i wish i could feel that way that "the news media sensationalizes" this stuff, but my reality is that

1. i dont own a television to get sensationalized by. literally the only exposure i have to the "news" media and popular culture is through my sporadic bouts of sifting (i'll go 2 weeks and watch a bunch videos or i'll 2 months and watch 1), or whatever my facebook friends post and i chose to watch.

2. i live/work for/am related to/ very literally surrounded by people with this world view constantly. there is at least one tea party rally at least once a month here. there are right now, literally, 6 tea bagger signs in peoples front yards on my street alone. i do realize this is kind of a very loud minority movement. and that in other parts of the country, or the world at large, this just seems like a few people who are being pumped up by the media to look like dumbshits for profit. but the reality in, what i imagine is most of the southern states, is that this shit is absolutely everywhere. and it is having an extremely real impact on legislation and education, especially in texas (which will impact the education of 46-48 other states because of its sheer size, spending power, population and influence). the growth and popularity of this movement, particularly in texas, is having a very real and lasting and detrimental impact on what will eventually be the rest of the world. (with the dumbing down and godifying of educational standards, which has already happened, and the intense popularization of climate change denial, and making science denialism a populist movement).
and while i love the people i know who buy into this, and empathize with the fear and misguided hatred of the government, i can say with some authority that this world view is absolutely, detrimentally, batshit. and one that feeds and thrives and exploits ignorance and fear.

>> ^hPOD:

As for the other guys comment about tea baggers and sanity, he/she needs to understand that just because someone has a different view of life/set of opinions than he/she does, doesn't make them insane, retarded, stupid, or otherwise. I'm so sick of this kind of crap on Sift and other such boards. Not for nothing, but the media loves to sensationalize the idiocy of society. You almost never see a regular democrat/liberal, republican/neocon or tea bagger in the news...you always see the extreme idiot that makes them all look stupid.

when i was a kid we lived in what can only be described as an upper middle class crack house with cats everywhere. dozens of them. everywhere.

one day several of the non-feral outside cats turned up missing. we finally found they had all been taken to the pound on different days. 3 of them had already been put to sleep and the rest of them had contracted a nasty case of the kitty aids.

we found out it was a new neighbor down the street who had trapped them all one by one and hauled them off to the pound.

my dad was crazy. and we lived with about a dozen or so drug addicted, gender confused teens/early 20 somethings.
so........... we all exacted our revenge.

my dad had taken to sneaking onto her driveway every night with a vat of ketchup and a stuffed kitten on a noose, hanging the cat from a tree and painting the words (with kethcup) "cat murdering bitch" all over her garage door. we were all encouraged to egg and tp her house. whenever someone would pass out we would drag them into her flower bed and leave them there. my brother, who was addicted to crack at the time, pissed and shit all over front yard a few times. (she had apparently trapped our cats for messing up her flowerbed and spraying her front porch). this went on for weeks. i dont remember why it stopped and i dont recall if she ever did anything about the harrassment. but i thought it was a nice revenge story to share.

Those squirrels are awesome. Makes the stupid walking squirrels in my front yard seem boring and lame, like they don't deserve to live anymore...

>> ^JiggaJonson:

>> ^videosiftbannedme:
I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say are you sure it's raining oil? I used to see that same sheen on the rainy streets of Pasadena growing up and it was just the surface oil from cars being washed off the street. I'm not saying it's not raining oil, but I need more conclusive proof than this, ie. timelapse of a rain gauge that shows an oily slick on top.

That doesn't explain the oil on the grass.


The video doesn't actually show oil in the grass.

Some total crackpot pointing a video camera at some (petroleum based) blacktop is proof of nothing. The sides of roads is where cars park. Oil leaks from cars. Rain falls from clouds. Rain mixes with oil from cars on the pavement. Rainbow sheen appears. Happens every time it rains, on every part of the planet where cars park.

This is reminiscent of that video where the lady is claiming a conspiracy when she notices a rainbow in her front yard water sprinkler.

http://videosift.com/video/Crazy-Sprinkler-Lady

What a tragedy, that looked like a nice dog.

I have a pitbull, he truly is a baby. I cuddle with him all the time.

Once, I was in my front yard teaching him to lay down and stay. There was a nice amount of distraction on the street of people walking by. This one kid is walking by, and literally he stops at one point at starts staring at the dog, literally staring at him for like 15 seconds. Well, my dog kept glancing at the kid and back at me, he was ready to bolt but I didn't catch it in time, and he took off after the kid. The kid panicked and raced right into the street, both of them almost got hit by cars. And just then the police were turning the corner and pretty much caught the whole thing. The kid was bawling his eyes out. I got a ticket and a stern lecture from a dumb fat bitch cop.

Whats my point? Well. It's a given that I fucked up my letting my dog off his leash like that. But, I really wish there would be some amount of responsibility on the kid, or his parents for being so ignorant. First of all, you don't fucking stop and stare directly for 20 seconds at a dog if you're scared of dogs. Second, if you're scared of a dog, don't start running as soon as he comes up to you.

This is tl:dr but w/e... The other day I was in a field with my dog, I saw another person with a dog far away so I leashed my dog. I continue walking towards the person, its an old lady with some kind of husky/lab mix. She was trying to leash her dog but couldn't as she was way too old lol. She was all out of breath n' shit. So after watching her get frustrated with a couple failed attempts I offered to leash her dog. I went at the dog pretty hesitantly, because, well, it IS a strange dog lol. But when she saw how hesitant i wish she shook her head and rolled her eyes telling me the dog's really not aggressive. So I just went at the dog and leashed her. No big deal.

tl;dr People are pussies and should stop fucking being afraid of every dog they see and parents should educate their children on how to deal with dogs. Those cops are a buncha fucking pussies, they should've just called the dog over and fucking leashed it instead of coming at it with a 6 foot pole.

I don't know how often this is or isn't quoted, but I suspect racial sensitivity plays a role. Coming from black lips to white ears, it would sound threatening -- we don't need to wait for you to make laws or treat us fairly, we're just going to stand up and take what's rightfully ours. Coming from white lips to black ears, it would sound painfully condescending -- you don't need Civil Rights or fair treatment, you just need to stop whining about being oppressed and stand up for yourselves, and you'll find you weren't all that oppressed in the first place.

Just my guess based on what I know of race relations.

@GeeSussFreeK, I have my own story of learning about race as a child. I too was never taught about ethnicity as a child, though I did identify that there was more than a tan going on with "brown people" as I unknowingly called them. I didn't really think much of it, I mean people have different hair and eye colors, and different genders, people just have different skin colors. No big deal.

So it was until I had my 7th or 8th birthday party, and invited a bunch of school friends over for my party, including one of my friends who happened to be black.

He came over, and we did all the usual kid's stuff, including playing in the yard together. Well, our neighbors across the street didn't care for that much, and decided they'd all come out in their front yard with guns. They didn't say anything, they just stared at us a bit, before my mom rushed us into the house.

I later asked my mom why they'd done that, and she just said "they don't like brown people". I asked why not, and she said "I don't know".

Of course, years later my mom told me that they'd said they were just wanting to make sure that "little nigger" stayed in line, and didn't try to steal anything, and all kinds of really atrocious things.

I think racism is not dead, and not trivial. The only way to help with the problem is to be open to the idea of questioning your own actions with regards to race. I think of myself as being pretty free of prejudice, but I don't really spend time with non-white people in social situations anymore. I think that opens me up to a situation where I become insular, and insensitive to the ways in which a privileged white male like myself lives a life that's utterly different from that of people of other races, genders, and classes. It also means I might say or do something that seems completely fine to me, but would be horrific to someone outside my ethnic group.

I don't think the way you ease that tension is for people who are offended to feel like they need to just stay quiet and tolerate it. You don't just ignore it, and hope it gets better.

Hahahahahahha. Yeah, rub that spittle bug excrement allll over your body. It has magical healing powers. My front yard keeps magically filling up with dog turds maybe you guys can roll around in that too.

>> ^My_design:
One other question, if the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate, prior to Kennedy's death, then what kept them from getting this thing passed the first time around? I would think that it would have been better for them to pass the bill when they could and then make the changes later.

You and me both! Democrats seem to love to shoot themselves in the foot. They were bending over backwards and tying themselves into knots to make the bill appealing enough to conservatives to win Republican votes.

They also have members of their own party whose electoral strategy is to be "centrist", which often means "hold legislation hostage until Democrats water down their legislation." There also was a pretty drawn out argument between the Senate and the House about things like the public option, employer mandates, how to pay for it (liberals wanted to tax the rich, conservadems wanted to repeal the tax exemption on employer benefits), the overall level at which people would be subsidized, and even whether there would be a single, nationwide "exchange" set up, or if they would be done state-by-state. The conservadems in the Senate won every single one of those fights by holding their breath and refusing to vote for the bill until they got their way. After they lost the race in MA, there wasn't any way for the House to try to claw any of those back, except some of the tax & subsidy stuff (via the reconciliation "sidecar").

I also think losing the Senate race in Massachusetts itself was political malpractice. There was no way a Republican should have won that race, but Coakley went on vacation after the primary (literally and figuratively), and Brown went to everyone's front yard and asked for their vote. That's a recipe for success, no matter what the prevailing political environment looks like. Voters don't like to be taken for granted like that.

ALKDJFDLI! my house (in texas) is right underneath one of these. meaning the siren itself is attatched to the street light pole thats in my front yard. fucking corner lots. because i basically sleep right underneath the siren, the words coming out of it sound very distorted from inside my house.

i'm in fort worth, about 2 hours south of oklahoma, so there is a constant stream of tornados from march to june.

when i first bought my house, i had just left my exhusband, who had been off his meds too long and was often in trouble with the law because of it. i was also still using his last name, which sounds very similar to the word 'warning'. and the last 6 months of my marriage i lived in constant fear of the cops raiding my house. along with the fear of any other trouble or death he might get himself into.

so one spring day, a few weeks after i left him and moved in here, i was woken up from a dead nap and had no idea i was living underneath a siren. it sounded like a 10 cops in my front yard with bull horns yelling "holley warren, come outside immediately". given the circumstances i had just ran from, i wasn't in a good place mentally or logically, so i grabbed my kids from their beds and hid in the closet for 30 minutes, which incidentally, is a good place to hide in case of a tornado. but i was hiding from the cops, expecting them to bust down my front doors and haul me off to jail for being an accomplice to whatever shit he had pulled and take my kids away.

of course that didnt happen because the sirens were really saying "tornado warning, get inside immediately". i quit using the name "warren" after that. i also got some therapy.

I make more than 15k a year but I make it a point to keep my living expenses under $1000 a month and I'm no pauper, so I'm sorry but I have to call bullshit.

In fact, not only can someone live on $1000 a month, someone doing this and making 15k a year would be putting $3000 a year in savings so I'm sorry I just don't buy your argument.

If you wanna make it personal, why don't we compare living budgets and we'll see just why living on $1256 a month is so difficult. Heres mine:

I've included two numbers since I live in a one-bedroom house with my girlfriend. The left is what I would pay if I lived alone, the right is what I pay splitting costs with her (would be the same situation as having a roommate, and if you are that strung up on cash then thats probably the best option for you)

Rent $450 ($225)
*One Bedroom house, in a nice neighborhood, 2 miles from downtown in a city with ~1 million people

Water $30 ($15)

Electricity $50 ($25)
*Electric Heat

Trash $20 ($10)

Internet $40 ($20)
*5mbps Broadband

Cellphone $70 ($70)

Gas $25 ($25)
*150 miles a week, 50 mpg, $3/gallon

Insurance $16 ($16)
*$200 a year

Food $300 ($300)
*$10 a day: bacon ($2/lb) eggs ($1.5/dozen), steak/chicken/pork ($3/lb), fruit ($1/lb) and vegetables ($1/lb)

Total $1001 ($706)

So here I am, someone who makes more than minimum wage, choosing to live on $700 a month. Had I been making $1256 I would still have $550 left over for savings, emergencies, going out, etc. Its not that it can't be done, its that people choose not do it.

Every day I eat bacon and eggs for breakfast and a 16oz new york strip, ribeye, pork lion, or roasted chicken breast with fresh fruits and vegetables for dinner, I have high speed internet, a cellphone, a vehicle, clean water, heat, a front yard, and a roof over my head, and you are telling me this is "unlivable" ?

No...this is unlivable:
http://lboudouani.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/starvation3.jpg

>> ^blankfist:
"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."


Great Jefferson quote, but it should read: "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is anarchy."

Hi everyone. First time poster, long time VideoSift junkie. About me: I'm an Atheist, an extreme liberal left-wing kind of person, and a science junkie. I wanted to make a few comments regarding all the police brutality videos we've seen recently.

I do think police go too far in some cases. I think many cops are just the guys from high school that got made fun of in the gym's shower for having a small dick. BUT, in most of these videos I see people acting fucking stupid and getting the shit kicked out of them for it. 99.9% of us are honest, law abiding citizens who will never have anything but positive experiences with law enforcement. Cops put their fucking lives on the line to maintain a little bit of order to society. Without them, we are fucking Somalia. Without them, I'd spend my days sitting in the front yard with a shotgun defending my home from outlaw militia gangs who want to rape my family and take my shit.

Regarding this video: if I were a passenger on that plane and the chick in front of me was acting belligerent and not following the security personnel's commands, then yeah, I'd want her taken down. Why? Because I don't want to be on the next plane that flies into a fucking building. And even if she's not a terrorist, I don't want to sit next to her for 4 hours and hear her bitch about how hard it was to get on the plane.

Having said that: for every person who is a true victim of unprovoked police brutality- hellz yeah, sue the fuck out of them. Don't let them get away with acting like jackboot thugs. But come on, for every police brutality video we see, it seems that at some point the person getting the beating started acting the fool and got the pitbulls all riled up. Of course they are going to get bit.

You touch on another issue that's cropped up in my practice on multiple occasions: back injury.

I cannot count the number of patients whose downward spiral could be traced to a back injury. It's easy to dismiss it as an excuse, but I've seen it often enough to recognize that it's like being shot: sometimes it's luck on how bad it is, some people manage to overcome, and some people don't, but it's a very, very traumatic event where the cards are stacked against recovery.
The following anecdote highlights that issue and another as-yet-undiscussed: there are people who genuinely need pain medication, and there are addicts. It gets particularly thorny where those groups overlap.

As an example, one patient (we'll call him X) related how a morbidly obese man crashed his car into X's front yard. X was attempting to assist the man (who X did not realize was already dead) and threw his back out. He suffered over the next decade through multiple surgeries with the placement, removal, and replacement of pins and rods. (He showed me a plastic sack of parts from a previous surgery.)
In a case like this, several factors conspire against a person:
-Even with insurance, it's expensive. Every penny not spent on absolute essentials goes to medical costs.
-Chronic pain. Many of these people suffer from pain constantly and are perpetually medicated with increasing dosages of narcotic pain medications as their resistance builds. They become dependent.
-Inability to work, both due to the injury and inability to concentrate under constant medication, which in turn compounds the first problem

With the combination of unemployment, constant pain, and continuous medication (and possible dependence/addiction), often these people lose the will to properly care for themselves. As a dentist, I see this in people who gave up caring for their teeth, and then could not afford to fix them as they "rotted out". These rotten teeth become yet another source of infection and pain, and another reason they can't secure a job. X came to me to get the rest of his teeth taken out in preparation for dentures (yet another significant but necessary expense).
He neglected to inform me that he was being treated for chronic pain (and narcotic dependence) at a pain management clinic, but that's another issue.
The problem is that X was having all his teeth out, so post-operative pain is almost a certainty, but not only would you hesitate to give a recovered addict a narcotic Rx, but their tolerance to pain medication is so high that they actually need more than the average person to achieve relief. It's a Catch-22.

This isn't to say back injuries are absolutely life-ending, or to completely discount some degree of personal responsibility, but the recurring pattern of economic hardship, chronic pain, and drug dependence following these types of injuries is impossible to ignore.

I usually agree with Bill, but this time he is dead wrong on the Gates issue.

Tell me if I'm wrong about these facts: Gates broke into a house. Officer Crowley came to investigate. Crowley questioned Gates about his identity. Gates initially refused to cooperate and started screaming about racism. Crowley pressed the issue, and Gates eventually showed ID, while continuing to berate the officers. The officers present argue with Gates for a little about the validity of their investigation and whether it's racist or not, then start to leave. Gates follows them outside and starts creating a more public spectacle. Officers tell him to calm down, but he keeps escalating his tantrum. Officers arrest him in his front yard for disorderly conduct.

From brain's link:

A "disorderly person" is defined as one who:

- with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or
- recklessly creates a risk thereof
- engages in fighting or threatening, violent or tumultuous behavior, or
- creates a hazard or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose.

Anyone who is screaming at police officers on their front lawn is clearly causing annoyance and alarm, displaying tumultuous behavior, and quite likely qualifying for several other points. Being on your own property is not a "sanctuary" zone, where you can do whatever the hell you feel like. You still have to maintain some modicum of civility.

It is totally possible that the police could have defused the situation if they had been better trained at handling upset people, but they are *not allowed* to leave until everybody has calmed down and the situation has clearly been resolved. Obviously Gates was refusing to calm down.

So where was it that the police officers did something stupid? Well obviously it was when they arrested somebody who knew the president, right? I just don't see anything else they did wrong.

But please, if I missed something, enlighten me.

Actually the supreme court has ruled on a ban that Virginia has on cross burning and found the ban to be uncconstitutional but only because it covered cross burning in general. Regulations could be only established to bar that specific act if the cross burning was done as a means of racial intimidation.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/04/07/scotus.cross.burning/

"We conclude that while a state consistent with the First Amendment may ban cross burning carried out with the intent to intimidate, the provision in the Virginia statute treating any cross burning as prima facie evidence of intent to intimidate renders the statute unconstitutional," the ruling said.

This seems to be a clear cut case of a person motivated by racial intimidation and while, again, I'm all for the rights of the individual, those rights should only extend as far as they dont infringe on the rights of others.


In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
>> ^JiggaJonson:
I'm as liberal as it gets but I don't think this falls (or should fall) under first amendment protections. Would it be ok for her to have a burning cross in her front yard as well?
I'm currently racking my brain thinking about some of the negative implications of barring this woman from posting signs on her property.


Yes it would. Burning flag too.

>> ^JiggaJonson:
I'm as liberal as it gets but I don't think this falls (or should fall) under first amendment protections. Would it be ok for her to have a burning cross in her front yard as well?
I'm currently racking my brain thinking about some of the negative implications of barring this woman from posting signs on her property.


Yes it would. Burning flag too.