Wordless Wednesday: October 6th, 2021
categories: personal; word count: 0 words
October 2021 archive
Covering an event that happened in my city in 2014.
categories: personal; word count: 503 words
This is the picture of someone who has been in the local jail for seven years, so, I mean… so much for a fair and speedy trial, right? But in May of 2014, police officers attempted to execute a no-knock warrant on this man’s apartment, and as soon as he realized that someone was breaking into his home — even if they were cops — he began firing back, and in the midst of everyone firing, a cop was shot beyond the confines of his bulletproof garb and would later succumb to that injury at a local hospital. This man, pictured right here, is facing the death penalty because that can be applied to someone in our state if they shoot and kill a member of the police. On a tip from what would later be revealed to be a bad informant, local law enforcement was able to get approval to execute a no-knock warrant in a matter of minutes. The judge who made this decision seriously made it in a matter of minutes. During the raid on his apartment, an officer tripped over a flash grenade which would come to obscure everyone’s vision. It is entirely possible that the cop who was shot was shot as a result of friendly fire, and this has been acknowledged. No attempts have been made to determine whether it was a bullet from Guy’s gun or a bullet from a police officer’s gun that killed this man.
As soon as this man realized that it was members of the police who had entered his home, he surrendered. In exchange, the police threatened to kill him as they arrested him, and in the process several of his girlfriend’s ribs were broken. Later, after he was arrested, his apartment was thoroughly searched, and there was absolutely no contraband or drugs in the apartment… none whatsoever. Despite the fact that our state is a Castle Doctrine (“castle law”) state, and one is under the law allowed to injure and possibly kill anyone who breaks into their domicile if they are a threat to their life, Guy currently sits in the county jail facing the death penalty for this. Years later, in large part due to this incident, no-knock warrants became illegal in our city. But the fact of the matter is that they were legal at the time this happened… and three public defenders so far have tried to encourage him to take a plea bargain in this case, which he refuses to do to this day.
I remember when this happened. I remember waking up at five in the morning clearly hearing gunfire. Since this city is… a bit known for the high crime rate that it has, I went back to sleep, but I would later come to find out that the entire street that this happened on had been blocked off, so I had to find an alternate route to my son’s speech therapy. Here I am though, wondering when this “speedy trial” will take place for this man.
Music Monday: October 4th, 2021
categories: music; word count: 24 words
This was so funny when I found it (how had I not found it sooner?!) that I had to post it here. Come on.
Seems like I saved myself some money there, heh.
categories: MMORPGs; word count: 209 words
I had convinced myself that you had to pay more to get the DLC in Diablo II: Resurrected, and I was going to do that at the start of this month. But… to the best of my knowledge, you don’t have to pay anything extra. So that actually saves me money that I had intended on spending to give Bub the fullest experience of the game that we used to play together with him sitting on my lap as a baby, cooing. Yes, we installed it with the original CDs (gasp!), and there were still people playing the original Diablo 2 back in the day. And surprisingly, our current PC does not have a native CD-ROM drive… I had to buy a Blu-ray/DVD player that hooks up to the USB that requires its own power source to give Bub the fullest experience of those things. To reacquaint myself with the mechanics of the game since I haven’t played it in awhile I might stick to the sorceress class for my own personal character, because that happens to be what I’m the best at. (Blizzard. Literally. All over the place.)
I might also begin playing Diablo 3 with him a little bit more, both on PC and the Switch, just because.
We move onto the manufactured debt ceiling crisis.
categories: personal; word count: 399 words
I choose the subject of this post I do out of acknowledgement of the fact that it has happened several times since the birth of my youngest son, all while conceding to the possibility — and possibly, probably even the reality — of the United States defaulting on its debt, which has never happened before in the history of the United States and is rumored to have potentially catastrophic effects both to it and to the world economy. It’s rumored that it will delay (or worse, stop, at least until it were resolved) all payments made by the government, which would include both of the boys’ disability checks and even the child support that Bub’s paternal grandmother pays for her adult son since it is almost guaranteed to come out of his paternal grandfather’s disability or retirement… whatever he’s getting. All of it comes from the same “pot”, so to speak, even if the criteria for the payment and even the reasons may be different. If the United States can no longer borrow — create new debt — to cover shortfalls in cash flow when it has more obligations than it does cash on hand, everything paid for by the government goes on the chopping block, and we don’t even know what the scope of that chopping block is yet other than “really bad” because the United States has thus far been responsible enough to avert that by ensuring that the debt ceiling was either raised or suspended. That may or may not happen this time since Senate Republicans are digging their heels in about how Democrats should raise the debt ceiling — they can’t suspend it this way, they have to raise it to a specific dollar amount — through reconciliation, which only requires a simple majority rather than sixty Senators agreeing to invoke cloture to allow for a vote. Or unanimous consent, which… isn’t happening.
However, reconciliation tends to take weeks, and Pelosi and Schumer… don’t want to do it.
Even though Senate Republicans have told them that they will not in any way, shape, or form help them raise or suspend the debt ceiling themselves. McConnell has even told them to raise it through reconciliation.
There are times that I don’t like this country, and now would be one of those times.
We are manufacturing drama for the sake of doing so to see who, if anyone, will blink. Other people suffer.