Yesterday, it took me nearly two hours to get home from San Francisco.
It normally takes me about an hour using Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART).
Yesterday, someone thought it would be a fantastic idea to disrupt the BART system, forcing thousands of commuters to pile up like cord wood on BART’s commuter trains.
Their complaint?
Frankly, I don’t give a damn.
Actually, I do.
On the ride home, I was anxiously hoping to oppose whatever it was they were protesting.
It turns out…I do disagree with them!
Shocker!
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the protestors “were angered by the BART police shooting of Charles Blair Hill, a 45-year-old transient who allegedly threw a bottle at two officers and pulled a knife before one of the officers shot him to death.”
Imagine that.
If you attack the police, they just might shoot you.
Reflections of a Rational Republican 
I asked my friend one day who is a cop about “excessive force”. He said that a suspect can cover a span of as much as 27 feet before a cop draws and fires his gun. Plus, there’s the issue of not knowing what the guy’s on (besides adrenaline) which can also make the first shot ineffective in stopping him. Sounds to me like the cop was justified.
Either way, I agree with you – threaten a cop in any way, EXPECT to get shot. It’s a simple rule.
As for the protestors, here’s their idiot logic: “Let’s be a bunch of BUMS with no jobs expecting the system to take care of us, and then prevent those we’re leeching off of from getting to their jobs and earn an income that we can leech off of. This will supposedly raise awareness of our ‘issue’, and then these educated, working people will then somehow transfer their frustration from us to the evil police who killed an ‘innocent’ man, thereby ‘applauding’ and supporting our efforts.” Bull$hit.
When I was in Canada the G8 Summit was going on. Loser protestors crowded the Trans Canada Highway (which has a 75mph speed limit, btw) in an attempt to disrupt traffic. It didn’t work – none were brave enough to stand in front of 16 wheelers – so they moved to the side of the highway, and I missed the chance to throw something at them out my window at an excessive speed. I would have easily transferred the latent/lingering frustration from 10 years ago to one of those clown disrupting BART that day. Hopefully they try again next week. Idiots.
I’m against protesting, but I don’t know how to show it. 😉
Blogging about it is the only way I know of. 😉
Protesters = Puppets of the Left. 🙂 Maybe we can send Rick in there – does California allow open carry?
Of course not. I don’t even think SF honors the second amendment, even though criminals there have killed folks with assault rifles like AK-47s.
I recognize your frustration. It seems to me that protests have a checkered past, sometimes getting results, and sometimes not. The Viet Nam war protesters got results back in the 1960’s, and the Tea Party protesters seem to have gotten some results in modern times.
My opinion is that the more often the protests, the less attention we all pay to their cause. Plus, you have to look at those protesters. For example, if the protesters are wearing SEIU tee-shirts or “Yes, We Can!” tee-shirts, nobody will pay attention to their broken record chanting.
When you have thousands of grey headed, serious, and pissed off senior citizens like me on the streets threatening who knows what to ignoramus Congressional Representatives, something is going to happen, and John Law will not be slamming too many Grandma’s and Grandpa’s into the jailhouse.
So, I think it depends on the messenger, the message, and the situation.
Bob,
I think protesting is all well and good, provided it is not disruptive. Organizing in the town square is one thing, but stopping traffic or preventing people from getting home just to make a point is worthy of nothing but my contempt.
This guy was in handcuffs, lying on the ground face down, surrounded by police, when the cop on top of him stood up, drew his gun, and shot him in the back, killing him.
This isn’t the incident I am talking about. There was a second shooting after this one. They were protesting the second incident.
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