May 4, 2013

Tavon, Tavon likes his money / He makes a lot they say

Tavon White,
Black Guerilla Family bushman
From the Washington Post, a follow-up to the popular story about inmate Tavon White impregnating four guardettes:
Baltimore jail case depicts a corrupt culture driven by drugs, money and sex 
By Theresa Vargas, Ann E. Marimow and Annys Shin, Saturday, May 4, 4:12 PM 
Inside a gray brick fortress, past a barbed-wire fence, two women in prison guard uniforms traded words about their pregnancies. 
“Did he tell you we was having a son?” Tiffany Linder asked, according to court documents recounting the conversation. “Did you know about our baby?” 
Chania Brooks said she didn’t care about that baby. That was their child, not hers. 
“We having one, too,” she said. “So what?” 
The two 27-year-old correctional officers at the Baltimore City Detention Center were sparring over an inmate who prosecutors said left both women with a permanent reminder of their allegiance to him. 
To investigators, Tavon White is a thug who has been in and out of jail since he was 18, most recently on charges that he shot a fellow drug dealer four times. 
He is allegedly a high-ranking “bushman” in the Black Guerilla Family, a gang with a reputation for not just killing its enemies but also burning down their homes.
I don't think they mean
this kind of Bushman

Huh?

A "high-ranking 'bushman' in the Black Guerilla Family"? (The Black Guerilla Family is the nationwide prison gang founded by Prof. Angela Davis's future death row boyfriend George Jackson at San Quentin in 1966.)

What the ...

Is this a joke?

"Bushman" was the name of the famous gorilla in the Lincoln Park Zoo. When he was rumored to be dying in 1950, 120,000 Chicagoans came to pay their respects to him in one day. Bushman is currently stuffed and on display at Chicago's Field Museum. I've seen him at least ten times. From WBEZ, the NPR station in Chicago:
Bushman the Original Gorilla
Time magazine had called him “the best known and most popular civic figure in Chicago.” Now he was dead, and the city mourned. 
His name was Bushman. He was a gorilla. ...  
Bushman eventually topped out at 6'2" and 547 pounds.

The Lord of Lincoln Park became the most famous zoo animal in the country. Bushman was featured in magazines and newsreels, on t-shirts and postcards.

I suspect somebody is pulling somebody's leg over this whole Black Guerilla Family / Black Gorilla Family confusion, which I've theorized helped inspire the fine 2011 movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But I can't say who is yanking whose chain. This sounds like a racist joke that some old white cops made up and that the nice Washington Post reporters were too refined too grasp, but what do I know?

Bushman and fan at Field Museum
Other articles in local Baltimore media say a "bushman" is either "middle-ranking" or "relatively senior" in the Black Guerilla Family. Assuming that positions within the Black Guerilla Family leadership are indeed named after famous gorillas, I wonder what the top rank in the BGF is. Perhaps Kong?

Back to the Washington Post:
But during his three years at the state-run detention center, White, 36, was allegedly a figure who commanded respect, not only from fellow inmates in jumpsuits but also from many of the women in blue collared shirts and pressed slacks guarding him. Thirteen of them allegedly smuggled cellphones and drugs inside their hair, lunches and underwear for the man they called “Bulldog” or “Tay.” One tattooed his name on her neck, another on her wrist. 
Four have carried his children. 
... Just weeks before the two pregnant guards talked about the children they were expecting, a third allegedly pondered possible names for her son. 
“What if I name the baby King?” Katera Stevenson, 24, asked in a wiretapped call to her sister recounted in the affidavit. “I like the name King. King Tavon White.” 

Maybe he'll do even better within the BGF hierarchy than his daddy Bushman Tavon has done, and someday will be known as Kong King ...
... The inmates vastly outnumber the 625 guards, who make a base salary of $35,000 to $45,000 a year but can earn considerably more through overtime. They receive five to six weeks of training before entering — without any weapons to protect themselves — what one former guard calls “a city within a city.” ...
The corruption extends far beyond the 13 women charged, the affidavit suggested, with one inmate estimating that as many as 70 percent of the corrections officers were compromised. ...
Chania Brooks’s hands were shaking. She had just seen an inmate get attacked by a fellow gang member, blood spilling from his head, the affidavit said. 
She needed advice, so she went to get it. Not from a supervisor. From White.
“I abandoned my post,” Brooks said in an intercepted call between her and White. “I said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I thought he was going to have to go 911.” 
Brooks has denied the charges against her, including the allegation that White fathered her child. ... 
Documents that investigators recovered from the Black Guerrilla Family detail how its new members are taught to target specific officers. Look for women, they are told, with “low self-esteem, insecurities, and certain physical attributes.” 
The manipulation of young female officers often starts with a smile or a brief conversation, said a former inmate very familiar with the gang’s tactics. Then the inmate slips the guard a few hundred bucks in exchange for bringing him a pack of cigarettes. 
“Once that door is open, you find your way in,” said the former inmate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of safety concerns. “It’s a hustle game.” 
The gang also recruits relatives, girlfriends and fellow gang members without criminal records to apply for positions as correctional officers to establish a network of operatives within the prison walls, he said. 
As many as 80 percent of correctional-officer applicants in the central region, which includes Baltimore, do not make it through the background investigation, said Binetti, the corrections spokesman. 
Among those who do, women seem to dominate. More than 60 percent of the corrections officers in Baltimore’s jails are women, Maryland officials estimate. 
By comparison, women make up 37 percent of the guards in the District, a D.C. Corrections Department spokesman said. 
Regardless of the jurisdiction, officials say, all guards receive training on how to deal with the con games they will encounter inside prisons. They are warned how easily a compliment can turn into a favor, which can turn into an obligation. 
Jon Galley, a top Maryland corrections official, said he likes to show trainees a copy of a how-to guide, confiscated from an inmate’s cell, that lays out how to win over guards. The two pages of tips include dropping a “kite,” or love note, confessing to the officer that the inmate “felt a connection to her, that she was beautiful.” ...
Soon after White was born, court records show, his father began serving a life sentence for murder, and his mother struggled with drugs. He was raised largely by his grandparents and lived for a time in McCulloh Homes, a bleak public housing project in West Baltimore, said one family member. 
His own troubles began early, court records show. He was expelled from middle school in eighth grade. By 19, he was a convicted murderer who would spend seven years behind bars. 
It isn’t clear when his alleged gang ties began. His most recent charge — attempted murder — stems from a fight with one of his “boys” over a cocaine sale in 2009, according to court documents. White was charged with firing four bullets at close range into the man’s ankle, thighs and buttocks. 
White, prosecutors said during his trial in December, wanted to make sure there was no doubt about who was in charge. 
“Lesson learned: One shot at Tavon White’s ego gets you four in the body,” Assistant State’s Attorney Katie O’Hara told a Baltimore jury as White watched calmly from the defense table. 
But White’s attorney, Melissa Phinn, raised doubts about the credibility and consistency of testimony from key witnesses, and the jury deadlocked on the attempted-murder charge. They had done the same in an earlier trial. 
Now White is awaiting a third trial, scheduled for June, at the maximum-security North Branch Correctional Institution in Cumberland. Last week, he pleaded not guilty in federal court to racketeering, money-laundering and drug-dealing charges. 
What his criminal history doesn’t reveal, a family member said, is the loyal grandson and doting father who attended PTA meetings, accompanied his children to church and took them to Six Flags and Sesame Place. (In January, White called his grandmother Bessie Timmons from the detention center to tick off the due dates of the guards he had impregnated, according to the affidavit.) 
In jail, he played chess and read novels, court records show. Between prison stints, he cleaned swimming pools and packed boxes for a moving company. 
That is what he was doing when he met Danielle Hall at a Wendy’s down the street from McCulloh Homes. The two moved in together and had a daughter, who is now 7. 
“Tavon will always be a good guy in my book,” said Hall’s mother, who asked not to be identified by name, because of safety concerns. She said she was floored by the allegations that White was a gang leader at the detention center but not by his appeal to so many of the female correctional officers. 
“He’s a hunk,” she said. “He’s got a mean-looking body, a body that’s all that, that says, ‘Catch me if you can.’ ” 
Jennifer Owens had her diamond ring and her flashy cars and the name of the man who had provided them tattooed on her neck, according to the indictment. The 31-year-old correctional officer, who lives in Randallstown, drove around in two ­Mercedes-Benzes allegedly financed by the gang leader, one black and one white. 
In return, she gave him two children in two years. 
“Like really, who the f--- does that?” Owens said in an intercepted call to an unidentified woman in October. She called herself dumb but also said, “I don’t regret it.” 
Several former detention center guards said White could not have run such a large criminal enterprise without the help of higher-ups, tacit or explicit. But none have been implicated. ...
The challenge will be changing the culture of a place where, according to the affidavit, the names of 14 female guards were scrawled on a wall along with the price they allegedly charged for sexual favors: $150. 
... At least one of the 13 officers charged had been accused of gang ties at the detention center before. In 2008, inmate Tashma McFadden sued officer Antonia Allison, 31, for allegedly allowing a group of inmates who belonged to the Bloods to attack him in his cell. McFadden was stabbed 32 times; Allison, who denied having gang ties, remained on the job. Allison could not be reached for comment. 
Investigators were told that White and other gang leaders had informal agreements with jail officials: They would reduce violence inside the detention center and, in exchange, officials would “turn a blind eye to contraband smuggling and actively protect White and the [Black Guerilla Family] by warning them of investigations,” according to the affidavit. 
All 13 correctional officers who are awaiting trial have been suspended without pay.

In other words, still nobody has been fired.
The case against them could take two months to lay out for a jury, prosecutors say. 
No matter what happens in court or at the jail in the months to come, one fact remains indisputable: Tavon White ensured his legacy. 
Tiffany Linder is due any day.

What is she going to name him? Emperor White?

So, what's the over-under line on how many years this kid will wind up incarcerated?

50 comments:

  1. Like John Derbyshire, I had no idea women were being hired as prison guards to guard men. To work in the kitchen and laundry, maybe, but as guards? And to be hiring women whose quotes make them sound like the TSA would have turned away their applications: "Sorry, you're just too stupid to pat people down for a living."

    This isn't a serious country anymore. We think we can do anything we want to give people make-work jobs and avoid hurting anyone's feelings, and somehow it'll all just magically work out.

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  2. Much more romantic to think of bushman as the people with the more politically correct name of San or Khoisan in the film "The Gads must be Crazy." But then, thise people were much too peaceful to be a gangster role mode.

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  3. This comment won't get approved, but upon reading this article I have to say their behavioral patterns aren't that far from actual gorillas'.

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  4. I remember when "Gorillas in the Mist" was a bad thing.

    Here on how the Rodney King story got started. Very instructive.

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  5. The radio news headline that was common in the early 1960s "Guerillas Attack on the Plain of Jars" inspired a memorable Mad Magazine cartoon under the heading "How Kids Imagine Headlines."

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  6. TL;DR Let me guess, it's the White man's fault...

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  7. Bushman - the original Alpha male.

    I'll bet Whiskey is thrilled. That's our role model, guys. Let's get busy aping it.

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  8. On a related note:

    http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/05/why-segregation-bad-everyone/5476/

    "Broader historical trends since the 1960s show that racial segregation in American metros has been on a steady decline. But, looking at data from 1980 to 2005, this study showed that higher rates of racial segregation in a metropolitan area are associated over time with decreases in economic growth. In a place like Detroit, the most racially segregated metropolitan area in the country, this means that the entire region might generate $2 billion a year more in income if it had segregation levels closer to the national average."

    I don't even know what to say to this.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  9. rob said: ...went into lordosis

    I've never seen the word lordosis so effectively weaponized. On this frightful day, you have earned your seat in angry internet guy Valhalla.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  10. It started with the "n word" getting popular in rap lyrics, and now with "gorilla" and "bushman" being bandied about, they are rubbing it in that they can make a long, long list of words only they can say.

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  11. Hey it worked. Laugh all you want, but Tavon White has probably 4 more kids just by female guards than say, the average coder or cubicle slave has by anyone.

    Who wins? Tavon White, with all those descendants, or some guy dumb enough to slave away at a cube all day, wearing dockers?

    And it all starts with female preference. Sure, there are observable differences among race and class. But the arrows all point one way. You want success, progeny, you better amp up your dominance, your Game. As much as you can for your socio-economic group. Recall that girl performing a certain act on a Gangsta Rapper last week? All over the internet? Even thuggery and racial boundaries can attract "nice" girls to act that way -- because that is the arrow of attraction.

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  12. You want success, progeny, you better amp up your dominance, your Game.

    Doctor, heal thyself.

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  13. Speaking of Blacks and prisons, from California, courtesy of an endemic disease that can get nasty (Valley Fever), we now have the government acting on medical evidence that race exists and all people are not just the same except for the color of their skin:

    State to move at-risk inmates

    "The federal official in charge of healthcare in California prisons has directed that more than 3,000 inmates be moved out of state lockups that are infected with a lethal fungus known as valley fever.

    ...especially vulnerable inmates ... The list includes ... African Americans, Filipinos and others of Asian descent."


    The Mayo clinic says:

    "Race. For reasons that aren't well understood, Filipinos, Hispanics, blacks, Native Americans and Asians are more susceptible to developing serious infection with coccidioidomycosis than are whites."

    Kind of surprising Native Americans are more susceptible than whites. Maybe whites have spent a long time huddled around sooty fires in cold caves or other conditions bad on lungs.

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  14. The next century is not going to be kind to people with IQs of 75 and insufficient impulse control to finish high school or stay out of jail. If you have children with the kind of women that will help provide your kids low IQs and little impuse control. through their shit genes and shit parenting, then it will be unkind to your kids.

    Perhaps instead of competing with perpetually-incarcerated career criminals in the alpha-thug skank sweepstakes, you might want to look for someone a little higher quality....

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  15. The gorilla-guerrilla confusion reminds me of the 2011 news that lots of teenagers don't know who Osama bin Laden, which in turn reminded me of a story a high school teacher emailed me in 2008:

    Student Named Yesenia: "Teacher! Teacher! I have a question."
    Teacher: "Yes, what is it?"
    Yesenia: "Who is Son of Aladdin? Why are they always looking for him in a cave?"
    Teacher: "Huh?"
    Yesenia: "What's so bad about Son of Aladdin? Why are they trying to catch him?"
    Teacher: "Oh, you mean … Osama bin Laden?"
    Yesenia: "Yeah, Son of Aladdin."
    Teacher: "He's a terrorist."
    Yesenia: "Oh."
    Teacher [trying to make this into a Teachable Moment]: "But don't confuse Osama with Obama."
    Yesenia: "Who's that?"
    Teacher: "Barack Obama. He's running for President. The African-American candidate."
    Yesenia:
    Teacher: "You know, the black guy?"
    Yesenia [Eyes widening]: "He's black?"
    Teacher: "Yes."
    Yesenia: "And he's running for President?"
    Teacher: "Yes."
    Yesenia: [With wide-eyed alarm]: "That's bad."

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  16. Let's have some photos of those female guards along with their weights. Most probably average about 800 pounds of quivering cellulite, and come complete with those yummy tattoos. They've got a plum job there; they have a monopoly on the supply of women those convicts can fraternize with. Convicts can be some pretty desperate people and that works in the female guards favor. On the outside they're not considered much at all, on the inside they're beauty queens.

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  17. Wow. The Mad Magazine joke about what kids picture when they hear "Guerillas Attack on the Plain of Jars" turns out pretty weird. From Wikipedia:

    "The Plain of Jars (Lao: ທົ່ງໄຫຫິນ [tʰōŋ hǎj hǐn]) is a megalithic archaeological landscape in Laos. Scattered in the landscape of the Xieng Khouang plateau, Xieng Khouang, Lao PDR, are thousands of megalithic jars. These stone jars appear in clusters, ranging from a single or a few to several hundred jars at lower foothills surrounding the central plain and upland valleys."

    So, there were no gorillas and it wasn't an airplane of jars, but it is was a flat land of jars. I had no idea ...


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  18. Mad Magazine was terrific and subversive in its day. The Lighter Side, by Dave Berg, was particularly funny.

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  19. LOL. This ironically named gorilla is also a contender for the memory hole.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massa_(gorilla)

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  20. "Hey it worked. Laugh all you want, but Tavon White has probably 4 more kids just by female guards than say, the average coder or cubicle slave has by anyone.

    Who wins? Tavon White, with all those descendants, or some guy dumb enough to slave away at a cube all day, wearing dockers?"

    I'd say the winner is the guy whose progeny gets access to the best medicine, higher quality of food, more education and an overall better quality of life with the ability to provide same for their own progeny. Also, the guy who gets to take pride in his kids.

    But that's just me. I'd rather eat a small gourmet meal than a mountain of shit. In fact, I don't want to eat a mountain of shit at all...

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  21. "Look for women, they are told, with “low self-esteem, insecurities, and certain physical attributes."

    What physical attributes? Wide feet? Mustaches? Prominent facial warts? What?

    Every female security guard I've ever met had been morbidly obese, so it can't be that special feature.

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  22. Hey, Whiskey should apply to be a guard in that prison. And when Tavon White is in the clinic for his next syphilis treatment, Whiskey could sneak up with a syringe full of sedatives and beat the crap out of him with an electric stick. In my experience, those people don't care if a fight was won fairly; don't have the concept of it. Then, all those female guards will recognize Whiskey as the top alpha and become his bitches instead. And all the Tavon's bastards will be babysitting little Whiskies, in a couple of years.

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  23. ""Look for women, they are told, with “low self-esteem, insecurities, and certain physical attributes."

    "What physical attributes?"

    Right. They are leaving out the best part. Who wouldn't want to read the next sentence in the Black Guerilla Family training manual?

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  24. This sounds like a racist joke that some old white cops made up and that the nice Washington Post reporters were too refined too grasp, but what do I know?

    Well apparently you don't know how to spell "race-realist".


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  25. Whiskey, me lad! I've missed you. As I have read the increasingly frequent comments from hardly and the Radical Centrist ("Why am I the only guy in America that sees this?"), I've gained a new appreciation for you and Truth.

    Welcome back; please stick around.

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  26. The Judean People's Front said...

    I really don't know if you meant that as a sincere compliment or sarcastic insult. Either way, I don't know if I should feel complemented or insulted.

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  27. Most of the guards probably resemble Bushman: 6'2" and 575 lbs.

    I gotta second the props for Rob for his use of lordosis. All-Pro...

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  28. Who wins? Tavon White, with all those descendants, or some guy dumb enough to slave away at a cube all day, wearing dockers?"

    One group that will certainly not win: gullible White Christians who enlist in the military so that they can get their head and/or balls blown off fighting for a government that despises both their race and their religion.

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  29. When I was a boy, way back in the early '70s, in my kiddy way I took a half interest in the TV nes bulletins that my Dad was obsessed with. In the years of language formation, kids generally have a way of linking words to concepts, and I more or less knew that 'guerilla' meant someone in green fatigues, bush-hat etc fighting in some jungle, rather than a regular army soldier (this was during the 'nam period).Anyhow, the fantasy of apes wearing green combat fatigues - and frightening the hell out of people, did cross my mind on a number of occasions. The estimable 'Planet of the Apes' TV show was broadcast in them days, and my young mind got a little too wrapped up in fantasy.

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  30. "You want success, progeny, you better amp up your dominance, your Game"

    Yeah, yeah, okay, Whiskey, you got it all figured out. We know. But I'm curious. How much of this theory have *you* put into action? How many kids ya got?

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  31. rob said: I really don't know if you meant that as a sincere compliment or sarcastic insult. Either way, I don't know if I should feel complemented or insulted.

    Yes, Rob, it was indeed a compliment. I generally don't attack other commenters on stylistic grounds.

    I'm not sure why you would be insulted. Was it the angry internet guy Valhalla quip? That was just my tongue in cheek way of saying that your line was a fine demonstration of both brute force and precision of meaning. It was a verbal feat of arms.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  32. A friend of mine from high school joined BGF during a stay in jail in Baltimore. He explained that there is a series questions that members on the outside will ask each other in order to validate that they are talking to another bona fide members. The questions relate to a short, coded story that is part of the gang's literature that all members must memorize. My friend repeated part of the story to me and I definitely remember it had something to do with a bush. And doing a quick Google search, apparently BGF's top leadership is referred to as the "Supreme Bush."

    The bush is apparently an important symbol that is part of their (not so) secret code, and that's why they use the term "bushman."

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  33. Okay, maybe here is a case where abortion might be the right thing to do. Maybe we should let their "counselors" come in an lie to the guards about the "mass of cells" in their body that a doctor can remove safely. The last thing we need is a bunch of this thug's sons populating the next generation of thugs.

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  34. stari__momak5/5/13, 3:59 PM

    There's a great/horrific <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVqbAUMM9A>Louis Theroux doc</a> (yeah, he's smug as all get out, but he does go where no one else does) on a Miami jail. Apparently it is common practice for inmates (the black ones at least) to 'gun' the women guards -- i.e. to masturbate in their presence. Good times!

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  35. I can't believe you like money, too. We should hang out.

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  36. JPF,

    I thought it might have been a Stormfront/net-nazi thing. I don't know whether to be insulted or not by a compliment because I'm ambivalent about how far down the HBD/alt-right rabbit-hole I've gone.

    I watch the news and think everyone with power or influence is evil, or crazy, or both. Too many of the problems look like positive feedback loops. They aren't self-correcting and can't go on forever.

    As far as I can tell the best-case scenarios are awful, and likely outcomes will be nightmares for almost everyone.

    I hate to invoke Godwin, but almost every German new the Nazis were a mix of lunatics and thugs, but respectable decent people had done a terrible job. To paraphrase, when good ideas are outlawed, only outlaws will have good ideas.

    If I'm forecasting at all accurately, then the entire political-professional-managerial elite is driving the country off a cliff because they think we'll just be able to fly. Most of the respectable or even likely opposition would just burn it down faster. Glenn Beck or Michele Bachman sorts would just be more of the same, except with more Jeeboo, slightly different wars, and fewer vaccinations, and they'd intentionally destroy social safety nets.

    We on the alt-right may be right about some stuff, but would you really want Whiskey in charge of anything?(not that he's really one of us, but he is on the lunatic fringe)? Or Roissy/Heartiste? Or me? I wouldn't. Most socially marginal types are marginal for reasons. They'd use power for revenge. Just look at the way so many commenters here talk about women. If they ever had real power, would you want your sister around them?

    So that's why I hope that I'm wrongedy wrong wrong and just crazy.

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  37. Who wins? Tavon White, with all those descendants, or some guy dumb enough to slave away at a cube all day, wearing dockers?"

    Most of Tavon's kids will probably end up either dead or in jail before they are 20.

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  38. Rob,

    You seem like a genuinely decent person who is sick of dysfunctional, destructive crap. As I see it, you're fine so long as you remain anchored in a sense of compassion and humanity that is unsullied by politics.

    Jim Bowery,

    That's my favorite line in the movie.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  39. One group that will certainly not win: gullible White Christians who enlist in the military so that they can get their head and/or balls blown off fighting for a government that despises both their race and their religion.

    What choice do they have in this economy? Got to put food on the table.

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  40. "So, there were no gorillas and it wasn't an airplane of jars, but it is was a flat land of jars. I had no idea ..."

    Steve, it's really rare that I've known a fair amount about something almost all my life and come to learn you've never heard about it!

    Plenty of US airmen were shot down over Laos and the Plain of Jars during the secret war there. (Google on 'MIA "Plain of Jars"'). A number that were not picked up surely survived landing, perhaps hundreds? In addition to all the normal forces, there was a "Flying Tiger"-like plausible deniability "dipped" secret US air force, the Ravens, dedicated mostly to forward air control assisting a CIA-backed Laotian army on the Plain of Jars.

    No US POWs were ever released from Laos. Much of the "MIAs still missing" relates to this war. It's likely all US POWs were executed, but no one knows.

    When a full history of the 20th century and the Cold War is written a good while from now, the not-so-secret war on the Plain of Jars will occupy a prominent position.

    As that wikipedia article you reference says a bit further down:

    "Between 1964 and 1973, Laos was subject to the most intense bombing raids ever by US bombers (see Secret War). In this period, more ordnance was dropped on Laos and particularly on the Plain of Jars, including 260 million cluster bombs, than was dropped during the whole of World War II. 80 million failed to explode and pose a deadly threat to the population to this very day."

    The secret war in Laos resulted from the need to maintain the legal fiction that there was no war in Laos, but it was one of the hottest theaters of the Cold War. A lot of things probably came from experience in Laos. Among others, the CIA probably learned big-time how easy it was to raise large effective mercenary armies in the third world, lessons applicable to things such as the later wars in Afghanistan. The US realized it didn't need to provide the boots on the ground, it might even by much more convenient if the US didn't. Lessons to good effect a few years later in places like El Salvador.

    A lot of those Hmong refugees in the US are from Laos, not Vietnam. From the Japanese Times, "The Plain of Jars: A place of war and death":

    "...archaeologists fascinated by the great Asian mystery ... the Plain of Jars... A lesser-known fact is the province’s status as the most heavily bombed place on Earth."

    ...

    The casualty rate among the Ravens was extremely high — about 50 percent, according to Christopher Robbins in his book “The Ravens.” Reportedly, 400 died in combat and a further 600 went missing in action."


    RIP. One does wonder if they would have fought the same for the US of today. Perhaps introducing that uncertainty was the intent of the cultural left.

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  41. As I see it, you're fine so long as you remain anchored in a sense of compassion and humanity that is unsullied by politics.

    Is this a prescription to stand on the sidelines while our people are persecuted and displaced?

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  42. Average Joe:

    How fortunate for Tayvon's genes that it turns out to be possible to propogate them even from inside a jail cell.

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  43. Most of Tavon's kids will probably end up either dead or in jail before they are 20.

    That's more than enough time for each of them to bring many little bundles of joy into this world.

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  44. Anonymous said: Is this a prescription to stand on the sidelines while our people are persecuted and displaced?

    No.

    -The Judean People's Front

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  45. As many as 80 percent of correctional-officer applicants in the central region, which includes Baltimore, do not make it through the background investigation, said Binetti, the corrections spokesman. Among those who do, women seem to dominate. More than 60 percent of the corrections officers in Baltimore’s jails are women, Maryland officials estimate.


    That confirms what I first thought. Since it's the men's jail, they want to hire men as jail guards. But it being a jail in heavily black Baltimore, they want to hire blacks (i.e. not hire whites) more than they want to hire men. And since so many black men have rap sheets, they have to settle for black women. And the kind of black women in Baltimore who would want to work as guards in men's jails are easily susceptible to this gang's bamboozling.

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  46. If Barack Obama had a son, he would look like Tavon.

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  47. Nicodemus van Patterson5/6/13, 9:09 AM

    Ref: Yesenia, I recall seeing a survey in the year 2000 which showed that around 1% of US schoolkids thought that there was an Arab terrorist called Osama Van Halen, and that a somewhat smaller percentage was aware of a group called Weird Al Quaeda.

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  48. So, what's the over-under line on how many years this kid will wind up incarcerated?

    Put me down for a Benjamin at 80%, I'm good for it.

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  49. This story made me go apeshit.

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  50. Nicodemus:

    I have to say, I didn't care for that stint where Osama Van Halen teamed up with Hagar the Horrible.

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