Only by stuff that’s worth being intimidated by. I’ll let you decide on my toughness for yourself. If I possess any, I’m not aware of it. I just know that it never crossed my mind to be scared because someone called me “Opie” at a rec center.
I don’t believe for a second that anyone tried to stop anyone from entering the polling place. I’m flat out calling bullshit on that.
Black Panthers are not analogous to Nazis, but no, I wouldn’t call that intimidation. Just some idiots looking to get their asses kicked. I would actually enjoy watching some skinheads try that in a black, inner city neighborhood.
Screaming for a cop on what basis? what law would be getting broken? No, I would just fuck with them right back. Skinheads are stupid. They’re easy to fuck with.
It’s not intimidation, and I would high five the guy.
We have CCW in here. Why would I be scared of stick, when half the people are walking around with heaters?
What does it say about my character? The issue isn’t “choosing not to vote for Obama,” by the way, but choosing to vote FOR a racist party.
This website? The one that says nothing of the sort? It does reference this link to a local newspaper, reporting the Justice Dept. decision (and which offers us the opinion of Mr Hans von Spakovsky, whose name is legend as a paragon of non-partisan civic virtue…)
I don’t live in Roseville anymore (we bought a house in St. Paul), but I’m talking about some Minneapolis and St. Paul neighborhoods I’ve worked in.
Roseville wasn’t necessarily all that safe either. Somebody got stabbed in one of my old apartments shortly after I moved out. Not just the building – the same apartment. It was a home invasion. A Minnesota Viking also got his car shot up once outside a bar just a couple of blocks away from our building. It was a neigborhood right on the border of St. Paul – not really the tony part of Roseville.
Even the worst parts of the metro are tame compared to the Washington DC neighborhoods I spent a year prowling around in, and that wasnt so bad compared to the guys walking around with machine guns in the junta occupied, third world African country where I spent my last two years of high school.
Prolly 'cause carrying a nightstick anywhere is already illegal* in pretty damn much the entire US. Here’s PA’s law,
If they’d called the police instead of Fox News the guy would have been arrested on sight. A nightstick serves no common lawful purpose in the hand of a civilian.
Now if had been a full length riot baton and he had a Spaldeen he might, might, have been able to give the “I was on my way to a stickball game” excuse … but I doubt it.
CMC fnord!
*Yes this link is specifically about knife law, but pick any state link and you’ll see language like this, “‘Weapon’ means and includes … any bat, club, or other bludgeon-type weapon …”.
You have a point. Not as much as you think you do, but some. It didn’t occur to me that you were talking about something buried in the archives, but of the present moment. Of course, nobody seems to think that this is a burning issue of the moment, except for several of Obama’s worst enemies. And, of course, you.
By the way, did you ever get around to reading that Talking Points Memo view, offered above? Not trying to suggest that they measure up to the Washington Times for non-partisan candor, or anything…
When you offered them as a cite, did you realize they were utterly full of shit, and have been for years, or is this news to you?
Well, heck, of course you wouldn’t call it intimidation, Dio. You are a hero, a real man who (to hear you tell it) wouldn’t be intimidated by a Sherman Tank and would enjoy seeing people “getting their asses kicked”.
Some of us, however, do not have the strength of ten as you do because your heart is pure. You know, because some of us are old, or infirm, or small, or just plain weak. If you can believe it, we’re such wimps that we wouldn’t even enjoy seeing other people getting beat up. I know this is a stretch for you, but many people are actually easy to intimidate.
So while you can laugh off a couple of skinheads with a big stick, most of us normal humans would in fact be intimidated. Not that you would notice, of course, you’d deny the intimidation even if they testified to it … hey, wait, they did testify to it. Bartle Bull, the editor of the Village Voice who witnessed the episode, called it “the most blatant form of voter intimidation I’ve ever seen” … but Dio knows better than that, because although he wasn’t there, he wouldn’t have been intimidated.
Which, I suppose, is why the laws against intimidation do not concern themselves with whether people actually feel threatened. It is illegal, for example, to brandish a deadly weapon in a polling place, whether or not it is full of manly men of your stripe who simply cannot be intimidated. It doesn’t matter a bit if people in the voting booth are intimidated by someone pulling out their weapon and waving it around, the law doesn’t care about that.
The intimidation is in the actions of the offenders, not in whether or not everyone at the scene is someone like you, someone who can’t possibly be intimidated.
PS - If you think big skinheads with sticks are not intimidating, I sincerely hope your good luck continues and never have the opportunity to run into any … at which point all of your bluff and bravado and posturing will avail you not.
It’s much easier just to say “I’m wrong”, you know, than to try to make up excuses for your stupidity.
I did not say it was on page one. It may amaze you to find out that some of us are aware that if you actually take the trouble to read the first page of a web site, there are actually links to other pages on the site.
For example, there is a link on page one of the NBPP site that, if you click it with your mouse, will actually take you to the page I linked. Perhaps you didn’t notice the link because it was cleverly disguised with the words "Click here for Public Notice Regarding Philadelphia Chapter Suspension & Official Statement Regarding Alleged Voter Intimidation".
Like I said, you take dumb to an art form.
Regarding the “Talking Points” memo, I did read it. I’m sure that they are 100% right that nothing at all happened, nothing to see here, move along, folks … and that’s why the NBBP disowned the people who did nothing at all wrong, and threw the Philadelphia chapter out of the party for doing nothing at all wrong, and that’s why the video doesn’t show anything wrong, and that’s why the black couple were wrong when they said they were afraid of the people who hadn’t done anything wrong, and that’s why the accused didn’t bother to show up in court to defend themselves, because they hadn’t done anything wrong … :smack:
Keep telling yourself that. I’m sure someday you’ll believe it.
I do not think it is a burning issue of the moment. I don’t even think it was a terribly egregious example of voter intimidation, although it was a clear one.
It is certainly an ongoing issue, however, as the DOJ has announced that they plan to investigate how it happened that they decided to overturn the default judgement and not prosecute. So the issue certainly has not gone away.
I originally offered it up as an example of why people think that Obama is a “radical” (on the radical left, for the context-challenged). I found it shocking that the Department of Justice would treat the case as they did, and not let the default judgement simply stand. That, to me, was a clear case of a radical political bias, where intimidation from the political left was simply ignored. Of course, YMMV …
Well, lets just leave it at the situation not being as cut and dried as you make it out to be. Nor nearly so dramatic as your more breathless quotes might suggest. Point of fact, the whole thing seems pretty trivial. Its all about feelings and impressions, nothing actually happened. You’re trying to inflate a Japanese condom into the Hindenburg. Well, you and a collection of Obama’s worst enemies, except you are doing it for our own good.
Nothing about truncheons/nightsticks. Blackjacks, yes. Sandbags, yes. Brass knuckles, yes. Truncheons/nightsticks, no. And no, I do not think that it qualifies under the catchall phrase at the end. Connecticut had to add nightsticks to the list of prohibited items because they were not covered under the catchall. In Oregon and Kentucky they are specifically mentioned. But most states, including Pennsylvania, have not made them illegal.
Which is why, despite the man being filmed with the nightstick, he wasn’t arrested.
Which is why the injunction which he was served with by the DOJ specifically forbade “Minister King Samir Shabazz from displaying a weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location on any election day in the City of Philadelphia” … because it wasn’t illegal for him to have the nightstick there prior to the injunction. Otherwise, there would have been no need for the injunction.
However, if you can bust out a case of someone, anyone, ever having been arrested in Philadelphia for simply possessing a nightstick in public, I’ll be glad to change my mind …
Well, gee, guess I was misled by all the screaming and tearing your hair out. Thought that meant something real important. I’ll remember that, next time.
