Random Thoughts of Mine...

Clarification: I mistakenly dropped a word when commenting on whether the officer made any hand gestures to signal the bicyclist to stop. The sentence should have read that the officer made no hand gestures.

Kudos to The Smoking Gun for posting a copy of the arrest report filed by New York City policeman Patrick Pogan.

He's the officer who a tourist videotaped body slamming a bicyclist in what appears to be an unprovoked attack last Friday. The case is rapidly playing out on YouTube, where the clip has been watched nearly 900,000 times since Sunday night, when it was posted.

This is why I love the Web and I respect The Smoking Gun. They get paper. Thesmokinggun.com is famous for posting copies of important documents before anybody. They let readers decide for themselves what people say by publishing court filings, e-mails and memos.

Read the rest of the story here.

I saw the video earlier on YouTube and could hardly believe it. Some members of the NYPD are bad apples that give the rest of the cops on the force a bad name. There have been reports in the past of cops abusing their power. A co-worker of mine had several runins with NY cops. He calls them arrogant SOBs. When you read the police report filed by the cop who body slammed the bicyclist, he lies more than once on the report. He claims the bicyclist hit him, knocking him down and giving him lacerations. That clearly did not happen on the video. The cop even claimed that he saw the bicyclist weaving in and out of traffic almost causing some wrecks. The traffic looked stopped to me in the video also. The cop never tried to gesture, or voice, anything to the bicyclist about stopping for him. This looks like a clear case of police brutality, which does not surprise me about hometown cops. The cop is currently suspended while the NYPD investigates. He needs to be fired for assaulting the bicyclist and for lying multiple times on the police report he filed. If he did these things once, he will do it again unless he is fired.



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I had seen this movie sometime ago when it was playing at a local theatre for a limited engagement. It was made by the late Hollywood producer, Aaron Russo. You can see a trailer for the movie here.

In this film, Mr. Russo set out to find out about the laws concerning the Federal Income Tax in America. He ended up covering much more subjects such as, the Federal Reserve System (which is linked to the income tax), national ID cards, chips that can be implanted into humans, electronic voting machines (rigged elections), and the erosion of civil liberties in America. Big Brother is becoming real in our times. It has been accelerated since the events of 9/11, which was allowed to happen, with the full knowledge of the U.S. government, by the way. All of the earlier mentioned things began in 1913 with (1)the ratification of the 16th Amendment, (2) the passage of the Federal Income Tax, and (3)the ratification of the 17th Amendment. All 3 of these events are connected. Here is a link to the official movie site. Below is a quote from the site, along with the movie:

America: Freedom to Fascism is a compelling and troubling account of how the wealth of our nation was silently passed from its citizens to a handful of powerful bankers in 1913. That's the year the Federal Reserve Act and the 16th Amendment were introduced, giving a privately held corporation the means to control our finances while ensuring its interest payments through the strong arms of the newly-formed Internal Revenue Service. Ever since then, Russo suggests, Americans have been gradually conditioned to accept fewer freedoms and a lower standard of living... all the while considering debt and servitude as distinctly American values.

Russo's first and most cogent point is simple: Americans are not required to pay a federal income tax. That's a bold statement to make, as few people believe that such a fraud could be perpetrated for so long. My father, himself an accountant, insists that the income tax is a very real thing. Russo takes that same belief to IRS employees and simply asks them to cite where it says an unapportioned income tax is required of us all. Guess what? They can't. In a telling segment Sheldon Cohen, former commissioner of the IRS, goes so far as to reject Supreme Court rulings and the Constitution as benchmarks over what is legal with regards to taxation. Russo also interviews members of the tax honesty movement as well as disenfranchised IRS agents who agree that no law on the books conjures up a requirement to send the government part of one's hard-earned paycheck. Russo then showcases court cases where those accused of tax evasion have won precisely because the prosecution cannot provide evidence of a legal federal income tax law.

It's shocking to have it hammered into your head over and over that you've thrown your money away for nothing, but repetition is good; it helps knock loose the deeply entrenched belief that we owe a portion of our livelihood to our government.

America: Freedom to Fascism - Director's Authorized Version





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Dear MyOpera Team,
I am writing to you today because I have some issues that I would like for you to fix quickly. First off, some friends of mine have recently been upset by asinine members of this site leaving them inappropriate comments and/or messages. One person even blocked the member that was upsetting them, but that person was STILL able to get onto my friend's page and leave a really inappropriate comment on one of their pictures in the photo album They were able to do this because that a$$hole had added my friend to his friend's list. Now what kind of crap is that? If you block a person, they should be BLOCKED and unable to comment and message the member that blocked them!

Second, you need to change the way that adding friends is being done. It needs to be done like Yahoo IM, Myspace, and others do it; you have to approve a person's request before they can add you to their friends list! Some people have added me to their friends list that I want nothing to do with because of the content of their pages, and comments that they have left on people's blogs. I would greatly appreciate a "friends request" system like seen on other sites, as would many other members of this community.

Third, There is currently no way for me to edit my friends list. I have tried to make changes to it and the "Edit Friends" option is now MIA. Where did it go? Please return it very soon.

Fourth, on a recent post I tried to upload a song to the post and the song seemingly uploaded to this site. When I tried to put it on my blog post, it wasn't there. I tried to delete it and upload it again and got the same results. Only now, I have 2 of the same song file in my Files folder and can't delete either one

Fifth, whenever I type a message into my Shoutbox, I don't need a message in my Inbox that says, "FXM256 posted a message in your shoutbox!" I already know that, duhhh!

I must say that I enjoy this community and feel quite at home here. I have had the pleasure of meeting some wonderful people from around the world, and some have become good friends Please fix the issues that I've outlined very soon and MyOpera will be an even more enjoyable place for all of us

Sincerly,
Marcus


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I tried to do this post earlier today but the stupid Opera server wouldn't let me What the hell is up with Opera lately? Why don't they put more warnings on the homepage when they are having problems with the site? How freakin hard is that????

It's been a while since I have done a post. I've been working a lot of hours lately and haven't felt like posting because I was tired. Today (Friday) is my first day off in a week and a half. I'm to have had a day off. I might not get one for another week and a half. Oh well, guess I'll just take the money.

Last night at work, I was talking to one of the maintenance guys. He likes to spend time out about in nature, which many people like to do. He was talking about digging for emeralds and other gems at a hollow mine that's open to the public in Hiddenite, North Carolina. He told about a trip he had made out there with his girlfriend last year. He wants to go back out there and search for more gems next year. We also talked about Crater of Diamonds State Park in Murfreesboro, Arkansas, where the public can search for diamonds and keep whatever they find. There have been some famous diamond finds at that state park this year. A Texas couple found a 6.35-carat diamond there back in September. He had also made a trip out thre one year. He didn't find any diamonds that time, but he says he goes on trips like this just for the fun of it. He doesn't care if he finds something valuable or not. I realized that I had never done anything like that and it seems like something fun to do. There are many things that I would like to do before I leave this Earth. I'm not doing them right now Have to get on the ball and figure out ways to do the things that I want to do while I'm still alive.

I also wanted to do a follow-up to the Pac-Man post. Here's some more games to play. I remember going to the arcade to play video games such as: Space Invaders, Asteroids and Frogger, to name a few. You can play these games plus five more at Neave Games. There are a lot of games to play at this site.


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