A Lickable Guy: Wilkes-Barre Policeman Makes National News

[Photo from FOX News]

May 9, 2013 -AP
A northeastern Pennsylvania city official says a blog photo showing a woman poised to lick the badge of a moonlighting officer outside a bar probably isn't a crime, but may violate department regulation.

Wilkes-Barre spokesman Drew McLaughlin says the police chief is investigating that photo and two others showing a provocatively dressed woman posing on the hood and the trunk of a police car.

The spokesman says no officers are pictured in the police cruiser photos, but that the photo of the woman poised to lick the officer's badge could violate regulations if the officer were actively participating in having the photo made.

Wilkes-Barre officers are allowed to moonlight to provide security at bars through a program run by the police union.

Based on evidence in the photo, police believe the badge licking occurred more than a year ago.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/09/pennsylvania-police-chief-probing-badge-licking-photo/#ixzz2T18XyabJ

Commentary: All's fair in love and Wilkes-Barre

Several incidences in the Banana Republic of Wilkes-Barre involving the city's finest have preceded the revealing of this pic.

First, they have a creepy relationship with the city's contracted tow truck operator, Leo Glodzik of LAG Towing, and have reputedly harassed innocent people on his behalf. Wilkes-Barre police officers have received cars on loan from him in spite of being in a position to increase his earnings by having more cars towed--a direct conflict of interest. When reporters waited outside city hall to get some answers, the cops actually tried to issue them citations for trespassing.

Additionally, Wilkes-Barre city police refuse to enforce a provision of the contract with Glodzik which reportedly mandates that he submit logs of all his tows to police so they can ensure he is charging industry standard. Several years passed without Glodzik ever submitting any records, while he routinely charged double and triple the standard price for a tow.

Second, police Chief Jerry Dessoye is alleged to have frequented a crack house on McLean Street and to have refused to shut it down.

In short, many of the city's police are thugs. Most probably aren't, but if there were any good men in the department, there would have been some whistle-blowers. Perhaps the crime spilling into the city from New Jersey, New York, and Philly has caused a war-like atmosphere among the cops where morality takes a backseat to survival. If this is true, then the incompetent mayor has only made the city more attractive to criminals by building Coal Street Park near the locus of many violent crimes in the city. Oh well. All's fair in love and the new Wilkes-Barre.

Rand Paul Hits Home Run with Filibuster

Rand Paul's filibuster was a hit--even with Obama's media outlets such as ABC News and MSNBC. Although they often purposefully obscured his reason for filibustering, ie the fact that Brennan couldn't assure Rand that Americans wouldn't be targeted, most of the media gave a favorable presentation of his stand.
The Huffington Post (...) gave Rand the most publicity of the major liberal outlets, because compared with ABC/NBC/CBS, it is far less pro-establishment, less connected to the White House, and more likely to prioritize civil libertarian values above conformity with Washington.

Rush Limbaugh had Rand on his show today, and allowed him full reign to discuss the problems with the proposed drone policy. Limbaugh seemed to be reluctantly supportive of Rand, but nevertheless he gave Rand plenty of time to speak and had a respectable discourse with him. This is a huge victory for Rand because he was given a platform in the difficult-to-crack neo-con talk radio syndicate.

Laura Ingraham wrote an article praising Rand, a rare thing for her to do with someone who isn't a neo-con like she is.

The same could not be said of the vile neo-con Mark Levin, who astonishingly has no mention of the name Rand Paul anywhere on his site, even regarding an article specifically about Rand's filibuster. Levin, a bloodthirsty warmongering Zionist, cares much more about Rand voting for Chuck Hagel and thus against the wishes of the Lobby than he does about Rand protecting our freedoms.

Anyway, Rand chose a good issue to make a stand on. Virtually every sane American, liberal, conservative, libertarian, etc, can identify with the need for a trial by jury.

Rand chose a good nominee to filibuster, because Brennan is a non-Jewish white guy, so Rand cannot be calumnied as anti-semitic or racist by the sneaky media for opposing him.

Finally, Rand energized his pro-liberty base after previously doing some things that had discouraged them, such as voting for NDAA2013, supporting sanctions on Iran, and refusing to discuss Bilderberg.

And in any sense, the genuineness of Rand's filibuster, bourne out by the fact that his speech was substantive throughout, is something most people want more of in politics.

Rand Paul Nullifies any Benefit from Israel Visit with Hagel Yay

Rand Paul has likely lost all credibility with militant neocons like Mark Levin for voting in favor of Chuck Hagel, who has made remarks concerning the Israel Lobby's power.

Paul went on Levin's show in January, pledging his love for Israel while recounting his recent visit there, yet he squeezed in one little bit that Israel's embargo against Palestinians in Gaza should be ended because the economic prosperity Gazans would gain from trading with the rest of the world would induce them to attack Israel less. Rand framed it as being good for Israel, so Levin let it pass. Rand was very submissive to Levin's expectations of belief in Israeli infallibility.

But it seems like Paul's vote for Hagel will finalize his expulsion from the neocon talk radio syndicate's realm of consideration in 2016, because actions speak louder than words. Indeed, Paul has nullified any creds he got from his "cheap date" with Israel during his visit. It seems he is thrashing about in vain, trying to adhere to his non-interventionist foreign policy convictions on the one hand, while trying to appease the Lobby with the other.

Christians United For Israel (CUFI) campaigned hard against Hagel. Although not headed by a Christian, CUFI is the standard bearer of Christian Zionism and seeks to exploit the innocence of evangelicals for the good of the Israel Lobby. Evangelicals are more likely to compromise on Chris Christie's recent acceptance of Obamacare than go against their belief that any opposition to Israel or its Lobby warrants a curse from God. So Rand has lost credibility with them.

But Rand has gained points with people like Pat Buchanan who perceive Hagel to be the least militaristic option Washington had to offer, despite his support of sanctions against Iran and drone strikes everywhere.

However, Rand's own father, Ron, opposed Hagel for not being anti-war enough.

You can't please them all.

In any case, it's a shame that evangelical churches and the media at large brainwash people to believe that being conservative means having an unquestioning support of war with Israel's opponents. The best we conservatives can do is spread the truth about the apostate belief of Christian Zionism, the lack of threat from Iran, the reason why America should not start wars to ensure Israel's illegal settlements continue to expand, and the real place where radical Islam is gaining ground: Europe via mass immigration.

Ponytail Man Likens Friendly Sons to Magdalene Laundries

 Disclaimer, the author of this post is not a member of, nor affiliated with the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick organization.

If a bunch of Irishmen host a dinner for men, then they want women to be wrongfully imprisoned, according to WILK's ponytail man.

Ponytail man is trying to allege that the same impetus that led the Friendly Sons to be a boys only club was behind the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, which were a cultural tragedy that ruined the lives of many women. This not true.

Magdalene Laundries Background
The documentary Sex in a Cold Climate covers the tragedy of the laundries. After Ireland won its independence from Great Britain in 1922, the new Irish government took over asylums formerly run by the British and converted them into partial laundries. But it wasn't just crazy people who filled them anymore. If a woman got pregnant out of wedlock, or was found to have had sex out of wedlock, or even if she was raped through no fault of her own, she could be sent to the laundries for life. A girl raised in an orphanage who did no wrong could even be sent to the laundries for the "offense" of being pretty. The only way out was either escape or emancipation by someone on the outside, since imprisonment in laundries was actually not bound by any law and was only held together by public shame. Of course, the nuns who ran the laundries worked the women extremely hard and were often shockingly cruel and abusive. Orphanages weren't much better as sometimes priests would abuse girls. A film based on true stories of the laundries is The Magdalene Sisters.
By the way, do the Friendly Sons do any of these things? Obviously no.

Why the Laundries and Friendly Sons are Unrelated
Pony tail man says the laundries and all male gatherings are caused by the patriarchal society. However, there are many things that would seem to play a larger role than male dominated societies.

One would be the strict Catholicism that pervaded Ireland during the 20th century. The idea of Catholic guilt was very strong. It wasn't Catholicism per se behind the laundries because Catholics elsewhere never founded any such laundries in the 20th century* but rather a particular brand of Irish Catholicism involving hyper self-shaming. This shame was practiced by both men and women. If it were exclusion based on sex that caused the laundries to come about, then Why was Ireland the only country to have them? There were plenty of other nations throughout the 20th century where all-male groups abounded, and none of them had Magdalene laundries. Moreover, the Irish Catholic church was not nearly as powerful in the US as it was in Ireland, so this explains why nothing similar arose in America.

Furthermore, Ireland had been oppressed by the British for hundreds of years, and maybe they took it out on their women. Blacks' proclivity to use corporal punishment on their children is often explained as a reaction to having suffered oppression from slavemasters and Jim Crow. Granted, oppression does not necessarily cause people to oppress themselves, but it may dispose them to do so. In any case, Irish in America were never oppressed like they were in Ireland and formed no laundries.

Affirming solidarity between men is not the same as oppressing women. All other things being equal, a group consisting solely of men has more in common than a group consisting of both men and women. There is nothing wrong with a group of men getting together as men, and in fact, there is a healthy masculine camaraderie which helps bring them together as a group. How someone could say this is evil is puzzling. For being a collectivist, Ponytailman seems to exclude collectives of well-off Irishmen from the realm of legitimacy. But I'm sure he'd have no problem with wealthy Arab men meeting among themselves. Furthermore, he would probably have no problem with poor men dining together as men.

Feminists want Power not Equality
Feminists complain that there aren't enough female congressmen, CEOs, judges, etc. But you never hear them complain that there are too few female garbage collectors, sewage treatment plant workers, coal miners, telephone pole wire repairmen, or slaughterhouse workers. They never complain about women missing out on miserable things men have to do--only the things that carry with them prestige or power. So this is why Ponytail man would have no problem with, say, a group of poor factory workers having an all male dinner. The epithet that Mr Ponytail is a Marxist is dead on.

What you can do
If you would like to be a counter-Revolutionary and affirm the Friendly Sons' justification in having their dinner, write them at info@friendlysons.org
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* One might argue that convents were sort of prisons in the middle ages where innocent women were usually sent against their will, but in many places, nuns of that time had slightly more freedom than the nuns of today and enjoyed the privileges of reading and writing which were denied to most men and women at the time.

Hollywood Underestimater Reviews Tron Legacy

The uniquely incandescent clothing of characters, vehicles, et al, is what initially lured me into watching Tron: Legacy. I was in the mood for such a rawly reduced presentation of form and light. The film prioritized special effects, and was artful in a stylistic sense. But every action of the characters seemed to be covered with a nonchalantness that didn't allow for a lurid enough presentation for the viewer to digest as meaningful.

However, the saving grace of the film is the female character Quorra, who is the love interest in the plot. Tron Legacy was plagued by all the typical modern Hollywood annoyances: Characters with overly terse speech, a plot choked out by excessively long action scenes, but Quorra offered some relief.

Quorra is a human-like program within the game who has mysteriously acquired a special evolutionary development which other human-like programs don't have. She takes a liking to the main character, Sam Flynn. She displays natural behavior that girls often exhibit when they're around guys they like. These include viewing from afar, giving a lot of eye contact, and prioritizing being together with him. These are innocent female behaviors that Hollywood seems to have tacitly banned in other films. Her damsel in distress quality is heightened by the fact that her life consists of the dark gray drudgery of her cyberworld. In a way, her position of situational weakness and innocence really heightens her ability to love because worldliness and manipulations are absent and unable to block her longing. In spite of her weakness and innocence she is still a smart, strong woman. It is a amazing that a female character who exemplifies feminine virtues such as purity and self-sacrifice squeaked through the Hollywood feminist screen.

Her love-interest, Sam, could have been a little more into her, and the paradigm of her being a computer program sort of gets in the way of a nicer love story. It would have been better if he showed a liking to her earlier in the film. Only when Sam's father avers her equivalence to humanity does he seem to appreciate her. Apparently he is not susceptible to the "indefinable charm of weakness" Oscar Wilde spoke of in women, which Olivia Wilde's character Quorra displays. Anyway, [Spoiler Alert] in the end, she saves Sam, and Sam saves her. Is such a story not the whole point of romantic love? Perhaps a going theme of the movie could be that true love stands alone.

The dynamic of Kevin Flynn and Quorra both being partial yet different creations of Sam's father is interesting as well; almost as if they are his unrelated children of his. The movie will explain why this is so... It is interesting how their romance evolves from a side-issue to almost being the main thing at the end of the movie. But even at the end, it is presented in a sort of distant nonchalantness that pervades the film. Maybe it's supposed to be representative of the indifference people have toward things in a video game world, where one "dies" as often as every minute.

Another theme could be that certain life situations are worth risking it all to escape from. The American Revolutionaries did this in the Revolutionary War. Many people undergo life-threatening surgeries and treatments to get out of horrifying illnesses. This sort of scenario occurs in Tron Legacy.

As a final note, the soundtrack was handled by the House/Techno group Daft Punk. The music often felt like it was building up to something which it never got to, but overall it seemed to fit well with the film.

Ultimately, if you're looking for a movie that doesn't command much but delivers in a few small ways, as in the glow in the dark designs and nonchalant, yet severe damsel in distress element, then Tron Legacy is worth watching.

The Hagelian Dilemma

Pat Buchanan, an ardent opponent of the neocons, has endorsed Obama's pick Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense. But Ron Paul will not go so far, and seems to imply that the enemy of the neocons--Chuck Hagel--is not necessarily Dr. Paul's friend.

from RonPaul.com:

Hagel has shown some admirable willingness to advise caution overseas. He is seen as unenthusiastic over the prospects of a US war on Iran, which is certainly to be welcomed. But let us not forget that he did vote for the war against Iraq, he has expressed support for multi-lateral sanctions on Iran, and last year he wrote in the Washington Post that, on Iran, he supports “keeping all options on the table, including the use of military force.” Nevertheless because he does represent a more moderate voice in foreign policy than the neo-conservatives can tolerate, they are dragging his name through the mud. In choosing Hagel, then, we can hope the president is signaling that he will pursue a less aggressive foreign policy in his second term. But we cannot count on it.

This is a confusing issue because although Hagel may not be a Paul Wolfowitz-like neocon, he certainly is not on board with an ideal Paulesque/Buchananite noninterventionist foreign policy. Should someone vote against Hagel for being too pro-war? or vote for him to stick it to the neocons? Is Hagel as good as it gets in terms of aversion to war with Iran? It seems Ron Paul doesn't trust Hagel to avoid war but Buchanan does.
Paul gained his nickname "Dr. No" by holding every vote to a strict standard. This standard includes an opposition to militarism abroad. But holding to this standard may force Obama to nominate someone more pro-war than Hagel. This dilemma gets to the heart of politics as to whether compromise is ever justified.

Finally, the sad fact is that neocons and Ron Paul alike oppose Hagel for opposite reasons. Politics makes strange vote coalitions.

In Defense of Alex Jones

Disclaimer: The Nothington Post staff does not subscribe to any of Alex Jones's conspiracy theories, nor his sensationalism, celebrity worship, and other errors.

Jones was uncomposed and overly boistrous in his debate with Piers Morgan on gun rights. People say that he made liberty people look bad. Indeed, maybe he did. Many conspiracy theorists theorize that he is a double agent who is trying to make liberty people look bad. But it seems Jones's conduct during the debate was a manifestation of his spark plug personality and not deliberate sabotage. That same fiery temperment has made him famous and has also drawn many people to liberty philosophy. Even if he isn't a calm debater, people need to remember the good that he has done.

It's a fact that many Ron Paul supporters found the liberty movement through Alex Jones. Moreover, Jones always supports honest, anti-establishment, pro-freedom candidates like Debra Medina and Kurt Haskell. Despite his conspiracy stigma, Jones has the largest following in the liberty movement, with many fans not totally on board with liberty as well. The worst side effect of his conspiracies may be an overexuberant distrust of government among his followers, but consequently, no Alex Jones supporter could be found to be the chump of a cynical politician.

It's funny because even conspiracy people are developing conspiracies against Jones, saying that because he doesn't tout their worldview enough, he is an agent for the Illuminati or something. But even if this is somehow true, which it isn't, Jones has brought so many people to be "awake", as they call it, that the Illuminati or whoever would have to be totally stupid for sponsoring him.

Jones has a lot of legitimate information on his show that the rest of the media ignores. For example, Jones covers the Bilderberg meeting, an important meeting of world elites that the cowardly mainstream media ignores for fear of being called conspiracy theorists. Like the G20 or any gathering of world leaders, Bilderberg deserves attention, and Jones has nothing to lose in covering it.

In sum, Jones makes valuable contributions to journalism and the liberty movement despite his regrettable conspiracies.
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Correction
We initally gave as an example of the mainstream media ignoring Michigan's law that oppresses small hog farmers at the behest of big agra, and related that Jones had covered it. But we subsequently found an ABC News article about it, so we were wrong that the media ignored it. However, one could say that major media outlets did not cover it enough. If they had publicized it like they did the Trayvon Martin case, then Michigan probably wouldn't have any problems now with oppressive farm laws.

Gun Grabbers Use Propaganda Not Reason

Gun grabbers such as the ponytail man waste no time in using recent news of mass shootings as propaganda to fit their preconceived agenda of taking people's guns. They justify exploiting news of murders for political gain by saying that "if this particular gun control law were in place, fewer or no people would have died," and then they act as though those people who would oppose such laws somehow endorse the murders. If gun grabbers are going to throw the first punch, pro-gun people have a right to respond.

First of all, the gun grabbers are selling snake oil. They do not know for sure that the laws they propose would prevent murders. If clip sizes are reduced, then a killer could bring additional clips. If quotas are put on clips, a killer could bring an additional weapon. Economics tells us that there are substitute goods that can be used in place of goods to fulfill the same purpose, so even if all guns are successfully banned, alternative weapons and methods of killing would be sought by killers. If a killer wants to kill a certain number of people, he can find ways to circumvent bans.

It'd be one thing to introduce statistics on gun deaths in the US and and to estimate how many lives a proposed law might save. But in that case, the law would be somewhat testable, and if it failed to reduce deaths, then the gun grabber would look bad. To escape potential statistical scrutiny, gun grabbers opt to play on people's emotions by using news events of mass shootings or shootings involving famous people. You get the idea from these media propagandists that ordinary people who are shot individually elicit no need for anti-gun laws, as if their deaths are less important. Indeed, they are less important to the gun grabber, because they are not as useful in drumming up support for anti-gun legislation.

To answer the question as to whether people "need" to own high powered guns, I quote Sidney Painter in his book on French Chivalry: "Until the non-noble class obtained wealth, leisure, or a cheap, easily used, and effective weapon, the position of the feudal aristocracy was perfectly secure" (page 3). Notice that maintaining feudal aristocracy is partly reliant on the rulers (or government) possessing far superior weaponry to the commoners. The founding fathers wanted to make sure common people could defend themselves against, say, indian raids instead of being helplessly reliant on the government to protect them. Thus, the power structure would be unlike a feudal system in which only rulers could offer sufficient protection. In a land of liberty, commoners deserve to have effective weapons. These weapons should be as potentially effective in defense as the most effective weapon possessed by government agents who deal with similar threats. But because gun grabbers promote government coercion and not liberty, they see no need to support the right to own high powered firearms for people without government-granted status.