2014 archive
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
It is not polite to lie.
His false claim led police from several agencies to swarm an area of St. Francis last week looking for the supposedly armed suspect.
The real story was that Lloyd R. Robinson, 24, of St. Francis was playing with his handgun at an E. Tesch Ave. apartment Thursday when he accidentally shot his girlfriend, police say.
Defining Characteristics 0
American Exceptionalism, n.: The propensity of the United States of America and its citizens to except themselves from accountability for their actions. See Viet Nam, Nicaragua, Granada, slavery, Jim Crow, asbestos, tar sands, fly ash, Halliburton, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, NSA, CIA, Ferguson, Birmingham, British Petroleum, Monsanto, DDT, honey bees . . . . .
A Whole New Twist on “Pay for Performance” 0
Please just make big-time football go away.
A Picture Is Worth, “Legal Intervention” Dept. 0
“Legal intervention” is a lawyers’ term for someone’s being killed by police while committing (or assumed to be committing) a crime.
er, yeah.
From the Sunlight Foundation, which has much more.
Quota System 0
I did not realize this. Did you? (Emphasis added.)
(snip)
The quota is unprecedented. No other federal or state agency is required by law to detain a specific number of people without any regard to whether the quota makes sense from a law-enforcement perspective. Indeed, the quota is so excessive that it has been criticized by the very immigration authorities charged with enforcing it.
This is what cruelty looks like when it’s made routine by force of law.
Read the rest.
Meta: Comment Spam 0
Akismet has caught well over 200 spam comments in the last 24 hours. The bottom-dwellers have been restless.
Not one of the spam comments has made it to the front page.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite to your life partner.
(snip)
“We found Jane hysterical, stating she had shot her husband,” Winslow Police Chief Shawn O’Leary said Sunday morning about the officers’ arrival at the house. Winslow EMS and Delta Ambulance also responded to the emergency 911 call.
(Anti-)Drug Cartels 0
Frank Carabino has a few thoughts about drug cartels.
Not, not those drug cartels–the other drug cartels, the ones that profit from warring on drugs. A snippet (much more at the link):
Expanding public access to legal marijuana is bad for business.
Locking people up for minor drug offenses and maintaining a monopoly on the bountiful pain-relief industry are two aspects of the status quo that law enforcement and physician groups have an interest in maintaining.
His point regarding law enforcement is obvious. Warring on drugs has been been a prime source of funding and power for police agencies; it’s also brought them lots of cool toys (as we have recently seen displayed in Ferguson) and property. In addition, it enables them to feed the prison industrial complex with thousands of new captives every year.
We are not normally so willing to view the actions of medical associations so cynically, but do not confuse your kindly family practitioner with his or her professional association. Remember that the AMA coined the term “socialized medicine” over half a century ago in its campaign against President Truman’s effort to improve Americans’ access to health care for fear it might cut into its members’ wealth. You don’t get much more cartel-ly than that.
Close Encounters of the Repugnant Kind 0
Connie Schultz had one recently. Read her report.
Hate Sells. It Also Pays 0
Chauncey Devega gives an example.
“Family Values Republicans” = Endless Amusement 0
Now comes the Regent, another “Family Values Republican” whose self-vaunted “family values” are revealed as a sounding brass, a tinkling cymbal, signifying nothing.
Today the Regent says, “I don’t blame my wife,” even as he blames his wife.
Remember, in Republican World, “Family Values” are not values.
They are tactics.