BLM has urge to kill whites

Apparently, it's a real effort to not kill white people and men.  It's so difficult to not kill poeple, she needs help from her god to avoid it.

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More stupidity from the Radical Religious Right

The truth is stranger than fiction.  There really are idiots out there that believe this nonsense. 

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Prayer Warriors Needed Now!!

What the fuck are we praying for??   It doens't matter...  Let me take a shot at this for you K!

"Dear Lord, sweet baby Jesus;  who art so tiny, juts laying there in your manger, while livestock shit all over the straw.  Please help poor K learn about critical thinking, and how to apply it as a thinking tool, to help her reduce the amount of faulty conclusions she embraces, and to improve the quality of her life."

You think that'll help her?  I doubt it....  but at least it made me feel better....   Because that's about all prayer is good for.

An example of the silly shit leftists say....

I would love to see how happy these idiots would be if they could actually live in the America they say they want, one with no military and no police officers....  Where public policy was based on religion and appeals to emotion instead of data and science.  

These people want us to return to where we were centuries ago in our thinking, and our public policies, which is why many of us refer to them as "regressive leftists".

The Satanic Temple in action in SF

While others "talk" about pseudo-science, and superstitious thinking, The Satanic Temple is actually doing something about it.

This is a video from their most recent event over the weekend in San Francisco, protesting the ISSTD and the dangerous stupidity they endorse and claim is science.  I was so honored to be able to participate in this action.

Features:
Daily Kos
Religion Dispatches

What the other side is saying:
A call for an uprising

About the ISSTD:
Gives annual achievement award to witch hunting conspiritard

What can be done about bias and superstitious thinking?

What can be done about bias and superstitious thinking?

I submit the only way to overcome bias and superstitious thinking is education.

People must be educated to learn that we all have biases. We all have blind spots that occur naturally in our perspective.

It's more than just education, though, that's only the first step. Once educated, one must be committed to the on-going effort of recognizing their own biases, and trying to see around them. It's so easy to allow intellectual laziness to take over, and to become comfortable with your biases instead of working hard to see around them.

What is a "leftist" or a "rightist"?

Here is the difference between a regressive leftist, and a regressive rightist, Jeff Foxworthy Style:

• If you think Sam Harris's or Bill Mahers ideas on Islam are best described as hateful, or islamophobic, you might be a regressive leftist. 
• - If you think Eric Garner or Michael Brown didn't at least contribute to their own deaths, you might be a regressive leftist.
• - If you think college campuses should be designated as "safe spaces", you might be a regressive leftist.

• - If you support religious freedom for theists, but not for atheists, you might be a right-winger (rightist)
• - If you go around talking about freedom, and liberty, but oppose the rights of gays to marry each other, or for women to obtain safe, legal abortions, you might be a right-winger.

Police Brutality on The Godless Rebelution

So I was listening to the "Godless Rebelution" podcast.  I really like their show, and what they're doing with it.  I have really enjoyed the guests they've interviewed, especially Lucien Greaves and David Silverman, and I really enjoy listening to the show.

So anyways, I was listening to their latest show today, when at around 5 minutes in, they started talking about a recent officer involved shooting that happened recently in Salt Lake City.

So these are intelligent guys who I enjoy listening to, and they seem to be critical thinkers, which is what I'm always looking for when talking with or listening to someone, but I'm going to have to call them out on some complete bullshit they said in this episode.

So the first thing they really said about the incident was "The police were busy becuase they had to murder a teen in the city".  That sounded to me like humor, so I just dismissed it, but they ended up doubling down on that remark.

To their credit, one of the guys right away said the shooting was the fault of the teenager because "the most important thing is compliance with a police officers orders - It doesn't matter what the laws are, that's totally his fault, he deserved to be murdered."

Well, it sounds like he wasn't murdered.  All of the information isn't in yet, but it sounds like the police told him to drop the weapon he was using to beat a homeless man, the other teens dropped their weapons, but this one refused.  it sounds like the officers invovled feared the offender was going to hit the homeless person with that weapon again, so they shot him to stop him from hurting anyone else.  That's not murder, it's called a justifiable homocide.  In other words, it's exactly what we pay our police officers to do for us.

But semantics aside, it went south from there.

One of the guys remarks "Just because he decided not to drop a broom stick, the police decided to shoot him."  

Not really.  This kid (I'm assuming it was a kid, as they keep calling him a teen, but they called Michael Brown a teen to and he was no kid) was allegedly battering a homeless person with what could have been a deadly weapon.  Strike someone in the head with a broom stick and you can easily kill them.

Are these guys really siding with an asshole committing a violent crime instead of the victim, who was a defenseless homeless person, and the police officers who arrived to help the homeless person?  How on earth could you side with an asshole harming a defensless victim, unless you had to in order to side against the police officers involved?  And if you were going to side with an asshole harming a defenseless person in order to side against the police officers involved, you must have a huge bias against the police.  You have to be operating pretty irrationally in order to take that position, right from the start, without access to much of the information about the incident.

According to one of the guys on the show, the broom sticks were metal (that's intersting, I don't think I've ever encountered a metal broomstick before) and when the police ordered the "kid" to drop the weapon, he continued to strike the homeless person with the stick.

Next they said "the kid was in the wrong, but the police shouldn't have shot him.  They should have done some kind of escalation of force;  they could have tased him, they could have pepper sprayed him.  The problem I have is the quick escalation of force that's being used."

Now this is the part I really want to address, and I want to address this for two reasons:

1.  Up until now, their comments on this case have been pretty irrational, and what can you really say to rebut irrationality except "come on man, you're being a fucking idiot"   I'm sure even these guys would agree there isn't much more you can say to someone who is being irrational.  But this comment is rational.  It's wrong, but it's rational, so now we have something we can talk about, and hopefully reach understanding, and meaning.

2.  This seems to be a pretty common mis-conception among people in the media who tend to side against the police in these cases.

So here goes.

When dude from Godless Rebelution (sorry guys, I don't know your names yet) mentioned "an escalation" what he's talking about is the "Use of Force Continuum."  The image below is what it looks like.

Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with an individual police officers decision to use force or not, a police officer has the legal authority to use force against someone in accordance with the above continuum, as long as a court, or the agency the officer works for, determines that force meets the "objectively reasonable" test.  In Graham v. Connor (1989), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police use of force must be “objectively reasonable”  -- that an officer's actions were reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting him, without regard to his underlying intent or motivation.

In other words, the officer doesn't have to use all of his less than lethal tools or tactics if they decide none of those are appropriate, and everyone doesn't have to agree after the fact that the officer made the best possible decision.  When a police officer decides to shoot someone, and all the facts are considered, the court will ask was his actions reasonable.  If yes, it's legal.  It's not murder, it's legal.

Keep in mind that police officers make these decisions very quickly, during rapidly developing, dynamic circumstances, with only a sliver of information available to them.

Now I'm not in possession of all of the facts of this case, but from what little I'm aware of so far, it sounds like these officers were called to help this homeless guy who was being victimized by three assholes that should be in prison, not running our streets.  When they arrived, two assholes dropped their weapons, one asshole continued battering the victim.  The police officers apparently felt it was necessary to shoot this asshole to stop him from using a weapon to cause death or serious injury to the victim.

You can "Monday morning quarterback" a police officer all day long.  "Well, why didn't the officer karate chop him?"    "Why didn't the police officer use jiu jitsu to take down and restrain the suspect"   "why didn't the police officer just shoot the weapon out of his hand", but at the end of the day, the law doesn't require the police officer to be subjected to that kind of scrutiny.  The standard the officer is subjected to is "was his actions objectively reasonable given the information the officer had, and the circumstances the officer faced at the time."

When a police officer arrives on scene and sees a suspect actively engaged in assaulting a victim with a weapon, the police officer has the legal authority to take whatever measures the officer deems necessary in that moment to stop the threat to that victim.  All day, every day.  That's the law.

Now there are problems in law enforcement, but that isn't one.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to write about what I think are the problems with law enforcement and how those problems can be fixed, but in the mean time, please try to do the following:

- Before deciding a police officer was out of line, or guilty of "brutality" please wait until all of the facts of the case are avaialble.  That means waiting until the use of force investigation has been completed, the criminal investigation (if there is one) of the officers actions is completed, and the IA/personnel investigation is completed, and all of that information is made public.  I know that's a long time, but reaching a conclusion before you have that information is silly.

- If you want to be a pundit scrutinizing police officers, fine. But please educate yourself about what the law requires, and about police procedure first, or you'll just sound like a biased douche bag.

Douchebag Rob Lowe - Don't be this Rob Lowe....

In The News - The Satanic Temple San Jose

The San Jose Chapter of The Satanic Temple made the cover of "The Metro", Silicon Valley's "Alertnative Lifestyle" weekly paper.

I was really worried about how the article would turn out, but Jennifer did a great job!  Check it out!

Goats, God, and the Devil