Octopus Overlords

LawBeefaroni wrote:The Texas boat above has .50s. I imagine it's for sinking other boats. And for strafing shorelines, just to be sure. When 5.56 and 7.62 just won't do.

Brian wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:The Texas boat above has .50s. I imagine it's for sinking other boats. And for strafing shorelines, just to be sure. When 5.56 and 7.62 just won't do.

I don't see any .50s on the boat. I do see what appear to be four M249 SAWs which are 5.56mm.

The Coast Guard does use .50 rifles to shoot out boat engines but, the CG is not your small town police force either.

Enough wrote:Hooray for open carry laws and the Oath Keepers!

Moliere wrote:

Lexi Kozhedsky, 19, of University City stands in front of the police line to protect them from protesters on West Florissant Avenue on Monday, Aug. 10, 2015. "They deserve to be protected. I would rather get hit by something than let it hit them," she said. "I feel like I'm going to get a lot of hate for supporting the police, but someone has to do it."

$iljanus wrote:Her shirt has a Constitution class looking starship on it. Nice!

LawBeefaroni wrote:

$iljanus wrote:Her shirt has a Constitution class looking starship on it. Nice!

It's a dreamcatcher.

$iljanus wrote:Her shirt has a Constitution class looking starship on it. Nice!

GreenGoo wrote:

$iljanus wrote:Her shirt has a Constitution class looking starship on it. Nice!

That was my impression as well. I'm not a fallout boy fan so I had no idea what I was looking at.

Alefroth wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

$iljanus wrote:Her shirt has a Constitution class looking starship on it. Nice!

That was my impression as well. I'm not a fallout boy fan so I had no idea what I was looking at.

It's more commonly associated with Native Americans than Fallout Boy.

GreenGoo wrote:

Alefroth wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

$iljanus wrote:Her shirt has a Constitution class looking starship on it. Nice!

That was my impression as well. I'm not a fallout boy fan so I had no idea what I was looking at.

It's more commonly associated with Native Americans than Fallout Boy.

Well duh, but it's clearly on a Fallout Boy tee-shirt, and if I was a Fallout Boy fan, I assume I would have recognized it right away as a dream catcher and not a stylized USS Enterprise. I'm assuming it's cover art for one of their albums or something. I can't imagine it's just a random image on a Fallout Boy tee-shirt that just happens to be a dream catcher.

LawBeefaroni wrote: As far as I can tell, it's only found on the t-shirt. It's not an album cover.

GreenGoo wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote: As far as I can tell, it's only found on the t-shirt. It's not an album cover.

Huh. Does it tie into one of their songs or something?

LawBeefaroni wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote: As far as I can tell, it's only found on the t-shirt. It's not an album cover.

Huh. Does it tie into one of their songs or something?

I have no idea. I just thought it looked like a dreamcatcher and searched "Fall Out Boy Dreamcatcher." Every reference was to the shirt, primarily shopping links to Hot Topic/Forever21 and Amazon. It says "F O B XIV" on it but that doesn't turn up anything.

All I know about them is that they did this misheard classic (the first Youtube video I ever favorited) and that they're from Chicago and that they recorded at a really fun studio in my neighborhood.

But this girl in Ferguson has no doubt immortalized that t-shirt.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote: As far as I can tell, it's only found on the t-shirt. It's not an album cover.

Huh. Does it tie into one of their songs or something?

I have no idea. I just thought it looked like a dreamcatcher and searched "Fall Out Boy Dreamcatcher." Every reference was to the shirt, primarily shopping links to Hot Topic/Forever21 and Amazon. It says "F O B XIV" on it but that doesn't turn up anything.

All I know about them is that they did this misheard classic (the first Youtube video I ever favorited) and that they're from Chicago and that they recorded at a really fun studio in my neighborhood.

But this girl in Ferguson has no doubt immortalized that t-shirt.

Daveman wrote:Am I really the only one who thought of the Simpsons when I saw "Fallout Boy"?

ImLawBoy wrote:

Daveman wrote:Am I really the only one who thought of the Simpsons when I saw "Fallout Boy"?

I'm pretty sure that's where they got the name.

GreenGoo wrote:

Alefroth wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

$iljanus wrote:Her shirt has a Constitution class looking starship on it. Nice!

That was my impression as well. I'm not a fallout boy fan so I had no idea what I was looking at.

It's more commonly associated with Native Americans than Fallout Boy.

Well duh, but it's clearly on a Fallout Boy tee-shirt, and if I was a Fallout Boy fan, I assume I would have recognized it right away as a dream catcher and not a stylized USS Enterprise. I'm assuming it's cover art for one of their albums or something. I can't imagine it's just a random image on a Fallout Boy tee-shirt that just happens to be a dream catcher.

Alefroth wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

Alefroth wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:

$iljanus wrote:Her shirt has a Constitution class looking starship on it. Nice!

That was my impression as well. I'm not a fallout boy fan so I had no idea what I was looking at.

It's more commonly associated with Native Americans than Fallout Boy.

Well duh, but it's clearly on a Fallout Boy tee-shirt, and if I was a Fallout Boy fan, I assume I would have recognized it right away as a dream catcher and not a stylized USS Enterprise. I'm assuming it's cover art for one of their albums or something. I can't imagine it's just a random image on a Fallout Boy tee-shirt that just happens to be a dream catcher.

Not being a Fall Out Boy has nothing to do with one's ability to recognize a dreamcatcher. Like I said, they are recognizable because of Native Americans (and rear view mirrors), not Fall Out Boy.

Moliere wrote:Their name makes me think of this:

Smoove_B wrote:

Moliere wrote:Their name makes me think of this:

They're actually named after:



as pointed out by Daveman.

The City of Ferguson, Mo., announced Monday that it was withdrawing thousands of arrest warrants for municipal violations and taking steps to prevent the incarceration of people who cannot pay fines and fees, a response to the sharp criticism of its court system that emerged after the killing of Michael Brown last year.

The measures go beyond a state law set to take effect on Friday that limits the amount of money municipalities can keep from minor traffic offenses and imposes safeguards on the amount of time people can be locked up for failing to pay fines and fees. Several other municipalities in the region have announced similar warrant amnesties.
...
Yet court reform advocates, while applauding the measures as a step in the right direction, said the region’s municipal court system needed a complete overhaul. They questioned whether the changes announced Monday would withstand changing financial times and changing judges, and whether the new standards could be enforced.
...
The changes, ordered by Judge Donald McCullin, who was appointed as Ferguson’s municipal judge in June, called for withdrawing all municipal warrants issued before Dec. 31, 2014. That should amount to nearly 10,000 warrants, the city said. It does not apply to state charges for more serious crimes.

Defendants will get new court dates, according to the order, and may be put on installment plans to pay off their fines or ordered to perform community service instead. Some indigent persons could have their fines commuted, according to the order.
...
These changes come as Ferguson, with about 21,000 residents, had already stopped assessing additional fees for people who failed to appear in court.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday that he has asked for the resignation of Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

The announcement at a press conference came amid angry protests in Chicago over the way the city responded to the killing by police of a black teenager.
...
In Chicago, the outrage has been focused squarely on the killing of Laquan McDonald in October 2014. Dashboard camera footage recorded the teen, who was carrying a 4-inch knife, walking yards away and turning his back to Officer Jason Van Dyke when Van Dyke opens fire, shooting the teen 16 times.

A freelance journalist filed suit, arguing that the video was public record. The city went to court to prevent its release. A judge sided with the journalist, and the footage was released last week.
...
When the video was released last week, Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder.

He walked out of jail on bond Monday evening after a judge set his bail at $1.5 million.

Van Dyke had a history of complaints before he gunned down McDonald, and in almost every case, he was cleared in one way or another. The allegations mostly involve excessive force, and at least one complaint alleges that he used a racial slur.

There appear to be no criminal proceedings against Van Dyke before last week, but a jury did award a Chicago man $350,000 after determining that Van Dyke used excessive force during a traffic stop. (The city of Chicago also gave McDonald's mother, who had not yet filed a lawsuit, $5 million in April.)

hepcat wrote:I was listening to the press conference on the radio while driving for lunch. It was painfully awkward. Rahm sounded like he wanted to be anywhere but in that room.

The fact that the city fought the release of this video is inexcusable in my opinion. The police should operate with transparency. At least at this level. I can understand undercover operations requiring discretion when it comes to what the public can see, but this was not the case. This was the department covering its ass and reinforcing the opinion that Chicago is one giant cesspool of corruption.

Sun Times (in April 2014) wrote:Brutality-related lawsuits have cost Chicago taxpayers $521 million over the last decade — that’s more than half a billion dollars — and Burge’s team accounts only for about 15 percent of that staggering figure.

In 2013 alone, the city paid out $84.6 million in settlements, judgments, legal fees and other expenses, more than triple the budgeted amount.

That’s a huge expenditure for a city with billions of dollars in unfunded pension obligations, and a budget crisis severe enough to force mental health clinic shutdowns, reduced library hours and higher fees for water, parking and other services.

hepcat wrote: That's two people I need to avoid political discourse with in this office.

No intelligent person should be tempted by "All lives matter," the insidious slogan that's increasingly fashionable in conservative circles. Not that it isn't true. Its self-evident banality is actually its power. How can anyone argue with such a sentiment? But let's be clear: the slogan was specifically designed as a political weapon to neutralize Black Lives Matter, an angry, noisy movement that is beginning to frighten the mostly non-black people who possess power in the U.S. and Canada, and their uniformed enforcers. As it should.

Consider that just this week, the mayor of Chicago fired his police chief, who, for more than a year, had refused to make public the dash-cam video of one of his officers shooting 16 rounds into a young black teenager, Laquan McDonald. The uniformed shooter has now been charged with murder. Take a look at the video if you need any convincing that there is a need for the Black Lives Matter movement. McDonald, 17, was walking jauntily along under streetlights, after having used a knife to vandalize the tire of a police cruiser. There is no audio, but all the reports have said he wasn't showing the absolute deference demanded by the white police who were pointing their weapons at him from a few metres away. Suddenly, one of them fires, and McDonald collapses. The officer then unloads 15 more rounds into his body, emptying his clip. You can see the corpse jerk as the rounds hit; each creates a puff of dust. No wonder the police chief didn't want anyone seeing the video while the shooting was being investigated. Had it not been for the determined protests of the Black Lives Matter people, though, this "matter" might have been dealt with internally, ending with a bland written statement that the shooting was justified, as has been the case so often in the past.

Of course, the policeman charged with murdering McDonald may yet be found not guilty, if history is any guide. Just last year, a grand jury declined even to indict a white New York policeman who leapt onto Eric Garner, an obese black man who'd been committing the crime of selling loose cigarettes in public, and choked him to death after he noisily resisted orders to submit. There's video of that episode, too.

A postscript: There is one Black Lives Matter chapter outside the U.S., in Toronto, where racially tinged police shootings have occurred. But, says spokeswoman Sandy Hudson, the Canadian chapter is hobbled. Data, she says, is compiled differently in Canada. Race isn't considered in statistics the way it is in the U.S. "The black community knows these things are going on, because we are affected," she says. But "when people ask us to prove it, it's difficult." Difficult, but impossible to dismiss. Is Canada better? Ask the indigenous leaders who have been seeking an inquiry into their nearly 1,200 missing and murdered aboriginal women over the past 30 years. All lives may indeed matter, just some a lot more than others.

The Alabama Justice Project has obtained documents that reveal a Dothan Police Department’s Internal Affairs investigation was covered up by the district attorney. A group of up to a dozen police officers on a specialized narcotics team were found to have planted drugs and weapons on young black men for years. They were supervised at the time by Lt. Steve Parrish, current Dothan Police Chief, and Sgt. Andy Hughes, current Asst. Director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama. All of the officers reportedly were members of a Neoconfederate organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels “racial extremists.” The group has advocated for blacks to return to Africa, published that the civil rights movement is really a Jewish conspiracy, and that blacks have lower IQ’s . Both Parrish and Hughes held leadership positions in the group and are pictured above holding a confederate battle flag at one of the club’s secret meetings.