Liberty Counsel: Not Hateful Enough!

Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver (left) with his wife and Liberty Counsel president Anita Staver. Credit: Liberty University.

Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver (left) with his wife and Liberty Counsel president Anita Staver. Credit: Liberty University.

After months of preaching that the so-called First Amendment Defense Act was the only way to protect the “religious freedom” of those opposed to marriage equality, one of the nation’s leading anti-LGBT organizations has done a complete 180.

In a press release published Wednesday, Liberty Counsel explained why it abruptly stopped supporting the sweeping federal legislation. As it turns out, the anti-LGBT legal nonprofit that represented antigay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis and a host of other right-wing dissenters wasn’t all that worried about religious freedom. It appears the group was instead primarily concerned with making sure individuals, businesses, and federal contractors could discriminate against LGBT people without “punishment” from the government.

So after the bill’s lead sponsor in the House, Idaho Rep. Raul Labrador, revealed a change in the language of House Resolution 2802 that would protect people from adverse government action regarding any “religious belief or moral conviction” about marriage, Liberty Counsel balked. While the draft bill posted on Rep. Labrador’s website is dated July 7, the official congressional page for the bill has not been updated since it was introduced June 17.

“For the first time, the federal government under the proposed FADA will formerly [sic] recognize and condone same-sex marriage on par with the natural marriage,” read Wednesday’s press release. “Liberty Counsel can no longer support FADA unless the proposed amendment is abandoned and FADA returns to its original language of marriage being between one man and one woman.”

Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver went on to “urge all members of Congress to reject the proposed amendments to the First Amendment Defense Act that include same-sex marriage,” promising that “pro-family” organizations will not be able to support the legislation unless it singles out same-sex couples for legalized discrimination. The antigay language in FADA is “necessary to protect people of faith,” Staver concluded.

Seems to me that what ‘people of faith’ need is lot of quiet time. Quiet time used to reflect on your personal morals not only being evil, but being used as the justification to treat other people as objects to be crushed.

The Advocate has the full story.

Seceding Over Slavery.

fox_of_trump_jesus_160511e-800x4301-440x270Most people know about Bill O’Reilly’s unbelievably idiotic remarks about slaves building the White House, and his subsequent doubling down, attempting to justify his previous commentary and digging quite the hole for himself. O’Reilly spent a fair amount of time opining that liberals literally want him dead. I don’t want you dead, Bill, I want you off the air.

Anyroad, the idiotic remarks about slaves and the astonishing distortion of actual history inspired Marcus Ranum to do a very in-depth post about slavery. Here’s a little bit:

The Odious Institution

The colonies in America had been priming themselves for a revolution for some time. Unpopular legislation from England, in the form of taxes and regulations – notably The Stamp Act, The Sugar Act, The Townshend Act – had provoked protest, violence, tax collectors being brutalized, and civilian protestors shot down by redcoats. England was trying, simply enough, to extract some of the colony’s massive wealth through taxation, to pay for its various wars. The colonial leaders were trying, simply enough, to keep their wealth – a great deal of which was at best semi-licit: whenever the crown would levy a new tax, the colonial entrepreneurs would smuggle the goods, anyway.

The “triangle trade” was taking place “off the books” to a significant degree, and was at least partly designed to facilitate smuggling. It was a hugely profitable trade-route, and underpinned much of the New England economy as well as that of the American south’s most powerful and wealthy state, Virginia. From 1770 to 1780 the people who became the political leaders in the colonies were all wealthy, and that wealth depended on smuggling, slavery, land speculation, tobacco or cotton farming, or “trade” (which meant: buying and selling alcohol, tobacco, slaves, etc) – the unhappiness the colonial political leaders were feeling with England was that their tax-sheltered existences were threatened. They were already hugely wealthy, in terms of the time, with some notable exceptions (Jefferson was really really good at spending money!) George Washington was the largest land speculator in the colonies, John Hancock was a smuggler “trader” of large but unknown fortune, Jefferson owned lots of land, slaves, and farmed tobacco and cotton.* They had time and inclination to get involved in politics because they had a great deal of wealth at stake and had enough wealth that they could take the time – literally afford – to travel about protecting their interests.

For the colonial elite, the Somerset decision had the attention-riveting effect of a dagger pressed against the throat. It was immediately seen as a threat to their interests for the simple reason that: the colonies were under England’s law. If English law had finally come down on the issue of slavery as odious, immoral and – what really mattered: unenforceable – the colonial elite had a serious, serious problem on their hands.

So they did what any justice-loving group of leaders would do: they worked out how to emancipate the slaves, apologized and compensated them with grants of land** and started tithing a reasonable percentage of their gains to England.

Of course they didn’t.

It’s an excellent read, so click on over for the full article.

Orlando Cops and the Krispy Kreme Meth Incident.

Daniel Rushing buys a Krispy Kreme doughnut every other week. (July 27, 2016) (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda / Orlando Sentinel)

Daniel Rushing buys a Krispy Kreme doughnut every other week. (July 27, 2016) (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda / Orlando Sentinel)

Orlando cops decided to arrest a 64 year old man who was guilty of driving and doughnut eating – everyone be careful, if you’re going to do the same, stay away from the glazed!

Daniel Rushing treats himself to a Krispy Kreme doughnut every other Wednesday. He used to eat them in his car.

Not anymore.

Not since a pair of Orlando police officers pulled him over, spotted four tiny flakes of glaze on his floorboard and arrested him, saying they were pieces of crystal methamphetamine. The officers did two roadside drug tests and both came back positive for the illegal substance, according to his arrest report.

He was handcuffed, arrested, taken to the county jail and strip searched, he said. A state crime lab, however, did another test several weeks later and cleared him.

“It was incredible,” he said. “It feels scary when you haven’t done anything wrong and get arrested. … It’s just a terrible feeling.”

[…]

That’s when she spotted “a rock like substance on the floor board where his feet were,” she wrote. “I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic,” she wrote.

She asked for permission to search his vehicle, the report says, and Rushing agreed. “I didn’t have anything to hide,” he said. “I’ll never let anyone search my car again.”

Riggs-Hopkins and other officers spotted three other pieces of the suspicious substance in his car, according to the report.

“I kept telling them, ‘That’s … glaze from a doughnut. … They tried to say it was crack cocaine at first, then they said, ‘No, it’s meth, crystal meth.'” His arrest report confirms that he tried to tell them.

[…]

She booked him into the county jail on a charge of possession of methamphetamine with a firearm. He was locked up for about 10 hours before his release on $2,500 bond, he said.

According to FDLE, an analyst in its Orlando crime lab did not try to identify what police found in his car. She only checked to determine whether it was an illegal drug and confirmed that it was not.

Three days later, the State Attorney’s Office in Orlando filed paperwork, saying that it was dropping the case.

Rushing, who retired after 25 years as an Orlando parks department employee, has hired a lawyer and is asking the city to pay him damages.

“I got arrested for no reason at all,” he said.

[…]

The Orlando Police Department did not explain why the two drug field tests that Riggs-Hopkins conducted were wrong.

When asked how many other road-side drug tests have produced false positive results, an OPD spokeswoman wrote, “At this time, we have no responsive records. … There is no mechanism in place for easily tracking the number of, or results of, field drug testing.”

FDLE spokeswoman Molly Best wrote that her agency has no information about the prevalence of false-positive field drug tests.

The New York Times reported on July 7 that its review of FDLE data showed that 21 percent of the time, drug evidence that was listed by local authorities as methamphetamine turned out to be something else.

In its statement, OPD described the arrest as a lawful one.

Full story at the Orlando Sentinel.

The Cost of McCrory.

Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) (nc.gov, Screengrab)

Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) (nc.gov, Screengrab)

The costs keep mounting in NC, and going by all appearances, McCrory simply doesn’t care in the least. I keep trying to figure out why there is this pig-headed obstinacy in hanging on to HB 2, and all I can come up with is that McCrory is doing this to save face. Or he thinks this is face-saving, because it seems to me that any idiot could figure out the costs far outweigh any perceived benefit.

The price tag for keeping North Carolina’s HB2 on the books just keeps getting more and more expensive.

In a review by the Associate Press, Gov. Pat McCrory and state legislative leaders have run up more than $176,000 in legal fees to defend the law, which prevents transgender people from using restrooms and changing rooms matching their gender identity.

That’s likely not the total because some firms have yet to bill the state for their work on the legal battle between the state and the Department of Justice.

State taxpayers will have to eat those real costs, in addition to the estimated $100 million in lost potential revenue after the NBA withdrew the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte over the controversial law.

There’s also that $500,000 that was pulled out of the state’s disaster relief fund a while back. Taxpayers cannot be happy with this, any more than the massive tab some Arizona taxpayers are faced with over Arpaio. I don’t know why people keep such assholes in office, but it’s time to kick them out on their arses, and get competent representation.

Via Out.

No True Catholic.

Tim Kaine.

Tim Kaine.

While Tim Kaine’s pastor describes Kaine as “very compassionate, approachable, available, and friendly,” a Washington DC-based priest, a member of the Dominican Order, has told Tim Kaine that he is not a true Catholic and not entitled to receive communion. The issue? Tim Kaine has stated his personal opposition to abortion, but refuses to enact laws as a public official that would interfere with a woman’s right to choose.

The anti-abortion site LifeNews reported that Father Thomas Petri took to Twitter to condemn Kaine. “Senator @timkaine. Do us both a favor. Don’t show up in my communion line.” The priest also told Kaine that his beliefs that women should be priest and that “abortion is fine” makes him either “poorly catechized or a dissenter.”

I can’t say I was thrilled with the Veep pick, but anyone who pisses off priests gets credit from me. Nothing riles up priests like the disobedience of thinking. Perhaps Father Petri should spend more time praying than tweeting. I’m sure if he prays hard enough, god will do something or other, right?

Full story here.

No, Judge, there is not a difference.

Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Robert Milich (Photo: Screen capture from WKBN)

Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Robert Milich (Photo: Screen capture from WKBN)

Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Robert Milich took attorney Andrea Burton into custody for contempt of court after she refused to remove a Black Lives Matter pin while in his courtroom when he asked.

Judge Milich sentenced Burton to five days in jail, but she was released on a stay because the decision is on appeal. She’ll stay out of prison while she works her way through the appeals process and abides by Milich’s rule not to wear items that make a political statement in his court.

Milich told WKBN his opinions on the Black Lives Matter movement are irrelevant when it comes to his anti-pin policy.

“A judge doesn’t support either side,” he said. “A judge is objective and tries to make sure everyone has an opportunity to have a fair hearing, and it was a situation where it was just in violation of the law.”

A judge wasn’t wearing the pin. An attorney was wearing it. So much for that bit of ‘logic’. It’s not a violation of any law to wear a pin, or any other piece of self decoration. So much for that bit of ‘logic’. This is obviously not the work of anyone being objective, now is it, Judge Milich? No, what we see operating here is bias. It’s right there, out in the open, plopped out for everyone to see. Would you try to force someone to remove an Amerikkan flag pin? A Christian cross?

Oh, here we go…

The judge said his ruling is based on Supreme Court case law in which a judge can prohibit symbolic political expression in courtrooms, even if it’s not disruptive.

“There’s a difference between a flag, a pin from your church or the Eagles and having a pin that’s on a political issue,” Milich said.

So, Black Lives Matter is a political expression, but a Flag pin isn’t. Hmmm. And a church pin? That’s not political, it’s perfectly okay to be sporting that type of open discrimination in your objective court? Right.

Full story at WKBN, video at the link.

NBA: Bye Bye, Charlotte.

NBA/Flickr.

NBA/Flickr.

Charlotte just lost millions in tourism and entertainment dollars after the National Basketball Association announced Thursday the group is pulling next year’s All-Star Game from the city.

The NBA had warned North Carolina and Gov. Pat McCrory that the city might lose hosting the game if the state did not make changes to HB2, the notorious anti-transgender law that prevents transgender people from using restrooms and changing facilities matching their gender identity.

“The NBA and the Charlotte Hornets have been working diligently to foster constructive dialogue and try to effect positive change,” the NBA said in a statement. “While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2.”

McCrory released a statement following the decision warning North Carolinians that “the sports and entertainment elite,” among others, “are imposing their political will on communities in which they do business, thus bypassing the democratic and legal process.”

I, uh, mmmph, :stifles scream: Just what in the fuckety fuck fuck do you think you’re doing, McCrory? Does it resemble “imposing your bigotry, fear, and hatred via the political process of legislation”? Any recognition there, you flaming fuckweasel? You certainly have zero basis to talk about bypassing the democratic and legal process. So, businesses aren’t allowed to decide where and when they wish to do business anymore? Interesting. Perhaps you should get out and talk to all your constituents who are Hornets fans. Maybe they have something to say about it all, given your determination to run your state into the ground. :spits:

Full story at Out.

The Fraternal Order of Police Is Insulted!

REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk.

REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk.

Cops are insulted that they aren’t being put up on a pedestal of pure heroism. It’s hard to imagine how they think having snitrums all over the place is helping any.

Philadelphia’s police union is blasting Hillary Clinton for inviting relatives of victims of police shootings to speak at the Democratic National Convention next week, but failing to include relatives of slain police officers.

John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, said the union was “shocked and saddened” by the planned choice of speakers at the convention, which opens Monday in Philadelphia.

“The Fraternal Order of Police is insulted and will not soon forget that the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton are excluding the widows and other family members of police officers killed in the line of duty who were victims of explicit and not implied racism,” Mr. McNesby said in a statement.

Shocked! Saddened! Insulted! Angry! Certainly, I can understand those feelings. Interesting that Mr. McNesby just can’t figure out that all those emotions and more are also on the part of all the families and friends of those who were victims of extrajudicial killings by cops. As for explicit vs implicit racism, you need to understand those concepts, not just the words, Mr. McNesby. You also need to understand that cop isn’t a race. It probably wouldn’t hurt if you could figure out that people wouldn’t be driven by absolute fury if you acknowledged wanton murder committed by cops, and stopped killing people of colour. The little things, you know. :eyeroll: The mere fact of this outrage is terrifying coming from cops, because you know there is zero thought going on there, it’s all kneejerk reactions, reactions which have a hell of a lot to do with a lack of cop worship. I don’t want people who are authorized to kill wanting worshipful obeisance. We already have enough trouble with religions.

He said it’s “sad that to win an election Mrs. Clinton must pander to the interests of people who do not know all the facts, while the men and women they seek to destroy are outside protecting the political institutions of this country.

I, uh, can I just die of irony poisoning now?

The Clinton campaign has scheduled former President Bill Clinton to speak Tuesday night with members of Mothers of the Movement, a group that includes relatives of black men killed by police such as Eric Garner of New York and Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri.

Former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, who said the nation is a “powder keg” over the police-involved shootings and assassinations of officers, is also scheduled to speak.

Full story here.

The Red Hot Assholes Revival.

Pastor Steven Anderson (Screenshot/YouTube)

Pastor Steven Anderson (Screenshot/YouTube)

Remember Steven ‘Pulpit Stomp’ Anderson? Steven and his other hateful buddies are getting together, for the Red Hot Preaching Conference in Sacramento, Ca. this weekend. Gosh, a whole weekend of poisonous hatred. Sounds charming.

The “Red Hot Preaching” conference scheduled for this coming weekend in Sacramento will feature four of the most repugnant King-James-Only pastors who have more than just their relentless hatred of gays in common … they’re all Quiverfull. These preachers of patriarchy are Truly True Believers™ who embrace Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar-style “family values” … Christian homeschooling mega-families who reject all forms of birth control and are devoted to raising up a “quiver full” of children to serve as “arrows” in God’s holy war.

Pastor Roger Jimenez, who celebrated the Orlando massacre, saying, “Christians shouldn’t be mourning the deaths of 50 sodomites,” will be hosting a four-day conference of “soul-winning” and “hard preaching” at his church, Verity Baptist, in Sacramento beginning Thursday evening.

Jimenez will be joined by three fellow “fire-breathing” preachers: Steven Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, who has advocated for the death penalty for gays and adulterers, Donnie Romero, pastor of Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth, who prayed for the injured survivors of the Pulse nightclub attack to die and who threatened violence against LGBT people, and David Berzins, pastor of yet another Independent Fundamental Baptist church, Word of Truth, in Prescott Valley, Arizona.

When Jimenez and company are not busy condemning “sodomites” and “faggots,” they’re likely to be preaching about a woman’s duty to stay at home, dress modestly, submit to her husband, have lots of babies, homeschool, and always be sexually available when hubby’s in the mood.

The current political climate didn’t create these evil doucheweasels. They’d be evil any where, any time. That said, the current political climate is openly fostering and embracing every kind of bigotry and hatred, under one guise or another. The guise of Christianity is being used to push through one evil after another in the GOP dream platform. That’s why, while it’s very tempting to simply mock and dismiss these evil clowns, we cannot afford to do so. Here in uStates, if we aren’t vigilant, if we don’t make every possible effort to rouse people to get out and vote, to make a difference, these evil clowns could well be our future overseers.

The full story is here.

The 800 lb. Gorilla.

Judicial candidate Eric C. Grimm in a May 2016 campaign video. (Screenshot)

Judicial candidate Eric C. Grimm in a May 2016 campaign video. (Screenshot)

There’s no longer an 800 pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the room. There’s a herd of oliphants, trampling their way across uStates, and they white, angry, and bursting with hate.

MLive reports that Eric C. Grimm, a Muskegon lawyer and a judicial candidate for Muskegon County’s probate court, sent an email out to his colleagues on July 10, asking for their votes and criticizing sitting probate court judge Gregory C. Pittman for bullying the other candidates.

“I can understand why some of the other candidates may not want to speak up about the 800-lb Silverback Alpha Male in the middle of the Probate Court,” Grimm wrote in his email. “They are each considerably less free to walk away and refuse to have anything to do with this court if the bullying problem is not fixed.”

According to MLive, Grimm apologized for the bigoted remarks after backlash from prominent public officials including the county prosecutor and the chairman of the county board of commissioners.

The candidate claimed both in a statement and a television interview that he is redeeming himself by, “sentencing myself to 100 hours of community service, in the very same community most adversely impacted by my mistake.”

MLive notes, however, that Grimm refused to retract his broader statements alleging Judge Pittman’s bullying behavior, claiming that he merely “got carried away with the artfulness of a triple metaphor, and lost sight of the optics,” and that the resulting “so-called ‘outrage’ is overblown, insensitive in itself, and a charade.”

So much for that redemption. I wonder just how much that “very same community most adversely impacted” wants this assclown attempting to redeem himself in their neighbourhood. I wouldn’t want him in mine. On another level, it’s the statement about that most adversely impacted community that bugs me no end. I grew up with a couple of extremely bigoted relations. The rest were of the “we’re good people, not bigots” stripe, with heads full of stereotypes they accepted unthinkingly. Of course bigotry harms those it targets, that’s the principal aim, but it reaches much farther than that. Bigotry harms every single person it touches. It’s an infection of thoughtless hate, and highly contagious. It poisons every environment, it ends up in the heads of children everywhere, and so it keeps growing, keeps infecting one person after another, seeping through generations, a toxic mold which inhibits thought, the desire to learn, compassion, and empathy.

I expect it’s too much to hope that Mr. Grimm figures out what he did wrong, and actually tries to correct that, rather than loading up his brain with buzz word idiocy. You don’t need to concern yourself with losing sight of the optics, Mr. Grimm. You need to concern yourself with your loss of humanity.

Full story here.

Goodbye, Dylan.

Dylan Francisco, who was killed in Chicopee, as seen in a Facebook profile photo uploaded June 24, 2016.

Dylan Francisco, who was killed in Chicopee, as seen in a Facebook profile photo uploaded June 24, 2016.

This is Dylan Francisco, a 15 year old murdered by coward and gun fetishist Jeffrey Lovell.

Funeral services have been scheduled for a 15-year-old boy who was shot to death by a homeowner Saturday. […] The teenager, whose obituary who gives his full name as Dylan Christopher Waitson-Francisco, attended the Glenwood School in Springfield for elementary school, according to the obituary. Later he attended middle school in Chicopee. He also started working for the Summer Youth Program with the Valley Opportunity Council in July.

He leaves his mother and step-father, Heather Francisco and Steven Beauregard, and three siblings, Damien and Desiree Francisco and Anthony Beauregard.

Sounds like a good kid, who was gunned down for being a teenager doing teenager things. Unfortunately, this has sparked discussion of the so-called Castle doctrine, where some people are actually defending Lovell. Thankfully, there is no Stand Your Ground law in Massachusetts. So, where are all the pro-lifers, screaming in outrage over this child’s death? Where is anyone screaming in outrage over this death? You know we’re beyond fucked when the important conversation is deemed to be one over whether or not castle doctrine applies. I’m sure that’s of great comfort to Dylan’s family and friends.

Here in Massachusetts, there is no stand your ground law.

However, local attorneys said that homeowners have some rights, but they come with standards.

“To obtain the defense of self defense, the homeowner has to show that the intruder had actually entered into the home of the person who fired the shot in self defense.  Furthermore, there has to be a threat of imminent serious hard.  In other words, if the person has a weapon or threatens a weapon, if a person doesn’t have a weapon, I don’t believe there is a right to use force like a gun,” said Jack McQuade from the Law Offices of Mark E. Solomone.

 

Jeffrey Lovell.

Jeffrey Lovell.

“Mr. Lovell told this party to ‘get the f–k out’ and ‘stay the f–k out.’ As the … party continued to bang on the door Mr. Lovell stated that the window broke at which time Mr. Lovell raised his loaded S & W (Smith & Wesson) firearm and shot one round through the glass of the door,” the police report states.

The door has three windows lined up vertically. The top window broke when the boy was knocking on it, said James Leydon, spokesman for Gulluni.

“Mr. Lovell stated he aimed towards the … torso. After firing the weapon, Mr. Lovell then looked out of the kitchen door and saw the individual lying on the ground at the bottom of the stairs and the … individual was moaning,” the police report states.

[…]

When police arrived, they found no evidence that the victim entered the home, court records said.

“Mr. Lovell also indicated that the victim never entered his residence,” the police report says.

So, it’s obvious Mr. Lovell was not in any danger whatsoever, let alone imminent danger. I think it’s best to remember that this is the man who festooned his Pinterest page with photos of weapons along with “Can you say ‘pest control?’ Gotta get one. ”

Via MassLive, WMN, and MassLive.

Oil Spills: Good for Everyone, Really!

CREDIT: AP Photo/Bill Haber

CREDIT: AP Photo/Bill Haber.

No one is going to be surprised by the duplicity of oil companies, or their constant attempt at spin. This time, though, they’ve not only taken the cake, they’ve tried to walk off with the whole party, too. Their new line is that oil spills are really good, for everyone. They stimulate the economy, they make jobs, and they help wildlife, oh my yes!

For the past few weeks, the Washington State Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) has been holding hearings on the matter of a proposed oil-by-rail terminal that could be built in Vancouver, Washington. If approved, it would be the largest oil-by-rail facility in the country, handling some 360,000 barrels of crude oil, shipped by train, every single day. It would also greatly increase the number of oil trains that pass through Washington, adding a total of 155 trains, per week, to the state’s railroads.

[…]

But according to witnesses that testified before the EFSEC on behalf of Vancouver Energy — the joint venture between Tesoro Corp. and Savage Cos. and the entity behind the Tesoro-Savage terminal proposal — oil spills might not actually be that bad for the environment.

“The Draft Environmental Impact Statement identifies many economic impacts arising from an accident associated with Project operations, but fails to recognize economic activity that would be generated by spill response,” Todd Schatzki, vice president of Analysis Group — a consulting group that released an economic report on the terminal commissioned by Tesoro Savage — wrote in pre-filed testimony. “When a spill occurs, new economic activity occurs to clean-up contaminated areas, remediate affected properties, and supply equipment for cleanup activities. Anecdotal evidence from recent spills suggests that such activity can be potentially large.”

Schatzki’s pre-filed testimony also includes references to both the Santa Barbara and BP oil spills’ role as job creating events. He notes that the Santa Barbara oil spill created some 700 temporary jobs to help with cleanup, while the BP spill created short term jobs for 25,000 workers. Schatzki does not mention that BP has paid individuals and businesses more than $10 billion to make up for economic losses caused by the spill. Nor does he mention that California’s Economic Forecast Director predicted that the 2015 Santa Barbara oil spill would cost the county 155 jobs and $74 million in economic activity.

For the Columbia River region, the impacts of an oil spill could be equally economically devastating — a report from the Washington Attorney General’s office found that an oil spill could cost more than $170 million in environmental damages.

[…]

In testimony given on July 7, another Tesoro-Savage-associated witness, Gregory Challenger, argued that oil spills could actually have benefits for fish and wildlife. Challenger, who worked with Vancouver Energy to analyze potential impacts and responses in the event of a worst-case discharge at the facility and along the rail line, told the committee that when oil spills cause the closure of certain fisheries or hunting seasons, it’s the animals that benefit.

“An oil spill is not a good thing. A fishery closure is a good thing. If you don’t kill half a million fish and they all swim upstream and spawn, that’s more fish than were estimated affected as adults,” Challenger said during his testimony. “The responsible party is not going to get credit for that, by the way.”

To prove his point, Challenger cited National Marine Fisheries Service data that showed that 2011, the year after the BP oil spill, had been a record year for seafood catch in the Gulf of Mexico. And while that’s true, Shiva Polefka, policy analyst for the Center for American Progress’s Ocean Policy program, cautioned against trying to make sweeping statements for how all ecosystems would respond to an oil spill. Following the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, researchers discovered that crude oil had soaked into the rocky beaches near the spill site, emitting toxic compounds for years that had long-term adverse impacts on salmon and herring populations.

“Does cutting fishing effort benefit fish? Absolutely,” Polefka said. “Enough to mitigate the horrible effects of large oil spills in every case? Absolutely not.”

During his testimony, Challenger also brought up the Athos 1 oil spill, which sent 264,000 gallons of crude oil into the Delaware River in 2004. The spill, Challenger said, took place during duck hunting season, and forced an early closure for recreational hunting in the area.

“There were an estimate of 3,000 birds affected by the oil, and 13,000 birds not shot by hunters not shot by hunters, because of the closed season,” he said. “We don’t get any credit for that, but it’s hard to deny that it’s good for birds to not be shot.”

According to NOAA, seabirds are especially vulnerable to oil spills, because of the way that oil affects their usually-waterproof feathers — when those feathers become matted with oil, a seabird loses its ability to regulate its temperature. Often, it will try to preen itself to remove the oil, which only forces the oil into its internal organs, causing problems like diarrhea, kidney and liver damage, and anemia. Oil can also enter into a seabird’s lungs, leading to respiratory problems.

The full story is at Think Progress. So, there we have it. Oil spills are great! Why, they help everyone. This is such blatant bullshit, I’m rather stunned they are even trying this ploy.

Bulletproof Warrior.

Jim Glennon. Credit: Elizabeth Flores, Star Tribune.

Jim Glennon. Credit: Elizabeth Flores, Star Tribune.

The seminar was called “The Bulletproof Warrior,” and the instructors urged the law enforcement officers in the hotel conference room to make the decision to shoot if they ever feel their lives are threatened.

Videos of bloody shootouts between police and civilians emphasized a key point: Hesitation can kill you.

In the audience at the May 2014 seminar was a young St. Anthony police officer, Jeronimo Yanez, city records show. He’s now known around the world as the officer who killed Philando Castile minutes after making a traffic stop in Falcon Heights last week.

Amid intensifying demands for changes in police training in the wake of the shooting deaths of Castile and others, such “survival” courses for officers are flourishing nationally. But some in law enforcement are distancing themselves from the approach.

The Houston Police Department, for example, won’t pay for its officers to attend the Bulletproof Warrior seminar, which is put on by an Illinois for-profit company called Calibre Press.

And the leader of an international police training association said he thinks some seminars like those offered by Calibre and other firms foster a sense of paranoia among officers.

Oh, you think? As if the militarization wasn’t bad enough, there’s shit like ‘bulletproof warrior’, which is little more than an expensive exhortation to shoot! shoot! shoot!, but not white people if you can avoid it.

“Police training became very militaristic and it caused a lot of the problems that are going on in the nation,” said Michael Becar, executive director of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, with offices in Idaho and Washington, D.C.

Ah, there it is. Nice to see this acknowledged, but are you going to move past that?

Jim Glennon, a co-owner of Calibre who co-taught the seminar Yanez attended, said it’s wrong to link the course to the officer’s actions last week. “Everybody’s going after this kid,” Glennon said Wednesday. “Nobody should be judging what he did yet without the evidence.”

Well, you see, we have evidence. Evidence of murder. It’s right there, for everyone to see. Perhaps if you hadn’t invested so much time in making cops hyper-aggressive, this might not have happened.

The Bulletproof Warrior is one of 15 sessions offered by Calibre and its parent company, LifeLine Training. The courses are well-known and popular in law enforcement circles. Facebook photos show conference rooms and auditoriums filled with officers to hear the Bulletproof Warrior message.

Fans say it provides a valuable “wake-up call” in police safety tactics for the street: how to read the body language of someone preparing to attack, for instance. Training professionals note that Calibre was a pioneer decades ago in teaching basic police safety.

The body language of someone preparing to attack. Right. Interesting how the body language of PoC is always “oh no, gonna attack!”, while that of white people, even when firing at police, is not, so you end up with dead PoC, and white people arrested. Something is seriously fucked up with your warrior training there.

Yanez took the 20-hour seminar on May 21-22, 2014, according to a summary of Yanez’s training that the city of St. Anthony provided after a public records request. A year earlier he attended “Street Survival,” another of the company’s seminars, records show.

Yanez also took 20 hours of training in 2012 in “Officer Survival” from a different organization. In May of this year, he took two hours of training titled “de-escalation,” the only instruction in his four years with the department that appears to focus on that approach, the records show.

Over 40 hours of “training” in how to be a bigoted profiler, hyper-aggressive, and a killer. Great. And a whole 2 hours in de-escalation. Wow, I am just so impressed. I don’t want to be funding cop shops, when they are doing this sort of shit. Who in their right mind would? (I said right mind.)

William Czech was also in the Bulletproof Warrior class in the Ramada in Bloomington those two days in 2014. Czech isn’t a police officer. He’s a 47-year-old electrician from Mendota Heights with a keen interest in police training because of incidents involving a mentally ill family member.

Czech posed as a student to get into the class. He said he was horrified. He said he expected to see a presentation about understanding both how to avoid using deadly force as well as how to realize when it’s unavoidable. Czech said the course consistently emphasized the risk of hesitation.

[…]

Still, there are some in law enforcement training who question the courses.

Becar, who leads the international law enforcement training group, said his organization has no position on LifeLine Training and Calibre. But he said he has attended Calibre classes.

“Everything they were doing made the police officers very paranoid,” Becar said. “At some point they wouldn’t even stop a car without three backups.”

The Houston Police Department will not pay for officers to attend the Bulletproof Warrior seminar, said Houston police spokesman Kese Smith. Officers can go on their own time and expense, he said.

Smith said he couldn’t elaborate, saying only that “some of their instruction is not what we instruct.”

“No position.” “Can’t elaborate.” Why in the fuckety fuck not? If there are good cops, who think all this shit has gone much too far, why don’t you have a position? Why can’t you elaborate? Why in the hell aren’t you speaking out and denouncing this absolute crap? Why aren’t you doing your damn job, to protect and serve?

Full article here.