Screw that. Driver was totally in the right.

If I were in that situation, surround by hundreds of people trying to block me in, I'd high-tail it outta there as well, motorcycle be damned.

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@newtboy
Do you honestly believe a BLM sign holder at a clan March would be treated better? What about at a Trump rally? If you claim to think either case wouldn't end in hospitalization, you're not being honest.

Not only did I never claim that, I have trouble figuring why you think I would? My second sentence again:"My opinion though lies the same whether it’s this guy treated as he was in the video, or if the situation was reversed and the lone guy had a BLM sign instead, same standard applies."

I oppose meeting speech with force excepting when that speech is being used to promote violence or harm, I'm also willing to allow that 'speech' can also amount to being disruptive or harassment like your notion of bringing inappropriate material to a kids park, or using a megaphone inches from someone's face.

I kind of thought on that point we'd find agreement, or at least understanding and agree to disagree?

Opening a new point from you're statement:He was the instigator. His sign amounts to "you will not silence our Nazi voice" at a rally pushing to silence their Nazi voice in their neighborhood.

I've read a few of the links you provided, and looked up a few articles on the gallery and I'm having troubles with the characterization. Do you have a good specific link that more clearly focuses on the nazi support from the gallery? The reading I've done seems to describe an art gallery, that allowed exhibits and talks from far-right and at least arguably fascist speakers on possibly a few occasions. You seem to talk like it was operating openly as a neo-nazi HQ.

So, what I've looked up so far, it does look an awful lot like a gallery pulled in speakers that people disliked, so they rallied to shut down the gallery as punishment for allowing wrong-think to be spoken. Then when guys like the one in the video came to defend free-speech, they too were classed as nazi's and lumped in as enemies too. Last article I found by the guy in video, so maybe he's lying, but other articles I've found also suggest that the gallery operated more generally rather than being an explicitly alt-right hub:
https://medium.com/@dctvbot/i-regret-nothing-c05401636032

I openly admit I’m plenty ignorant on the background to all this.

My opinion though lies the same whether it’s this guy treated as he was in the video, or if the situation was reversed and the lone guy had a BLM sign instead, same standard applies. You had a very large crowd around him not content to shout him down, but intent on using force to chase him off and trying to again use force to take his sign from him. Thats over the line and I don’t care who is doing the pushing or what the sign actually says. As above, if the sign or message is itself a promotion of violence, then its the police and court system you want to pull in, not the mob or vigilantism.

The little background I read from your links though suggests the large crowd had been there repeatedly with the same purpose of getting the gallery/HQ shutdown. Seems awful likely to me guy with sign was then standing outside said gallery and all the more aught have the right to stand near it with a simple sign, without being dismissed as the one ‘invading’ or stealing the protestors platform. To be honest most of the discussion about giving or blocking platforms reeks to me of just renaming stuff so folks can duck the well worn arguments in support of free speech.

I was extremely suspicious about the effectiveness of simple masks and still am. They do stop you from sneezing on other people, obviously.

The biggest effect seems to be psychological - once the majority of people agree to wear masks that means they have taken control of the situation and are willing to do something about it, be responsible.

I've got a lot of respect for the interviewer. No way could I ever handle putting myself in any of the situations he does. And as ridiculous as his interview subjects are, they're also real people. I think it's worthwhile to document the more fringe / bizarre elements of society.

Obscenely biased reporting. Which is too bad since the basic truth of the seemingly cornered protesters was a bad situation that the cops may or may not have known about.

"Cars were like honking in support of us."
Lol, no, you're an idiot blocking an interstate.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

Local politicians create the Law. PD is obligated to enforce it. on 1 - 10 he seemed about a 1 or 2. They should have taken him home and fined him a token amount (50 bucks ). However Law states ZERO tolerance which led to this sad situation.

Change the law so cops can have more discretion.

Guess MADD has a lot to do with current laws.

I understand and support the protesting as there are clearly systemic racism issues that have long needed to be addressed. I understand the rioting - people are fed up and tired of inaction. But I can't agree with her explanation and rationalization of the looting. I highly doubt all of the looters were impoverished and just wanted to sample the luxuries that they see other more well-off people enjoying. Instead, I suspect many of them saw an opportunity in the chaos of the protests and riots to take advantage of the situation. White, black, it doesn't matter - there are always people out there that are more than willing to steal when the opportunity presents itself. It's wrong, plain and simple, and, in my opinion, trying to rationalize and forgive that type of behaviour weakens her otherwise reasonable argument.

What an absolute BS stop. With that said, people that get pulled over really need to stop trying to confront the officer(s) when shit like this happens. Nothing good is ever going to come from that, as it's highly unlikely the cop is going to admit fault or apologize. Furthermore, you are re-engaging with someone that clearly wants to give you a hard time and cops can find a reason to fine or arrest you. As much as we'd all love to rip that cop a new one, he's got a gun, pepper spray, a taser, and the backing of a gang, so in my opinion it's better to contact the media and register a complaint AFTER disengaging from the situation. When the dude in the video got out of his car I immediately thought some bad shit was going to go down...

Sorry you don't understand math.
When the factors are the same, they're the same, so cancel out. Tested under the same conditions, those things are the same, or better under the roll over situation because it doesn't put as much energy into the stationary object. I'm being generous and calling it a wash.

50gs to 1.2gs. 50gs to 1.2gs. 50gs to 1.2gs. 50gs to 1.2gs. 50gs to 1.2gs. Get it? What you're talking about is infinitesimal compared to the forces involved. 50gs to 1.2gs. 50gs to 1.2gs. 50gs to 1.2gs. 50gs to 1.2gs.

By what factor of risk? That statement is meaningless. It doesn't mean you get hurt more, it means they don't test every factor in rollovers in this test, so can't say you won't also break a nail. It absolutely doesn't mean you get hurt worse every time, or even on average. Doing the math, it's about an 8' movement over about 2+- seconds to roll, so under 1/2 g. That's what you say makes it worse than a 50g forward hit....1/2 g. Really?! I'm pretty sure you're just playing with me pretending you don't understand.

Now leave me be....please. I've been frustrated for a while with this discussion.

Hahaha.. Cancels out. OK, yep. It's basic math here not a complex collision simulation...

Did you even read this bit,

"The partial rollover presents an additional injury risk beyond what the standard crash test criteria are intended to measure"

I'm only discounting some things it because it's irrelevant to the point which is you stating rolls or "flops" are better than an arbitrary situation that generally doesn't exist and certainly isn't the other option to a roll in this test.

You're massively oversimplifying things again. Where is your crumple zone math? Where is your math showing how much force is imparted into pushing the car in front forward based on whether it has it's brakes on, is still moving, etc, etc, etc.

Your personal experience is not extraordinary. I have been in accidents, I didn't bother to bring it up because it doesn't mean anything.

I'm not arguing that higher G forces don't correlate with more severe injuries, that's not the point . The point is that CSI injury is very complex, complexities that can cause severe injury with minor force in situations like.. a rollover.

from the report you mentioned,

"The partial rollover presents an additional injury risk beyond what the standard crash test criteria are intended to measure"

You [redacted] lying waste of skin. That's an outright verifiable lie. The only thing you said that's true is Trump is snot....but that's insulting to snot.

The vandals and rioters have been filmed working with police who not only protected them as they vandalized businesses but directed them on exactly how and what to paint/break so it looks like protesters did it. In one video of many, the white masked vandal started smashing the sidewalk just feet in front of a large police line as they watched until protesters stopped him and shoved him forcefully into the police who only then finally arrested him....or at least pretended to. No word on who he is or with what group, but it's obvious that protesters are doing more to stop rioters than police/Trump's government. In another, a fat white woman is seen painting BLM and other slogans on a building while police watch, they then suggest she add "George Floyd", which she obediently does.

Watch what he personally directed the secret service and military police in DC to do to PEACEFUL PROTESTERS, not a vandal among them, full mounted attack using grenades (flashbangs can kill) rubber bullets, clubs, hooves, boots, and tear gas. Barr, at Trump's order, personally directed them to clear the way for terrified Trump to crawl out of his basement hidey hole just so he could go have a photo op at a closed church (and they are pissed at being a prop for his divisive political ploy), pretending he isn't hiding behind hundreds of armed guards even after removing all protesters from the area, and pretending he regularly goes inside, but we ALL know he doesn't unless the congregation is replaced with cameras and he's the only speaker, giving a sermon on how great he is, better than Jesus.

Trump personally, and his administration, have been clear, clamp down on protesters, dominate them, shoot and arrest them, treat them like the vandals , because it's in his interest to demonize the protesters. He's even toyed with having any that can be identified by any means deemed domestic terrorists and putting them in prison for 10 years. Absolutely zero distinction between the protesters and vandals (who so far those caught on video vandalizing have all been masked whites, likely Trumpsters trying to make the protests turn to riots and blame non whites and democrats for his divisive lack of leadership that has if not caused this situation, at the least exacerbated it exponentially).

Yet more brain numbing, verifiability wrong dumbassery by a Trumptard. Remember last month when your ilk invaded government buildings armed to the teeth? Trump stood with those rioters, even as they burn governors in effigy on the front porch of the governor's mansion, Trump calls THEM patriotic good people, and peaceful protesters in the streets, those are THUGS he wants shot. *facepalm the dumb is getting dumber daily.