstrate that there are still a lot of Visigoths out there, people who grasp what our Betters don’t, people who grasp what Eastwood was saying to the empty chair: America isn’t a top-down nation.
Re-electing Obama means things will get worse quickly, and electing Romney means things will get worse more slowly. We’ve been telling ourselves this for over a year because on its face, independent of other facts on the ground it is simply undeniably true.
But there are other facts on the ground, people.
Exactly! But has anyone contemplated all that implies before diving into the “we’re fucked” pool?
You’d think the local grids with nuclear generation capabilities would be golden.
But it wouldn’t surprise me if the regulatory agencies —in one of the last acts that was actually carried out— had all the nuclear plants taken offline because they’re more concerned about a meltdown during a civil breakdown than they are about keeping the lights on and trying to ameliorate the civil breakdown.
Ernst, whether or not regulatory agencies are successful will ultimately depend on local government.
For instance, I dare any Federal agency to shut down the Palo Verde nuclear plant in AZ while Jan Brewer is governor.
Serr8d, I expect that we’ll lose technological fluff (i Pads and Smart Phones, anyone) but core technology will be okay. It won’t be pretty and people will suffer, but the base needed to reconstruct should remain available.*
*providing, of course, some sort Holnist movement doesn’t start.
– Unfortunately Ernst thats not the way the ‘grid’ is distributed. Through an accident of location, power sources are not evenly distributed, and some sources are required to feed to other areas to make the distribution homogeneous.
– Partly due to location, partly due to alternate sources that are not continuous. For that reason the grid is highly unbalanced in terms of coverage. The network is volotile and only barely stable.
– Any sector interruptions can, and often do, trigger a chain shutdown on neighboring sections, and in some cases, far region shutdowns. Thus a tripped line station in Navada deactivates a huge portion of the West coast grid. The same situation at a station in Ohio knocks out the entire midwest bloc all the way into Canada.
– This uneven distribution adds to the potential for failure. Like government, centralized power sources are a bad idea.
– In other news…..
From the book: “yeh, social theories are great and all, but then sometimes you need to think about getting elected.”
I know it’s uneven bbh, which is why I could see local authorities (podunk municipal power) trying to take their little piece of the grid offline before a collapse elsewhere forces them to go down. And then I could see them trying to get back up in podunk by literally cutting transmission lines. Or trying to get back up after being forced offline by doing the same.
I know there was a book written back in the 70s about this very topic. I believe it was by the guy who wrote “Future Shock” but damned if I can remember what the title was. There were a tremendous number of apocalyptic books out then and I didn’t read them all.
But has anyone contemplated all that implies before diving into the “we’re fucked” pool?
The introductory article posits sudden hunger being put into the system. That by itself would do it, and it wouldn’t have to be EBT cards drawing zeroes.
One good flare from the sun, or a lucky hit with a dirty bomb, and all our electronics are fried beyond recovery, including the spare parts. Even if you got the grid going, there’s nothing you can plug into it that would work. Including gas pumps.
If it’s not the flow of electricity that stops, it can be the flow of money. If our currency becomes worthless, the food riots do, in fact, start.
We’ve got lots of complexity, but also lots of dependencies and a few single-points-of-failure: money, electricity, transportation fuel, communications.
The Visigoths might survive, but not all of us, because those rioters that Bracken describes do exist and they will destroy whatever they can.
Prepare for the worst; hope for the best; don’t ever think it can’t happen to us.
dicentra, this is why I come here: Not a single person at PW is under the illusion that history does not repeat itself nor does anyone fool themselves into thinking “things will be different this time.”
One thing that I have worried about since 9/11 is the contamination of municipal water systems. This also goes back to the stuff that Abby Hoffman called “Monkey Warfare” (the racist). The yippes talked about putting LSD in Chcago’s water system. I worry that some terror cell will run with this idea, not the LSD part, but some kind of contaiminent. A bacteria like unto Legionairre’s Disease would do in an awful lot of people.
In fact, anything that attacks the respiratory system. Your lungs fill up, you die.
But what is it we’re expecting? And by that, I’m trying to get back to McGehee’s point about facts on the ground.
McGehee’s point can’t really be addressed by any of us here.* It would presume to know the scope of the problems that face us and their possible remedies. Thus, we speculate.
*By that I don’t mean to impune the knowledge of other posters, just that that knowledge may be priviledged and/or classified.
Di, my point is the Visigoths are why this kind of thing is so unlikely to happen in the first place. That’s the main “fact on the ground” I’m tired of people overlooking.
Visigoths — American ones, at least — are builders and planners of the NOT top-down central planning variety. And they’ve left their imprint on how things are built here for over 200 years. Top-down politicians can’t make a dent in that unless they invest 200 years in the effort.
When you read Bracken, do you think of Thomas Hobbes?
If not, why not?
– Ernst, the present fiscal situation is unsustainable.
– For all the reasons, and potential failure points that di and Leigh and others have pointed out, things have to be changed somehow or it is enevitable.
– How does it start? It can start in a myriad of ways from a simple screwup in a mailing of SS checks to a malfunction in a water system. Or it might be a breakdpwn in some high density area like a Chicago that spreads and panic grows and rumors fuel public anxieties. People begin to go hermetic and make irrational decisions, and it just builds on itself.
– Local governments would have to declare Martial law, and then the Fed would do the same. I saw up closew and personal what can happen in the riots in Cleveland in the 60’s. The speed of breaksown is amazing.
We are on the cusp of losing our postal system. Big deal, say we of a younger generation. Oh no! Say old ladies like my mother and my aunt who refuse to own debit cards. While electronic banking and bill paying is a no brainer for us, people like my ma don’t trust computerized bill paying. It doesn’t matter that one of my brothers is a big shot at Dell and has explained how it is actually safer, identity protectionwise to pay online. She isn’t having any of it.
She isn’t having any of it.
– Its a double edged sword Leigh. No systems foolproof, and computerized systems are partivularly vunerablem and sometimes they’re fine.
– It seems to depend on the bank you use. One account I had went south 6 times in a single year. Its a Pita, a real mess when it happens. If it doesn’t then all appears seemless and convienient and trouble free. A lot rides on luck in selecting the right venues.
She’s banked at BofA for 40 years. I’ve tried explaining it to her, BBH. “Ma, the computer sends your information in packets. When you call on the phone, you’re giving the information to one person.”
Of course things can always go wrong.
– One thing I recently became aware up with a problem shows how banking laws have changed over the years, and the info is not widely deciminated, maybe by intent, its not clear.
– Do not give access for automatic deduction bill paying to anyone or any company. The banks no longer provide stop payment blocks on accounts. Once started the only way you can prevent improper deductions is to destroy your old card and change the account.
Autopay is of the devil.
You and my father both.
this kind of thing is so unlikely to happen in the first place.
What “kind of thing” do you mean. The total, final collapse of society into smoldering ruins?
The scenario that Bracken envisions could very well happen. That doesn’t mean it takes us out and we stay out.
I’m envisioning a massive upheaval that includes violence and death and disruption—for a season.
How long, I don’t know. But very much a system crash, blue-screen-of-death type of thing where you lose all of your data and some of your apps.
Doesn’t mean it can’t be rebuilt, or that something can’t be rebuilt. Just that our current trajectory is unsustainable and it’s too late to come in for a nice gentle landing in the trees. The pilots of this thing are taking us into the mountain.
Big crash. Big fire. Lots of screaming. Some death, dismemberment, and injuries.
But then the survivors climb down off the mountain and set up camp. And it might be a while before they build another plane, is what I’m sayin.
One thing that I have worried about since 9/11 is the contamination of municipal water systems.
To contaminate a municipal water system, you’d need huge amounts and concentrations of a contaminant to affect people, on account of there’s so much water, anything you put into it (in a quick drop-and-scram operation) would get diluted to the point of ineffectiveness.
Plus if you’re handling enough stuff to hurt people, it will more likely hurt you first.
You know, it’s occured to me that thinking of Hobbes —or more to the point, expecting a Hobbesian state of nature is just as much of a problem as Bracken’s musical chairs hypothesis.
Followed by widespread outbreaks of spontaneous order
is the idea that I think McGehee is getting at.
Thinking of Hobbes isn’t solely thinking of Hobbes’ state of nature theoretic, but also, say, thinking of the Civil war from which Hobbes wished to escape or which he wished to lay down a reasonable basis to prevent in future.
Thinking of Hobbes is in fact thinking again of the groundwork accepted by Locke and other British empiricists as the proper basis for politics, and many other things besides. Thinking of Hobbes, in other words, is returning to think once again of the origins of our own politics, which are today in crisis precisely because too little has been thought about that basis in our recent history, if I were to venture a guess.
But the apparent fact that Hobbes doesn’t immediately come to mind (for Bracken, evidently, if not for most of us here), as he most likely would for the founders should they have read Bracken? That’s something else again.
Followed by widespread outbreaks of spontaneous order
Which, if I’m not mistaken, is not ruled out by Bracken’s scenario.
I’ll ask the commenters here who build things: to what degree of possible failure do you design what you build? How badly do you assume things might get during the life of what you’re building, so that you can either design it to withstand a crisis, or plan for a response that will mitigate the damage?
Most buildings today are built to be disposable. Developers figure that a building will be torn down and replaced due to fads and fashion before it “wears out”.
Agree with both of you. Just reacting to the tenor of some of the comments on the original thread I guess. And maybe also to gunwankery and “collapse porn,” as somebody called it. It seems like some people’s idea of “prepare for the worst” is to get ready to head out and live the full Cormac McCarthy experience. Which is focusing entirely too much on the dull nasty brutish and short part of Hobbes with which everybody is familiar.
I blame it on the near total takeover of Philosophy departments by lefties, sdferr. We barely touched on Hobbes, Locke and the like back in the Stone Age when I was in undergrad.
Plus if you’re handling enough stuff to hurt people, it will more likely hurt you first.
Quite true. However it wouldn’t stop persons of a terroristic bent to do so.
There was a doctor who upon his death (murdered by a colleague) was found to have stockpiled many tons of chemicals in hazardous chemical barrels inside concrete pipes such as would be used for storm drains on the property around his home. These chemicals (there were munitions, as well) were to be sent to South Africa. Indeed, it is unknown how much had already been sent.
“We barely touched on. . . ”
Which is intellectual crime. If, of course, the object is to understand American politics.
Which again, evidently was and is not the case in so-called “government” or “social studies” classes today. And there, exactly there, is the point I seek to make.
And you make it well.
– Given a choice between a well worded thread outlining our eminent demise and one focusing on boobs, I’m pretty sure which one I prefer.
– But then, I’m nothing if not a giver.
The spigot (or teat, if you prefer), at some point, will either run dry or what it spouts will be useless. And then, all hell will break loose. People will suffer greatly. Blood will be spilled. But it won’t be the end of everything, it will be the end of the world as we know it. And then we’ll carry on.
Not that I savor the pain and destruction, but I’ve been in Camp Can We Just Get This Over With for quite some time now. Unless we can get an engineer on board who’s going to hit the brake and sound the alarm, we’re going to crash, fiscally speaking. It may already be too late. Me, I’m tired of watching impending doom. I’d rather be rebuilding.
Except subsistence living isn’t Paulian, it’s not “Utopian”, I didn’t promote it, I’m not Paulian, and as components in Ron’s and my excellent Utopian wasteland anyway, food, shelter, and sex aren’t all that’s left in it.
And what Paulesque stuff I’ve seen isn’t tied to brute force. Quite the opposite.
What I said was that to balance the system it has to fail. Can you grasp that?
Which it shall never, ever be allowed to do. If I haven’t been clear: The present monetary system is Ponzi. It CANNOT be made solvent (even by Ryan’s trimming a few percent here and there) and what CANNOT hold shall not hold.
Or…you weren’t even remotely clear. Either way, whatever it was you were trying to say in that piece I can just ignore.
Either McGehee has not read enough Mark “A Nation of Sandra Flukes” Steyn or I’ve read entirely too much of him.
Naw!
[…] (Via The Devil) […]
This seems to fit here: I was eating dinner and got a call from a blocked number. Usually I don’t answer those, but I did this time, and it was the local police asking if I had a gun. I told them I had several. They asked me to come outside and walk to the bottom of my driveway with my hands about my head. I walked out holding the phone, because I wasn’t sure if this was a prank — and because I’ve had problems with a few of the neighbors, as I’ve detailed before here.
So once I got down to the end of the driveway, I saw one, then, two, then three officers on foot who evidently had parked a street over and staged themselves from the side street that intersects my street. At least one had a rifle slung, but he wasn’t pointing it toward me.
The officers came over, asked me to turn around, frisked me, etc. Then they said somebody reported that I was on the porch with a gun.
Now, I went to the range today, and before going I was outside packing my range bag and removing the home defense clip and the single round I keep in the chamber of my FNP 45 Tac. At around that time, the dude who’d been holding a screwdriver last we talked drive by on an ATV and must have seen me with the hand gun. My gun. On my porch. In an open carry county.
Still, keep in mind that I was packing the range bag at 3 o’clock. I went to the range and shot from 4:30 to 5:30. When I got home, my wife, my older son, and two of the neighbor kids were building a school project diarama on the porch. I entered the house through the garage, put my range bag down, locked up one of my guns and reloaded my home defense pistol with JHP. I then put both of them away.
I was only outside again carrying my infant son and watching my wife and kids build the diarama. Then I went inside and made dinner.
The call I received was at the tail end of dinner, about an hour and a half after I got back from the range, and a good 4 hours since I’d loaded up my range bag.
The officers seemed surprised I hadn’t been on the porch with a gun since 3; they told me the call had just come in minutes before. Then they asked if I had some neighbors who didn’t like me. I said yes and pointed them out.
I showed ID, told the officers I had a conceal carry permit (they knew; it’s how they got my phone number), showed them my range ID, etc. They thanked me for my cooperation. The one with the rifle suggested I load the range bag inside. I told him I have an infant and I won’t spray gun cleaning products around him. He said he understood.
So. This is where we are. The police evidently didn’t know who called in the report. And it was a false report, to boot. Yet I’m the one who got hassled and had my dinner interrupted.
I told the officers, who were pleasant (though one wandered off and was asking my wife if my son had access to the weapons), that they should keep a record that I’m licensed to carry. They said their concern was that I was maybe suicidal.
I guess people who put guns into a range bag on their porch (which by the way is largely blocked by bushes; the guy just happened to be driving by when I walked out of the house with the pistol, which I’d just removed from the safe, the holster for which was in the range bag) are more statistically likely to kill themselves.
Or something.
We live in a backward place. It didn’t use to be like this.
JHo, just never mind, okay?
I’m not attacking RP or you.
Then they said somebody reported that I was on the porch with a gun.
really you’re not allowed to have clean guns on your porch? you’re not allowed to carry guns on your property? did they interview the the complainant with the same zeal?
They didn’t even know who the complainant was. Evidently, you can make someone come out of his own house with his hands up and frisk him because some anonymous person reported they saw that person on his on porch with a handgun that he’s allowed to carry.
That’s good to know, I think.
mr. g,
i spent 24 hours in the county jail about 4 years ago because the crazy next door neighbor said i was threatening him. total bs charge. dude never showed up at the magistrate hearing and the scum lawyer i hired did a plea and took $500. this shit sux because as limbaugh says it is the “seriousness of the charge” that counts:
Where liberals and the media are concerned, it’s not the nature of the evidence that matters in cases like this, Paul. It is the seriousness of the charge. That is how they attempted to prevent Clarence Thomas from being confirmed at the Supreme Court. Anita Hill says that he sexually abused her and manipulated her and so forth. It was a “he said, she said.” There was no proof. And the liberals said, “Well, we have to investigate the seriousness of the charge,” even though there was no evidence.
link
Do you think it was Hispanic Neighbor? Those unattended kids in the intersection should be brought to the notice of CPS. Anonymously.
I’m almost positive it was him or one of his buddies.
Incidentally, he works for a family run construction company, the name of which is on his truck.
…
Any police here? Should I call up and make my own complaint that somebody filed a false report on me?
Jeff, that sounds a lot like the swatting incidents that have been reported.
I remember when the cops would have asked a lot more questions of the person providing the tip before bothering you, Jeff. The outcome of that conversation of yore would have been “it’s not illegal to carry a gun on your own property, and call us back when he starts waving the gun around.”
I really don’t like what happened, because I don’t see where the cops had the right to demand that you put your hands in the air and then search you.
Obviously, the premise from which cops operate has changed. Coming to a neighborhood near you, your very own minority report.
The only reason I went outside was because I didn’t want them coming to the door and shooting my dogs.
Never take a plea. Especially when there’s no evidence against you. You only perpetuate the bullshit.
If you can’t show who it was, it seems futile. Surely you’re more clever than to do futile.
The cops won’t do fuck all about a false complaint but they have no problem harassing a law abiding citizen.
Should I call up and make my own complaint that somebody filed a false report on me?
no i’d mail the mayor , any council representative, and the chief of police the same letter asking why this unnecessary event occurred and what their office is going to do about it. also send malkin something. document,document,document. also get the official police report about this event.
Never take a plea.
yes but i thought legal counsel was what i hired. lesson learned.
“They said their concern was that I was maybe suicidal.”
First, hear a grunted curse word here.
Second, so the line quoted is or was the only cause for the police response? Seems that way anyhow, which in turn makes me wonder if the local jurisdictions to Denver aren’t simply in a period of over-reaction due to the theater shootings? That is, there’s no there there as far as the complaint goes, outside the inclusion of some “suicide” threat — for which the stupid system has no evidence at all — yet responds anyway.
Jeff, unfortunately, you need to file a complaint. As of right now, there’s a one way paper trail that contains a complaint about you having a gun and the cops confirming you have a gun. And, obviously, make sure you get a copy of the complaint you file.
I sure hope Hispanic Neighbor’s family run construction company has filed all the proper permits for any work they are doing. City Planning or some such would know and it’s public record stuff, too. It would be educational.
Those fines can get hefty.
Sometimes a history of interpersonal trouble will be cited as evidence of a basic personality problem. But that’s only one possibility. The fact is, there are honorable and innocent people in the world who make simply good targets.
I didn’t want them coming to the door and shooting my dogs.
Good thinking. We have a trigger-happy Sheriff’s Deputy here who regularly shoots dogs. No need to traumatize the wife, kid or you.
does an atv need to be licensed to drive on a public road in co.?
The best way to get people on your ass these days is to go on about your business and not bother anyone.
Blake, the police got my number from my concealed carry permit info. So they already knew I keep guns (or at least could have assumed). They told me I did nothing wrong, and they were the ones who broached the subject about a problem with neighbors. They seemed to think that that’s the reason for the call, and they didn’t seem happy about it.
I don’t want to antagonize the local PD. It’s a small town. But I will call tomorrow and ask lots of questions because I want some clarifications. It seems to me insane that I had to go outside like that, particularly on the basis of an anonymous call. By that logic, I may as well move to the end of my driveway and live with my hands up. I’m at the whim of anonymous callers!
Well, in my case, it’s lifting strange weights in my driveway, and not allowing some dick State Trooper to bully me.
Then there’s the whole “write something on the internet” thing, and the next thing you know Anonymous is being broached to maybe remove you as a problem by someone who the rest of the rightwing blogosphere views as the gallant hero to my despised evil doer.
I’m the devil, you see.
No, Bucky Showalter is the devil. Because Pedro Strop.
Jeff, I forgot about the whole CCW thing. Always a good indication of gun ownership.
I’ve always been under the impression you just want to go about your business, one of which is writing a blog. Evidently, writing a blog comes under the heading of bothering people these days, although it escapes me as to how someone is forced to read a blog.
But what do I know? Perhaps there are home invasions where people are forced to read blogs against their will.
– Heres a bit of info Jeff. The cops know who called them. If the call is blocked some municipalities have deblocking technology. If your precinct doesn’t they have long standing contact points to get the info on any caller. The phone carrier has the info. Its just a matter of following up. I’m not sure what the local laws are there but in most jurisdictions if you put in a formal request they have to tell you if they file a report on the incident. At the very least they have to tell you the truth about knowing who the caller was, if not their identity.
– This “We don’t know” ruse has been going on since the days of the old Bell system.
It’s strange, Blake.
I really do just go about my business. I guess that makes my standoffish and aloof and worthy of suspicion among the buzzing, gossipy bug people who live down the street a ways.
– Oh, and they also record all calls.
Thanks, BBH. I’ll bring it up.
Thing is, we don’t have a false report here. We have a stupid report and a subsequent overreaction from the cops, despite the actual cops disinterest in what they were doing. They got sent to see about a guy with a gun, which there was.
Perhaps it’s time to fashion some consequences for disrupting your serenity. Rock salt rounds ain’t what they used to be.
Not all calls are recorded. Most but not all. Tip lines are usually not recorded because the reasoning is that fewer tips will be called in because people “don’t want to get involved.”
If it is Hispanic Neighbor and he called the staion house directly, then yes. It is recorded.
– Pablo, there had to have been something more sinister said by the caller than simply “I saw a guy carrying a gun from his garage to his house”. Especially since a check would show them Jeff has a carry permit. Something the caller said to embelish would be needed to convince them to investigate.
– The good news is the asshole neighbor got the message.
Does Bad Cop Neighbor still live on your block, Jeff? If so, is he friendly with Hispanic Neighbor?
mr. g. be quiet about this stuff here. it is not like “world wide hip hop” where you can video a trashing of a location and get a “get out of jail” free card. hi eric!
“…..And just in case you were harboring any doubts, here’s a nice bedtime story for you about cliffs.”
– I guess I got my answer about the number of meals we were away from total civil breakdown. One half days worth, or two meals.
– Ane we get to do it again at the end of the year. Interestingly enough, in the weeks right around my birthday. Happy birthday me.
I had a nice walk downtown with the wife and kids this evening. Local arts and crafts festival and our pitiful attempt at an Oktoberfest going on. Remembered I live in an open carry state when I saw a guy with his wife and two kids admiring the same sidewalk chalk drawing my family was.
The only thing odd about it was he was carrying a glock with an extended magazine. If that hadn’t been sticking out from his his, I don’t think I would have even noticed he was carrying.
Sorry about your neighbor problems Jeff. I wish I had some useful advice.
his hip. I don’t know where his “his” is.
Depends on the meaning of “his,” Ernst.
Ditto on the lack of useful advice, Jeff.
Anyway, later all.
– I’m not sure Ernst, but I think his “his” is located betweem his hips.
– Amyhoo, on the debt ceiling thing, they’ll undoubtedly extend it again no matter whos in the WH after the end of the year, they have no choice. But we;re running out of time. They can’t depend on just extensions forever. At some point other countries, not realizing they’re signing their own death warrents, will refuse to buy American bonds, and the game will be over.
Sometimes small town cops who think they know everybody real well get “sheriff Taylor” syndrome and start “managing” people.
If you know that Tom is a weenie and scared of his own shadow then you try to keep Tom calm even if it means bothering Joe who Tom saw cleaning a gun. See, if Tom is worried he might take matters into his own hands and put a rock through a window or worse. So you make sure that Tom sees you go over to Joe’s house and give him a good talking to and eyeball the house just in case Tom actually saw something. Then you go back and tell Tom that it’s handled and you let Joe know that Tom is jumpy and could he please avoid the silly freak for two weeks or so, until he gets fixated on something else.
It’s sort of like Pilate flogging Jesus in the hopes that the rabble would have their anger and blood lust satisfied and thus not lynch him or call for his execution with overtones of rioting being imminent should a crucifixion not occur tout suite. Only it’s way way lower in intensity.
If Tom sees Joe checked out by the police then maybe that will satisfy his grudge or fears or whatever. “Take that Joe! ”
Now that is not professional or proper law officer conduct but once someone thinks they are a real life ‘sheriff Taylor’ ina town of lovable rascal idiots, you tend to see them willing to entertain that kind of token spanking solution.
I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but in a town of less than 15,000 people it might happen. And a disturbingly high number of local people would put up with it or even encourage it too as long as it doesn’t lead to any legal problems.
You probably need to find out where that whole ‘suicide’ thing came from though. That sounds a little bit like laying the grounds for something else.
My take is a little different.
Somebody knew the exact scenario and words to use to get a certain response from the P.D. A response which however it went, whether you answered the call or not and whether you cooperated or not, would lead neighbors, who are not involved in this, a negative impression of you as someone the police are watching and cautious of approaching without backup.
I further suspect that, probably the wives of the two you are having trouble with, in the days before this call was made started rumors that you are someone the police consider to be a danger to others so that this call will be confirmation that the rumormongers/liars are to be seen as truthful now.
Hopefully your P.D. has some professionals and is not just a unionized bunch of buddies.
I had the same thoughts, geoffb.
Jeff, this is one reason I put up a nice high privacy fence around my back yard; none of my neighbors see me cleaning guns. Don’t know if this is an option for you…..
Back to the original topic of the post:
One of the reasons you might have detected a “bring it on” vibe in the comments over there is that a whole lot of people (and not just on the gunblogs) have apparently come to my conclusion that we can’t live with Leftists in a civil society any more, and they’re not leaving (or stopping trying to control us) on their own.
Perhaps you’ve a local busybody snoop who’s calling the cops every chance she gets. This busybody may not be the same neighbor who is troublesome, but his wife’s friend’s friend who leans on proverbial fences exchanging gossips.
Doesn’t sound like a (sorry ladies) a male-call. The officers were not at the ‘ready level’ you’d expect if they took this call seriously. Police get worried busybody calls that they don’t really want to have to respond to.
Were I you, I’d just let this drop. To further stir up shit means the smell lingers longer than might be necessary. The cops were satisfied; they left, and didn’t ask for any followup.
Yes. Privacy fence. I’ve a 6-foot wooden surrounding my back yard, extending several feet past what’s necessary, so I don’t have to deal with the union thug neighbor next door. Just as well…when we first moved in, there was an existing chain-link fence. First time I saw ut’s wife was whilst she was mowing their back yard. Sitting on a riding mower, wearing a bikini-top and shorty-shorts, with several hundred pounds spilling around and about in all the wrong places. I was traumatized for life; the fence went up a couple seasons later.
Oh, and the word was already out that she was THE neighborhood’s busybody.
I have a six foot fence in the back, but my house is on something of a rise, so to get the “privacy” from the road behind me, I’d have to go all the way down to the fence line and sit in the landscaping rocks. Not interested.
My front porch is largely obscured by bushes.
I’m open to the idea that I was SWATTED, though mildly so. But I want to know who made the call — because it was a false complaint; I hadn’t been on the porch with a gun when they said I was — so I can protect myself. If there WAS an incident report filed, I need to make sure I’m covered.
As for the officers not being on ready level, they staged on a different street, there were 3 of them, one had a rifle ready that I saw, and I suspect had I not answered the phone they were on their way to my door to pull me out of the house by force.
That’s ready enough for me.
In any event, the fact that this can happen once means theoretically it can happen every time. And I won’t live under that condition. So I want to find out what MY rights are, and I want to do what I always do: fight to preserve my individual liberties.
Just because police are smiling and friendly doesn’t mean it’s any less a police state.
True, that it could happen again. Re-reading a bit, the most troubling thing they said to you was the ‘suicide’ word (the rest of it seems right out of their standard operational playbook). Why should they use that word? From where did that concept originate? That’s not from a busybody’s worried worry-call.
But, tread carefully, is all I’m saying. Remember, these guys deal with the worst of the worst on a regular basis; they can (and many do, unfortunately) forget good guys really exist. Thin blue line, and all of that.
Nope. There was a guy with a gun (they could assume from my carry permit), but my gun hadn’t been out when the caller claimed it was. In fact, we were eating dinner, and for several hours before that, we had 3 or 4 kids and my wife on the porch making a diarama.
The cops told me they’d just received the call. Their reaction suggested they found me a possible threat. Why is that? I need to know the particulars. I have no idea what the narrative is on me.
serr8d —
My wife is making the call. She’s far more diplomatic and less threatening. I’m an alpha male. What can I say?
Also, I contacted Robb Allen who runs a gun blog now and he’s looking into this for me, as well — or at least putting me in touch with those who deal with such issues.
My goal here is not to antagonize the local PD. It’s to find out what cause they had to do what they did. And if they didn’t have any, they need to change their procedures, and I’ll fight to make sure they do.
Liberty isn’t just a theoretical concept that needs to be protected in the abstract. And sad to say, one of my biggest problems, you may have noticed, is that I’m tenacious when it comes to matters of (to my mind) integrity.
The context here seems to be trial, but the principle is essential everywhere.
Anybody else?
Furthermore, this may be lawfare, in addition to which I think the local PD have little if any grounds — assuming they didn’t arrive with due cause to enter your home already — to force you to the street.
Whoever did this to you, I have to believe, stands in their own legal jeopardy. Which goes to this:
This episode is bullshit in my view and I think you’ve been remarkably diplomatic. So I remarked.
Grounds to chain you to the bumper and haul you in.
/sarc
This wasn’t. This was checking out a call made that must be responded to, and a report filed. The next level would’ve been an actual arrest, then the prosecution. Cops are given a lot of leeway in which to operate, but also constrained as to what they can do and say, at the initial level. Their responses to answers given to their questions determine whether or not they can arrest and detain.
Since that didn’t happen, the followup needs just be with a dust-mop, as Jeff’s indicated it will be.
Which I strongly alluded for that reason.
The call must be responded to in a manner that makes a man perp walk to the street hours late under presumed threat of legal force, serr8d? I question the call, the interview, the decision to approach, and I question the implied threat of lethal force.
Probable cause, due process and all that.
Yes, assuming that cause existed and the witness was credible, but apparently neither were fulfilled.
Self-contradictory in the abstract but I get what you’re saying. And that’s the problem here. It’s the smiling police state Jeff mentions.
Again, of course. However where and what was the initial probable cause? Where is the witness? And to what?
I’d hope it could constitute Jeff’s right to find civil liability. I’d hope.
To Protect. The Serve part died.
On the ‘blog lawfare’ angle…cops can, and do, lie. So the word ‘just’ modifying ‘saw’ can’t be considered as an undeniable truth. Someone ‘saw’ the gun on your front porch, perhaps from a few dozen posts back…?
The cops told me they’d just received the call. If they weren’t given the particulars, that’s not my fault. These are local PD. I didn’t get the sense they were trying to shine me on.
Also, if the complaint was that at one point of the day I was outside on my porch with a gun, the answer should have been so what? See, eg, The Second Amendment.
Worse still, they knew I had a permit to carry concealed. So I’d gone above and beyond to secure my gun rights.
Once I answered the phone and they didn’t see me on my porch, the complaint has no merit. Depending on what the actual complaint was. Which is what I have to find out.
Based on what I was told yesterday, I don’t see cause. But I’m willing to understand the local PD’s position, provided I’m alerted to the nature of the complaint. And if the complaint was so serious that it merited certain actions, I would think that finding the accusations false would be cause then to train their sights on the complainant.
If not, we live in a police state.
Our mayor pro-tem, I just found out, has 36-years LE experience. If push comes to shove, we’re going to have a talk about the 2nd Amendment, respectfully, and how for the sake of our community we can balance officer safety with a foundational, fundamental right.
JHo, didn’t you post a vid where a guy was confronted by the cops simply for having a gun on him? And he refused to give info or be frisked? I considered doing that but I didn’t want my family or the neighbors to see me pushed to the ground and restrained.
So in that regard, I already lost my liberties.
If you can find that vid or the link, please post it. I’ll be gone most of the day — son has a birthday party to go to and it’s an hour drive both ways — but I’d like to review all the laws that guy cited.
Cops respond to calls involving firearms, usually bearing firearms. It’s what they do. Sometime they overreact, sometimes not, but in my experience, they always react. Given that they didn’t come full SWAT on you, Jeff, they probably figure they handled it low key. Especially as the response was so much later than the original imaginary ‘incident’. In their minds, it was neither urgent or serious, but they took such precautions as they felt necessary for their safety.
They never for a moment considered the implications of their response, however.
And therein lies the problem. They have no more rights to “safety” than do I.
I wasn’t the one with the rifle at the ready.
Jeff,
It’s a small town and cops tend to hang together. I suspect some of the local PD have interacted with your State Trooper neighbor and ST made comments that lead to the local PD to believe you’re trouble.
My take, anyway.
Let’s put on the responding officer’s moccasins for a moment, shall we?
A call is made, a response necessary. Every legal action requires a legal reaction; in this case, officers don’t know anything whatsoever about who is behind that gun at that address: a drunk? a domestic hostage situation? a possible homicide-suicide? all or none of the above?
Usual procedure in response to such a call as they received it: call the party, ask the party to do certain things, inspect the party, observe the party’s reactions and responses to standard questions. Officer’s judgment then dictates whether or not to elevate or stand down. In this particular incident, there was no need to escalate to a higher level; all was cool.
My dad was a cop, was shot, lost a kidney for it, before I was born. So I can see both sides of this, out of actually knowing of a bad happenstance. Well, knowing of the residual scars of it, at least.
Being a cop can be a very dangerous job.
The danger of the job is commensurate to the pay and benefits as determined by those who enter into it and keep at it.
What I don’t accept is that my rights are less important than those of the police. I’m not “a party” to be maneuvered and inspected and then passed like a side of beef by governmental inspectors. I’m an individual with unalienable rights who was ordered away from my dinner, away from my family, out of my house with my hands raised, and then restrained briefly and frisked. The probable cause for my crime? A call noting that I have a gun.
That means there are millions of us who, for the right of keeping and bearing arms, are expected to surrender certain other liberties to the state? So that the police can feel safe?
Sorry. That I don’t agree with.
A month or so ago three friends and I were shooting clays on one of the others’ farm land. We were across a field about 100 yds from the road, with our backs to it and firing away from it. After an hour we packed up and went about half a mile to the rifle range, on the same farm. After about half an hour of rifle shooting, we got a call from the lad’s father that the police had called. Three reports had been received, one that men with illegal weapons were shooting (!), and another that we had been seen shooting in the middle of the road. After being told that this was all gibberish, the police arrived anyway, demanding certificates and particulars. Not all are as lucky as we were. Full armed response units including helicopters are called here for hapless pigeon shooters.
Cops hate responding to any kind of domestic violence calls, particularly if there are firearms involved. As serr8d says, they don’t know what they are walking in to and chances are getting beligerant with them would get you a trip downtown.
As it stands now, they know the caller is a crank, possibly with an ax to grind. You came out the good guy by being reasonable with them. Yes, it was a pain in the ass and upsetting. I’ll bet you don’t see them again, though.
Blake —
My experience shows me that the STs and the local PD don’t really get along all that well. They like to measure each others’ dicks, so to speak.
Okay, I’m off. Discuss among yourselves.
And? Who called it in? What happens to them? Or am only I to suck it up and be happy the cops now see me as a stand-up guy?
All true.
But, what, in your estimation, would’ve been the correct response to your situation?
Then, also, what would be a correct response to a similar call three streets over in which a similar situation was reported, but the party was getting ready to kill his wife, his kids and then himself?
How in the world would the cops be expected to know the difference? and deal with the public’s reaction if that other situation had gone down, and they hadn’t responded, having gotten a call?
Seems the pd would always be placed in such Catch 22 situations. So, and therefore, the standardized responses.
And? Who called it in? What happens to them? Or am only I to suck it up and be happy the cops now see me as a stand-up guy?
Settle down. Next time Hispanic Neighbor shows up with a screw driver in your driveway, I bet the cops won’t have a problem believing your side of the story.
It blows. I agree with your outrage. You live in a neighborhood full of pussies, what can I tell you? Not much other than to move further out into the country.
What happens to them?
crap, looks like I missed this whole bit of thread …
Unfortunately cops are not going to try and track down one crank phone call. Frustrating but true, especially since the call went off without incident just a waste of everyone’s time.
Best advice (which I see has been offered and you’re doing) is to create a paper trail with PD. File a complaint, put your suspects in it with as much detail as possible and if more crank calls come in, the cops may have to visit the asswipe and tell him to knock it off.
AND if there are more incidents, then you can take your paperwork to court and get a restraining order from the court
serr8d, your responses here are at best centrist and pragmatic, meaning they are to the point of expecting to live under constitutional protection in some measure of safe and legal sovereignty, bullshit. Sorry to put it like that but it is what it is.
There are no two sides here, there are no other shoes to fill, and there is no other perspective to grasp. Either the investigated party has the same rights LEOs do or they do not — meaning either the citizen is perceived as equivalent and in fact, legally superior, or he is subject.
Here the citizen was rendered subject.
This is why open carry is so essential It restores the psychological balance between what is an exponentially ramped police “response” in an increasing policed State and the real holders of the right to expect, maintain, and enforce order. They being us. We are law enforcement.
People need to get that straight: The armed citizen is not only not dispensable for the very purpose of his standing rights, he is indispensable to the law being upheld.
Jeff asked me to post that video of the guy asserting his rights and thereby owning them. I can’t find that clip but did find this one. I’ll post it for the perspective it presents. I expect it’ll inflame some conservatives in their belief that we’ve effectively hired our security out and should therefore expect no repercussions.
Oh and RON PAULIES! should have their skinny kid ass beat down. Just to get that out of the way.
I liked that other video since the guy talking to the cop was on a city street and he sounded like a young’un.
JH
Curiously, let’s leave Jeff’s particular incident aside — can you tell me what you would consider as a proper policy procedure to respond to any 911 call.
I’m afraid I don’t have that experience, Darleen, but I’m thinking that in bona fide criminal instances, it must include a credible report of an egregious crime. I’ve heard enough recordings of 911 calls to have some grasp of the grilling the caller goes through if they’re not actually reporting such an event.
(In other words, an anonymous phoned-in charge of some musclebound Jew on what was known to be his own porch looking scary to a drive-by on the street probably could have been dispensed with by other means. And maybe the caller hit with the consequences of misuse of 911.)
Was this a 911 call or a “concerned citizen” call to the station house? We don’t have that information.
Correct. And if it wasn’t a 911, Jeff’s sense that he would have been dragged from the house is all the more concerning.
I think you’re thinking of this one.
I recall awhile back, during a discussion of the basis of our rights, suggesting that they only exist when you insist upon them. That kid is an excellent example of that.
That’s the one, Pablo. Thanks.
So, is this how that works?
Apparently not.
The ‘investigated’ ‘parties’ do not have the same rights – or responsibilities – of a LEO. If you can’t understand what is the distinction between a professional who is trained and expected to do a heinous job 24/7/365 and a civilian who’s name and address pops up on a screen, then you are living in the red-pill world. Certainly not one where there’s a significant population of people who don’t live their lives caring about other people, and in fact prey on other people. Citizens hire police to protect them. Police are existent as a community’s response to bad people, not to make you feel threatened. If you feel threatened by police, then there are places you can go where there are no police. Camden, NJ comes to mind.
No. Here a citizen was treated with respect, after showing respect, following standard police response-to-situation inquiries. If there was another citizen who infringed on the system, unlawfully mad a prank call, then let’s hold that one responsible for the entire situation, not the responding police, who were just doing their jobs as they were trained to do.
Oh. In case you want to go to Camden, a realtor.
Man. Camden was scary in the 90s. I took a wrong turn coming back from the Shore once and stopped to ask an old man who was selling fried fish out of a shack how to get back to the Turnpike. He told me the quickest way there and told me not to tarry since it wasn’t a safe neighborhood.
“Lock ya do’ ” he said.
serr8d, in both paragraphs of your reply you justify theory with practice, and in both cases you thereby subject rights to situational, temporal policy.
You are simply incorrect in both cases.
Practically you are also incorrect, as I spelled out in a reply above yours. From what we know, the situation could and should have been handled vastly differently.
Being brought out into the street in full view to be frisked with guns trained on you is not the kind of respect I expect.
The question is, on what grounds were the police brought to my house in the first place? He has a gun on his porch should be met with, as is his right.
“He’s suicidal” was the clue for the presence of so many cops and getting frisked. They don’t need you lighting up the whole neighborhood on your way out.
We’d likely only know that after the fact.
Sorry, but that’s the price of liberty. Either you want it or you don’t. There’s ALWAYS a potential crime happening in advance of it being committed.
True or not: it is better for ten guilty men to go free than it is for one innocent man to be imprisoned.
Discuss.
I remember years ago Jonah Goldberg challenged this piety from the perspective of pragmatism and decided it is not better for society. To which I replied, I sure hope he isn’t that one, then.
True. But you are talking about a different set of circumstances. I believe that statement pertains to being judged in court, not questioned by the local police.
But, the call. That call to police changed everything. If, three blocks over, the trained cops read the intent in the guy’s eyes or demeanor, and prevented that outcome, then would their procedures be worthwhile?
JHo, in your perfectly libertarian world, exactly what would be the acceptable level of free criminals, of dead cops? You know, to make libertarians feel free?
With apologies to FDR, (and possibly Harry Carey) now we have nothing to hope for but hope itself.
America votes self off cliff into starless abyss. News at 11.
Assuming this strawman needs a reply, maybe consider Jeff’s three previous posts. Comprehend. I mean, you haven’t mine, have you?
Harry Caray I meant…
Myron Cope. Yoy!
“JHo, in your perfectly libertarian world”
Purist! Indefensible!
Consider this: The call was made, could have easily been dispatched with the cops telling the caller: “He has that right.”
Instead, cops are sent to Jeff’s house to investigate what is not a crime, but, for all intents and purposes is right out “Minority Report.”
That this incident ended with no shots being fired and ended only (I used the word “only” advisedly) with a citizen being inconvenienced does not detract from the myriad of things that can easily go wrong with an armed response to a citizens house.
Consider what could easily have happened had Jeff not answered his telephone. Remember, the original call to Jeff’s phone was from a blocked telephone number.
In situations like this, it’s very easy for things to spiral out of control, all because the cops are working from a lousy premise.
all because the cops are working from a lousy premise
This is true. The cops are working from the information they have at hand and work experience in similar situations: suicidal dude with a gun.
Jeff, being a law abiding citizen, doesn’t ping their radar as a bad guy.
It sucks all the way around, but the cops are not Karnak.
JHo, I’ve read your posts; I can’t see your libertarian system working in the real world that we’ve got going on right now. It took us a while to arrive here, with police procedures spelled out in professional criminal justice science. Even with these ‘awful’ (your view?) procedures in place, we see more crime per capita than we’ve ever seen. So we are far from a police state.
Classical liberals are not as subject to black-and-white thinking as libertarians. Mises…
As for Jeff’s particular case, the next step is to find out who started it all by placing that call, setting an inexorable machine in motion. That person could’ve been persuasive and with heart-of-gold intent, or persuasive with bad intent. But please, the police, given that person called, give ’em a break. Again, what was correct procedure? Was there a win-win situation?
I’d say yes, Jeff won, and can win even more with his next correct moves.
Having established my character, serr8d is now fitting existential pieces to it. Having done that, I suspect I’ll find myself with a clarified sense of How Things Are.
I am a nation of men.
Let’s turn this around: how many people are you prepared to see taken out of their houses and away from their families, led down into the street, and frisked at gunpoint so that some trained professionals can peer into the soul of a disturbed future criminal (had they not preemptively stopped him for something he had not yet done) and save some children?
For the children.
Ah. Meaning, it may never get to court, because the courts will be the police, whose job it is to determine, through questioning and frisking and other procedures, preemptive guilt where until then innocence obtains.
Got it.
I think we need to have a long discussion about what liberty is and what are its prices.
But not tonight. I have a Broncos game to watch, and of course, I have to make sure to keep my phone close, in case the police need to see if I’m fixing to commit a crime by pulling me out of my house. Should someone alert them that I have a gun, I mean.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin, renowned Visigoth.
I’m not going to read back up through the thread, but did these cops put their hands on you or did they question you or both?
You keep skipping over the “guy with a gun who is suicidal” part. That puts a different spin on things as to how the police respond to a call. They don’t want to kill innocent-lil-you or get killed their ownselves.
My money’s on the Steelers.
Blake, if you’re going to live in a house sub-division, you’re going to have some of your freedoms chipped away.
You can’t keep old trucks that are unlicensed, more than two dogs, discharge firearms on your property, paint your house purple or let your kids ride their bikes without helmets. They certainly can’t have dirt bikes if they are under sixteen or drive one of your old trucks or cars at the age of nine or ten. You can’t keep livestock in the yard, play loud music after a certain hour and so on.
Life is full of trade-offs.
Leigh, okay, so, you’ve no problem with the cops questioning a citizen’s Second Amendment rights and possibly violating the Fourth amendment? What about the Sixth Amendment? Jeff doesn’t have the right to know who his accuser is?
We’re not talking about zoning ordinances, Leigh.
I understand that. The caller was anonymous. The cops thought Jeff was going to kill himself with a gun. That’s all they knew when they rolled up.
Now what?
No I don’t. They said it’s their job to check because I may be suicidal or something. They didn’t tell me that’s what anyone called in. They said what was called in was a guy on his porch with a gun. Which I believe is very very very very very very very very very much still within my Constitutional rights.
Which you keep skipping.
It’s in the Constitution. In the section on your fundamental rights being mitigated by moving into a subdivision.
No they didn’t. One cop said that’s one of the reasons they have to check on me, with my gun, after finding out I had a gun, on my porch. It’s an excuse to get around the Second Amendment, if you ask me.
Which you seem fine with. Because subdivisions.
That’s all they knew when they rolled up.
“The call I received was at the tail end of dinner, about an hour and a half after I got back from the range, and a good 4 hours since I’d loaded up my range bag.
The officers seemed surprised I hadn’t been on the porch with a gun since 3; they told me the call had just come in minutes before. Then they asked if I had some neighbors who didn’t like me. I said yes and pointed them out.
I showed ID, told the officers I had a conceal carry permit (they knew; it’s how they got my phone number), showed them my range ID, etc. They thanked me for my cooperation. The one with the rifle suggested I load the range bag inside. I told him I have an infant and I won’t spray gun cleaning products around him. He said he understood.
So. This is where we are. The police evidently didn’t know who called in the report. And it was a false report, to boot. Yet I’m the one who got hassled and had my dinner interrupted.
I told the officers, who were pleasant (though one wandered off and was asking my wife if my son had access to the weapons), that they should keep a record that I’m licensed to carry. They said their concern was that I was maybe suicidal.
I guess people who put guns into a range bag on their porch (which by the way is largely blocked by bushes; the guy just happened to be driving by when I walked out of the house with the pistol, which I’d just removed from the safe, the holster for which was in the range bag) are more statistically likely to kill themselves.
Or something.”
Well, I don’t know what to tell you. You feel violated. I understand that.
Which you seem fine with. Because subdivisions.
I’m not anymore “fine” with it than you are.
Like I said to serr8d, policy trumps prior right — in the case the Second can go pound sand because, well, subdivisions.
The ends always justify what came before the means, even.
What concerns me, leigh, is that along with your dead-to-rights attitude comes an unreformed irrationality I’d have sworn a psychological pro would find got in the way of patients being confronted with that necessary dose of reality that constitutes their healing.
That’s why I’m not a Clinician, JHo.
Good.
being confronted with that necessary does of reality that constitutes their healing
What does that sentence mean in English?
Thing is, you complied/consented. You could have told them you were busy washing your goldfish and you weren’t coming out. Would that create a larger problem, this time with an attitude? Maybe. So that’s a choice you have to make.
Nothing personal leigh, but how this next bit gets turned into pragmatism utterly escapes me.
Psychological catharsis. Healing. In English.
Would that create a larger problem, this time with an attitude? Maybe. So that’s a choice you have to make.
saturday night dinner with the swat team
It’s a long thread and I’ve already said I didn’t read back up.
The pragmatic aspect of it is: Do you want to go to jail and explain things to the judge or be inconvenienced at the end of your own driveway?
Quite frankly, you’re the last one to lecture others about pragmatism.
It was a blocked number. I looked outside and didn’t see anyone. I thought it might be a prank. At the same time, they had my name and my phone number.
I’m not sure that’s “consent.” Had I not come out they would likely have tried to come in.
Now. Do you really think it’s a choice I should HAVE to make? Because it’s the HAVE TO part that concerns me. No, I shouldn’t have been in that position. Having done nothing that was a crime when it was reported to begin with.
Inconvenienced. Guy in Colorado was shot dead in the back for legally carrying while in Costco.
Probably one of the first, actually. Dead citizens in Colorado and elsewhere being one reason why.
Being questioned by people holding guns while in the street, my family told to go inside, the neighbors gawking. That’s an “inconvenience” now.
Pick the lesser of two evils. For freedom.
Let me see if I can put this another way. If a neighbor called the police and said there’s a guy up the street on his porch with a rake, or a beverage, or a towel, or a snorkle, what would the police have done?
So.
If it’s legal to own a gun, to carry it openly, and I have a concealed carry permit, by what right do the police have to interrupt my dinner, demand I come outside, remove my family, question me and frisk me, for a report that says I have a legal object on my own property?
Do you want to go to jail and explain things to the judge or be inconvenienced at the end of your own driveway?
how about having a police force that asks questions of folks calling in “crimes”.
Wa? In other words, do you want to be arrested for not breaking the law and then following a period of incarceration for not breaking the law, debate the event with a State jurist?
Wow, what a telling comment that is, leigh.
That would require either probable cause or a warrant, neither of which appear to have been present. Had you declined their (ahem) invitation, they probably would have left you alone…for the time being. But it’s entirely possible that someone then convinces a judge that you could well be a headcase with an arsenal that needs to be checked out, and then they come back with a warrant and an attitude and your experience becomes even less pleasant, all nice and Constitutional. Or, perhaps the shift supervisor decides they’ve done all they can do and drops it altogether. Or, the judge hears that they got an anonymous call about a guy acting legally on his own property and he tells them to go find something better to do. So, you’re left alone…for now…but your local PD probably thinks you’re an asshole.
As soon as you picked the phone up, yes. What choice is up to you, but there was a choice to be made.
I’d be inclined to dismiss anonymous calls repoting non-crimes were I answering the PD phone. I would be looking into the how that dispatch decision was made, were I you. I’d probably also have a chat with the Chief and explain your neighborhood dynamics and seek his assurance that such an event would not be repeated.
There was no cause for arrest. Nor was there cause for any forcible entry or search.
Pablo, was there cause for a march down to the street, arms upraised?
They have no right to forcibly do any of that.
There was no cause for arrest.
public intoxication, disorderly conduct the police can make shit up and they do
JHo, was that forced? They can ask you to do anything. You can tell them to pound sand. Me, I’d have told them I’d be happy to talk to them, but that I wouldn’t be acting like a suspect on my own property while minding my own business unless they had a warrant.
Wow, what a telling comment that is, leigh
It’s me being pragmatic. My dear old dad always taught me to cooperate with the cops. I always have and have not had any problems with them.
I find the fact, yes fact JHo, that you view the cops doing their jobs as an enemy disturbing.
I don’t know if you were ever a poster on FreeRepublic, but at one time there was a fellow who went by the handle “Matsui” (I believe that’s how he spelled it). He took it upon himself to refuse to carry any identification, including a driver’s license.
Lo and behold, he gets pulled over in Ohio some place and starts a beef with the cop. The cop gets a case of the ass with him and tells him to turn around and put his hands behind his back. Matsui pulls a weapon and kills the cop with a full magazine to the chest on the side of the highway. Backup, that had arrived while the cop was preparing to cuff Matsui, in turn opened fire on Matsui and killed him, as well. Obviously, Matsui was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
I’ll stay here with my pragmatism and give the nice policeman my id and insurance and registration.
That’s a tough sell if you haven’t left your house.
You don’t have a penis. That makes things different. Trust me on this one.
Some of them do more than their job.
leigh, there was once this guy who went around in the middle of the night getting folks to light lamps in church steeples and he rode a horse and had a tricorner hat and made beer or anvils or something.
And there were musket balls.
And that’s why I’m a Constitutionalist, the end.
That’s a tough sell if you haven’t left your house
i spent time in the county jail on that so stuff it
Some cops are assholes and most of them don’t like anyone and understandably so.
Chicago cops in the 80s were incredibly crooked. On the take, drunk on the job, etc.
But you’ve never had any problems with them as long as you cooperated.
Me neither, actually, and I’ve never been arrested. Two traffic tickets in a quarter century, both for doing like 50 in a 35.
The notion of crawling over to them to prove my sanity does leave me a bit challenged, though.
You’ll have to tell us that story sometime.
I’ve never been arrested.
That makes two of us. I’ve had a couple of parking tickets and that’s it.
You’ll have to tell us that story sometime.
“newrouter says September 8, 2012 at 8:16 pm
mr. g,
i spent 24 hours in the county jail about 4 years ago because the crazy next door neighbor said i was threatening him. total bs charge. dude never showed up at the magistrate hearing and the scum lawyer i hired did a plea and took $500. this shit sux because as limbaugh says it is the “seriousness of the charge” that counts:”
unlike levin and hannity i question police conduct. they arrest peeps for filming them in a public space while doing their duties. geez darleen just posted a story whereby their union goes after elected officials who don’t do their bidding.
Oh. So that wasn’t public intoxication or disorderly conduct, then?
I grew up in a town where the cops had absolutely nothing better to do than chase teenagers around and by God they did it. I’ve been arrested for being a passenger in an unregistered vehicle, among other things.
There was this one time that 30 or so of us were having a keg party out in the woods. So, the cops showed up wagging their dicks and took our keg. Then, about 1/2 an hour later they brought it back…on the condition that whoever* had reached into their cruiser and snagged the blackjack from its holder over the window would return it to them. Good times.
*It wasn’t me.
Oh. So that wasn’t public intoxication or disorderly conduct, then?
Terroristic threats – 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 2706
You’ll have to tell us that story sometime.
i bought a beat up house to rehab. crazy old dude thought my work on the house was causing his old wife’s health problems. reported me to the building inspector. building inspector tells me to cease work until building permit issued. i cease all work on the property. (there’s 2 on the property and i live in the back one)about 2 weeks later on a friday night i’m arrested for “terroristic threats”.
So that’s a false report of a crime then, yes?
What if this wasn’t one of the troublesome neighbors? The NR/BK crew and the BB/Anon. bunch have taken an interest in Jeff’s name recently so this could also be one of their stunts.
Something was reported that troubled the PD enough to send out 3 officers (that you saw) and have them park away from the house to quietly approach it and one had a rifle. This seems a bit more than what they said was the cause and they have no requirement to tell you the truth but can say whatever they wish and find useful to gain the information they want from you.
I am not knocking the police on this except for one syndrome which also crops up in another profession.
Police are to their confidential/anonymous informants as journalists are to their confidential/anonymous sources. Both will very often protect them even when the informant/source burns them with bad info. Just ask Scooter.
So that’s a false report of a crime then, yes?
yea but it is demonrat town and i don’t know the players. after this event i got the building permit by contacting a demonrat councilperson. this stuff sucks locally but to have to endure it nationally makes me think of getting the hell out of this proggtard country,
The NR/BK crew and the BB/Anon. bunch have taken an interest in Jeff’s name recently so this could also be one of their stunts.
quite a dilemma in that your free speech is used to plot events against you
I think (and I know my opinion and another 187 pennies will buy you a cup of coffee at McDonalds) that the cops behaved appropriately. I think Jeff made the correct tactical decision in his dealings with law enforcement here. And if it had been me that this happened too, I would be just as pissed off as Jeff is because something would have been said about me that wasn’t true, and I would have no way to defend my honor in this kind of situation.
I would at least hope that the local LEOs would resent being used in this manipulative, duplicitous, cowardly way as I (if it happened to me) would resent being treated like somebody who was a threat to himself and others.
About the only thing I can think of to suggest is to be friendly and accomodating of the local LEOs if this happens, every time it happens (and may it never happen again, hear me Lord). Hopefully that way at some point the cops will say, leave Jeff alone, he’s our kind of guy.
As for the fuckers pulling this kind of shit, I would hope that they know that their anonymity only protects them, in a legal sense, while there’s law. In a world without law, old scores get settled, quickly and finally.
my 2cents
I believe the police response here is contingent on the phone call…
and we won’t really know anything until the tape (if its 911) is pulled.
either the caller pranked the circumstances (OMG there’s a guy on the porch waving his gun and threatening to kill himself) — three cops investigating then apropos
or
call is “hey, guy on porch with gun” … in a state where it is not illegal to have a gun in public. Dispatcher should have grilled “well, what’s he doing?” “nothing” “you realize it is his right? this isn’t a matter for the police” or at max have ONE cop car do a drive by to see if “guy is on porch”. Anything more is unacceptable.
As I said upthread, document document document.
As I said upthread, document document document.
“newrouter says September 8, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Should I call up and make my own complaint that somebody filed a false report on me?
no i’d mail the mayor , any council representative, and the chief of police the same letter asking why this unnecessary event occurred and what their office is going to do about it. also send malkin something. document,document,document. also get the official police report about this event.”
[…] Jeff has made quite a few enemies over the years, including death threats to his family and has armed himself appropriately. Jeff is one of those people who the enemies of freedom are more than happy to bully into silence, and recently, he has experienced ‘hassle by cop’ due to having the temerity to be a gun owner […]