Getting hung up on particulars is what the legal system is for. People all over the world expressing interest in this are losing site of the main point: Zimmerman shot an unarmed seventeen-year-old in his own neighborhood. The confrontation was a result of an unofficial neighborhood watch volunteer doing everything that a neighborhood watch volunteer should never do.

He should have been arrested, no question.

Oh, there was one eyewitness? Great, release the suspect pending trial and let the witness take the stand at the appropriate time. The actions of the police in sending a narcotics detective to a homicide scene, and their statement that Zimmerman (who had been arrested for assaulting a police officer previously) had a "squeaky clean record", are reason enough for officials to have listened to the pleas of the family to arrest the suspect.

When the 1% Fuck little children, the 99% cover it up.

What people haven't been talking about is that there was yet another person who witnessed the guy having sex in the shower with a kid; a janitor saw him having oral sex with victim number 8. He went back and told the entire janitorial staff what he saw. The guy was so hysterical that the entire staff thought he was going to have a heart attack. He reported the incident to his superior, and the guy told him to contact the police he chose to report it. However, there was a lot of pressure to not report the incident, because they were all afraid that they would lose their jobs if they reported the incident. Thus, it never got reported.

It's truly amazing to think of the number of people that knew about it...and how nothing ever happened. This went on for almost 20 years. Jon Stewart and so many other people say how it's inconceivable that 'they wouldn't stop it from happening and/or call the police immediately.' Really, most people aren't like that. You learn in first semester psychology that most people aren't like that. Most people are embarassed that they would be making a huge fuss on something that they don't know a lot about...even if they make a huge fuss about it through unofficial channels.

The biggest pisser is that the *university police* even knew about it, and they likely had a lot of internal pressure to keep it hush because they as well felt that their job security might be at risk if they pursue it. They even knew about a currently unofficial victim number 9 who is currently overseas in the military & can't return to be on trial.

Again, they were all afraid of losing their jobs because this asshole was so high ranking that they were afraid to do anything about it. THE 99% ARE THEMSELVES MAKING A LARGER DISPARITY AGAINST THE 1%. If you treat the 1% as untouchable in their position of power, they will be. If you demand equal treatment, then own up to it...especially right now.

>> ^ant:

Nice typo in the title!
animation comedy


Um, yeah... me and my homies call it Team Fo'tress 2. Cause we're totally urban. Totally.

@NetRunner

1. "What I mean by "life isn't fair" is that people are not always wrong when they feel that way. Some people are right to feel that way."

For people who care to be successful, it is always wrong to try to quantify how unfair life is. Business books always advise against it. Ycombinator's unofficial motto is, wisely, "Strap on some plums."

Herman Cain emphasized drive and proactivity instead of a victim world view and that's why he was able to contribute to society in ways more advantaged "victims" are generally unable to.



2. "Giving poor and disadvantaged people a break is the liberal position. Do what we can to equalize income, and improve the quality and pay of jobs at the bottom of the payscale."

If liberalism cared about bettering people's lives, why do Maddow and TYT never educate their audiences with the kind of career intellectualism that would actually better their lives?

How effective is 'promoting outrage' really? Unskilled workers are becoming less valuable each year everywhere in the world, and the next US president has good odds of being a Republican.


3. "The problem isn't the study itself, per se, it's how the wider world will use it."

The problem is that all facts are connected, so if liberal academics intentionally lie in order to shape knowledge about human history and society, the increased inaccuracy created by those lies doesn't remain contained within those special areas. I hope we stay in touch for the next 20 years, so we can see if you reverse your position and start advocating reprogenetics to create actual rather than fictitious equality.

>> ^lantern53:

Does this make our military stronger?
No.


I think the only way I could see this as partially correct is because when I was in the Navy, it wasn't secret who was gay and it didn't matter one bit. Of course you will get some homophobic people, just as there some racist people too - you can't avoid that when you are accepting people from across a large, diverse nation. Of course, some people are just assholes too.

But I'm looking at this from the viewpoint of a straight man who had/has a couple gay friends. It might be different if I was gay. In fact, now I am remembering one guy that got drunk and had sex with another man in the parking lot when we were pulled into a port (I think San Diego?) If it was a man and a women, they would have been officially reprimanded and life went on, but both of the men were kicked out of the military. That was fucked up.

Everyone's different, but some people still want to force their beliefs onto other peoples' actions. As long as those actions are involving consenting adults, I don't care what they do.

I seem to have went off on a tangent. My point is either you are being sarcastic or haven't been in the military. All this does is make the unofficial official and remove a layer of protection for people acting like assholes towards one particular group.

2:07, who shows up but a low rent Grim Reaper....

Lilithia, Level 3 Grim Reaper badge for you. (Hope it is okay to use this vid for my unofficial badge awards.)

@critical_d, what a deadly Sifter you are. In the last couple of days .... levels 51-56. That is a buttload of dead videos, guy!

Muchas gracias amiga!

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
*promote!!!! Sift this mofo outta the pqueueueueueueue

Video added to playlist. Invite sent! Mwahahahaaaaaa (devilish laugh)!!!!!!!!!!!


In reply to this comment by hpqp:
Hello Satan's little helper, I hear you have a Radiohead playlist going, perhaps this darkly atmospheric vid might make the cut?

http://videosift.com/video/Radiohead-4-minute-warning-unofficial-vi
deo-clip

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Hail SAGAN! Also, Lucifer lives in Switzerland!!!

Hello Satan's little helper, I hear you have a Radiohead playlist going, perhaps this darkly atmospheric vid might make the cut?

http://videosift.com/video/Radiohead-4-minute-warning-unofficial-video-clip

In reply to this comment by Issykitty:
Hail SAGAN! Also, Lucifer lives in Switzerland!!!

spam television was why I cut cable in the mid 90's and turned to piracy of television.

in the early and mid 90's I worked for DirecTV and we had entire scripts to explain to complainers about commercials and also spam ranked by channel, at the time espn ranked #1 in spam. with like 10 mins of content to 20 mins of spam ratio.

We'd have these groups come in from the networks to explain to us and give us talks on marketing and such with commercials, and I finally woke up.

After I left the job to move onto working in network operations admin for ISP, I turned off pay for tv, and have been a television pirate ever since.

no commercials, no annoyances, ever. And it doesn't affect ratings, as I was on the inside and worked closely with nielson families at one point in my career. Which the ratings system is a joke anyhow. Which is why half the scifi stuff gets cancelled when it has huge support, most nielson families the ratings box is ran by the older father or mother who don't really care for the scifi stuff in the first place and would rather watch Andy Griffith reruns.


the networks of course hate me from 1996 to today non stop pirating, and thanks to companies like Western Digital who make set top box for pirates by pirates is their unofficial motto in the forums.

The WD TV live box supports all codecs normally used by pirates, it's like the vlc player of set top boxes, costs 100 bucks and will stream any downloaded video files off a shared folder on your pc or you can plug in a usb thumbdrive or hard drive. Or with added app you can install a torrent program that lets you stream while torrenting all in 1080p HD.

>> ^VoodooV:

>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^VoodooV:
The sooner we abolish parties, the better. Party politics is what got us here.

How exactly would you do that?
You'd pretty much have to take away people's right to freely assemble, or forbid politicians from saying what they think about the issues before they're elected...

Uhh...no, not quite taking it that far. Not interested in slashing the Bill of Rights. There will always be unofficial groups and coalitions and there will be nothing you can do to stop that, nor should you. But what we can do is just refuse to recognize people as Reps or Dems, we can abolish any sort of official backing. Disband the RNC and the DNC. Simply refuse to give it legitimacy. When the state of the union happens, refuse to give a "opposition party rebuttal" At the very least! abolish this whole "reps sit on one side of the aisle, dems sit on the other side" nonsense. There is nothing wrong with people getting together, but the gov't doesn't have to recognize it and give it legitimacy so that the party eclipses the person as it is now.
The founders were definitely wary of parties and rightfully so. I don't see any problem with a concerted effort to at the VERY LEAST, discourage parties. We're seeing first hand the damage that can be done when party comes before country.
That and make all elections publicly funded..period. You'd see some drastic changes for the better


I guess my point is you're not being realistic about the dynamic at work. What's that going to cure? Are blankfist and I going to accidentally start voting for the same candidates? Probably not. Will liberals and conservatives generally refuse to organize into voting blocs to maximize their influence? Definitely not.

More to the point, what mechanism would prevent unofficial voting blocs from forming in the House and Senate? Once they form, are we really making things better by forcing them to pretend they don't exist? By refusing to let people come up with some shorthand word for them like Democrat or Republican (or Green, Monster Raving Looney, etc.)? By refusing to give TV air time to someone who wants to rebut the President?

It'd be a bit like trying to ban "alliances" in the game of Survivor. You'd have to intervene in almost every conversation to successfully do it, and even then people will still constantly be trying to do it under the radar, because the advantages are just too great. And that's a situation with at most 20 people under the most Orwellian level of surveillance possible...

Publicly funded elections on the other hand are a great idea, but that's wholly different from trying to kill organized parties. Publicly funded elections are about trying to neutralize the effect of money on the electoral process, and that's the real issue, IMO.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^VoodooV:
The sooner we abolish parties, the better. Party politics is what got us here.

How exactly would you do that?
You'd pretty much have to take away people's right to freely assemble, or forbid politicians from saying what they think about the issues before they're elected...


Uhh...no, not quite taking it that far. Not interested in slashing the Bill of Rights. There will always be unofficial groups and coalitions and there will be nothing you can do to stop that, nor should you. But what we can do is just refuse to recognize people as Reps or Dems, we can abolish any sort of official backing. Disband the RNC and the DNC. Simply refuse to give it legitimacy. When the state of the union happens, refuse to give a "opposition party rebuttal" At the very least! abolish this whole "reps sit on one side of the aisle, dems sit on the other side" nonsense. There is nothing wrong with people getting together, but the gov't doesn't have to recognize it and give it legitimacy so that the party eclipses the person as it is now.

The founders were definitely wary of parties and rightfully so. I don't see any problem with a concerted effort to at the VERY LEAST, discourage parties. We're seeing first hand the damage that can be done when party comes before country.

That and make all elections publicly funded..period. You'd see some drastic changes for the better

it officially ended, but unofficially it's best to keep it quiet in the Marines. They will make life hell, already read dozens of cases where they just ignore the person all together, and the hazing that goes on. My brother is a Marine and yea.. the stories I hear are crazy.

so this is just media crap to make civilians happy, trust me gays are still shunned in military.

Actually, @Issykitty, @dystopianfuturetoday and I attended an unofficial SiftUp back in... er... shit, sometime in Feb I think? It was for a movie screening. Does that count? It was on Sunset Blvd. We had brie and scones. Okay we didn't have brie and scones.