unixknight

A couple of observations that may or may not be of any help at all, from a guy who's been divorced and for whom some of what the OP said rings familiar... It seems like the husband has done an absolutely thorough job of convincing her that all of the problems are ultimately her fault. He's probably either convinced himself of this as well, or is using it to shield himself from having to look honestly at his own failings.The divorce threat seems to have been used as a lever, or perhaps a club. It's entirely possible that he's just a jerk, or it may be that these manipulations have arisen as a coping mechanism for something she's done. I'm not talking about the "I don't love you" thing at the beginning. This kind of pattern comes from a long history of issues, not one singular moment.If he's truly given up, then it's over. If, on the other hand, he moved back with mom & dad just to prove he means business, then it might be that the divorce threat mallet quit being so effective and so he had to up the ante. If that's the case, then he hasn't given up, he just wants some concession or another that she's unable/unwilling to provide. That concession may or may not be a reasonable one.divorcedat28:Thing is, and this is just my useless advice... You're in a no-win scenario, my friend. Right now, your "victory condition" is to get him to get back together with you, and you've said you're willing to do anything to make that happen. What that means is that even if you get what you want, you'll be living with a man who has demonstrated a willingness to manipulate you through the threat of divorce. You give him what he wants, he does you the "favor" of staying married to you. You cross him, and out comes the divorce card. It may be that he's had a history of living with a person suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, because the type of manipulations he seems to be using against you are typical side effects of being exposed to such a person for an extended period of time. Perhaps a previous relationship, or a parent in his life had NPD and he's been damaged by it. I used to be guilty of acting like that myself before I realized what I was doing and stopped. My first wife had a severe case of NPD and I've observed some of the same side effects in our kids. Fortunately for me, my current wife was very understanding of my issues as I was working them out, and we're very strong together now. If you have any chance at all of saving that marriage, then you need to be able to reunite with him with an equal level of "power" in the marriage. If I'm right about his having dealt with an NPD sufferer, then he's going to need counseling most likely as well. He mustn't be able to hold the divorce threat over you to get you to do what he wants. Period. Living under the Sword of Damocles is no way to having a healthy and fulfilling marriage, no matter how well you might be able to cope with the issues involved. So either he needs to learn not to manipulate you in this way, or you need to be ready to call his bluff if he threatens divorce again.

Just listened to it. I liked it. (Could have done without the healthcare tangent though) What he is saying makes a lot of sense in terms of the perspective on this being different for different racial groups and why. I'd also add that there was a time when I felt safer seeing a police car around. I don't anymore. I now feel less safe with a cop present, and I suspect that's a perspective shared by minorities who have historically been treated badly by law enforcement. (Of course, I live in Prince George's County and I work in Baltimore City, two places where the police have a less than stellar reputation.) The thing that awakened me again to the problem of racism is these recent killings of unarmed black men by white cops... NONE of the high profile examples have gone to trial, not one, even in situations where if it had been a civilian pulling the trigger, a trial would be guaranteed with a very real possibility of a conviction. I guess a lot of badges are shaped like shields for a reason...

My wife and I are going to buy it streaming and watch it tomorrow night.

My peace of mind comes from knowing that if someone comes into my home to harm my family, I can defend them rather than wait for the police to arrive too late. "When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."

I once debated a co-worker over some issue where the President grabbed some power or another. The co-worker was perfectly at ease with it until I asked him "Will you still be okay with the President having that power when there's eventually a Republican in office?" That completely shut him down. People forget that just because you're comfortable with that powerful institution/person now doesn't mean it won't be abused later.

This is really an excellent point. That limit echoes the way it is now, where the courts are our last stand against police impropriety. If we lose that... we're proper screwed.

You forgot the sudo on that one, my friend

Thanks for sharing that. I think I'd heard of that study some years ago but had forgotten about it. I was once debating a subject like this and someone said "Cops are like everybody else, they will make mistakes just as much as everybody else, so this is a non-issue." To which I responded that that isn't good enough. Police officers have a variety of authority and powers that I, as an ordinary citizen, do not. They can carry guns anywhere they want, they can make arrests, they can carry police issue pepper spray, they can block traffic, etc. That means they have to be the best of us. They have to be the most trustworthy, most honorable, most level headed. I agree that the uniform may have the impact you described in the prison guard experiment, so we need people who can resist that (if it can be resisted.) The trouble is too many people are unwilling to look at it objectively. The hero-worship causes a confirmation bias that leads people to minimize and even ignore the obvious problems. That, in turn causes people to galvanize, roughly along political lines, and it becomes just another deadlocked issue.

I hope you're right about this, and I'm inclined to agree, but the problem is that even small misuses of power pave the way to larger ones. We've all seen police cars blowing way past the speed limit when there's no emergency. It's a fact that when an off duty cop gets pulled over they never get ticketed because of "professional courtesy." For an example, see my earlier post about my police chief friend who got out of dozens of speeding tickets just by showing his badge. In the rare case where an officer does take appropriate action against one who's breaking the law, there's harassment and retribution: http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/florida-trooper-arrested-a-cop There are no consequences for this behavior, so naturally human nature takes over and it increases. I keep reading articles about cops taking cameras away from people who are (legally) recording their activities in public. The person with the camera is exonerated and given their stuff back (sometimes weeks later) but the officers face no disciplinary action for their behavior. A recent example: http://photographyisnotacrime.com/2014/12/florida-man-arrested-recording-cops-wins-settlement/ This sort of thing leads to the "us v. them" mentality and that brings my comments full circle.

That's true, but every time I hear a decision like this made "in the interest of safety" I wonder what the soldiers who have fought for our freedom, voluntarily and in the most dangerous environments imaginable, would say about that.

I thank you, sir. :)

The one I had was an '83.

It is for this reason U.S. Government agencies don't use equipment manufactured by Lenovo.

You know, that might be an option, since the likely line of sight where I'd have to point such a weapon would be in the general vicinity of my cat's favorite sleeping place...

Republican. Otherwise the gifts would all be paid for by taxes.

Yeah, see that's my thing I plan on eventually getting another M1911A1 that fires .45 ACP, so if that ammo is available in that type of round I'm okay to get it. The only other caveat being that M1911A1s are somewhat sensitive to the shape of the round. My old Colt M1911A1 didn't like anything except regular ball ammo.

While I agree the movie is probably stupid and I'm not emotionally invested, I don't think that's really relevant. What is important to me is that Sony has sent the message that this kind of saber rattling and threats are effective. This can only encourage more of such nonsense. IMHO, that alone is reason enough to release the movie, whether it's any good or not. It's why we're not supposed to negotiate with terrorists... that only encourages more of it.

What sort of ammo penetrates people but not drywall? (I'm not being snarky, honestly asking.)

You're right. The police have no responsibility whatsoever to assess the situation for themselves. Much better to take the word of whoever placed that 9-1-1 call and go in guns blazing, just to be safe. And if you feel the lack of audio somehow proves that he ignored commands, that's cool too. I mean, we can see from the video that the guy goes down in almost the same second the officers arrive, so how you can be so certain he ignored an order to drop the bb gun I don't know. Interestingly, here's a video of the guy who originally called 911 and made all of those claims changed his nonsense story after seeing the video. If you listen to his story and watch the video, you can see he's completely full of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl6eEwBHzKk Still not the bottom of the barrel, but if you feel that repeating it will make it so, go right ahead

Yeah I'd thought of that, and my wife is planning to get a .38 for that purpose. I'm just planning to get another .45 and I just don't feel willing to risk it... In my living room, the line of sight I'd be firing at is a bedroom on the other side of the wall. I don't doubt the ammo you're talking about would probably be fine, I'm just choosing to err on the side of caution.

I'd like to have a gun again but I live in an apartment and my fear is that if I needed to use it to defend my family or myself, I might miss and injure someone on the other side of the ridiculously thin walls. Instead, I have a 75 lb. draw hunting bow. Not the ideal weapon for home defense, but better than nothing.

I'm sorry but those statements are not correct. First, he wasn't waving the rifle around. This is shown on the security camera. Second, he was fired on before he had the chance to drop it. He never refused. Think about it. Why would he? I mean seriously. Are you honestly telling us that a man was holding an unloaded BB gun and refused to put it down when ordered to do so by police with guns drawn? Not only is that illogical, but it is not what was shown on the security tape. Don't take my word for it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XYNOTUWfHE No need to scrape the bottom of the barrel. A 2 minute Google search will give you all the examples you want of similar incidents. And yes, there's a problem, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. You can chalk that up to cop hating paranoid people if you want to, but that's really not helping. I don't hate cops, and I don't regard myself as paranoid, but the problems are obvious, and the longer we keep making excuses and turning a blind eye to it, the worse it will get. This needs to be addressed and discussed openly, not swept under the rug.

I've said nothing about people pointing things at cops. This guy didn't point anything at the officers: http://www.wlwt.com/news/crawford-family-decision-to-not-indict-officer-incomprehensible/28240330 And this guy had no gun at all: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/12/23/houston-grand-jury-clears-police-officer-jordan-baker/20818025/ Google the phrase "unarmed man killed by police" You'll get more hits than you can read in a week. These are not isolated incidents nor are they corner cases. This is a problem, and the more apologists make excuses, the more we're going to see it. Cops have authority and equipment to do their job, and they need to be held to a high standard to be worthy of that authority. I don't know if the solution is better training, better screening of candidates, better non-lethal equipment or what. But something has to be done or this is going to get worse, not better. Do you disagree?

Dude, if your arguments defending things like no knock warrants are going to be based solely on what's best for the officers, then you're not going to be very successful in convincing people that it's perfectly okay to do this stuff. Ever. It isn't that we don't value the safety of cops. We do. We don't want to see officers killed or hurt in the line of duty. That said, when we feel like in any conflict between that and peoples' rights, peoples' rights should come first. This is why cops got so much hero worship after 9/11. It's because those guys were sacrificing themselves trying to save civilians. This is what they were expected to do, of course, same as the firefighters who also got their recognition. Now, what we're hearing is that unarmed people are getting killed because "an officer was afraid for his safety." Apparently if I am carrying a BB gun in Wal-Mart that I was planning to buy, I might just get shot. If a cop is putting his safety before an unarmed person's life, he's no hero. Full stop.

Brother, you're not going to get a lot of traction with that argument. When you have cases like this: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/toddler-injured-swat-team-flash-bang-grenade-headed-home-article-1.1850982 It's very difficult to see why "tools that protect the officer" (your words) are more important than avoiding this sort of thing.