I am not a crook

Or, why I don't like America anymore.

One of the founding principles of American justice is, or WAS "innocent until proven guilty". Also referred to as, presumption of innocence it puts the burden of proof on the government.

The burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which has to collect and present enough compelling evidence to convince the trier of fact, who is restrained and ordered by law to consider only actual evidence and testimony that is legally admissible, and in most cases lawfully obtained, that the accused is guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If reasonable doubt remains, the accused is to be acquitted.

The fourth amendment of the constitution is supposed to protect the public from random, arbitrary searches by the government.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In other words, the government is supposed to have a REASON to conduct a search, "he looks suspicious" is NOT a valid reason for the government to search someone.

The sixth amendment states that if the government accuses you of a crime, it HAS to give you a trial.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

This IS freedom. This is the kind of law that made people from all over the world want to come to America.

But it's not like that anymore. Thanks to greedy, power hungry, rotten politicians and a LOT of compliant sheep who keep buying their bullshit more often than not the presumption now is guilty, until(at great legal expense) proven innocent.

The rot started with the so called "war on drugs". It got kick started by the prestigious and eminent president Richard Nixon

It kicked into full swing in the 80's, when the lapdog press began blurting out government talking points like "you have to give up some freedoms to prosecute the war on drugs". Most of the sheep watching the idiot box nodded in agreement as the government began its game play to make an end run around the constitution.

After about 20 or more years of this, even the sheep got antsy and there started to be some pushback.

9-11 to the rescue!

For a while things were lookin' bad for the politicians, with people beginning to tire of the war on drugs it was starting to look like the government might actually be forced to return some of those freedoms it "borrowed" from the American people.

Then, BOOM, the twin towers went down and soon after what did I hear from the media? The same, tired old mantra about how we have to "give up some freedom" to fight the new "war on terror".

For a while, this did NOT go quite as smoothly as it did under the war on drugs. President George W. Bush was not beloved by the main stream media and they rightfully called him out on some his shady, constitutionally questionable, activities. The press had lots to say about gitmo, phone tapping, and invading Iraq.

Then something happened. A miracle! The evil GWB was gone and Barack "Jesus Christ" Obama became president!
Hope and change! Freeeeeeedoom! The return of sanity and civil rights to a government which had been getting more repressive every year!

So what has happened under Chicago Barry's watch?
Gitmo closed?
Nope.

Patriot act repealed?
Nope.

Halted GWB's domestic spy program

Nope!
Instead the NSA went from spying on so called "terror suspects" to spying on EVERYONE! Let freedom ring Barry!

It doesn't stop there, There is an indefinite detention clause in the NDAA.
This isn't something Obama signed reluctantly in order to "get soldiers paid", Obama insisted that provision be there.

But don't worry, be happy, the same guy who insisted the indefinite detention provision be included in the NDAA has promised us he will never use it.
Lets say he keeps that promise. What about the next president? Or the one after that...

No jobs are expendable

It's time to demand a return of manufacturing to the U.S.
The economy has been sucking for years while jobs go outsourced, meanwhile the politicians shrug their shoulders and continue to fool the people with the tired old "It's the (insert democrats or republicans here) fault" partisan shell game.
I remember the sickening slickness and smarmyness oozing off the politicians when they sold out the country by passing NAFTA, telling the people that "we don't need those manufacturing jobs anymore."

Really? The politicians claimed that software jobs would replace them, but what are all the people who worked in the factories supposed to do? Pull $$$$ out of their ass to go to four years of school for computer science degrees?
What really happened is most of them were forced to take lower paying jobs in the service industry. "Would you like fries with that?"

Guess what happened to all those software jobs that were supposed to replaced manufacturing jobs? You guessed it, OUTSOURCED!
Of course the politicians trotted out the same tired old lines about "global economy" and "those guys will just have to re-train"

Now the U.S. economy has been sucking for years while China, who took all those jobs "America doesn't need", has a booming economy.
Instead of blatting on about minimum wage ALL the politicians should be doing everything they can to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. Fuck this "global economy" kumbaya shit, the Chinese don't think that way and neither should we.

Start by dumping the shitty trade agreements and levying tariffs on countries who are gaming the system.
Follow it up with tax breaks for companies that manufacture here and tax penalties for companies that outsource.

That will have a positive effect for everyone, people will make more money, more taxes go into the system, people with more money buy more goods which further stimulates the economy, everyone wins except the fucking greedheads in crony capitalism land, who would STILL be raking in money, but not as much as they would from outsourcing. Fuck those shitheads, the nations welfare should come before them being able to afford 12 mansions rather than 10.
Macci D's jobs would go back to being what they were supposed to be, where kids work to get a little spending money.

For a major change to the better people need to wake up and start squeezing the politicians by the balls.

No job is expendable, and any politician who has the balls to go on tv saying that and then bloviating about how those now out of work people he sold out need to "retrain" MUST be voted out of office.

Politicians have gotten away with selling out American jobs because there is this weird, unhealthy dynamic where people keep voting in incumbents, over and over again. This is further exacerbated by the ridiculous two party system where political partisans won't vote for a candidate from the other party even if their own parties candidate was Adolf Hitler or Caligula.

People need to break out of that mentality. They need to start letting the politicians know that partisan loyalty and endless incumbent re-elections are over. The politicians are the ones who's jobs need to be expendable, not the voters.

Emergency heat!!!

FYI, I did NOT come up with this myself, the original URLs will be provided as attribution.

So you are in your apartment, it's freezing cold, and your heat goes out. For some people the options aren't good. They may not know anyone near by they can stay with, and going to a shelter(if you can even find one) to hang out with strangers isn't very appealing. An alternative is an emergency heater, here are a couple of options.

Coffee can heater

Hello, all! I live in an all-electric city apartment in central Connecticut, and my partner and I (along with hundreds of thousands of others) lost electricity for almost a week after the Halloween blizzard a few weeks back. Of course, I was very well-prepared where things like batteries/lanterns/light and no-cooking-necessary food was concerned, and we had running water, but our main problem was heat: we have no fireplace or wood stove, no kerosene heater or other portable fuel generator (and, quite frankly, due to CO poisoning concerns, I don't WANT one), no electrical generator because we have no outdoor space to set one up.

But I was able to get our apartment up to 66 degrees at night -- even when outdoor temps were in the high 20s -- and I will tell you how I did it: I made makeshift heaters out of coffee cans and metal-cup tealight candles.

It's very easy: take an empty METAL coffee can, make sure the inside is clean and contains no coffee grounds, and rip off the label from the outside (because it is a potential fire hazard). Then, make sure you have some tealight candles, the kind that come in little disposable metal cups. IKEA stores sell bricks of 100 tealight candles for $4; if you're not near an IKEA, you can still find inexpensive tealights in the candle section of pretty much any discount or department store. Each IKEA tealight burns about four hours before running out of wax.

Depending on how cold it was, I put anywhere from four to six tealights in the bottom of each coffee can. The sides of the can would get warm to the touch -- but not hot -- however, the heat coming out the top of the can was hot enough that you could not hold your hand directly above the can's opening without burning yourself.

During the actual blackout I only had three coffee-can heaters; I burned other candles on metal trays and other fireproof surfaces, but tealights in a coffee can seem to generate far more heat than the same number of tealights on, say, a metal or mirrored tray. The coffee can "focuses" the heat, in a way. Since the storm my partner and I have been saving our empty coffee cans -- my ultimate goal is to have an even dozen on hand; as of this morning we have seven -- and after the blackout ended and tings went back to normal, I spent $52 plus tax on 1300 IKEA tealight candles. I figure that would provide two weeks of heat in a situation like the blackout -- freezing nights, but daytime temps above freezing. In a super-cold snap, where temperatures stayed below freezing even during the day, those 1300 candles would provide heat for a week.

Your mileage may vary depending on variables -- how well-insulated is your home, how many cubic feet do you have to heat, etc. For my place, we shut all the bedroom doors and heated only the bathroom and common areas -- roughly 1,000 cubic feet, with thickly insulated walls. And I noticed that burning 40 candles made the interior temperature rise by about 20 degrees. (So, presumably, if it were REALLY cold, 80 candles would raise the temperature by 40 degrees in a thousand-cubic-foot space.)

The coffee cans not only amplify the heat of the candles, but greatly reduce fire hazards: even if you spill wax from a candle, the melted wax will stay in the metal can. And, since the candles are made of vegetable wax, there's no danger of CO emissions (though the smell when you extinguish 30 or 40 such candles at once is, I confess, not very nice. I had to take the battery out of the smoke detector before I blew out the candles, then put the battery back after the smoke dissipated.)

Ad, of course, some standard safety guidelines: DO NOT leave candles burning when you are asleep, or not home. DO NOT keep an active coffee-can heater near paper or anything else flammable. Set the cans on non-flammable surfaces: metal stovetop, metal washer/dryer top, etc. I took the rotating glass dish from off my microwave carousel, which was big enough to hold two cans.
- Last Edit: December 04, 2011, 06:04:34 PM by Jennifer -

You can also make one from a flower pot.

Fukushima rad poisoning - No it's NOT like an airplane flight...

I was thinking about a news report on Fukushima and some bullshit the pro nuke shills were unsuccessfully trying to get me to gag down.

They claim that the average exposure was less than you get from flying on a plane. Now, that in itself is probably a bald faced lie, but lets for sake of argument say that part is true. Here is what they left out. When you go on a plane or get x-rays, you get irradiated for a set time period, then it stops.

Fukushima BLEW UP! When that happened radioactive particles got spread out all over the place. Some of these particles have a looooong half life. People near that plants explosion most likely either breathed in or ingested some of those particles. Instead of the short term radiation exposure of an airplane flight or x-ray, someone with one of those particles cooking in their lungs gets continually exposed. So after 15-20 years of this, HELLOOO CANCER! Of course the long time period from being exposed to the contaminants to the cancer gives the pro nuke scums all the deniability they need.

Urban survival, a big river changes things

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Self defense with a knife, never say never

There is a poisonous philosophy going around the knife carrying world that a knife should never be used for self defence. They give a lot of reasons and sometimes better alternatives, but never is an absolute, and absolutes are almost always, at some point and time, wrong.

Replace never, with "last ditch only" and you would actually be giving good advice. With last ditch only you try all the other alternatives first. Usually they will work, but usually is not always, and when everything else fails lying in a ball getting beat into a hospital or morgue isn't a better alternative than pulling your edc knife.

Lets go down the alternatives, and their fail points.

• A gun/pepper spray/taser is better.
  
  Well, yeah, especially the first one, gun. But hold your cowboy hat Texas, there are states/cities especially in the Northeast that either force you to try to get a "may issue"(meaning they don't have to give it to you) license or an outright ban on one of the above.
  
  
• It's the law, you'll get arrested and assraped in jail!!
  
  Again, going to the hospital/morgue NOW, or possible jail later. This is not rocket science.
  
  
• You can run
  
  Absolutely, if you are fast on your feet, near help, this can be a good solution! If you can make this work, DO SO! However, unlike what the anti knife defense crowd wants you to believe, this is NOT a 100% success solution, I would say not even close or the hoods would go out of business. Running is a MOVE, the same as a martial arts block, a punch, or pulling a gun. Moves don't always work and you need to have more than one in your bag of tricks. While running might work great for a 20 something or even an older person who jogs a lot, it's chances drop when someone is 50 and not in the greatest shape. It also drops when there are multiple opponents.
  Also, where are ya gonna run to on a train/bus?
  
  So run if you can, just don't assume that will always get you home free.
  
  
• Just give them the money
  
  Sure, try that, but I can't tell you how many news stories I've read about people who handed over the money and then were beaten/killed because the crack/meth head loser either didn't think they gave him enough, or was just vicious.
  
  
• If he has a knife, you'll get cut
  
  See "give them the money" above. If they are not happy with the money you turned over and you can't out run them how are you not going to get cut? Your chances are better if you let them know by showing your knife that they are going to get cut.
  
  
• YOU'RE WRONG, YOU'RE WRONG, because Joe Karate at iknoweverythingselfdefense.com said so!
  
  OooooOo, Hong Kong Phooey said I was wrong, gotta concede immediately...not!
  
  I think some of these martial arts guys have been doing it so long they are not factoring in that everyone isn't like them. Sure Karate Dan can head kick someone and then run, good for him, but he's not considering that most likely some 50 year old guy can't do that and can't run very fast or long either.
  
  Just because some expert says something doesn't mean they are always right, and in the case of self defense if they are using the word never take that advice with a huge grain of salt.
  

So my advice on knife defense is of course try the alternatives first, but never, say never.

Welfare vs Jerkwork

Hmm, Joe Sixpack high school grad has a dilemma. Which should he do, walk 100 miles to the welfare office, or down the street to start an exciting career at Macci D's! Let's do a comparison of welfare, and jerkwork.

Welfare/SSI is the door to the magic kingdom of government handouts. Why welfare over a jerkwork job? Well

• With welfare you are eligible for food stamps, with a minimum wage full time jerk job you "make too much money"
  
• Wefare recipient is eligible for discount/free housing via section 8 or public housing, full time jerkwork guy "makes too much money"
  
• Welfare leech gets free phone, jerkwork dude, you guessed it "makes too much money"
  
• Program may have been discontinued, but for a while welfare leech got a free car, jerkwork dude has to buy his own of of his peanut paycheck, then its $$$$$ in auto repairs if it doesn't pass picky Mass inspection
  
• Welfare leech gets free health care, under Obama care jerkwork dude is considered to "make too much money" for any government assistance, and will be forced to pay $50 to $100 A WEEK for private insurance or face penalties.
  
• Of course free money - Welfare leech doesn't even have to pick up a check, they get a credit like ebt card and the account gets refilled every month. Jerkwork dude works a MIN of 40 hours a week for a peanut paycheck, while welfare leech watches Maury on cable tv.
  
• Pity vs ridicule - The same liberals who so pity the welfare leech that they even oppose pictures on the ebt cards to root out fraud look down on jerkwork dude with scorn and derision.

Welfare wins! No surprise there, lol.
Maybe a little more help for low income WORKING people and A LOT LESS handouts to welfare leeches would change that.