Moving On

I know I said I would continue the previous post re: the kid who dropped out of college, but then somoeone much wiser than I gave me pause.

Debra She Who Seeks said...

I hope his parents are able to convince him to see a mental health specialist. Seriously, he sounds like he's in a manic phase. Young adulthood is often when mental disorders manifest. I don't condemn this young guy but I fear for him.

And of course, she's right.
So now I feel bad about mocking this kid.
Sp we will move on to other topics and let's speak no more of it,

Douche of the Day

Seriously, this guy is in the running for douche of the decade!

The Valedictorian of University of Maryland drops out of school two weeks before graduation

Gio Managadze

Entrepreneur

Okay, let's start with the fact that this putz identifies himself as "Entrepreneur."  Generally, that term refers to someone who has risked his personal fortune to start a business. It is generally not used to refer to self-impressed little schmucks who have yet to accomplish a goddamm thing in their lives.
And this little jackass was two weeks shy of actually accomplishing something -- not anything entrepreneurial, but still -- and he quits? How much money did your parents invest in your college education, and you quit with 2 weeks to go?
Also, he refers to himself in the third person in that stupid headline.


And he writes this smug, self-satisfied open letter to the University of Maryland and his infortunate parents:

Dear University of Maryland, 
I was your Valedictorian until about a month ago and almost gave the Main Commencement Speech at graduation, but instead of giving the speech, I decided to follow my dreams, fail all my classes this semester, and drop out of school two weeks before graduation without getting a degree. If you would like to know why your Valedictorian dropped out of school, you're welcome to read my email to my parents below:

Yeah, I'm guessing they don't care to know. They have your parents' money, if you want to leave early, how is that any skin of their nose?

Dear Mom and Dad, 
I finally found my destiny this semester in college.

My destiny was to not only disappoint you and waste your money, but to then go on and embarrass you publicly!

I have finally understood how leadership, happiness, and fearlessness actually work.
Leadership is very simple. 
All you need to have is a lot of confidence and a lot of empathy both at the same time.

Pictured: Three men known for their empathy.

You know, it's great to have a lot of confidence and empathy, but you know what else helps? Having some fucking clue what you're doing!

You need confidence to know what you want to do and do it. 
You need empathy to understand other people’s perspectives, emotions, wants, and desires so you can lead them and help them achieve their goals. 
You make yourself happy and you make everybody around you happy.

Hey, you know who usually end up being great leaders? Guys who think "hell, this'll be super-easy!"

I have learned that there are only two real emotions in life: love and anger.

Absolutely. As long as you don't count fear.
Or joy.
Or sadness, disgust, hatred, contentment, envy, want. . . but yeah, really just two.

Life is not as complicated as people make it out to be as long as you’re not lazy. 
Life is actually very simple. 
We are always mentally at either peace or war. 
You show love to your friends in peace and anger to your enemies in war. 
That’s it. 
Peace or War. 
People are also easily divided in two categories: real friends or enemies.

Oh, that attitude will really serve you well in the world of business. Other business-people aren't independent actors with whom you can possibly make deals in mutually beneficial ways. They are either your real friends or your enemies. That's totally not the kind of perspective that lands you in bankruptcy court over and over again.

This is what a real friend is: he supports you in every way possible, makes you feel better no matter what you’re going through, never judges you, never makes fun of you in a bad way, and always has your best interest in mind. 
Every “friend” that does not fit this description is a fake friend.

Sounds like a page from every 13-year-old's diary!

You need to get rid of fake friends immediately. They’re only slowing you down. 
Either try to convert them to your real friends or just completely ignore them forever.

Get rid of them IMMEDIATELY! Or, you know, try and see if you can cajole them into being your true besties!

I have finally also understood what passion really means. 
Every human being on this planet only really has one passion - the passion of life. 
If we are mentally at peace, we are passionate about life by doing what we love.
If we are mentally at war, we are passionate about life by fighting for it and protecting it.

Somewhere at the University of Maryland there is an intro to philosophy professor whith his face in his hands groaning "no, that's not what I meant."

Very simple. 
You’re always happy, though.
Happiness is a choice.
You’re happy in peace. 
You’re happy in war. 
You’re always happy.

What? How does that even. . . what kind of a psychopath is happy in a war?
And that is not how emotions work. You can't just say "oh, my girlfriend broke up with me? I choose to be happy! Oh, my mom just died? I choose to be happy! Oh, my son is a nincompoop who's dropping out of college because he thinks that at 21 he's figured out the secret of life? I choose to be happy!"

If you stop being lazy, stop listening to haters, and take control of your mind and all its thoughts and emotions, you can literally choose to be happy all the time. 
From right now, till the second you die, you can always be happy if you want to.
Happiness is a choice.
I’m always happy, no matter what happens.

You think you need a reason to be happy? 
I’m happy because I’m alive. Period.

There are no other emotions in life other than love and anger.

And happiness. Love, anger and hap - three emotions! There are only three emotions!

Fear? 
What is fear?
Fear doesn’t make any sense to me.

Yeah, what doesn't make sense to you would fill a dictionary, but go on.


Fear is not an emotion. 
You can’t feel fear.


Really? You can't? I mean, I guess if you're a full-on sociopath, maybe you can't but the rest of us?

Pictured: Wendy acting strangely for some unknown reason.

Fear is generally recognized as one of humankind's most primal emotions. If humans did not feel fear, we'd all have been eaten by sabre-toothed tigers aeons ago. Fear is absolutely necessary for survival. It's why you don't walk up to a bunch of Hell's Angels and tell them that motorcycles are for weiners.

Fear is all in your head.

Yeah, that's where all emotions are.

If it’s in your head that means you can completely block it out. 

Maybe, but if you do that it will inevitably lead you to making stupid decisions like trying to climb into the lion enclosure at the zoo to pet the cubs or dropping out of college with two fucking weeks left because you think you're some sort of brilliant genius-guru or something.

This semester I was able to block out every single fear I had in my head about absolutely everything.

I’m literally, by definition, fearless, and you can be too if you want to.

So, if you were confronted by, say, an angry bear, or a gun-toting lunatic or a 20-ft tsunami, you'd just block that fear out of your head? So you'd have no motivation to try and flee the danfer? So you'd be dead? Hell of a plan there, Sparky!

What are you afraid of?

1.
Are you afraid of other human beings?
What?
Why?
What does that even mean?
Why would you fear someone of your own species?

Really? Why? Um, maybe because members of my species commit 100% of the murders, assaults, and batteries that happen ever?

Because some of the more notorious members of my species include Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy and Dick Cheney?

How is this confusing for you?

Why would you fear someone of your own species? 
If someone is a threat to your happiness in any way, then they are an enemy.
Aggressively defend yourself from your enemies, but also show mercy. 
Just because somebody is your enemy, does not mean you necessarily have to hurt them. 
You should do your absolute best to solve all your problems without unnecessarily hurting others.
Other human beings should not be your enemies. 
Life is a collaboration, not a competition.

You just said --JUST SAID-- thast anyone who is not your true friend is your enemy. Yous just said that like 5 minutes ago. And now you're going to sit there straight-faced and say "
Other human beings should not be your enemies."
And "life is a collaboration, not a competition."?

 These are your real enemies: cancer, hunger, homelessness, all other diseases, the fact that we're running out of resources and haven't colonized other planets yet, the fact that we haven’t discovered life somewhere else in the universe, etc.

How is the fact that we have yet to discover life on other planets my enemy? I'm perfectly fine with that. It would be pretty cool if we did find little green men on Mars, but it doesn't really impact my life that we haven't.
I would say that I have more to fear from the fact that we've never found the Zodiac than the fact that we've never found space aliens.

 

              

  Okay, I can see that this is going to need to be a two-parter. Maybe three. But this has gone on long enough already. I'll try to pick this up tomorrow.

 

                                                                           

Tammy Bruce is a Terrible Person.

So the gleeful jackals at FOX showed a video of a kid telling Mike Pence that he owed him an apology for accidentally "bopping" his nose. Pence wasn't offended, he readily apologized and hugged the kid. If you didn't know better, you'd think he was a decent human being! Anyway, Pence may not have been bothered, but the nasty little kitten-stompers at FOX sure had a problem with this boy!

Tammy Bruce took special delight in sneering at this kid, complaining that "we're giving birth to 'snowflakes' now." I don't really even know what this whole "snowflake" thing is. Seems like about a year or so ago, right-wing assholes adopted this word as a sort of catch-all insult for anyone who's maybe a bit liberal for their taste or something? I don't know, it used to be a term that people used when someone was claiming to be special or unique, like "well, aren't you a special little snowflake," but now I think it is supposed to imply weakness or over-sensitivity or something.

Anyway, Tammy decides to jeer at this kid, saying something about him needing a "safe space." Yeah, Tammy. He's a CHILD! Of course he should have safe -- every place should be a safe space for a child! What kind of monster thinks that children needing to feel safe is some sort of indictment of modern society or a sign of parental weakness or whatever?

Fox News called a child with autism a ‘snowflake’ pic.twitter.com/bGUpegNzSH

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) May 17, 2017

And the apology? Please! She actually sits there with a straight face claiming "we never meant to hurt a child or his mother." Yes you did! Of course you did! You just feel bad now because you found out he's autistic and the son of a veteran. You had no problem insulting that child and his mother before you knew that. It's like you mug a guy on the street, then you find out he's a disabled Vietnam Vet and you feel shitty, but instead of saying "I never would have robbed that guy had I known he was a disabled vet," you have the balls to sit there and say "it was never my intention to rob anyone!"




And she says "as a gay woman and a feminist, I have spent most of my adult life working to improve the lives of women and children. . ." Which sounds great, but if you really are a feminist lesbian, what the fuck are you doing on FOX?
Apparently, Ms Bruce was once the head of the Los Angeles chapter of NOW and was involved in ACTUP, but like so many before her, she figured out which side the money is on and now she writes books like these:

Books

• The New Thought Police: Inside the Left's Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds (Prima, 2001) ISBN 0-7615-6373-3
• The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values (Random House, 2003) ISBN 0-7615-1663-8 ^[13]
• The New American Revolution: Using the Power of the Individual to Save Our Nation from Extremists (Morrow, 2005) ISBN 0-06-072620-2

Oh, and she writes a column for the right-wing nut-job purveyor of conspiracy theories and hate-speech World Net Daily.
And, according to her Biography page: In addition to her media work, Ms. Bruce speaks to a variety of groups nationwide, including college, business and civic organizations with her speech, “Contrary to Popular Belief: How Conservative Ideas Empower Women, Gays and Blacks.”


So, I guess she's making up for whatever amount of time she spent working for women, children and the disenfranchised.

And speaking of her Biography page, there's this little unrelated tidbit:

A free-speech and Second Amendment advocate, an important contributor to her position on the issue comes from her experience as a radio talk show host. The “Tammy Bruce Show” premiered in 1993 in Los Angeles and was nationally syndicated in 2005, enjoying over 200 terrestrial affiliates. In 2009, in a move to gain more freedom, Ms. Bruce took her radio show independent, making it an exclusively New Media program available online and via podcast. Tammy Radio remains the #1 program on the worldwide internet radio hub TalkStreamLive for 3 consecutive years.

Wait. You're telling me that she had a nationally syndicated radio show and thought "you know what, I'm just gonna do this as a podcast instead?" Because she wanted "more freedom?" Like the freedom from making money?

Oh, but she's the number one show.
On the internet.
Oh, wait.
The number one show on something called "Talk Stream Live" which I've never heard of and I listen to podcasts a lot. I'm familiar with Nerdist and Earwolf  and TYT  and Soundworks, but I have never heard of this "Talk Stream Live."

Anyway, the point is that Tammy Bruce is a horrible person and when she and the guy that introduced her phony apology claim that they totally agree with leaving kids out of it, they are lying. Because that would rfequire a bit of human decency.

Trump to graduates: 'No politician in history... has been treated worse'

By Dan Merica, CNN

New London, Connecticut (CNN)President Donald Trump, amid his own swirling controversies, advised United States Coast Guard Academy graduates that while things aren't always fair, "you have to put your head down and fight, fight, fight."

"Look at the way I have been treated lately, especially by the media," he said. "No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.

 

 

 

 

 

Now you can have all the negative consequences of drug use without any of that pesky "getting high!"

From WXIA, Atlanta's NBC affiliate:

Georgia now has more than 250 officers with special 'drug recognition expert' training.

So what does that mean?  It means that you can be pulled over, pass every roadside sobriety test and these special officers can look at you and "recognize" that you are on drugs because I guess they're psychic or something? And you can be arrested for DUI even though you have passed the sobriety tests because this psychic cop decides that even though there's no evidence that you're high, you're high!

I don't know if this video is going to embed properly, but you can watch it here: http://www.11alive.com/news/investigations/the-drug-whisperer/437061710
You can skip ahead to about the 20:15 mark when the officer, AFTER the driver has passed several sobriety tests, asks her if she's been smoking marijuana. She says no, he says that she's "showing indications" that she has and proceeds to cuff her.




The conversation, in part, goes like this:

Officer Carroll: "I'm going to ask you a question, okay? When was the last time you smoked marijuana?"
Katelyn Ebner: "Oh, I don't do that. I can give you a drug test right now."
Officer Carroll: "You don't smoke marijuana?"
Katelyn Ebner: "I do not, no."
Officer Carroll: "Okay. Well, you're showing me indicators that you have been smoking marijuana, okay?"

And then she's arrested.

Katelyn Ebner: "I'm going to jail for marijuana?"
Officer Carroll: "No, ma'am -- not possession, unless I find any in your car. I believe you're impaired by the marijuana you've smoked."
Katelyn Ebner: "Okay, so when I do a drug test, I'll be free to go, correct?"
Officer Carroll: "You're going to jail, ma'am. Okay? I don't have a magical drug test that I can give you right now."

She's arrested with no actual evidence of having committed any crime other than the fact that this particular cop has been given the right to decide that she seems like maybe she's high because he can read some sort of bullshit "indicators." How do I know they're bullshit?

The waitress spent the night in jail, had her alcohol server's permit revoked because of the arrest. After four months, prosecutors dismissed all her charges -- because the blood test came back completely clean.

[emphasis added. By me.]

"You had to spend months -- and thousands of dollars --  proving your innocence," Keefe said.
"I did," Ebner said.

So this woman had her life fucked up pretty bad because this one officer thought he could magically determine her drug status because he had some magical training.



So what kind of training do these officers receive in order to become "drug recognition experts" (DREs)?
Well, I found this on the website of the International Association of Chiefs of Police:

The DEC Program trains law enforcement officers and other approved public safety officials as DREs through a three-phase training process:

1. DRE Pre-School (16 hours)
2. DRE School (56 hours)
3. DRE Field Certification (Approximately 40-60 hrs)

The training relies heavily on Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFSTs), which provide the foundation for the DEC Program. 
 (DEC stands for Drug Evaluation & Classification)

Not a lot of detail, except that the basis seems to be the standard roadside sobriety tests which any police officer can do, so what makes DREs special? I don't know.


 I did find this training video on YouTube:






In this video, the officer talks about checking the suspect's pulse and pupil size. I had an experience with this years ago, when I was a young single fella. My girlfriend and I had just left a bar where we had gone to see a band. I had had one beer. We were in the parking lot of a public park across the street which must be the site of  some drug activity, I guess. Anyway, just as I was about to start the car, a police car pulled up with lights on and the officer asked for my license & registration. He asked had I been drinking. I told the truth, one beer over an hour ago. He asked what other drugs I had taken. I told him "none." He did not believe me.

He got out his pupil measuring card, shone his light in my face, checked my pulse and told me I was definitely on something. He asked me why, if I wasn't high, was my pulse so fast and my pupils so large. I told him my pupils are just naturally large, they always look like that (which is true) and my pulse is fast because you're making me really nervous.

I gave him permission to search my car. By now another police car had pulled up and there were three officers all telling me that I was definitely on some drug or other. I offered to take a breathalyzer. I offered to take a blood test, a urine test, any test they had. I made this offer several times and none of the cops responded or acknowledged that I had said anything.Eventually a third police car arrived on the scene like I was Al Capone or something.

They did not find anything incriminating in my car, and eventually, after about an hour, and after one officer told me that I was probably "coming down," but he knew that I was on something (and as angry and frustrated as I was, I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing. "Coming down?" Am I in an after-school special?" This was the 1990's!) anyway, after about an hour, they finally let me go with the recommendation that my girlfriend drive as I was obviously impaired. I didn't say anything, but I thought that if they were so convinced I was high, they had no damn business letting me get back in the car with just the advice that I have her drive. What kind of irresponsible bullshit is that?


Anyway, thank God they didn't have the DRE program back then, or they'd have cuffed me and taken me in. And I was way too pretty to go to jail!

The same thing happened to college student Princess Mbamara two weeks earlier -- on Good Friday.
Officer Carroll: "When's the last time you smoked weed?"
Princess Mbamara: "I don't smoke weed."
Officer Carroll: "You don't smoke weed?"
Princess Mbamara: "No. Not at all."
Officer Carroll: "Okay."
                 
[And yes, this is the same Officer Carroll]
 Princess Mbamara: "Wait -- okay, hold on sir."
Officer Carroll: "Just one second -- Just give me one second."
Princess Mbamara: "You're arresting me!?"
Officer Carroll: "That's correct."
Princess Mbamara: "Sir, hold on one second. I'm complying."

 Princess Mbamara was also jailed. She fought the DUI-drug charges for half of 2016.

Mbamara's toxicology screen came back and only showed positive for lidocaine -- an over-the-counter local anesthetic used in transdermal patches to treat back pain, insect bites and other types of pain and discomfort



And again,I'm not sure if this video will embed, so here's a link to where you can watch it:
http://www.11alive.com/news/investigations/raw-princess-mbamara-dashcam/438127977

Months later, it happened again to an Auburn University student.
Officer Carroll: "You're giving me indicators that you have consumed marijuana, okay? So at this time, I believe that your failure to maintain lane was the reason for that -- so you're being placed under arrest for DUI, okay?"
The prosecutor filed a dismissal of the DUI-drug charge five months later: "Defendant performed well on FSEs (Field Sobriety Evaluations) and blood and urine were negative."

So what kind of consequences have their been for this officer? Well, from what I could find online:

Due to this special training and his high ate of making arrests, Carroll got a promotion and a merit raise in 2016. According to 11Alive, he got top marks for making the proper arrest or don’t arrest decisions regarding whether drivers were impaired.
However, as 11Alive noted, the three innocent people he arrested for allegedly driving under the influence that year — Ebner, Mbamara and an unnamed student from Auburn University — were not mentioned in these glowing reports.

I have not found any reports of any of the falsely arrested persons being compensated at all.

DRE programs exist in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Happy motoring!