Priceless

What on earth was KUTV thinking putting a poll like this out?

I mean, seriously, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out everyone in the world is going to be voting in it.  After all, I did.  LOL

Lots of people linked to it, but I expect Dan Savage was a major driver.

State settles with tasered motorist

I’m pleased to report that Utah settled with Jared Massey, who became an unwitting internet celebrity after video showing him being wrongly tasered was viewed by over 1.7 million people.

A stubborn motorist who became an Internet celebrity after video of him being stunned with a Taser by a Utah Highway Patrolman appeared on YouTube will receive $40,000 as part of a lawsuit settlement with the state, the Utah attorney general’s office said Monday.

Jared Massey claimed in civil lawsuit filed in January that his civil rights were violated because Trooper Jon Gardner fired his Taser before telling him Massey was under arrest.

The confrontation was widely viewed on the Internet after Massey obtained a copy of a video taken by the cruiser’s dashboard camera.

The video has been viewed on YouTube at least 1.7 million times and shows Gardner drawing his stun gun after the 28-year-old Massey - outside his vehicle to proclaim his innocence - refused to accept a speeding ticket.

Massey’s attorney, Bob Sykes, said he’s pleased with the settlement offer.

“They made what we consider to be a very fair offer of a significant amount of money,” he said.

Good.  Police in general have become much too taser happy of late.  Let’s hope this is the first of many successful attempts to rein in excessive force.

It’s worth noting that wanker in chief Chris Buttars’ response to the controversy is to make it impossible for the public to have access to the police videos - a disservice in terms of protecting both the public and the police.  Not, mind you, that we expect reality to interfere with any typical Buttars proposal.

K. Now I’m pissed.

Posted by Sean, from Hiding in the Backwaters

Chris Buttars, Utah State Senator from West Jordan, is an ass. I have to believe that even wingnuts who support him as a champion of moral causes privately think, “What an ass.” Generally I just try and ignore him. Otherwise, I’d be angry all the time, but this just tears it.

Buttars just lost his seat as the chairman of the Senate Judicial Confirmation Committee. It’s about damn time he was sanctioned. Of course, you don’t get sanctioned for being a homophobic and racist bigot. Sorry, I meant Champion of Moral Causes. However, you can get sanctioned for unethical behavior, which is only a matter of time when you’ve got an ego as big as Buttars’. Buttars wrote a letter to a judge, on Senate letterhead, scolding him for ruling against a personal friend (and large campaign contributor) of Buttars’ in a land dispute said friend is engaged in with Mapleton city. And here is what Buttars said in that letter that just burns my shorts.

“I had hoped that we had appointed a judge that would err on the side of individual rights, not a liberal activist judge who would champion government.” (Salt Lake Tribune, 2/26/08)

ARE YOU [expletive deleted] KIDDING ME???!!! This is the [expletive deleted] who introduced a bill to put the kabosh on a recently created domestic partner registry in Salt Lake City. Passed unanimously by the city council, it would allow local businesses to offer domestic partner benefits if they so desire (Salt Lake Tribune, 2/23/2008). What a hypocritical [expletive deleted]. He’s only a champion of individual rights if you’re rich, white, straight and a campaign contributor. Otherwise, the state (ie. Buttars) gets to decide what constitutes individual rights.

All you have to do is read the news from the last few weeks and any rational, thinking individual would be able to tell the man is clueless, probably a raging narcissist, and has no business in the Senate. He plans to seek re-election, because he knows his critics are unjustified. I think the odds he will get re-elected are actually pretty good, but if by some stroke of luck he should lose, you know it won’t be because he’s an [expletive deleted]. It will be because his critics sabotaged and slandered him.

Ed note:

Criticizing Buttars is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, but he really, really needs to go.

A crock of buttars

Great read at Snide Remarks

How wide a divide?

Great oped in the Salt Lake Tribune:

     I’m looking at a photo of Chris Buttars and he looks like he has just been served a dog poop burrito. Really, like he has just taken a big bite of it. I can’t recall a nastier expression on a human being. He’s wearing a look of pure, thorough disgust. If you don’t believe me, look for yourself. Buttars is sporting this look in a photo in last Tuesday’s Tribune, front page.
The photo, shot by Scott Sommerdorf, should win an award. It tells the whole story of Utah’s cultural divide, the schism, the chasm, without a single word. It shows quite clearly what for many of us is the heartbreak of living in Utah. Faces like this get certain members of Utah’s majority community called self-righteous bigots. 

Buttars is indeed an asshat, and the worst kind ofself-righteous bigot.  But the sad truth is a LOT of his constituents feel the same way he does, they’re just too smart to say it in front of TV cameras.

Still an asshat

Utah’s biggest embarassment, state senator Chris Buttars, isn’t content with his irrational fear of science, his homophobia, or his racism.  Now, it seems he’s trying to shield police from accountability when they overstep the line.

A new bill proposed at the legislature would allow for police to withhold misconduct reports from the public. Supporters of the bill believe that police misconduct should be kept secret from the public so to not discredit police testimony. Others say that a forthright police unit is essential to the community.

In September, Jared Massey was zapped with a taser by Trooper John Gardner. A video of the incident was recorded from Gardner’s patrol car. Gardner can be seen shocking Massey until he hits the ground while Massey’s wife screams from the side of their SUV.

You may recall the Massey incident.  I blogged it at the time, and you can still see the video online.

I don’t know what’s more pathetic - Buttars himself, or that he really is largely representative of his district.   And responsible Utahns weep.

In memoriam

A nicely done You Tube memorial to Gordon B. Hinckley, the 15th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who passed away yesterday at the age of 97.

I had the chance to shake his hand on  a couple of occasions.  The world is poorer without him in it.

Embarassed to be a Utahn

Hat tip to Digby for this:

A man is tasered for no  reason other than he has the gall to ask the officer why he was pulled over.

Is this what America is coming to?   What happened to civil rights, and to law enforcement that actually receives respect because it DESERVES respect?

IQs rising in Utah

According to a Salt Lake Tribune Poll, it appears Bush has finally managed to burn his last bridge.

    A January poll by The Salt Lake Tribune showed a precipitous drop in support for Bush’s handling of the war among Utah’s Latter-day Saints.
In the survey, just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormon said they backed Bush’s war management. That’s a level considerably higher than Bush gets from Utah’s non-Mormon population and the nation at large, but it’s also a 21 percentage point drop from just five months earlier. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.

Interesting.  As a former Utahn it’s interesting to see changes like this.  Bush’s lawlessness and disregard for the Constitution might finally be coming home to roost?  We can only hope.  As Pastor Dan observes at Street Prophets:

Utah is generally among the reddest of the red states, and support for Bush’s Folly has been correspondingly strong. But as the article goes on to explain, Mormon leaders in the church and government have been signaling that good Mormons can oppose the war.

That’s a remarkable change illustrating the power of this stupid, immoral war to break the back of the Republican coalition. God knows no reasonable person wants the war to drag on for another two years, but if it does, the GOP will lie in tatters.

Hat tip:  Crooks and Liars