misfitS pOLITICS
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In our society we often hear talk of a "thin blue line," the implication being that police officers (and to a lesser extent firefighters and EMTs) are a bulwark against calamity in our day to day lives. In recent years, it's grown into what can best be described as hero worship. While there are many in the public safety sector who are doing good work and have a servant's spirit looking out for others, this idea that ‘they're coming to save us’ when disaster strikes is at best misguided, and at worst can make us vulnerable to the predation of the so called bad apples that tend to populate any large group of people. In the latter category, public safety is no different than any other workplace dynamic. There are going to be those who, at best, simply act in their own self preservation or don't have the training to adequately respond. At worst, some go after the vulnerable. In both instances this is done under the full protection of the law. Many of us are asked why we bother with an everyday carry (EDC) weapon. "Why do you feel the need to carry a weapon to protect yourself?" Here, I would like to explore those reasons.
I'd like to first mention some court proceedings that have removed any obligation from LEOs to put themselves into harm’s way. The bulk of this precedent has its roots in a 1989 case that ultimately went before the US Supreme Court. Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services was a case of child abuse where social services was aware of the abuse, but did not remove the child from the father prior to the child entering a vegetative state. The mother ultimately sued, only for the court to rule that the state has no special obligation to protect a citizen against harms that it did not create. In doing so, the ruling built on a 1981 case (Warren v. District of Columbia), which held that police do not owe a specific duty to provide services to individual citizens. This precedent was affirmed more recently after the Parkland High School shooting in 2018, where suits against the Broward County Sheriff's office were dropped, citing prior case law affirming that there was no duty for officers to protect people from the acts of a shooter. With all that said, there are obviously exceptions in play here. Last year, in Nashville, TN, local cops stormed into a school in order to take down an active shooter. Even then, it was fairly obvious watching the body cam videos that they were not extensively trained on any kind of room clearing. In spite of that, they were still able to eliminate the threat and, in their case, decisiveness and overwhelming force won out over any sloppiness in technique or tactics. But that is the exception, not the norm. Situations like what happened in Uvalde, TX in 2022, where responding officers stood by waiting on additional backup as a shooter killed several students and faculty, are unfortunately more common. There are a number of factors at play here that I'd like to walk through. First and foremost, the level of training (or lack thereof) that the average police officer or sheriff's deputy receives. For the vast majority of cops, they only fire their duty weapons during qualifications. For most, this is a yearly occurrence, with little to no training in the interim. For long guns, that interval can be even longer, again with no training in between qualifications. Unless a cop is in a specialized unit (SWAT, Marksman, etc.), any firearms training outside of qualification is usually done on their dime, with their own weapons. One cop that I spoke with recently on the subject mentioned that his agency doesn't provide any compensation or ammo for training outside of those quals. For him, pistol qualification is yearly, and biannual for long guns. Any additional training is done on his own time, on his own dime. He does put in a lot of his own time in that area, but I would consider him an exception to the rule on the subject. He did note that they're seeing more active shooter training, and there's also a fair amount of non-firearm related training that they have to complete annually, particularly dealing with domestic violence, mental health, and use of force. Second, there is a liability factor that applies to agencies / municipalities, and to a lesser extent, individual officers. There is still a good deal of what the courts refer to as "qualified immunity," that prevents individual cops from being sued, but the threat of lawsuits, especially in today's hyper-litigious society, plays a large role in crafting agency policy. It also results in an agency being less hesitant to throw an individual under the bus, by letting them go "for cause," in which case the cop has no backing for any subsequent civil suits that will likely follow, all this in an effort to keep the agency, or the municipality / state from being embroiled in a lawsuit. According to the cop I mentioned earlier, this has resulted in cops being less proactive and more reactive in fear of being hung out to dry. This has also resulted in a significant drop in morale in the profession as a whole. A third factor that in all fairness is not applicable in all localities is priorities that come down from the government (whether state or local) that a particular agency is affiliated with. Revenue from traffic citations and civil asset forfeiture have provided a carrot that many areas find it difficult to resist. In my home state of Oklahoma, a small town along US-69 was stripped of their authority in 2014 to write traffic citations along the highway, after the state found that the town had generated 76% of their income through traffic fines. Other small towns along the heavily trafficked highway have had their authority stripped in similar manners in years past. With the amount of money that can be generated through citation revenue, some localities will prioritize traffic enforcement over response times to other crimes. Civil asset forfeiture offers a similar incentive. In this practice, authorities can seize personal assets (vehicles, cash, etc), that they suspect are connected to a crime, and there's often no requirement for a conviction for the seizure to occur. This really took off during the "war on drugs" and, in many of these cases, the burden of proof is on the property owner to prove it wasn't connected in order for them to get their property back. Getting their property back is a lengthy and expensive process that many can't afford to go through. Fortunately, in this case, the US Supreme Court is planning to hear a case that has the possibility of at least curtailing the practice. Four states (Maine, Nebraska, North Carolina, and New Mexico), have abolished the practice entirely, and others have curtailed it. Both of these practices, though, provide an incentive that they can prioritize over other aspects of policing. With all that said, there are many instances where the above factors aren't at play, and it comes down to response times and the limitations that arise. I've lived a large portion of my life in rural areas where there's simply a lot of distance to cover. At my grandparents' farm, even today, response time is rarely quicker than 20 minutes for anyone. Police, fire, or EMS. It took right at 20 minutes for EMS to arrive the final time my grandfather fell before he entered hospice care prior to his passing. This is nothing against the personnel involved, or any priorities (or lack thereof) of the nearest town. It's just a simple fact that they live off a winding road several miles from where the nearest EMS / FD is based. At my grandmother's ranch in Texas, it's even farther out of town where a good response time is a half hour or longer. In any kind of emergency, whether it be a wildfire, a medical emergency, or an intruder, that is a long time to have to wait for any kind of help. Even in town, a lot can happen in the average 8 - 10 minutes that it takes from the 911 call to an officer, firefighter, or paramedic actually showing up. At the end of the day, we are responsible for our own safety and that of our families. Whether it be due to inadequate training, department policy / priorities, or even the simple limitations of how quickly one can get somewhere, we can't run under the assumption that someone is going to be there to save us when things go awry. While public safety in many cases has become reactive, we need to be proactive in our preparations for a variety of scenarios that may arise, regardless of the level of emergency that arises.
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Some of you may not know me, it has been quite some time since I've posted anything here. My name is Rick Robinson and I own and run a little podcast network known as KLRNRadio.com.
I am about to share with you the story of a heartbroken mother who had the worst experience imaginable, a living nightmare for any parent. And she suffered it alone, all while feeling unheard because of how our federal government handled the COVID 19 pandemic. I have more to say after but I want you to hear her words first: "I lost my son Jesse because of Operation Warp Speed, which President Trump still claims was his greatest achievement and that he still demands credit for to this day. I knew OWS was flawed from the minute it was announced; I just didn't put it together that it was the reason they had to discredit IVM and HCQ + Zinc and a ZPac to be able to get OWS pushed through as an EUA vaccine. When it came out, I wasn't going to get it, but I wouldn't tell anyone else not to. I even told my son Jesse that since he was high risk because he was overweight, he might want to think about getting it. It was just hard to figure out which one would be best, and I was doing my research. Jesse was 26 and decided against it himself. He took all the precautions the government said while I was taking D3, Zinc, and other natural immune boosters. I was trying to get him to as well. In August of 2021, we all got Covid. We got the delta variant, which was said to be really deadly. We don't know who got it first, but we all lost our taste and smell at the same time. I know for a fact had we been given an early treatment, such as ivermectin, when we tested positive, my son would still be alive because the EUA vaccine was unavailable to us. They just told us to stay in our house, take OTC, and check our O2 levels. We were struggling through, but one night, Jesse started running a higher temp. I gave him some Tylenol cold medicine, and he went to sleep. He woke up coughing worse than usual, so I checked his O2 levels. It was 40. It was not supposed to go below 80. I called 911, and they took him. The hospital wouldn't allow me to go be with him even though I had recovered. They put him on an HPAP, and that seemed to help him at first, and they started him on antibiotics. Then they started him on remdesivir. During that time, my husband had gotten an antibiotic, a steroid, and a monoclonal antibody infusion, but the doctors didn't lower his dosage of warfarin, which he will be on for life. In the coming days, it was apparent the HPAP wasn't working well, so they told us they would have to intubate Jesse. We got a phone call, and we were able to pray with him and tell him we loved him. He told us he missed us and loved us, and that was the last time we got to speak to him. During the coming days after that, we were getting hopeful news from the doctors that they were able to turn down his oxygen from 100% to 70%, then 60%, and then down to 40%, so the treatment was working. During all of this, my husband collapsed on the floor in the bathroom and was vomiting blood. I called 911, and he was rushed to the hospital. He was bleeding internally, and they suspected it was a bleeding ulcer, but his INR levels were really high, which meant his blood was dangerously thin. They kept him in the hospital to get his INR levels to normal. By now I'm simply overwhelmed, unfortunately I got a call from Jesse's doctor that he spiked a fever and had a staph infection in his blood. They had to stop his Remdesivir and, give him strong dosages of antibiotics, and try to get his fever down. My heart sank. That was Saturday night. Early Monday morning, I got the call from Jesse's doctor to come and see him because he was in bad shape. When I got there, they made me wait in a room while they flipped him over. They came and got me and told me he coded. They brought me to the nurses' station and made me watch as they were trying to bring him back. I couldn't be there while he was alive and awake, but I could watch my son die. The doctor finally came out and said that his pulse would not come back. I told them to stop. My son was gone. Then, I had to go get my husband when he was being released from the hospital and tell him his son was gone. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do. Because our government decided to let people die to get a dangerous vaccine, I lost my son. It was never about saving lives for President Trump; it was about his ego and reelection. For Fauci, it was about money. For our government, it was about power and control. Operation Warp Speed was evil. I am Tamara Wells, and this is my story." Read more from Tamara here:
Mrs. Wells, first and foremost it is my honor to share your story and your pain, so thank you. Dear reader, I have been banging this drum for years.
The American public deserves the truth. Dr Fauci openly lied to us! All of us! The very basis he used to lock down the country was a lie! He admitted behind close doors just a few short weeks ago the following things:
These revelations alone turn the entire argument they used to quarantine us on its head. So I have to ask, when did Trump know he was getting played? It took us nearly FOUR years to learn what a lot of us suspected, me included. I say emphatically that he had to know, because if not, the day the stories broke about the closed-door sessions he would have been on Truth Social rattling the windows. Trump owes America answers. If the roles were reversed and Biden had spearheaded Operation Warp Speed, once the revelations we just discussed went public, right-leaning outlets would be asking: 'What did Biden know and when did he know it?' This isn't about who you vote for, it's about truth. We deserve to know why some very questionable decisions were made. The truth is that there were cheap and effective medications available that fight coronaviruses effectively. Like it or not the Leprechaun of the Potomac knew that! Hell, he started using them off label to fight SARS COV2! How many people died just to push needless, expensive treatments, and vaccines onto the world? Trump promised us he was getting in their way because they were coming after us and he was going to stop them. Then they came for us, and not only didn't he stop them, he helped them do it. Did President Trump get played? Quite possibly! They even convinced him to sign the legislation that helped them influence the 2020 election. That is why even though lots of weird things happened, things I hadn't seen in my 16 years of talking politics, he can't say they stole it when he handed them the keys to the kingdom with the stroke of a pen. To many Americans, Trump broke his word and became the very thing he swore to destroy. So the next time you see someone telling you they refuse to vote for Trump, don't attack them, but ask why. I promise this mom isn't alone. I also promise I will use whatever platform I have to fight to hold everyone accountable. Especially those who say they are on our side.
The following is a transcript of a Thanksgiving message broadcast on klrnradio.com on November 22 2023. You can find them on Xitter at @KLRNRadio.
“True Thanksgiving;” – a tale that unveils the essence of gratitude, woven into the fabric of our nation’s history.
It was the fall of 1621, in a land where the Pilgrims had settled, seeking freedom and a new beginning. After a harsh winter that claimed many lives, the survivors stood resilient, embracing the promise of a bountiful harvest. As the air turned crisp, and the leaves adorned the landscape in hues of amber and gold, the Pilgrims gathered for a feast – a feast that would become the cornerstone of what we now celebrate as Thanksgiving. But this wasn't just a feast; it was a fellowship of cultures, a testament to the power of unity in diversity. The Wampanoag, the Native American people who had inhabited the region for generations, joined hands with the Pilgrims. Together, they broke bread, shared stories, and expressed gratitude for the abundance bestowed upon them. Amid plenty, humility reigned. The Pilgrims, facing hardships not long ago, understood the fragility of life. They knew that the fruits of their labor were not just a result of their own toil but a gift from the land and the hands that tilled it. The True Thanksgiving wasn't just about a lavish spread; it was about breaking bread with newfound friends and acknowledging the interconnectedness of humanity. It was about gratitude, not just for the harvest but for the opportunity to forge bonds across differences. So, on this day of Thanksgiving, a day set aside to express gratitude for our blessings, let us pause and reflect on the true meaning of this holiday. Thanksgiving is not just about turkey and stuffing, football games, and parades. It is not just about a day off from work or school. It is not just about shopping sales and Black Friday madness. Thanksgiving is about much more than that. It is about taking the time to appreciate the good things in our lives, no matter how big or small. It is about expressing gratitude for our family and friends, our health, and our homes. It is about recognizing the blessings that we often take for granted. In this time of year when we are bombarded with messages of consumerism and materialism, it is easy to lose sight of what is truly important. We become caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and we forget to take the time to stop and smell the roses. But Thanksgiving is a reminder that we should not take our blessings for granted. We should not take our family and friends for granted. We should not take our health and our homes for granted. We should not take our freedom and our opportunities for granted. On this Thanksgiving Day, let us take the time to express our gratitude for all the blessings in our lives. Let us tell our family and friends how much we love and appreciate them. Let us give thanks for our health and our homes. Let us be grateful for the freedom and opportunities that we have. And most importantly, let us remember the true meaning of Thanksgiving. Let us be thankful for the simple things in life. Let us be thankful for the people who make us laugh and love us. Let us be thankful for the opportunities that we have been given. So, as we sit around our tables this Thanksgiving or in front of the television, let us not forget the roots of this celebration. Let us remember the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag, coming together in gratitude. Let us embody True Thanksgiving – a day to appreciate the abundance of our lives and the variety that enriches our nation. Happy Thanksgiving |
MisfitsJust a gaggle of people from all over who have similar interests and loud opinions mixed with a dose of humor. We met on Twitter. Archives
January 2024
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