Penny Lane

Hello, friends.

This guys like the gift that just keeps giving. Our very own rob ford.

She can't resist a Zimmerman story.

I SEE PENNY LURKING!!!
Come back to the dark side, Penny Lane, Penny Lane.

Sorry to spam the thread, but I just noticed that today is my eighth anniversary of joining VJ. WOW! So much has changed in those 8 years. I quit my beloved job, moved across an ocean with a husband, worked at a think tank, moved across a country, lived in the 'burbs, broke up with my cheatin' husband for whom I'd moved continents and coasts, fell in love with a little black kitten who is now a big black cat that likes to box my ears at 6am, moved over the hill into LA, went off the deep end, had a series of terrible dates and half-relationships, quit being a consultant, was unemployed for six precarious months, met an amazing man who showed me that American men really are the bestest EVAR, went back into the legal field, fell in love with my Mr U, got in a car accident, steadily rebuilt my body and mind and heart, got truly bones-deep happy for the first time in my adult life, stopped shirking responsibility, went back to law school and grew the eff up.
And I posted a lot on VJ. That too.

So this leaves your worldview in perfect order. And it takes care of three Muslims at the same time. Be honest with us: Did you break out the champagne in the bunker?

eta, i'll give you this much lib, you sure know how to pick up a script and run with it. good job.

So what are you saying here, lost?

wait you might be on to something. this is all brian williams truther deflection!

When will we start profiling white men to the point where we are suspicious of all of them?

When will we start profiling white men to the point where we are suspicious of all of them?

No doubt there are a few people here who ought to be subjects of a police stakeout.

Word. It only matters that their Muslims when they're the perps not when they're the victims.

This is what happens when people get their news from a site whose primary purpose is pay for click revenue.

At least we're not running out of right wing nut job nonsense.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19592372
Worth noting that the rape rate in the US seems to have the same dark blue shade as Sweden's. No rapes in Egypt, on the other hand. You believe that? Yes, if you're a right wing nut job, you most certainly do. Because Lord knows there ain't no raping moosleems in Egypt.
http://www.geocurrents.info/geography-of-crime-and-punishment/misleading-murder-and-rape-maps-and-the-the-sweden-rape-puzzle

If guns and cars are the same, then why do you need both? Why don't you just keep your car handy?
Same question. Why don't criminals use cars to rob banks? Why are our attack helicopters not armed with cars? I mean they kill more people right?

There is no anger here. I suggest if you have an issue with me that you take it up privately with the mods rather than making these public spectacles.

A gun is inanimate. That is not really the point.
The point is your incorrect, based on the false premise that guns more often than not are helpful as a defensive tool, belief that your choice of getting a gun makes you safer. That feeling you get from a false premise so often recited as gospel by the NRA, gun manufacturers and the rest of the gun aficionado crowd who are just reciting bad data from a fatally flawed 'study' is why you think you have made a snappy comeback. Fail.
From the OP:
In fact, there are millions of lives that are saved in America every year, or millions of instances like that where gun owners have prevented crimes and stopped things from happening because of having guns at the scene.
It may sound reassuring, but is utterly false. In fact, gun owners are far more likely to end up like Theodore Wafer or Eusebio Christian, accidentally shooting an innocent person or seeing their weapons harm a family member, than be heroes warding off criminals."
Noone has said that you should not have a gun. You just need to understand that your reason for having it, defense, is bogus, unless you truly understand that you have actually increased the level of danger to yourself and those around you and act accordingly.

Does your neighborhood suffer a lot of attacks by Boko Haram? I'm going with no.

i don't know. i was on the fence for a long time, but now being an owner of both a mac and a pc, i have to say - i get less lip from the mac. i find it difficult to agree with you most of the time, but you might be on to something. windows 8 might be the death of me.

I remember my first beer.

Yes, must be staged since we all know that the homeless are not actually people or may display any human traits.

Why does it have to be underculture? It's a valid point. Two guys load bb guns and shoot up a store. They get arrested. A man talking on the phone gets shot with a toy gun in his hand. He's shot dead. What's wrong with this picture?

"It sounds like he has a history."
His history is f*cking irrelevant. Who cares what his history was? What matters is what he was doing at the time of his death and we know what he was doing because we WATCHED it. What is this need that some of you have to drag someone through the mud when they're dead in order to somehow justify his death? I don't care how many times he was arrested. He wasn't being hostile, he wasn't being violent. He was unarmed with his hands up. Isn't that what we keep hearing Mike Brown should have done? Put his hands up and show he didn't have a weapon. Eric Garner did this and STILL DIED.
I mean, good lord, a guy can walk into a movie theater and shoot up the place and be taken into custody alive and unharmed, but an unarmed guy on the street with his hands up is choked to death and there are people debating his criminal history. He was begging for his life, telling them he couldn't breathe, and nobody did a damn thing about it. But yes, let's definitely talk about his prior arrests. That absolutely matters in the last few minutes of his life when he's doing nothing wrong.
Sick.
I mean, I stayed away from most of the Ferguson nonsense because at least there was conflicting witness accounts of what happened there. But in this case, that doesn't exist. We saw exactly what happened and how it happened. Anyone who can watch that video and think "hm well he had prior arrests and he's big, so I understand how a cop could have KILLED HIM IN A CHOKEHOLD" is insane.

I'd like to blame the officer who used unnecessary force and everyone else who watched a man scream 11 times that he couldn't breathe and left him there to die while not doing anything to help him.