Mister Yojinbo

Recent Activity

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  Mister signed the petition | almost 2 years ago

  Tell President Obama: Stop Offshore Drilling and Demand a Clean Energy Future
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  Mister signed the petition | almost 2 years ago

  Tell Congress: Stop Outsourcing Our Security to Blackwater and Private Mercenaries
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  Mister signed the petition | almost 2 years ago

  Tell the City of Boulder to Stop Punishing the Homeless
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  Mister commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  For Prisoners, Life on the Inside Means Aging Faster

  Life or the law isn't that simple. I did eleven years in federal prison for bank-robbery. I was guilty and accepted my sentence when I was convicted. But I met many people in there who should not have been in prison. Men who were imprisoned simply on the word of paid informants who were coached in their testimony by the prosecution.

  
  

  One of the finest men I've ever known I met in prison. He's still there and after going over his case, I firmly believe he was innocent. Unfortunately, he chose to go to trial under the mistaken belief that the truth was all you need to win in a courtroom. He was sadly mistaken. And when he was found guilty, he was punished for having the audacity to exercise his right to a trial by the system. You see, if you cop a plea you get less time than if you go to trial. For the very same offense. He was sentenced to 24 years, which, in federal prison where there's no such thing as parole, means he'd have to do about 22 of that. For a white collar offense. First time offender. I robbed six banks and "only" got thirteen years. Of course, I pled guilty. Had I gone to trial I was looking at a maximum of some 124 years.

  
  

  My friend fought tooth and nail against his conviction and now some eight years later after having gone all the way to the supreme court, he had the sentence thrown out and is awaiting resentencing (which will be far less than the time he's already served). Even so, he's now willing to accept the conviction simply to get out, even though he knows he's an innocent man. That's how the system really works. It's not about right and wrong. If you believe that you're naive and sheltered. Step outside your simplistic world view and see how things are rather than how you wish they would be. You'd be surprised.

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  Mister commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  Taser International: Don't Use Abusive Sheriffs to Promote Your Weapon

  Everything's impossible until somebody proves otherwise. That's all I'm saying. But the current system definitely wasn't designed for a world like ours....

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  Mister commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell Fails 4th Grade U.S. History Lesson

  No, the average southern farmer did not go to war so slaves could be used on rich plantations. You absolutely miss the context of the war and simply focus on the surface.  Was slavery a part of it? Yes, in so much as oil is a part of our current policy in the Middle East. But none of our soldiers are signing up to to shed their blood for barrels of oil, just as those confederate soldiers were not going to war to keep slavery. It's a complicated issue, but it all boils down to what I already said, Southern culture felt threatened. They weren't fighting FOR slavery any more than we fight FOR oil. But the issue is intrinsic to the conflict. Everyone want to reduce things down to simple causes and that's not possible when it comes to history.

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  Mister recruited Christy to sign the petition | about 2 years ago

  Abolish the inherently exclusivist Western B.C. & A.D. calendar designation
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  Mister signed the petition | about 2 years ago

  Abolish the inherently exclusivist Western B.C. & A.D. calendar designation
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  Mister started the petition | about 2 years ago

  Abolish the inherently exclusivist Western B.C. & A.D. calendar designation
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  Mister commented on the article | about 2 years ago

  Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell Fails 4th Grade U.S. History Lesson

  It would be a lie if I said I wasn't partial to the Confederacy as a boy growing up in Texas. I had a confederate battle flag on my wall and liked the "General Lee" far more than I did Bo or Luke Duke precisely because it carried the "Stars and Bars" on "The Dukes of Hazzard". When I played war with my friends, back when you could play war in the woods without being labeled either a sociopath in training by the Left or jihadist in training by the Right, if the theme was the Civil War then I was always a part of Stonewall Jackson's brigade. And whenever John Wayne or Clint Eastwood appeared in a post-Civil War cowboy movie, I admit I felt a thrill when their character was an old Confederate soldier, and felt a bit betrayed when they were not.

  
  

  But, despite what you might assume from these facts about my youth, one thing I never was, I'm proud to say, was a racist. I had friends from all kinds of backgrounds and races. I didn't use racial epithets and felt uncomfortable around those who did. So it puzzles me why so many people assume, based on my personal preference for Robert E. Lee over "Useless" Grant, that this implies I am somehow condoning or glorifying slavery. I can only ascribe it to ignorance of history and culture. ( Sometimes the term "multiculturalism" is as exclusive as the "monoculturalism" it seeks to correct.)

  
  

  All too often, people base beliefs on little more than what they've heard someone else say, without ever looking into a subject and forming their own perspective. If some people are offended by what they think these things represent, that is their right within a free country. Just as it is my right to be offended by things other people might value. I personally find the Christian cross to be offensive for all the pain, misery and death that has been done in its long shadow. But to others, it's a symbol of hope, however false.

  
  

  For me, the Stars and Bars doesn't represent human trafficking and enslavement, but the honor and courage of the men who shed their blood and died for it. And, for the record, it didn't symbolize slavery to them either. The vast majority of soldiers who fought on the Confederate side were not slave-owners. Most were little more than serfs themselves, working plots of land mortgaged to the wealthy minority. They went to war, not so the plantation owners could keep their slaves, but to protect their homeland from what they saw as a blatant attempt by the federal government to unconstitutionally extend its power.

  
  

  In fact, the symbols of the Confederacy weren't even popularly associated with racism until the 20th century, when segregationists and other racist groups in the South used them to give their ideologies of hate and intolerance some sort of historical context. But in the end, all these things are just pieces of history. Symbols of where we've been and how far we've come.