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Comments: Miguel. He's a blogger since he basically blogs as a hobby. His journalism is an online website that gets very little traffic. It does not generate income and is a hobby of Hopfinger. I get much more traffic on more than a few websites I edit. Does this mean I can shove people at a private event and claim my rights are violated if told to leave? http://community.adn.com/node/136902
Comments: My problem is with the use of force to suppress uncomfortable lines of questioning. I note with interest your insistence that he is a "punk" and "just a blogger"...gotta make sure you keep him out of your cognitive sphere by marginalizing him...he might say something that conflicts with your world view. FWIW he is an editor of the Alaska Dispatch. I also like how Miller pushed an old lady into an 8 y/o on the way out...
Comments: Miguel. First of all, you, as a typical brain-dead zombie, only point to half of the story. Private security guards can make detain others in Akaska, especially of someone who alledgely assaulted another. To diffuse a situation it is good judgement to move an aggressor from others and call in the police to sort things out. What's your problem with the situation? He's not a reporter. He's not an editor. He is a blogger. He was tresspassing. It is alledged he assaulted someone and disregarded requests to leave. Hopfinger admits to being aggressive. He admits to putting a camera in the face of someone running for Senate. He admits to bumping someone. He admits that he heard orders to leave the private event. He admits to carrying an object in his hand that was not readily recognizable. http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-18/politics/alaska.miller.reporter_1_security-guard-private-security-cnn?_s=PM  OLITICS
Comments: Doug... You are right...there is a difference between private security / volunteers and sworn LEO's...LEO's represent the people of the state, private security represents the individual. In this case a reporter was asking questions...the security man decided he was being too insistent and told him to leave and refused to identify himself, when the reporter refused to leave the security man closed inside the reporters personal space, the reporter protected his personal space from an unknown intruder, at which point the security man detained him. What was the security detail protecting here? Most telling was that the security team then attempted to isolate the reporter from other journalists...can't have them taking pictures and asking questions.
Comments: Miguel. You're selective outrage is immature. There is a huge distinction between a security guard detaining a punk who assaulted someone compared to arresting protesters by police. One of these is authoritarian one is rude. My favorite is the guy arrested for brandishing the Constitution. http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2010/05/kip-williams-arrested-at-obama.html http://mrssatan.blogspot.com/2009/05/protesters-arrested-before-obama.html http://m.gazette.com/articles/arrested-41135-today-peacefully.html http://deadlinelive.info/2010/08/10/john-bush-freedom-activist-arrested-at-obama-speech-ut-austin/ http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/05/14/Eight_Arrested_at_Large_Obama_AIDS_Protest/ http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=12643 http://www.imao.us/index.php/2009/08/man-arrested-for-brandishing-constitution-at-obama-rally/ http://www.newsminer.com/view/full_story/9306842/article-Obama-protester-arrested-at-Alaska-State-Fair?instance=home_news_window_left_bullets
Comments: Doug... Keep defending him...this was not in the event, this was afterward. The guards threatened to arrest other journalists asking the journalist questions while in "custody". How many journalists would these jack asses arrest? How many would the average RWA? Again, these people were just schmucks in suits...not sworn LEO's. They had been given AUTHORITY...look how they used it, to suppress the press. Press issues aside doesn't it seem that someone running for an elected position should have to answer questions from the public?
Comments: Miguel. If you consider yourself unbiased - just try to tell the whole story for once. From this jerk's pen blog. He acknowledges this was a private event. And yes - since you lack the basic ability to understand information - private events occur at public places. oFo you think a "civic center" which holds a concert is open to thenon-paying public? The jerk even admits that he pushed (simple assault?) the security guard in his blog. http://alaskadispatch.com/dispatches/news/7187-miller-guard-says-editor-refused-to-leave-private-event
Comments: Doug... keep defending this guy and trying to make him seem like he has no pathology... that he's "normal" that his followers were doing just fine.
Comments: Doug... Do you ever get tired of being wrong or do you just ignore it because of the jangle of cognitive dissonance. It was a public school, the body guards refused to identify themselves, they apparently had no law enforcement powers, they were not representative agents of the school district therefor had no right to claim trespass, the other reporters were threatened when they were talking to the journalist, the video camera was taken and the tape erased. The police released the journalist...one would assume that a crime would warrant some police action. Seriously... quit trying to justify this crap, you end up sounding like a knob. Such behavior is unacceptable in civil society, even if you agree with the politics.
Comments: Miguel. You really need to do your homework. Hopfinger is the editor of a blog. The school was leased for the private event. He was asked to leave and upon non-compliance was trespassing. He has admitted to pushing others and had a threatening demeanor.
Comments: Gary. Just because you're too lazy to find conversatives who protested against King Bush II's big governance didn't occur. I'm fighting a computer crash (actually a physical destruction). I have compiled 50+ conservative protests, articles of disgust, elected officials questioning Bush, etc. Do I need to post this list to prove your laziness? Let's examine your thought process. Bush = big government = bad. Obama = bigger government = socalist nirvana. BTW: I am 100% for increased legal immigration to push our growth rate to 2.5 - 3.0%. Just because you can't understand the need for legal processing of immigrants doesn't make it illogical. If a worker comes here to do work we process this person as a VISA. Citizenship has a higher demand and must be a uniform process.
Comments: I have authority...how dare you question that...FEAR ME. Tony Hopfinger, the editor of the Alaska Dispatch, was handcuffed and placed under some kind of citizens arrest by bodyguards for Joe Miller, a candidate for U.S. Senate and darling of the conservative Tea Party anti-tax movement. Hopfinger's alleged "crime" following a Miller town hall meeting was that he was trespassing, though he was in the halls of a public school attempting to ask Miller questions. Moreover, Miller bodyguards threatened that they would detain other journalists who were attempting to ask questions of Hopfinger while in the custody of Miller's bodyguards, according to various reports, which noted some were subjected to "chest bumps" and "shoving matches (via the Anchorage Daily News).
Comments: Wow! How's this for a caricature or archetypical authoritarian? This is a comment left after a news article reporting that Sheriff Joe Arpaiao has been ordered by the governemnt to bring his hell-holes up to at least gulag quality. Anyhow, check how its possible to go down the page and tick off one RWA trait after another. The guys fear of crime, illegals, drugs, combined with law-enforcement rhetoric and fear-mongering has reduced his mind to little more than TV ad slogans and bumper sticker jingles. And not the least bit embarrased apparently.... Gary "Do the crime - You Do the time. Y'all aware of that fact.
Comments: Gary... There are a couple of things I see here. The first is that the first TEA partiers were libertarians, later the movement was co-opted by the RWA leadership and perverted into the reactionary branch of the GOP. What was a grass roots movement has become astro turf for the big corps. Ranting about the actions of the later movement is pointless, we have a handle on their pathology and it tracks well with the observed behaviors. More interesting are the Libertarian roots, I have friends who are hardcore Libertarians and they are disgusted with the fact that they have been lumped in with the conservatives. Karma is close to the Libertarian ethos, the more rational see the need for limits on monopolies and environmental controls. The god squad running the TEA party agenda now has NO interest in a small government, just one that does what THEY want, and oppresses those that THEY want oppressed.
Comments: I read Haidt's theory of conservative ineffability awhile back. I didn't think much of it then, and with this, I'm finding it hard to force myself into giving it the amount of objective scrutiny someone of his stature should warrant. Previously it seemed he was simply creating additional moral descriptions as a way to account for RWA-SDO behaviors that clearly didn't fit in with the existing descriptions of moral "types". Now he's using "Karma" to account for the TPers demands to hold Wall St. accountable. However, he fails to account for their complete lack of this same need for "Karmic balance" during Dubya's 'unbalanced' appearance as President. Here Haight quotes Armey, apparently believing this old political war-horse and extreme right-wing manipulator is someone a psychologist can quote with confidence. "[L]ook at the political issue that most enraged the early tea partiers. Armey and Kibbe state categorically that it was not Mr. Obama's stimulus bill that turned millions into activists; it was Mr. Bush's bank bailout. " That's absolute crap. Most I'd wager can barely even bring themselves to acknowledge that it was Bush who enacted the Wall St. bailout. By the time the Tea Party got rolling with "millions", Obama was in power. And despite the stock market crash and subsequent bailouts being a matter of recent memory, they were then and still are blaming Obama for it. But it's the pivot point on which Haight launches his theory of right-wing morality. One that is so full of holes and so obviously contrived that there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Haight is himself a conservative...perhaps a Libertarian. Karma? Get real!!? Then what accounts for their lack of desire to see karma done whenever the in-group oppresses an outsider? Does group loyalty somehow trump Karma, even tho he describes the latter as the central, guiding factor that structures their way of behaving? Not likely...or even rational for that matter. So what about fear? The acceptance of Bush's stated need to torture an enemy who poses no threat to the US's existence whereas a decade earlier a far larger, far deadlier, and infinitely more sophisticated enemy had been vanquished without any need to revoke habeas or practice "extraordinary rendition". S what did their acceptance of Bush's Patriot Act, their silence about his WMD deception, his "signing certificates" he claimed gave him the legal right to break any US law, or ignore any guaranteed right of an American citizen, be it constitutional or legislated ,just as long as he alone thinks it was "in the best interests of he country". Where does "Karma" or balance come in there? Isn't there an impicit understanding of proportionality involved with it? No. He's excusing the rage and revenge exhibited by his beloved conservatives...probably telling himself that he must do so because he's "loyal" and "God-fearing", "patriotic", and damn it! .... needs to justify this here Lab to all the other spooks here in Virginia! And thus the notion of "karma" took form. He's bringing "balance" to the increasingly lopsided data. Hey... It could happen...?! :-) |
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