Brett Kavanaugh is lucky he didn’t get a red light camera ticket.
When you get one of these in the mail, you haven’t merely been accused. You’ve already been processed. There is a bureaucratic but threatening demand for money – right now – based on a declaration that you – the registered owner of the vehicle – are guilty of having run a red light. Or driving faster than the speed limit.
Even though it’s not been proved you were even driving.
Even though you never had an opportunity to defend yourself against the accusation.
Nothing has actually been proved.
You are, however, the registered owner of the car. This serves as proof you are the only person who could have been driving it when the alleged offense you’ve already been convicted of having committed occurred.
. . . unless you provide evidence that someone else was driving it when the offense occurred.
Put another way, the only way to establish your innocence is to provide proof of someone else’s guilt. You become the de facto assistant DA in your own prosecution.
Or rather, the transfer of prosecution.
It’s a nice little racket, of a piece with the government forcing every business to collect taxes on its behalf. If the business doesn’t make you pay, the government makes the business pay.
The point being that someone always pays.
Another judge recently found out about the new legal doctrine of establishing innocence by transferring guilt.
Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Ariadne Symons got a demand letter in the mail from Verra Mobility, the privately owned and for-profit company that runs the red light camera system in California.
The Judge was ordered to hand over $489 dollars because her 2007 Pontiac was photographed “running” a red light. “Running” in quotes because these cameras infamously snap pics – and trigger fines – based on the “running” of a yellow light. Yellows deliberately timed to turn red very quickly- in order to trap as many cars as possible “running” red lights.
What wasn’t shown was who was driving the judge’s car – which in pre-camera days would be a problem because of the burden on the prosecution to establish who committed the offense before convicting anyone of it.
A body is found in someone’s house. The fact that someone owns the house isn’t sufficient evidence to arrest them for murder – much less convict them – simply because a body was found in the house they happen to own.
The same principle used to apply to traffic laws as well. A cop couldn’t issue a ticket for red light running or speeding to the owner of the car, even if he saw the car run a light or exceed the speed limit.
It was necessary to pin the tail on the donkey.
And it wasn’t the obligation of the donkey to pin the tail on someone else.
The judge used these arguments in an attempt to get the ticket tossed.
Which failed.
Verra Mobility – backed by the state of California – demanded that the guilty incriminate himself.
Herself, as it turned out.
The camera had taken a picture of someone behind the wheel of Judge Symons’ car when it “ran” the red light – but it wasn’t clear who that someone was.
Symons’ husband was able to produce irrefutable evidence that he wasn’t behind the wheel on the date (and time) the transgression occurred and so couldn’t have been the person in the picture. This eliminated him. But Verra Mobility demanded the judge take his place in the driver’s seat, so to speak.
In order to assure the DMV points got assigned appropriately.
The fine was never in question.
Judge Symons even got censured for having the gall to not play ball. When the California Commission on Judicial Performance got wind of Symons’ insistence on due process, it ordered her to contact Verra Mobility (previously American Traffic Solutions) and implicate herself.
“Judge Symons knowingly assisted her husband in filing the request for trial by written declaration with the court, which was designed to have the citation dismissed and which did not identify the judge as the actual driver,” commission chairman Nanci E. Nishimura wrote.
“The judge’s conduct constitutes, at a minimum, prejudicial misconduct.”
Italics added.
When a judge gets censured – one step shy of being removed from the bench – for declining to incriminate herself and insisting that the burden of proof is the obligation of the party making an accusation – you know the deck isn’t just stacked.
It’s glued together.
But it all follows from the principle of the innocent having to disprove their guilt – which was first tendered to the American people decades ago, when other judges judged it acceptable at “safety” ands “sobriety” checkpoints.
Judge Kavanaugh was justifiably outraged about having to prove he didn’t assault the woman who said he did – and insisted what she said be believed.
But at least he wasn’t required to pin the tail on some other donkey in his stead.
Maybe next time.
…
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a few years back i loaned the truck to a friend who got a photo cite. the pic was clearly not me. i toddled to the sheriffs station where a lardy old hag demanded that i reveal the name of the driver. i let he know i was not there to possibly misidentify someone and would not be doing their job for them…i was there to prove it wasn’t ME. she reluctantly agreed that it wasn’t me and i asked that she note the cite as being dismissed asked her to make a note of the date and time as well as her department ID and get it signed by someone. you would have thought i had called her mother a whore. the nerve of me she harrumphed. i politely let her know i was able to wait for a higher up or deputy if she was unable to perform that task.
as far a judge being tormented for asserting her rights…i’m having a hard time finding sympathy as i am SURE she has PERSONALLY shit upon plenty of other folks rights over her many years. once i see this jurist make loud AND PUBLIC pronouncements as to the legality of the scam cameras i will warm to her plight. until then…welcome to our life, bitch
Guys,
I meant to comment yesterday about MY run-in with one of these devices. I was coming up on a busy, local intersection when the light was yellow. I went for it, and I got ticketed. Let me tell you, these devices are CREEPY!
They send you a ticket in the mail, citing you for running the red light. In the letter, they give you a URL where you can view camera footage. If you go through a yellow light and it changes before you get into the intersection, you’re ticketed-end of story. I played back mine in slow motion, and it turns out that I misjudged the light change by a measly 3/10 (0.3) of a second-0.3 seconds! It didn’t matter; since I breached the intersection AFTER the light changed, I got nailed. Thankfully, it wasn’t for points, so I just paid it. Even so, those things are CREEPY…
That’s one of the ways they cajole people into just paying up – by not assigning points if you don’t fight it. Take the ticket to court and no doubt points will be assigned if and when you lose. It’s all about the money, has nothing at all to do with safety. Surprisingly, in some states red light cameras have been removed on the basis that not only do they not improve safety, they increase rear-end accidents because people will slam on their brakes when the light turns yellow.
Plus, the fine isn’t big enough to justify taking off work, going to court, and fighting the ticket. Yeah, it’s a racket, but it doesn’t make sense to spend more money to prove you’re right.
Here’s a link too make everyone feel all warm and fuzzy about backup cameras.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lawn-mower-accidents-are-maiming-children-simple-fix-might-have-n1010761
Think of the children. How many will be safer when R is gone from the automobile?
Will push mowers and rickshaws become THE new technological advancements of the Roaring 2020s?
“We can’t lock our kids in kennels while we mow the lawn,” Jennifer Heim said. In 2015, her son Wyatt, then 4, lost a toe and suffered serious leg injuries when his grandfather backed over him with a riding mower in East Dubuque, Illinois. Heim said she had warned Wyatt about lawn mower safety many times. But it’s difficult to communicate the risks of amputation to a child.
Why not lock them up? They are strapped in a safety seat in a car.
Of course the kennel will have to be climate controlled with backup power. Just in case grampa forgets to loose the little ones when he finishes the lawn.
Perhaps the climate controlled child safety kennel/car seat will become standard equipment on new cars. That would also prevent this https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/feb/23/arkansas-judge-acquitted-childs-hot-car-death-can-/
Think of the tragic consequences this judge suffered because of the dangers of the Easy Bake Car Seat.
Perhaps Mr. Musk will at least make these Climate Controled Safety Kennels optional in his Teslas.
But will they be fireproof?
Now we all pay the price. My mower won’t run. It fired up and died and is dead as a nit with a new battery. It has nanny everything including turning the key back a notch to stay running while you back up. A big=ass relay for the entire nanny and engine system has taken a dump. Good luck on finding one. Gonna get a guy with a shop to rewire with an on/off switch and a pushbutton for start. FEFEFH’s
As to children not minding….my dad ran my little ass off when he was mowing. I understood and was more scared of him having to use the old razor strop than the lawnmower.
Of course it’s only cops that mete out corporal punishment now…..solely at their discretion…..of which logic and law nor human morals enter into.
Wonder how much longer until appliances such as washers and dryers get the “safety” treatment. Perhaps they’ll come standard with a button inside the drum that you have to press to confirm that “Li’l Jimmy” didn’t wander inside the machine. It would be similar to the “stowaway button” that school bus drivers are required to press to check that no kids are left in the back.
My damn stupid washer already has it. A lock that prevents opening the lid while operating. You have to shut it down to add anything you might’ve missed. Laaaaaaame!
Hi Blue,
Go shopping… they already do. When my washer croaked about four years ago and I had to get a new one, I discovered they all have an interlock that prevents opening of the lid once the cycle has started. For saaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety. Apparently, because some idiot let their toddler go for a swim. So now – per usual – we are all treated like idiots.
I had one of those for a couple of weeks.
Being used to my old washer I went to toss a couple of extra items in. Safety latch was so weak that I broke it off with a very gentle pull.
Washer would not work. Tried to bypass the safety switch but was actually made so complex that the computer in the machine cycled it every time the machine started, just to make sure it was operational I suspect. No safety signal, no wash.
Not a huge deal as it was free to me but I found the locking part online, for $90. Not worth it as the thing barely washed clothes so I always had to run it twice.
And not only that, but you can’t really fix them because of said “safety” devices. But then again, what else is new?
Traditionally it is just a switch that stops the spin cycle when the lid is opened.
If the interlock mechanism is left electrically live but mechanically disconnected that should be sufficient to defeat it unless it has a sensor. In which case the sensor would need to be fooled. It would be something simple like detect switch, hall effect, or reed switch. The first can be depressed or jumpered and the last two fooled with a magnet.
I’d like to find a kid named Jimmy, have him set the washer, get in and punch the button and shut the lid, make a vid of the entire thing. Soak Jimmy down and put a shirt and shorts on him that had just been spun dry, dig out a spot and shove him in it, then open the top and scream “Oh Jimmy, oh no! You’re wrinkled.”, then throw in some Downy and say “I’ll save you Jimmy” and start it on a new cycle. There was a time that would be funny. Now they’d send the National Guard looking for my address. Good luck since I’d make sure to use a good VPN beforehand.
Not gonna lie, this post is actually pretty disturbing. Have you considered getting some help?
Damn, 8, that is FUNNY! I’d love to see the vid 😉
Don’t forget, to keep Jimmy from getting wrinkled until you can iron him, a stint in the fridge wiull keep him till you’re ready for him! (SHHhhhhhh!!!!! Don’t want them putting inside door handles and alarms on fridges next!)
That reminds me of some of those old WB cartoons that I used to watch on VHS tapes back in the 90’s. If anyone tried producing cartoons like that now, as you said, TPTB would probably send the entire country’s militia after them.
Gahan Wilson could make some really funny stuff along these lines. Chuck, it’s called “comedy”. It’s the sort of thing one might have seen on SNL at one time.
[Pictures Mr. Bill getting tossed in the washing machine: “Ooooooooooooohhh!!!”]
Nunz, I still have a t shirt of Mr. Bill saying “noooooo”. It no longer fits but I might frame it.
Oh, I hated the nanny mowers when I was growing up – and they weren’t nearly as horrible back then. My parents wanted me to help with yardwork from a fairly young age, and once my father died I had to. But they ended up having to start the mower for me every time, because when I first started my legs weren’t quite long enough to push the clutch all the way down without coming slightly out of the seat and tripping the “is mower occupied” interlock switch.
Most annoying saaaaaaaafety “feature” on our mid-1990s vintage riding mower is that it was designed such that to back up you had to pull up and stop the blades or the engine would cut out. This made the thing all but useless for negotiating around trees and bushes. Fortunately it turned out there was a simple set of contacts that shorted out the ignition, easily defeated. (New mowers may be more complicated, or maybe not. Would rather not spend scarce $$$ on one so I just keep patching this one up.)
Never had a real problem with the seat switch but I’m heavy enough that bouncing off it has not been a problem 🙂
Well just wait until you own a business and you fire a black female in Chicago. Obvious discrimination complaint. Multiple agencies will pursue it here. The EEOC of some human rights thing. Youtre paying at least 5K. It could be 50K. But youre paying. Unless you want your entire staff interviewed privately by communists. This country had many steps of death. By far the biggest one was Lincolns war.
My country tis of thee,
Sweet land of penury,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my freedoms died!
Land where it’s illegal to drive!
From every mountain side,
Let tyranny reign!
I pledge allegiance to the flag,
Of the Communist States of America,
And to the police state, for which it stands,
One nation, under tyranny,
Divisible, with liberty and justice for none!*
*Except for TPTB, of course
Both good poems. I think I’ll create a folder to keep them in….and date each one.
I can’t come up with any sympathy for a judge getting caught up in a racket the judiciary helps run and benefits from.
The way this likely happens is that someone doesn’t like her so the ticket got processed through rather than being tossed aside in the “review” process or later.
I concur, Brent. It is very likely that she unknowingly pissed in this judge’s cornflakes at some point, and he is just taking his revenge anonymously. Of course, he could be upholding the law, unconstitutional as it may be. Almost certainly he wants to set a precedent that no one escapes the paying-paper in HIS court!
Brent,
Not just a judge….but a judge who chooses to reside AND work in California (Thus choosing to subject herself to that communism, AND to inflict it upon others).
Now THAT’S justice!
Reminds me of our WAR ON DRUGS ™..The 4TH Amendment CLEARLY STATES (as amended by real government-appointed judges) that no one, not even a COP can search your car UNLESS A JUDGE OR A DOG says it is OK…
“UNLESS A JUDGE OR A DOG says it is OK…”
My dog was OK with just about anything. As long as she got her belly rubbed.
Watched a video yesterday of 10-12 Dumbsh*ts taking the oath of enlistment into the US Marine Corps. When the oath got to the part “to defend the constitution….” I busted out laughing. The media and citizens nearby were treating them as gods. Of course when/if they get shot up or killed in some hated nation 10-12,000 miles away the media and citizens ignore them. I know this from first hand experience.
The media propaganda is good,,, I mean really good. I haven’t run into one ‘soldier’ or the parents that haven’t told me he is ‘fighting’ for our freedom.
I love my country, but hate the government. I’m not one to “wrap” myself in the Flag. I prefer to “wrap” myself with the Constitution & Bill of Rights as originally intended. Stop light cameras and road checks are the first signs of a police state. If you’re unsure of who your master is, it will be one or ones who you CANNOT dare criticize or question. That old moto I’ve heard years ago sill holds true; more laws, less freedom!
Hi Allen,
I discussed this a little with Bryan Hyde today (see link on main page for the audio). It is my contention that the modern American police state was born when the Supreme Court ruled that random checkpoints, without specific probable cause, were not “unreasonable” as prohibited by the 4th Amendment. If so, then black is white and water isn’t wet.
In any event, that precedent set the stage for what followed – what has become common practice today: Having to prove you aren’t guilty of . . . “something.”
This latest is an expansion of the idea. Now you have to find someone else to lay the guilt on – in order to avoid having it laid on yourself…
Hence the outrage over the changes in the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh had nothing to do with the outrage, aside from being a “conservative” judge. Look for the Dems to make a big deal of the SC in the 2020 general election, since they think having a 12 member panel deciding the fate of 333,000,000 people is a good idea.
Has anyone started a Ruth Bader Ginsburg death watch? Has anyone seen her since Trump pushed her down the stairs a few months ago? Can a justice who’s brain dead but still breathing still serve on the court?
Government is the opposite of freedom.
Red light and speed cameras and checkpoints will eventually lead to traffic cops literally putting their lives at risk to enforce no-victim ‘crimes’ strictly for revenue enhancement and people will rightly or wrongly increasingly think that the only solution is violence against the cop, because they know that the system is rigged and unbeatable. In other words, when fed-up people begin wasting traffic cops I told you, but DON’T FREAKING BLAME ME.
Nathan,
If people are willing to tolerate ALL of the assaults upon their liberty, property, and lives which the goobermint perpetrates already, they will never rebel. Normal people would have, long ago- but a people who have conditioned over the course of generations, through pooblik skools and pervasive media into believing that the government is their god- well…people don’t shoot their priests- and the few who might, realize that the price is too great, in the midst of this society in which 99% of the people, regardless of creed, revere those black-costumed badge and gun toting servants of the false god of State.
Hi Nathan,
The other day, I saw a familiar sight: An AGW parked off to the side of the main road, waiting to victimize people for “speeding” – a manufactured transgression (exceeding an arbitrarily decreed maximum allowable velocity) and it got me to thinking about the mindset of the AGW.
In order to do what he does, he must either believe that not causing harm is harmful and that he is justified in causing harm himself. That it is morally legitimate to threaten people with murderous violence who’ve done nothing to harm anyone but merely failed to obey an arbitrary rule issued by the government.
Or, he doesn’t think about it at all. He is “just doing his job.”
I don’t believe he really believes “speeding” is harmful since all AGWs routinely speed – often very much in excess of whatever the speed limit is. If it is “unsafe” for any of us to drive faster than the speed limit, then logically, it is also unsafe for them to do the same. Yet they do. Conclusion? They are hypocrites.
And if he is “just doing his job”? Then he is a cynic – a nihilist indifferent to the rightness or wrongness of what he is ordered to do and does, for money. By choice. No one forces anyone to be an AGW – not yet. Accordingly, they don’t enjoy the defense that a camp guard in Nazi Germany might have offered: I had no choice! If I didn’t do my job, I’d have been shot!
Hence my contempt for AGWs.
Their defense of the practice of speeding in an AGW hot rod is that they’ve been trained on how to do it. Well I went through driver’s ed in high school and had to pass a driving test, so I was also “trained.”
I wonder how many AGWs could pass a German driving exam?
Amen, RK…
Like a number of people here, I have also been “trained” – more so than most AGWs – yet it cuts no ice with one who has just threatened me with murderous violence for “speeding”…
Funny too, how it was “illegal” and dangerous to do 65MPH when the speed limit was 55….and then one day, someone just signed a piece of paper, and then suddenly it’s perfectly fine to do 70 or 75MPH on that same stretch of road!
Apparently, the signing of as piece of paper is what determines if something is “safe”: or not.
Will they be issuing refunds to all the people who were ticketed for going 60 or 65 ot 70 in the past?
Or…just like how the AGW can drive at the same speed or faster than you are going, to catch you…but you’re driving is “dangerous”- and his is not….
A sick world, full of sick people who have no problem with these absurdities….
I was on the road late at night a few days ago and a merge impaired cop of the ISP is entering via ramp. Typical merge impairment, not accelerating to traffic speed. But this is a cop so I move left and slow to the PSL. Because I don’t know if he’s really merge impaired or is looking to ticket me. Cop merges in at the PSL and I keep him in front of me.
So he gets bored with me in short order and takes off at 80mph soon to be 90mph and then I loose sight of him. But I know I’ll find him again with someone pulled over. A good while later, maybe 35-40 miles later. There he is on the side of the road achieving his performance objectives by pulling someone over.
Highly unlikely someone who was going faster than I saw this cop drive.
Good point, Nunzio. I was talking to some friends and told them that one day, I wanted to go see the state senate in session. One asked me why and I said because I have never seen 50 pirates in one place before.
When Coke Stevenson was head of the Texas Lege a group from DC “came to visit”.
The chambers were an uproar, a couple hundred conversations at once, none of which, hopefully, was relevant.
One of the DC crowd asked Coke why he didn’t call the house to order. Coke replied “If I did that, they might start passing laws”.
Yesterday morning I check the traffic online and see the telltale signs of the truck checkpoint on my usual route to work. So I take the alternate route to bypass it. What do I see? “Safety Belt Enforcement Zone” and then the cop at the side of the road and further up another with someone pulled over blocking a lane of traffic. And as I passed on the now far side of the truck checkpoint sure enough it was there. Same town, although the state cops help with the truck enforcement.
And it’s getting even worse lately. Now, not only do they have the state poopers doing “checkpoints” every time there’s a holiday, weekend or weather change; now the town and city pigs are doing it too! Even here.
Every single week, there’s some checkpoint now. The “one” for ‘Memorial Day” was from May 25th, ongoing to June freaking 1st!
I guess next, it’ll just be 24/7 365 days a year……
Must be very lucrative, as they even do it in places like Long Island where the pigs make over $100K a year… Over $50 an hour times 10 pigs or so, to check seatbelts? Yeah…..
Real effective too![NOT!]- While they were doing the checkpoints here on Sunday, a drunk where the checkpoint wasn’t, crosses the centerline and kills 2 elderly people.
I can’t wait to get out of here!
“While they were doing the checkpoints here on Sunday, a drunk where the checkpoint wasn’t, crosses the centerline and kills 2 elderly people.”
Kinda like those random checkpoints on the NY subway system. While the fuzz is busy guarding one station, the terrorist(s) will “work” the next one down the track.
Hi Blue,
I have pointed out on several occasions to “conservative” defenders of the Heimatsicherheitsdeinst and Gate Rape that if you have the means to fly privately – general aviation – you’re exempt from fondling, etc. Do you suppose, I ask them, that “the enemies of freedom” lack the means to charter a plane? What does this tell us? It doesn’t tell “conservative” badge-lickers much. They just gape, not grokking what it does mean. Which is that what’s going on in commercial aviation is habituation training. Getting people used to being treated as prisoners so they will be easier to handle when the time comes to actually put them into prisons. Or just to get them used to being treated as Soviet proles, which is what they have become.
There’s something else to consider: used airliners can be picked up fairly cheap-for an oil sheik, that is. I can’t remember the site now, but I saw used 767s, 757s, etc. that you could pick up for 10-20 million.
‘Conservative” used to mean something. Something relatively better than “Liberal or Progressive”. But that was many years ago. Now, the terms are interchangeable, depending on who they are trying to fool.
Nunz, and failure to stop for the manufactured “crime” would almost certainly be cause for “official” termination by firearm.
Whatever happened to punishment according to the crime?
Hi Eight,
Indeed. You no doubt remember when running from cops would result in them chasing you… but not killing you. They’d cuss and call you a so-and-so…. but guns stayed holstered. Cops (as distinct from AGWs) used to brag about going a career without ever drawing their service weapon. Today, it’s hard for them to go a week without doing it, apparently.
I was thinking too, Eight, just before as I was driving: Isn’t it funny how when you are falsely charged with a “crime”- whether by an inaccurate red light camera, or by a pig who thinks the yellow advisory sign is tantamount to the speed limit, etc- that even if you successfully defend yourself and win…..you still don’t get made whole!
You’re reward is just not being punished. You are never compensated for your time and effort and lost wages; he pig/state/red-light camera company (Scumbags-R-Us) are never penalized; never get a demerit; never get any sort of infraction on their record so that they are watched more closely in the future, so as the reduce the possibility of them doing the same to someone else, again.
No…..you just escape punishment for something that were never guilty of to begin with.
Some “justice system”!
Once, I fought a speeding ticket. I was stopped for doing 69 in a 55 during the “national speed limit” craze. By my speedo, I was doing 55. I took my truck to a state-certified speedo-checker guy, who told me that when it read 55, I was actually doing 59. In court, I got the cop to admit that there was a lot of other traffic in the area and that he COULD have been clocking another car. The judge complimented me on my defense.and said that I would make a good lawyer (!). He threw out the speeding ticket, but sent me to traffic school anyway. Go figure.
Easy to figure. Regardless of the truth, at least one of the rogue’s has to be paid. BTDT many times.
“Whatever happened to punishment according to the crime?”
That’s so old school. The new way is to send the entire flock to the slaughterhouse.
I wrap myself in two flags. One is simply a “bloody arm”, the other says(and alludes to two wars for freedom on this continent alone)Come and Take It.
Soooo, let me get this straight: it’s judicial misconduct to insist on due process? It’s judicial misconduct to insist that the accuser prove guilt? WTF?!
Hey Jason,
“I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE!!”
I swear I’m going to puke the next time someone duckspeaks that phrase to me.
Yep, that one drives me crazy but I hate this one even more, “we are the government”.
People are often astonished when I explain why that’s nuts. Most are so brainwashed by “Democracy” that they cannot see a distinction between themselves and the State. That’s why democracy is ultimately the most dangerous and anti-freedom of all the theories of political authority.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
This may be the last thing you ever read.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/05/22/the-apa-meeting-a-photo-essay/
Hey Tuanorea,
I read that yesterday, yikes! Thankfully, Szasz is still available as an antidote.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGzf7grTo4g
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
I’m not so sure.
https://youtu.be/cvFyZoTDZ2U
Hey Tuan,
I’m running a little slow this morning. I don’t understand your point, please elaborate.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
“Thankfully, Szasz is still available as an antidote.”
I’m inclined to say the All Suicide Channel is closer to the antidote.
Hey Tuan,
Hah, ok. It’s a great bit. Maybe Szasz could have been a consultant.
https://www.amazon.com/Suicide-Prohibition-Medicine-Thomas-Szasz/dp/0815609906
From the blurb, “While dying voluntarily is ostensibly legal, suicide attempts and even suicidal thoughts are routinely punished by incarceration in a psychiatric institution. Although many people believe the prevention of suicide is one of the duties the modern state owes its citizens, Szasz argues that suicide is a basic human right and that the lengths to which the medical industry goes to prevent it represent a deprivation of that right.”
I admire Szasz because he was a tireless foe of coercion and correctly understood psychiatry, as opposed to voluntary therapy, as an institution allied with the State.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
When my old man was dying, the hospice gals told me not to force him to eat.
Apparently starvation has an analgesic effect.
If you or I publicly announce a hunger strike, we would be taken from our homes, restrained, and have tubes shoved in our orifices.
Human livestock farmers are very protective.
Hey Tuan,
Sorry to hear about your dad, sounds like the hospice gals were decent and compassionate.
“If you or I publicly announce a hunger strike, we would be taken from our homes, restrained, and have tubes shoved in our orifices.”
It’s almost like they believe we’re the property of the State.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
Thanks for the kind thoughts.
The second batch of hospice gals were great.
After I fired the first bunch they turned me in to DCFS.
Apparently having the old man die in a hospital is quite a bit more lucrative for the Medical Industrial Complex than sending people to your house.
Looking back (almost two decades) I am happy I was there. The old man got to die in his own bed.
The DCFS visit was interesting.
She shows up with her name tag facing her shirt. I introduce her to dad, show her the bathroom and kitchen, and we both sit at the dining room table.
We have, what seemed to me, a normal conversation, maybe 15-20 minutes. I tell her I’ll let her get to work while I go to the store.
That’s when the sandbag drops.
She turns her name tag around and informs me she is an investigator checking on a report of elderly abuse. Tells me that, “Someone obviously made a mistake”, and says I’m doing a stellar job of taking care of the house and the old man.
So, with credit to Arlo Guthrie, friends, somewhere in Washington, enshrined in some little folder, is a
Study in black and white of my elderly abusiveness.
Tuan, had I tried to take my daddy from the horspital or the hospice(just shy of Soylent Green….and the only reason it isn’t is because of the funeral home lobby)they’d have hunted me down and killed me and that’s no exaggeration.
Hospice is just a nice, quiet, clean way to be put into a bed and not given sustenance but plenty drugs if you make noise.
Hospice isn’t a nice word. Sounds soothing to some I guess. Once you’ve BTDT, there’s nothing to recommend it as I see.
You ARE the property of the State. Remember Terri Schiavo ?
Fuck Tuan,
“Looking back (almost two decades) I am happy I was there. The old man got to die in his own bed.”
I’m blessed that I got to spend a few months with my dad before he died, surrounded by family and friends, in his bed.
Love,
Jeremy
Jeremy,
“I’m blessed that I got to spend a few months with my dad before he died, surrounded by family and friends, in his bed.”
While it sucks at the time, I also think it is a blessing.
Did the same thing with my mom 15 years earlier.
I do have an irony to share.
The old man had prostrate cancer for 19 years. Doctors told him he would die of old age before the cancer got him. But he was pretty buff even in his seventies.
When he was 77 he had an orchiectomy.
I actually had to leave the hospital when he was getting his balls cut off.
Mine were killing me LOL!
Tuanorea,
Holy shit, it’s great to find humor in these things.
I’m going through this with my mom, and my family, right now. No outside agent should be able to force their way into this intimate affair.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Good God that was insane. I misread something about Muslim treatment and finally realized it didn’t say toilet.
Tuan,
Sometimes at places like that APA conference its easier to see what is actually behind the curtain.
Brazil’s,
Didn’t know the wizard still hide behind the curtain.
https://youtu.be/Ahaz97ERLFA
Amen, Jeremy!
“Democracy” makes the average person believe he lives under a consensual rather than dictatorial government because the dictator is elected and changes every few years. The dictators, actually – as there are many, from the president down to the local bureaucrat who demands prior approval before you can erect a shed on “your” property.
Well, if they let anyone just do anything they wanted you’d have purple painted sheds 4 stories tall and built from pallet wood! My Realtor® would never be able to sell my house for the 25% markup she promised she could get with that eyesore next door!
And if houses don’t sell for what the Realtors® say they’re worth, the annual reassessments might start going down. Then the bums would start looking at millage increases to make up for the shortfall. Then they’d have less funding for the schools! Think of the children!
(What kind of pretzel logic was that?)
OH-MUH-GOSHHhhhhj!!!!! Could you imagine if the sprogs were not properly indoctrinated and dumbed-down in the skools??!! If they actually read a book, or played outdoors (in an unorganized activity) or talked to o;ld people, or learned from their fathers, and actually became capable of thinking, and of seeing reality, and maybe even acquired some real knowledge and understanding??!!!! Why, ‘our’ political system would be doomed! DOOMED I tell ya! (Because it thrives on ignorance)
Nunzio,
“learned from their fathers”
My daddy taught me to keep one hand on my GLOCK and use the other to hold my pants up above my knees.
He also taught me proper sight alignment with the HoMeBoY NyTe SyTeS before he went back to prison.
https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/homie-boy-glock-sights.152672/
Tuan,
Dat be a raciss gun! It’s only for shooting whites!
You don’t need no fancy, ‘spensive sights for shootin’ the brothas; all you gotsta do is hang an Eddie Murphy bauble-head from the barrel; when dey sees it, they smiles, and ya can see where they be even on the darkest night! (Surprisingly, teefs is one thing they manage to keep clean!)
LoL, this country…
Hope we all waved our flags good and hard yesterday to symbolize our freeeee-dumbs.
Because you know, freedom isn’t free…. (oxymoron)
Don’t even get me started. I had to spend the day with flag-waving yahoos whose answer to the pervasive surveillance we’re all subject to, and that they all embrace with social media and plastic “money” – is, wait for it…
“I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE!!”
I swear I’m going to puke the next time someone duckspeaks that phrase to me.
They all clamor for more and more chains and call it freedom. If you question whether the purpose of the closing net is “to keep us safe”, or whether it’s really worth “2% back” (after prices are raised 3% or more to cover the bank fees) to have every purchase monitored, or ask it’s a good idea to make your life an open book on social media; well you’re just some kind of nut-case malcontent who needs to get with the program. We’re screwed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLV4_xaYynY
It’s not winnable… I was at a Harley-Davidson event the other day. Of course the TeeVee’s were all tuned to the GAME. The national anthem came on and all stood with hands over hearts…. Absolutely astonishing. I exited left…. and got some very cursive looks….
I can’t explain it,,, the loss of freedoms day after day,,, the cold blooded killing of citizens by law enforcers,,, the killing of innocents by our military in far away places doesn’t seem to register.
Talk about denial,,, Just downright embarrassing…..
Hi Ken,
A few years ago, I almost got killed – or felt like I was about to get killed – when I very blatantly turned my back on the flag-humpers and did not recite the pledge (written by a socialist, it’s worth mentioning).
This was at a 5k race my ex ran in. She was mortified. Hence my ex.
I did the same in the 4th grade, I was tired of my teacher’s tyranny. My mother was a 6th grade teacher in the same school, and pretty much ring-leader of all the teachers with any sense……I did not have a pleasant ride home, nor did I have a painless evening. I could not understand, then, why she and my father would rear us to question authority, and exercise liberty, then punish me for doing so. Must be a “parenting” thing, lol!
Interesting trivia….
The Defacto National Anthem prior to 1931
My country tis of thee
My country tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died!
Land of the Pilgrim’s pride!
From every mountain side,
Let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture fills
Like that above.
Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom’s song.
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.
Our father’s God to, Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!
Now the present Star Spangled Banner 1931 ->
Oh, say, can you see? By the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming;
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air.
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there:
Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave?
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Please note the what I consider the obvious big difference
One is the love for the country, the patriots, Pilgrims, freedom and liberty,,, the other dramatizes a flag, war with a quick mention of freedom for those that still thought that important.
just saying…..
I’ve been tempted to do it with the original salute.
I was a member of a gun club a few years back. The members got all butt-hurt when I refused to pledge the flag after my state passed a drastic gun control law.
My attitude was that I’m not going to pledge the flag and celebrate my “freedoms” when my freedoms are getting violently raped by the government every day.
I’m not a member of that club any more… but the Fudds who run it now allow the facilities to be used for “law enforcement only” shoots with weapons that it’s illegal for the members to own.
F__k ’em. I’m convinced that our worst enemy is not the freedom-raping “liberals” — because they tell us exactly what they are going to do.
Our greatest enemy is the “conservative patriot” who is deluded into thinking that he lives in a free country…, when in fact he doesn’t. And his patriotism is used against him by the very forces that he worships.
George Washington didn’t pledge allegiance to George III and fly the Union Jack, did he?
Amen, X!
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free”.
A liberal is someone who wants to empower the state to be God.
A Conservative is someone who wants God to empower the state.
In the end, it all works out to the same thing: Collectivism. Ity doesn’t really matter if Hitler or Stalin is running it- either way, we are not free, and evil progresses.
Hey nunzio,
I like Joe Sobran’s quip. A conservative is one who wants the government to intervene in foreign affairs, but not domestic affairs, a liberal is one who wants the government to intervene in domestic affairs but not foreign affairs, a moderate is one who wants the government to intervene in both and an extremist is one who wants the government to intervene in neither.
Cheers, Jeremy.
Jeremy,
Who’d have thunk that we’d be “extremists” for advocating that human beings be left alone to live their own lives as they please; and that violence not be used on any except those who exercise it?!
My favorite definition of a liberal (Shame that it has to be from G. Gordon Liddy!):
“A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to society, which debt he proposes to pay with your money””
Hey Nunz,
“Who’d have thunk that we’d be “extremists” for advocating that human beings be left alone to live their own lives as they please…”
Yes, that was his point. I love this one as well, “the Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.”
Cheers,
Jeremy
Hi X,
Agreed. I parted ways with a “conservative” friend recently, for several reasons – but among them his badge-licking. Ironically, he’s a “gun nut” – and actually believes his “heroes” won’t be the ones kicking in his door to confiscate his guns.
In my experience, “conservatives” are just as authoritarian as liberals. And both suffer the same cognitive dissonance in that they they will claim to love freedom (e.g., of “choice” for the liberal and “gun rights” for the conservative) but neither has any real understanding of the principle – much less any desire to defend it when it invades what they each regard as their prerogative to order other people around for reasons they consider worthy.
I’ve noticed in the last decade or so that the Harley-Clansmen behave more like left-wing extremists with their “group” identity still being used as a means of coercion. I’d be happy if they just bathed and did laundry once a month!
Laugh out loud…..
Military thinking. I work with a few men who served, but in the 1990s. They were stationed far away from any “skirmishes” so they look back at their time in the service much the same way many look back fondly on their high school and college experiences. There’s the Marine flags on the back of the codpiece pickups, the stories about the military, and of course their Facebook feeds were full of cemetery pictures and flags on Monday.
IDK if it is the military brainwashing, or just what happens to men when they get to be 18-25 years old, but for whatever reason they’re really nostalgic for that time in their lives. I tend to be that way too, but at the time I was building a business, not polishing my shoes. But no one’s interested in the story of how I hired a video production crew, or made hand-me-down equipment work reliably, or built a network server without any instructions. But talk about shore leave in Japan and you’ll keep everyone on the edge of their seats.
18-25 sure was a great time for me too, RK! But like yourself, instead of being an invader in soimeone else’s land and doing the will of some politicians and bankers while being a veritable slave, that time period was great because I was free, and because I did not pose the threat of violence or coercion to anyone else. I learned, and I grew, by erxploring the real world and by becoming a man, and eeking-out my own freedom, and earning an hgonest living, like yourself, by being innovative and frugal and working for myself with my own hands, instead of collecting a check.
The assholes who glory in “serving”, they are the polar opposites of us; they couldn’t care less that even though they were grown men, they were essentially still school-children, being ordered about by other men. They were essentially prolonging their adolescence and their school daysd of irresponsibility- by just “following orders” and thinking that they were absolved of any responsibiulity for what they may have done (The very opposite of what it is to be a man!).
And they glory even more in the fact, that by doing so, they garnered the respect and admiration of other assholes like themselves, who see such conduct as a worthy pursuit; while also (like schoolyard bullies and AGWs) being handed power over others- which makes them feel like ‘big men’- as long as they obey the power over them- since they could not earn such respect nor power on their own, but instead require a uniform and a gun, and the backing of a murderous empire to do so.
That is what they glory in- like a 10 year old with his first BB gun and a pocket full of firecrackers- who would harm and destroy things just to revel in the sense of power he gets from doing so.
FUCK every one of those bastards who are in a state grave (Except for those who fought in the Revolutionary War or for the Confederacy), as they are the enemies of freedom and humanity. I piss on Memorial Day!
And I’ll bet you aren’t spending more than a few minutes thinking about the “good ‘ol days” either. I know this morning when I was reminded of those days by this post was the first I thought about my 20s in years. Much more interesting living right now than in a past that wasn’t or a future that’s not possible.
Oh, no, RK- quite the opposite! I draw strength and knowledge from always thinking about the past- mainly from 6 or so to about my mid 30’s. Not only was it a far better world then, but I got to see so much- and had the ability to understand what I was seeing, from quite a young age.
In some ways, I make the present into some of the best days of my life, but what I do; and I wouldn’t trade it- but the experiences I had getting here; the things I got to see and experience -things which will never be again; which only existed for a brief while and in specific places- were just invaluable- and although I prefer to control my own destiny, I have to say that I was very blessed to have just been in the right places at the right times, to have had a richness of experience that continue to fascinate me to this day, and make me mourn for the world which then was.
I guess you could say, I try to do the present and the future justice, so as not to waste or degrade that great past. (I know what ya mean though- by contrast, those military dicks just glory in the past because it was when they had some power, and because someone else was running their lives, so they hadn’t screwed it up too badly yet. -Like Al Bundy forever glorying in few high-school football touchdowns… They’re mourning the fact that that was all they’ll ever be; that was the high point of their lives.)