What a stupid pig (I know, I know, that is like saying one is a “stupid idiot“).
You don’t need to be a physics major to know that twice 0.08 is not 0.016, it is 0.16.
The cop gets pissed because he thinks this guys lied to him about how many beers he had, when he is the one that isn’t capable of processing grade school level maff.
And if only one life is saved, then blah, blah, blah…
The current allowable BAC level is 0.08 but through the genius of government statistics they determined that a person with 0.05 is less impaired than if they had a BAC of 0.08. What a mind-blowing revelation.
The question no one asks is whether Person A while being highly impaired is actually a better and safer driver than Person B with not an ounce in their system. Not everyone is at the same starting point before “impairment.” But that is the type of question that makes collectivists heads hurt.
Unsurprisingly, the lives that could be saved is the focus put forth but it is a front. If it is further lowered it will not be for “safety”, it will be so the thugocracy can pull over more people, collect more fines, more court fees and infringe on our rights more freely and completely. And if the issue is met with any resistance from liberty-minded people they will be labeled as pro-drunk driving and pro-death for being against this this valiant collectivist effort (sarcasm end).
This is in our future, make sure you have your “papers” handy.
John Giles/PA wire file
The National Transportation Safety Bureau recommended Tuesday to lower the legal blood-alcohol content level to .05 from .08.
WASHINGTON – The National Transportation Safety Board voted to recommend to states that they lower the blood-alcohol content that constitutes drunk driving.
Currently, all 50 states have set a BAC level of .08, reflecting the percentage of alcohol, by volume, in the blood. If a driver is found to have a BAC level of .08 or above, he or she is subject to arrest and prosecution.
The NTSB recommends dropping that to a BAC level of .05.
Each year, nearly 10,000 people die in alcohol-related traffic accidents and 170,000 are injured, according to the NTSB. While that’s a big improvement from the 20,000 who died in alcohol-related accidents 30 years ago, it remains a consistent threat to public safety.
Karolyn Nunnallee, a mother who lost her daughter Patty in the deadliest drunk-driving accident in in 1988 and served as a president of MADD, speaks ahead of the 25 anniversary of the Carrollton, Ky., bus collision.
The recommendation prompted immediate criticism from restaurant trade groups.
“This recommendation is ludicrous,” said Sarah Longwell, managing director of American Beverage Institute. “Moving from 0.08 to 0.05 would criminalize perfectly responsible behavior.
“Further restricting the moderate consumption of alcohol by responsible adults prior to driving does nothing to stop hardcore drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel.”
The United States, Canada and Iraq are among a small handful of countries that have set the BAC level at .08. Most countries in Europe, including Russia, most of South America and Australia, have set BAC levels at .05 to constitute drunken driving.
When Australia dropped its BAC level from .08 to .05, provinces reported a 5-18 percent drop in traffic fatalities.
The NTSB reports that at .05 BAC, some drivers begin having difficulties with depth perception and other visual functions. At .07, cognitive abilities become impaired.
At .05 BAC, the risk of having an accident increases by 39 percent. At .08 BAC, the risk of having an accident increases by more than 100 percent.
The NTSB believes that if all 50 states changed their standard to .05, nearly 1,000 lives could be saved each year. It is also considering other steps to help bring down the death rates on America’s roads.
The NTSB is an investigative agency that advocates on behalf of safety issues. It has no legal authority to order any change to state or federal law. It would be up to individual states whether to accept the NTSB’s recommendation, and up to the Department of Transportation whether to endorse the recommendations.
The last move from .10 to .08 BAC levels took 21 years for each state to implement.
Original HERE.
Aren’t we all a village? Aren’t we all our “brother’s keeper”? So why can’t I or some costumed thugocrat stick a gun in your face so you make the “right” decision? And if you still don’t, why not just run over you with a car…, it’s for the “greater” good, right?
And if you read this and think “well he shouldn’t have run away”, then you are part of the problem and should ES.
By eric
That’s what happened to Deland, Florida resident Marlon Brown about a week ago. Brown was killed – run over – by Deland Police Officer James Harris, who pursued him with his squad car after Brown tried to run away on foot after being stopped over a seatbelt violation (see here).
Brown – according to news reports a popular neighborhood barber – hadn’t done anything to anyone. His “crime” was to have asserted self-ownership, which in a slave society is the gravest offense there is. He probably thought to himself: I am a grown man. No one has any more right to demand I wear a seatbelt than they have a right to insist I eat my veggies or wear a sweater because it’s cold out. Whether eating veggies or wearing a sweater on a cold day – or “buckling up for safety” – is a good idea or a bad idea is completely irrelevant insofar as it’s my self that’s involved and thus, no one else’s business. Certainly not a cop’s. Aren’t cops supposed to fight crime? When did the job of a cop become parenting or life-coaching at gunpoint? Who the hell are these people to point guns at me over my decision to not “buckle up”?
Brown likely had such thoughts as he saw the wig-wag lights of Officer Harris in his rearview. Then, he probably got mad. I know I would have. You are driving along, minding your business, causing no harm to anyone. Then you glance up and see the bright lights – and the buzz-cut head – of Officer Unfriendly. This costumed menace is about to threaten you with violence and – at minimum – shove a piece of paper in your face that will demand what amounts to a ransom payment, or else. The “or else” being a jail cell. Over… nothing. A non-crime.
And so, Brown attempted to flee. It ended up costing him his life.
Mind, “officer safety” was never threatened. Brown merely tried to get away from an obnoxious costumed thug who had no business bothering him in the first place. But that was sufficient to justify summary execution by motor vehicle.
It is not an isolated happenstance anymore. Not a month goes by – oftentimes, hardly a week goes by – without some godawful report of a citizen being killed by cops over…. nothing. A murder – and that’s exactly what this was – prefaced by some petty affront to the authority of someone in a state-issued costume. Talk back – hell, dare to question – and the Tazers come out. Attempt to ward off the blows – and you will hear Stop Resisting! as the blows continue to rain down. They may – or may not – stop at merely a beating, a kicked-in skull.
Marlon Brown learned just how far it can go. A witness to the event, Sabrina Waldron, stated: “After the car hit Marlon and landed on him the back end of it was up in the air.” Thus ended Brown’s life.
Was it worth it? Was it right?
A man is dead – for no reason. Or rather, for a very bad reason.
In a sane society, Officer Harris would have had no legal pretext for bothering Marlon Brown. He may have looked askance at him for electing to not wear his seat belt – just as I may look askance at a grossly obese person ordering a double cheeseburger and 64 ounce Coke – but insofar as Officer Harris’ legal authority was concerned, he (in a sane society) would be powerless to intervene. That’s how it ought to be. For the same reason most of us – dear god, let us hope – do not want costumed men with guns rousting us out of bed to go for “healthy” morning jogs or supervising our dinner menus, threatening us with nightsticks and Tazers and guns if we don’t abide by their “recommendations.”
And yes, that is where we are headed – if people (enough people) do not come to their senses. If enough people don’t learn to discipline their inner busybody – if only for their own sake. Because most definitely, what goes around will come around. You may find it appalling that some people choose to go unbuckled. Resist the desire to insist they do so. Because if you do insist, you’ve just given license to the inner busybodies of all those people out there – among whom, no doubt, there will be busybodies who just can’t abide something about the way you live your life. . . some “risky” hobby, some “unhealthy” habit. No small corner of what used to be your life will be left to you. Chained to a collective – compelled to Submit & Obey.
And the antidote to this horror? Self-ownership. You own you. I own me. Neither of us has any claim on the other that’s enforceable at gunpoint. Feel free to suggest. To recommend. But when it comes to the use of force, the one and only legitimate justification is self-defense. Otherwise, leave me alone – and I will leave you alone.
If that had been the law in Deland, Florida, Marlon Brown would still be alive.
And James Harris would not be a murderer.
Throw it in the Woods?
Original HERE.
I don’t think the cop was screwing with the driver. I understand the driver was probably only driving the speed limit because the cop was there but that still doesn’t excuse him from putt-putting in the left lane. IMHO, this driver is an asshole for driving slowly in the most left lane on a FOUR-lane highway. I was taught German driving manners and road habits (and practice them) so I have no sympathy for this type of person.
I don’t agree with the cop tail-gating the Civic but I don’t see a problem with the cop “herding” this asshole over to where he belongs, the right lane. He gave him a chance to move over before turning his lights on. I have been behind many people like that and the only way to get around them without a state issued badge authorizing coercion is to then pass on the right which can be unsafe and often leads to this type of driver accelerating to match your speed.
Drivers like the person in the Civic are the flakes/clovers that think they are being safe for following the rules but in fact are gumming up highways, slowing the movement of traffic, creating rage in other motorists and generally contributing to making the highways a less safe way to travel.
I will do something I don’t often do on this site, I will commend a cop for doing something useful. Well done pig, well done.
I read this story posted by Yojimbo on The Burning Platform and even I couldn’t believe it. I have spent the last 45 minutes trying to find proof that this is a hoax story in the hopes that it isn’t true; it simply can’t be true.
I have read multiple sources even including Coachella’s own website for the festival stating and describing that the police checkpoints will be 1/4 to 1 mile away from the concert entrance.
I have failed to debunk the story, I have found these articles (the last one is the festival official site):
http://www.coachella.com/festival-passes/about-wristbands
RFID bracelets are being required for entrance into the concert. This I have no problem with, it is a private event. But for this event the checkpoints are as far as 1 mile around the entrance. The result of this is that people who aren’t attending the event who live less than a mile away are required to have RFID tags to enter their own homes and private property.
Read and think about that statement again, I’ll repeat it because it bears repeating:
The result of this is that people who aren’t attending the event who live less than a mile away are required to have RFID tags to enter their own homes and private property.
I consider this a new low for a society and nation which has already fallen so far away from liberty.
Cody Wilson of Defense Distibuted has released video of a successful test of the first fully (almost fully) printed firearm. I have read that there is a piece of metal inside of it so that it complies with the Undetectable Firearms Act as well as a nail that acts as the firing pin. Everything else is printed from ABS plastic using a printer that cost approx $8k.
It is easy to be unimpressed because it is single shot and the video only shows what seems to be the new “Liberator” shooting .22LR. It looks to be nothing more than a home-made “Zip-Gun.” I have read that there will be multiple calibers and barrels (see vid to see them in the case). Others think this will instantly change everything. I think both are somewhat foolish. People have been making their own firearms for quite a long time but to do this yourself today either requires exemplorary artisanship or a firearm that is rudimentary at best (i.e. pipe guns) which tend to resemble a modern flintlock.
3D printing offers the possibility of not compromising nearly as much. The printer allows complex components to be manufactured simply, repeatable and quickly but the strength of the materials is still very much in question. There are even printers that use metal (and cost much more than $8k) but is the bonding process utilized by the printer as strong as say, starting off with a solid block of aluminum? Rifling of a barrel may be the biggest hurdle and quite possibly insurmountable.
It is no doubt that an all ABS gun will not last long but this barely ACT 1. Kudos to Cody and his team. I suggest everyone help by downloading these files regardless if you ever plan on using them and help make sure the “Liberator” doesn’t go away like the “Liberty Dollar.”
NOTE: After further reading I found that the round fired was actually a .380. It isn’t an awfully powerful round but carries significantly more validity than a gun that fires a .22lr.
Eric Peters with a great article that shows what our owners have in store for us by further destroying our right to unobstructed travel. One of the most famous previous examples is the “claymore in your steering wheel” (great term by Eric) they call an airbag.
Now they bascially want to mandate we use our cell phones as a secondary key to start and operate our cars? Where is the limit?
So there is the potential that every car has one of these installed; well that only works under the assumption that every person has a cell phone, which not all people who drive have. I assume there will be a beauracratic process of getting a form approved by some ass-clown to get an exemption.
And what if you simply don’t want to bring your cellphone with you? In theory this will force you to bring your cell phone/GPS tracking device with you whenever you drive. Your owners need to know where you are going and what you are doing at all times.
What if you are out and lose the phone. Not only do you not have your phone but now you can’t drive your car. Absolutely idiotic.
Even with this system, what will stop someone like me who has an old iPhone that no longer has a cell-phone package but still works as an iPod from being plugged in and negating the entire system? There could be a small industry created that would build fake cell phones that look real but whose only function is to bypass this POS technological infringement of freedom.
Now, to be clear; I hate it when I see people are talking on their phone or texting while driving. But if they do this and cause no harm I don’t see why it is a problem. This is just another example of how TPTB think they can manage everyone’s life by destroying freedom to achieve safety.
The irony of all this is that the government will mandate a $400 device/cost onto the people whether they want it or not and more than likely a $5-10 piece of electronics will negate it anyway.
The only thing missing (so far) from our lil’ hitlers in charge, is a mention of how this will “protect the children.”
By eric
The jihad against sail fawn gabbling – and worst of all, texting – is about to bear fruit in the form of the ORIGOSafe (see here). It is a dock – an interlock – built into your car (perhaps your next new car) that will prevent the engine from being started unless you first insert your sail fawn into said dock.
For safety’s sake, of course.
“April is Distracted Driving Month,” lectures ORIGOSafe Founder Clay Skelton. “No matter how much people talk about the dangers of hand-held texting, especially among teens, driving isn’t getting any safer… .” He drones on for awhile more along the same lines before coming to the denouement: His device – installed in every new car. You can almost see the double dollar signs in his pupils.
Now, he doesn’t actually say the word. You know the word. Mandate. But where else is this headed? The concept is far too profitable to be lefty to the vagaries of the (semi) free market, to (what’s left of) consumer choice. Because – no doubt – very few consumers would freely choose to have their cars mauled with ORIGOSafe.
After all, would you?
“For only (italics added) $279″ – plus another $125 to install the filthy bugger – “you can have peace of mind knowing your driver is focused on the road, with the phone safely docked in the ORIGO,” trumpets the company web site.
Yep, “only” another $400 or so out the window – on top of the air bags ($1,500 per car according to most estimates) the back-up cameras ($200 per car) the tire pressure monitors (another hundred, maybe) all the rest of it.
But, you’ll be safer!
That’s the magic word. The word that justifies anything – cost no object. And which renders individual choice irrelevant. No, anathema.
If it’s “safe” then it’s a must do. Just what the doctor ordered.
And that’s what worries me most – the ordered part. My Spider Sense is tingling. I just know – with depressing certitude – that ORIGOSafe will tread the same path already well-worn by other safety items, once optional (failed) now “successful” (because mandatory).
Air bags, for instance. These claymores in the steering wheel would not be in every new car absent the order they be installed.
Same goes for the back-up cameras recently mandated.
Most people, left to their own devices, would elect not to purchase this gear. Not an opinion – a fact. Seat belts were available as optional equipment before they became mandatory equipment. Most people – when they still could – skipped them. Same with air bags when they first appeared in the early ’70s. Same with back-up cameras – which have been around for more than ten years but which many people didn’t buy because they couldn’t justify the additional cost and didn’t feel the need.
Unsafe! Intolerable! It cannot be permitted!
Mandates, for all! 
Did you know that several automakers already have in-car Breathalyzers in the works? Yes, indeed. The same interlocks currently fitted to cars owned by convicted “drunk” drivers are almost certainly going to be incorporated into the cars of non-convicts (that’s us) in order to . . . keep us safe. After all, it’s unendurable to imagine that anyone might drive drunk. Therefore, everyone must submit to being handled as presumptively drunk until proved not-drunk.
That premise has already been accepted by the courts – and much more unfortunately, by many people too. So, there will be little objection to mandatory in-car Breathalyzers, when those get rolled out. After all, if it’s okay to stop people at random and compel them to prove they aren’t drunk – well, why not insist they have Breathalyzers installed in their cars? You don’t support drunk driving . . . do you?
These same people will not only embrace – no, demand – that sail fawn interlocks be installed in all new cars. Just as they have insisted that all new cars be fitted with air bags, back-up cameras and tire pressure monitors. Because other people (not them, of course) cannot be trusted to act responsibly and competently. They need – in the insufferably oleaginous phraseology of one of their leaders – to be “nudged” in the right direction.
Well, among other things, I don’t even own a sail fawn – and hope to god I never will. What happens when they drop off a brand-new 2016 car for me to test drive . . . and I can’t even get the damned thing to start because I don’t have a sail fawn to insert into the ORIGOSafe?
I guess it’ll be my cue to exit, stage left. They’ve already sucked most of the joy out of driving anyhow – by taking the driver out of the equation. The latest new cars pre-empt the driver in a multitude of ways – transforming him, with each new model year, into a passenger. If one squints a little and looks hard into the distance, one can see the driverless car coming. Just another couple of years now, at most.
Meanwhile, we’ll all be so much safer (albeit $400 poorer) with our sail fawns securely docked into our ORIGOS.
Next up: Hannibal Lecter-style mouth guards to keep us from talking while driving.
Safety first!
Throw it in the Woods?
Original HERE.
“For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.”
~Jonathan Swift~
All I will say is that there is no “onion” and the wording is very well done.
(AMERICAN FREE PRESS -BOSTON)
Police and National Guard units seeking to confiscate a cache of recently banned assault weapons were ambushed Sunday by elements of a para-military right wing extremist faction. Military and law enforcement sources estimate that 72 were killed and more than 200 injured before government forces were compelled to withdraw.
Speaking after the clash, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Gage declared that the extremist militia faction has citizens who have links to the radical right wing tax protest movement. Gage blamed the militia for recent incidents of vandalism directed against internal revenue offices.
The governor who described the group’s organizers as “terrorists” , issued an executive order authorizing the summary arrest of any individual who has interfered with the governments efforts to secure law and order. The law enforcement team augmented by elements of the National Guard, were sent to raid a militia arsenal after widespread refusal of right wing extremists to turn over recently outlawed assault weapons. This decision followed a meeting in early July between government and law enforcement which authorized the confiscation of the illegal arms, known as the weapons of choice among criminals and militias.
One government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, pointed out “that none of these people would have been killed had right wing extremist obeyed the law and turned over the weapons voluntarily”.
Police and government forces initially succeeded in confiscating a large supply of outlawed weapons and ammunition. However, troops attempting to seize arms and ammunition in Lexington met with resistance from heavily armed militia extremist who had been tipped off regarding the government’s plans.
During a tense stand-off in Lexington ‘s town park, National Guard Colonel Francis Smith, commander of the government operation, ordered the armed group to surrender and return to their homes. The impasse was broken by a single shot, which was reportedly fired by one of the right wing extremist. Eight civilians were killed in the ensuing exchange.
Ironically, the local citizens blamed the government forces rather than the extremists for the civilian deaths. Before order could be restored, heavily armed militia groups from surrounding areas had descended upon the police and guard units. Colonel Smith, finding his forces over matched by militia mobs, ordered a retreat.
Governor Gage has called upon citizens to support the state/national joint task force in its effort to restore law and order. The governor has also demanded the surrender of those responsible for planning and leading the attack against the government. Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, who have been identified as “ringleaders” of the extremist militia faction remain at large.
A Lesson in History; one who is labeled a terrorist is another’s historical patriotic hero.
I read this HERE.
No one is free or safe when government/the state is unrestrained. That is why our “owners” love unrestrained power, it allows them to turn our rights into priveleges that can be granted or denied per their whim.
Boston and Freedom
by Andrew P. Napolitano
Recently by Andrew P. Napolitano: Taxation Is Theft
The government’s fidelity to the Constitution is never more tested than in a time of crisis. The urge to do something – or to appear to be doing something – is nearly irresistible to those whom we have employed to protect our freedom and to keep us safe. Regrettably, with each passing violent crisis – Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, 9/11, Newtown and now the Boston Marathon – our personal freedoms continue to slip away, and the government itself remains the chief engine of that slippage.
The American people made a pact with the devil in the weeks and months following 9/11 when they bought the Bush-era argument that by surrendering liberty they could buy safety. But that type of pact has never enhanced either liberty or safety, and its fruits are always bitter.
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It was written to create and to restrain the federal government. Every person who works for any government in the U.S. has taken an oath of fidelity to the Constitution, not unlike the presidential oath, which induces a promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.
The chief and final interpreter of the Constitution is the Supreme Court. One may not always agree with its interpretations, but they are, as legal scholars sometimes say, “infallible because they are final.” Those interpretations are particularly final when we have relied on them for generations.
One of those rulings underscores the primacy of constitutional protections, no matter the environment in which they are claimed. Indeed, after the Civil War had ended and President Lincoln was dead, the Supreme Court in a case called Ex parte Milligan (1866) rebuked and reversed Lincoln’s unilateral assaults on personal freedoms in the North and in so doing reminded us that the Constitution was written for good times and for bad, and its protections cover all persons at all times and under all circumstances who have any contact, voluntary or not, with the government.
The court has also ruled consistently throughout the 20th century that just as the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech, it also protects the freedom not to engage in speech. One hundred years after Milligan, the Supreme Court first recognized and articulated the constitutional basis for the right to remain silent in the Miranda case. That right is a natural right that is inherent in all human beings, and it is arguably articulated in the First and Fifth Amendments.
But since the court understood that most folks don’t know that they have the right to remain silent in the face of government demands for speech, it mandated that all governments – local, state and federal – comply with their affirmative obligation to tell everyone in their custody whom their agents wish to interrogate about the existence of this right, as well as the obligation of the government to honor it faithfully once it has been invoked. That has consistently been the law of the land for the past 50 years.
The pact with the devil occurred in the fall of 2001, when then President George W. Bush and Congress decided that they would use the machinery of the federal government to secure safety, rather than liberty. So, the Bush-inspired Patriot Act permits federal agents to write their own search warrants, and the Bush-inspired new FISA statutes permit search warrants of some Americans’ phone calls without a showing of probable cause as the Constitution requires, and the Bush-era intimidation of telephone service providers permitted our overseas spies to snoop on our domestic phone calls. None of this has enhanced safety, and all of it has diminished liberty.
In the Obama administration, the devil has demanded more. In the past five years, we have seen federal spies capturing the keystrokes on our computers, local police using federal dollars to install cameras and microphones on nearly every street corner, and, the latest lamentable phenomenon, the use of false emergencies to undermine freedom.
This began at the Mexican border, where immigration agents have been told to interrogate first and Mirandize later. It moved to Washington, where we have an attorney general who has told federal agents that the extremely limited public safety exception to the Miranda rule can exist for up to 48 hours. And it proceeded to the spectacle of well-meaning FBI agents being told to reject their training and the common understanding of well-regarded constitutional law and interrogate a half-drugged suspect with a hole in his throat whom they were about to charge with mass murder, in utter defiance of Miranda.
The public safety exception to Miranda goes to the safety of the officers and others present at the moment of arrest. It permits the police to express an excited utterance (“Where’s the gun?”) in an effort to protect themselves before securing the defendant and before advising him of his rights. According to the Supreme Court, it can last for just a few seconds.
The Obama administration’s radical reinterpretation of the natural and constitutional right to remain silent is unprecedented, terrifying and disingenuous. Think about this: The governor of Massachusetts, the superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, the mayor of Boston, the Boston police commissioner, and the head of the Boston FBI office all proclaimed on Saturday morning that the danger had passed and Boston and its suburbs could return to normal. Yet the attorney general in Washington told his FBI agents in Boston to disregard those officials and instead pretend that the public safety was still jeopardized and then expand a 10-second window to 72 hours.
The Constitution was written to preserve freedom by restraining the government. The courts from time to time have required the government to respect the natural law, as well. But when the attorney general arbitrarily changes the law to suit the demands of the people when they are weeping, it fundamentally undermines our freedoms. And a pact with the devil is the most dangerous of all, because his appetite can never be sated.
Original HERE.
