Laquan McDonald right? I bet anyone right now there will not be a first degree murder conviction in this case. Unless they find a note written by the cop that says "I'll kill any nigger I come across tonight." there's no way they'll get first degree. This seems like a case where the prosecution went overboard intentionally on the charge knowing they wouldn't get a conviction, but want to make the system seem like it has accountability. Or maybe Illinois allows the jury to convict on a lesser charge? I think that cop is guilty as shit, but if it were up to me, and prudence, he would get voluntary manslaughter.
1) The same way you get jurors for any sensational crime that is well known. 2) In short, absolutely, yes. Anything related to to city or state level government in Chicago or IL is corrupt as the day is long.
Sigh. Four dead at Colorado Planned Parenthood, including a cop. Shooter in custody. Considering everything going on in America right now, this right here is a perfect storm of shit.
I sometimes think about getting a place out in the country and getting a vchip/internet filters that block everything but porn.
So the Planned Parenthood shooting is pretty terrible. I feel like people are not talking about it as much I thought they would be, which is strange considering for all intents and purposes its a terrorist act. As abhorrent as I think abortion is (which is what the guy was raving about apparently), this guy is a fucking lunatic. Both sides are predictably drawing competing conclusions on his motivations, obviously.
Well, one side is calling the guy a psycho terrorist amped up by violent rhetoric. The other side is blaming a women's health provider for being wicked and bringing it on themselves. I can't speak for TV media, but social media and internet sources are covering nothing but this event. Let's not demure here, we know why he chose PP. Once more, a white guy with a gun shot up a place where people are supposed to be safe. God help us all when Mike Huckabee is the only GOP candidate to call it what it is: terrorism. Granted, he went on to rail against PP and abortion, but take what you can get. On the bright side of all this, everyone has shut the fuck up about the refugees being ISIS in disguise. Edit: It just occurred to me, why are there even SIDES? A dude with a gun murdered people in a doctor's office. How the fuck are there sides to this? "Well, he killed a bunch of people with (ostensibly) legal gun, BUT..." What the fuck, why is there even a "but" involved? Fuck that shit. Women getting a constitutionally protected service shouldn't be scrutinized any more than a responsible gun owner. These women aren't burying their newborns alive and these gun owners aren't murdering people. This is all divisive political and religious nonsense.
We average a mass shooting a little under one per day. The planned parenthood shooting strikes me as the logical conclusion to the propaganda video Carly Fiorina described (where ghoulish doctors were dissecting a live infant for its brain apparently). The only problem is that said video a) doesn't really exist and b) never reflected anything PP does. In other words if you vilify something to that extent, someone will take matters into their own hands. This shooting is a result of bad journalism, bullshit religious issues crowding the politics of women's health (and them cranking it to eleven by equating abortion to murder), and someone who is so ideologically far gone he truly believed the right thing to do to preserve life was to shoot a bunch of people in a clinic. My personal views aside, if you don't call this domestic terrorism then you are a coward, a racist, or both.
He said "no more baby parts" as he was arrested. What do we make of those people who made those videos earlier this year? They intentionally misrepresented Planned Parenthood and used clever edits to advance an agenda and stir up a moral controversy about a practice that is necessary for research and learning. I don't want to say that this shooting definitely happened because of those people, and even if this were his true motivation, I wouldn't say those people are criminally responsible. However, women's health clinics and their staff have been a target of domestic terrorism for quite a while. Perhaps rather than wringing our hands and whingeing about "well, you know, this doesn't look good on Planned Parenthood", we should reconsider our opinions of people who fan the flames of extremism and intolerance when we already know that murder, bombing and arson are weapons being used against providers of women's health care.
Christ is it even possible for anyone to view something objectively anymore? This has been stated quite a bit by the detractors, but its pretty clear what they are saying in the videos. Saying that its "creative editing" is just bullshit. The film makers surely wanted to make Planned Parenthood look bad. Planned Parenthood helped by making themselves look pretty bad. I get that people want to legitimize whatever their biased tendencies are, but its getting silly. And its interesting that some of you are quick to make leap that its creating extremism (which I agree it is) but you'll make the exact opposite argument when it comes to Islamic terrorism.
I'm bolding these two remarks in your post simply to support a bit what Juice is saying. It's very difficult - not just here, but in conversations with friends, in the legislature, and everywhere - to have a rational discussion because of bias The first comment about mass shootings seems to imply that on average once a day some nut job is shooting up a mall or school or doctor's office with some political motivation. I thought that number was high, so I Google for some support. The places that I saw that gave statistics to support that number do not differentiate between what the guy at PP did from a gang-related shooting outside a bar. Neither is acceptable. Human life should be valued more than that, the shooters have something wrong with their brains or thought processes, and guns were involved; but, those aren't the same types of crimes. The second comment seems to imply that only religious people (or at least people with "bullshit religious issues") are opposed to abortion. First of all, that's not true. Second of all, there are plenty of people who are opposed to abortion based on their religious convictions, but don't ever think shooting up a doctor's office is acceptable.
I think it's also worth mentioning that just because someone is opposed to abortion, that does not necessarily mean they feel that it's ok to interject into women's health issues. The two issues are separate in my opinion.
That does not excuse his actions any more than it excused James Holmes, Storm Roof, McVeigh, or Ted Kaczynski. The latter two most definitely viewed in the public as terrorists. Ole Ted is probably closest to this guy's mindset and that man definitely does not get a pass because of his mental instability. It will be interesting to see exactly what vernacular is used to describe Robert Dear and in what context. Because the majority of these GOP guys have not commented on this because it involves two of their hot button non-issues: terrorism and abortions; and a third issue being guns and a coalesced national gun database (WHICH ALREADY EXISTS). I really don't see how anyone can make excuses concerning these issues. Every fear mongering, pants shitting issue of the past year has just been proven indefatigably false at the cost of 3 more lives and 9 more maimed. I am definitely making political statements here: the right wing have lost their goddamned minds and this is what their bullshit rhetoric has produced YET AGAIN, MORE DEAD AMERICANS. *middle finger not directed at anyone here*
So wait, with all of that phone tapping and internet tracking the NSA couldn't stop this? I thought they were doing it for our safety? I thought they were doing it to prevent terrorism? I can't believe it, I gave up more of my freedom and I didn't become safer. Color me shocked. Well, I guess I will need to give up even more freedoms to become even safer, maybe even more free than I was before.
Planned Parenthood charged administrative fees for providing specimens for research purposes. I suppose I'm biased because my general field of work and education has required dead baby parts at times. Maybe you should go check your own biases about those videos. I'll give you a helping hand: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=planned+parenthood+creative+editing And let's not beat around the bush: there is a well-established track record of violence against women's health clinics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence#United_States Imagine if there were a track record of violence, intimidation and threats made against a particular group by extremists, and you made a deceptive video to make them look even worse. Sure, you're not criminally liable, but a group of people who claim the moral high ground on a debate about the preservation of life should hold themselves to some standards. I guess you'll try to conflate my opinions with unrelated opinions expressed by other people on other topics, but please tell me where I've made excuses for extremist Islamic preachers and have made apologetics for Islamic terrorists. I'd really like to know.
I think he might be referring to the fact that the babies' and the organs they were trying to save during the abortion weren't just clumps of cells. The "selling" part was always a crock. In true modern day internet argument fashion I'll post this: Should BLM hold themselves to some standards for the actions of some nutter?
Your snide bullshit pulled up results from TPM and Media Matters, some of the most left-wing blogosphere garbage out there that's taken seriously by almost no one with two brain cells to rub together, and you expect them to be accepted as legitimate sources when no one else does? Would you accept Breitbart and NRO as sources also? That's not providing factual sources, that's you satisfying your own confirmation bias. Watch the videos. Listen to what they say. How could that possibly be edited? Or have you seen the conveniently missing uncut raw footage somehow? But hey you dubiously need body parts for work or something, so the videos must be edited. And I don't quite get your straw man bullshit either, especially since I clearly stated that the shooting was horrible, the guy is crazy, and the rhetoric is a contributing factor of the crazy guy acting crazy. You're equating the nature of the videos as a purported justification for the shooting, which was never made by anyone.
Tone it down, fellas. This is partly the media's fault, because they were not objectively reporting the news regarding Planned Parenthood's activities. This is partly the fault of an inflammatory ideology that equates Planned Parenthood to brutal sadistic murderers. This is mostly the lack of any moderation regarding this issue, which is characteristic of a religious issue. That is, to these people,it is a life or death heaven or hell decision that they are personally responsible for...each and every time. This is also the fault of a Right wing that was all too eager to vilify and demonize a group like this. To be fair, PP is the perfect villain to the right wings rhetoric and deserves fair criticism, just like any other public entity. However, the right wings rhetoric has gone too far into turning middle Americans into victims who believe they are being persecuted and their beliefs flouted. The scary thing is that this rift shows no signs of healing. The white, Herero, Christian majority that comprised the GOP base firmly believes that their way of life is under attack...and it is. Things like religion, sexual orientation and race matter less (note: they totally still matter just not as much) than ever before. The suburban, middle class landscape is bleak and crumbling and these people are desperate for a scapegoat: Mexicans, gays, atheists, etc. When they find one, things like this will happen or worse.
I don't know how else to explain this to you: when adults speak amongst adults, they speak differently than they do when speaking with children. When I discuss an issue with a peer, it is different than when I discuss an issue with my boss. When professionals speak to professionals about a subject that is controversial and difficult, they speak differently than they would when speaking with lay people. I could have tape recorded conversations from various aspects of my work that probably could have made headlines if somebody wanted to, because your average lay person does not understand how end-of-life issues work, what a do-not-resuscitate order really means, or how an ICU works; the average lay person understands even less the intersection of all three of them. There is a reason public relations exists as a job, and there are innumerate professions where the ordinary lay person just wouldn't understand or properly contextualize what has happened or what has been said if they had access to raw footage, let alone edited footage. There seems to me a difference between the transcripts of edited and raw footage with regard to these videos. I would also appreciate if you refrained from saying that I dubiously need body parts for work or something; I don't need body parts in my day-to-day work, but I have viewed them as part of my learning, and they are important to research. Vitally important. I have seen fetuses and several month old babies sliced up and put on display and that is done because people need to know those things, they are tested on those things as part of their professional development, and sometimes they do research on those things to better other people's lives. I won't pretend that I wasn't shocked or disturbed by seeing them, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind as to the scientific rigour and intellectual seriousness with which they were presented. Similarly, professionals who worked in what was once one of the busiest trauma hospitals in the world (Kandahar Airfield) have shown me pictures - as part of presentations and lectures - from various aspects of their work there; sometimes it is pictures of patients in rough shape, and sometimes it is people smiling with kevlar helmets and bulletproof vests during mortar attacks. Shall we edit their presentations and only show them smiling? Show only how they dispassionately say that people "expired" from "hypovolemia", and then how they give a thumbs up at a care package from home? Someone could look at that and decide that it simply couldn't have possibly been fabricated from editing. With regards to my "straw man bullshit", the gunman was muttering "no more baby parts" as he was arrested, and this has been reported in multiple media outlets. Unless there are other high-profile videos about Planned Parenthood's involvement with fetal tissue donation, it would seem he was making some reference to these videos.