COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Can't We All Just Get Along?

I guess not.

Rodney King Shot MSNBC

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- Southern California police said 1991 police beating victim Rodney King has been shot, but the wounds are not life-threatening.
Rialto police Sgt. Don Lewis told the Riverside Press-Enterprise that King was hit in the face and arm by shotgun pellets on a San Bernardino street corner Wednesday night. He bicycled to his home in Rialto to call police and was taken to a hospital.
Police said when they arrived at the home, King and others there appeared drunk and few were cooperative in providing information.

San Bernardino police Lt. Scott Paterson tells the San Bernardino County Sun that the shooting may have involved a domestic dispute.
King was beaten by Los Angeles police in 1991 and the officers' subsequent acquittal on criminal charges sparked deadly rioting in 1992.

18 comments:

  1. Old Rodney, he's always the victim, aye?

    Beat upon, now shot.

    Life's a bitch, for Rodney ...

    ... or his domestic partner is

    ReplyDelete
  2. Threatening Canadian's beer might be one step too far:


    Scientists have found a new threat to the planet: Canadian beer drinkers.

    The government-commissioned study says the old, inefficient "beer fridges" that one in three Canadian households use to store their Molson and Labatt's contribute significantly to global warming by guzzling gas- and coal-fired electricity.

    "People need to understand the impact of their lifestyles," British environmental consultant Joanna Yarrow tells New Scientist magazine. "Clearly the environmental implications of having a frivolous luxury like a beer fridge are not hitting home. This research helps inform people — let's hope it has an effect."

    from John Lott's Website

    Shit! next it will be the frivolous luxury of having a fridge.

    ReplyDelete
  3. King, who is black, was videotaped being beaten by white Los Angeles police officers after he was stopped for speeding in 1991. Four officers were acquitted of most criminal charges in 1992, triggering rioting in Los Angeles and neighboring cities that left 55 people dead and caused $1 billion in property damage.

    King sued the city over the beating and obtained a $3.8 million settlement.

    However, he continued to have run-ins with the law. In 2004, he was ordered to spend 120 days in jail and ordered into treatment after pleading guilty to driving under the influence of the drug PCP after he lost control of his SUV in 2003 and slammed into a power pole in Rialto.
    xxxxxxxxxxxx
    I wonder if any of that money is still in his hands. Riding a bike? Maybe he lost his drivers license. Maybe he's blown it all already.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The Soviet Union is leaking uranium, but fear not.

    The proliferators were arrested.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The US gives a pass to the real proliferators, in Pakistan, Korea and Russia, while beating war drums over Iran's internal project.

    Even as the Israeli bomb Syrian installations, near the Iraqi frontier. Because the Koreans were selling nuclear technologies, some say.

    While the NorkkKs are no longer terrorist sponsors, while proliferating.

    The only reasonable explanation, the NorKs were not involved in a Syrian reactor, no credible evidence.

    Or Team43 would not reward the NorKs, would they?

    Hard to believe the US would do such a thing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Or are we making tribute payments to the NorKs?

    Ransoms
    Extorted monies, to be nice.

    Preppies might play that game, but the United States?

    With the GOP at the wheel, chartin' the course?

    ReplyDelete
  7. karma sucks...

    so funny

    wish it happen to hugo...

    ReplyDelete
  8. Kim Jong-il portrayed as Rodney King

    A victim worthy of recompense

    Not something a Conservative, no matter how Compassionate, could allow, NO?

    ReplyDelete
  9. The U.S. State Department publishes a list of countries that it has designated as sponsors of terrorism ("Listed Countries"). There currently are five countries on the State Department list: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.

    The SEC’s Office of Global Security Risk monitors public company disclosure of material business activities in or with Listed Countries and, earlier this year, the SEC added a feature to its website that provided direct public access to disclosures made by public companies in their 2006 annual reports concerning past, current, or anticipated business activities in or with Listed Countries. The SEC web tool also gave interested persons a way to link directly to the full text of a company’s annual report, where interested parties could read the company’s disclosures regarding its activities in Listed Countries.

    The SEC’s web tool drew many visits and comments. Many public companies expressed concern that the web tool did not disclose the most recent information about a company’s activities, could be misleading (regardless of the legality and appropriateness of a company’s activities), and could lead to significant reputational harm.


    Sponsors of Terrorism

    ReplyDelete
  10. Bush's Next Preemptive Strike

    As far as Bush is concerned, he doesn't need Congress's approval to make an enduring commitment of American force, treasure and lives in Iraq.


    Harold Meyerson

    They can see it comin' but are making the wrong call, demanding a "Vote on Victory"

    Best move the Bush Team has made, they are beginning to frame the Victory debate, now.

    ReplyDelete
  11. North Korea insists it is off US blacklist

    Staff and agencies
    Friday October 5, 2007
    Guardian Unlimited


    To which the US says ...

    However, the US has yet to confirm any of the claims.
    A month ago, North Korea made an equally confident assertion about exactly the same measures, only to find itself bluntly contradicted by the US a day later.

    "No, they haven't been taken off the terrorism list," the assistant secretary of state, Christopher Hill, told reporters at the time when asked about the issue.

    The US did not announce any reciprocal action when, earlier this week, North Korea committed to disable its main nuclear facilities by the end of the year.

    US officials have declined to publicly say that any decision has been made to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. The designation obliges Washington to, among other restrictions, oppose such countries getting loans from major international financial institutions.

    Other countries on the list include Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

    Earlier this week Mr Hill, who is the main US envoy to the North Korea nuclear talks, again refused to acknowledge any specifics about removing the country from the list.

    He said Washington had a "very clear understanding" with North Korea, but refused to divulge any details.

    North Korea was put on Washington's blacklist in January 1988 after a North Korean agent confessed to the 1987 bombing of a South Korean passenger jet over the Indian Ocean that killed all 115 people on board.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Bobal: I wonder if any of that money is still in his hands. Riding a bike? Maybe he lost his drivers license. Maybe he's blown it all already.

    Funny you mention blow.

    ReplyDelete
  13. When the CNN-You Tube debate among Republican presidential candidates began with a guy named Chris Nandor playing a guitar and singing, my wife Barbara exclaimed, "This is humiliating. This is really bad."

    --Fred Barnes

    What a depressing debate. CNN's long slide into mediocrity accelerates.

    --Richelieu

    Richelieu, being an aristocrat, indeed a French aristocrat, may scorn the "vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet causes" that we saw asking questions tonight, courtesy of CNN and YouTube. We Americans don't dare scorn our fellow citizens (at least not publicly).

    --William Kristol


    2 Hours of Humiliation

    ReplyDelete
  14. Sam, don't be such a Hugh Hewitt. This is the New Media. If you don't learn to balance, the wave is gonna throw ya.

    ReplyDelete
  15. DNA Samples OK for Nonviolent Felons

    By KIM CURTIS
    Associated Press Writer

    Latest News
    DNA Samples OK for Nonviolent Felons

    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that collecting DNA evidence from nonviolent drug offenders doesn't violate their privacy rights.

    The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals' 2-1 decision came in the case of Thomas Kriesel, a nonviolent drug offender who refused to give a DNA sample after his release from prison.

    A 2000 federal law requiring that violent felons give a DNA sample to be kept in a national law enforcement database was extended to all felons in 2004.

    Writing for the majority, Judge M. Margaret McKeown said the law was constitutional.

    "The government's significant interests in identifying supervised releasees, preventing recidivism, and solving past crimes outweigh the diminished privacy interests" of convicted felons, McKeown wrote.

    The dissenter, Judge Betty Fletcher, said the decision was made with "an air of shrugging inevitability."

    Fletcher said the decision "approves, without flinching, a statute that effects a far broader and far less justified erosion of the Fourth Amendment."

    The judge said if Kriesel's DNA is collected it will be retained in a database, submitting him to "repeated searches of his DNA whenever the government has some minimal investigative interest."

    Samples can be removed from a database, but only after the convicted criminal has served an entire sentence and submitted the proper paperwork.

    "An ever-expanding and unerasable electronic index of DNA profiles, monitored by the government's unblinking digital eye, may no doubt prove to be an effective law enforcement tool," she said.

    "But (the law) requires constitutional means, not just effective ends," she added.
    xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    9th Cicuit Court of Appeals, always predictable.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Thu Nov 29, 09:48:00 PM EST

    What it is, is pathetic.

    Running for the Presidency of the United States and it is turned into a joke of costumes and cartoons and shit.

    ReplyDelete
  17. From the Lincoln-Douglas debates to canned questions on YouTube.

    ReplyDelete