Part one of an essay on police malfeasance.

It has now become national news. Police in a mostly white upscale neighborhood in St. Louis (maybe a mile from where I live) have been caught on tape going ape shit and kicking the hell out of a black suspect that had led them on a high speed chase. The argument will be made that he had rammed the police cars before being stopped and he got what he deserved. While this argument may appeal to your feeling that one gets what is coming to them, this by no means deals with the fact that what the cops did was illegal and brutal. For those of you that haven't seen the footage yet a black male in a van leaves his vehicle after a chase that ended up with two cop cars lodged firmly in the vans side (it appears from the tape that this was truly the only way they could get this guy to stop). After he exits his vehicle he apparently tries to flea the seen, but as he was just in several collisions with police cars the man is moving in a way that would make catching him easy for a ninety-year-old Alzheimer’s patient doing the moon walk. I would bet good money that the first officer to make it to the suspect followed procedure fully in his taking down of said suspect. Now the guy is on the ground and here is where it gets ugly, every cop that comes to help "subdue" the criminal does so with savage force. Whether the man was struggling or not makes no difference what so ever because they plainly had enough officers there to control him several times over (i know this because ive seen "COPS" :). After the first three cops jump on the guy, pummeling him with punches any place that isn't covered by one of their "brothers", another cop comes into frame stomping on the mans unmoving legs. At this point any argument of struggling is now defunct because if this guy is moving at all it is to defend himself from the beating that is now taking place. You can see the police officers punching the man waiting for him to cover up his body so they can get in the coup de gras of any police-gone-wild wrestling match, the oh so satisfying head shot. The beating was so bad that the St. Louis police department released the man with no charges being filed when the incident started with him obviously breaking the law. While I can rant and rave about the unfairness of the situation the ultimate legality of this altercation will of course be left for to the courts to decide.

My beef with this incident (besides the obvious) begins with a story that was on dateline last night. Dateline used a decoy to invite people over to a house to have, what the invitees thought, would be sex with a minor. They tried to get an interview with the shit bags before letting them exit the house directly into the arms of the local police. As these would-be child molesters are leaving the house they are approached and told firmly but politely to put their hands behind their back. The only ones that had any type of injury had tried to run and got scraped up as they were tackled onto a neighbor’s driveway. Pardon my language but, What the fuck? Is running from the police as heinous a crime as trying to have sex with a 13 year old? We all answered no right? Then what were these cops in St. Louis doing? It will be said that they acted this way because they didn't know that they were being filmed, unlike the Dateline cops who knew they were being filmed the whole time, and there may be some truth to that, but I have a feeling it's because they had just been on a high speed and obviously dangerous pursuit of the suspect before apprehending him, which leads me to my next question. What kind of fucking rage-oholic ass holes are we hiring into our police forces? These are the men that are trained to respond to such instances and the first thought they have as they exit their vehicles is "i'm onna' kick the hell outta’ that nigger". This is just another sign that something needs to be done about the out of control police agencies all over the country. Don't give me that "it was just a couple of bad seeds" bullshit. EVERY cop that was on seen behaved inappropriately, whether engaging the suspect or standing around while others did. You’re not going to convince me that, as bad luck would have it, every shit cop from the Mapelwood police department just so happened to be at the sight of this particular arrest.

Like I said, something needs to be done. Perhaps a mandatory amount of education needs to be instated for those wanting to serve in uniform outside of the 6 week "police academy" they go through before entering the force (oddly enough, the gentleman guarding our highways already have such requirements). Perhaps cycling officers through desk jobs after being on the street for a specified amount of time, thus keeping them from getting burned out from dealing with the worst of society on a daily basis. Shit, I don't know, something, ANYTHING. Unless action is taken we are going to continue to see instances of police brutality on our streets and if not stopped we'll be left with riots in our cities as history shows is the result of repeated incidents of out of control police officers. In my next post I’ll be dealing with another less extreme example of the way those that are here to protect us feel they are above the laws they are sworn to uphold. If you haven’t guessed how my blog is going to end by now, my phone just rang. I think I was a bit snippy with the guy on the phone due to some residual anger from writing this, but no matter, I bet you can guess who it was for. Hey crazy ass cops, the jerk store called. They ran out of you.

P.S. if any of you know, are, or are related to police officers, i'm sure you/they have all behaved in an upstanding manner throughout the length of your/their careers.

Moody

As stories of soldiers being kept in Iraq for second and third tours of duty are becoming more prevalent, and on the heals of a recent television report stating instances of injured soldiers receiving paychecks for zero dollars there is an inconceivable outrage spreading like wildfire through the conservative community about one of the latest (January 29, 2006 Washington Post)) Tom Toles cartoons. This image doesn't seem to want to post so check my gallery if you’re curious. Anyway, this cartoon is so "outrageous" that I’m sure our freedom of the press will be outlawed shortly in the interest of "national security". While the cartoon, if taken at face value, would be a bit on the callous side, what its detractors are failing to see is that it's a METAPHOR. It is meant to REPRESENT the damage this ill planned war has done to all of our armed services. I understand that this may seem obvious to some of us but we're dealing with a group of people that think the world is only thousands of years old. My recommendation is that for those of you that think devices like simile and metaphor are "city slicker fancy talk" to stay away from the written news. If you can't grasp the concepts then stick to being force-fed "talking points" by the brain trust that is Fox news. What? What happened? Oh, the phone ringing just snapped me out of my rage. You might say I was seeing blue ;) The call was for all of the angry art critics out there. The jerk store just called. They ran out of you.

I've now got several Tom Toles cartoons in my gallery. The one this post is based on is the cartoon with the injured soldier in bed.

Moody

my better half (much better)recently (as in hours ago) started her own blog. While she has chosen to stay out of the political arena she is a faaarrrr better writer than i am. Not only is she a talented writer but, as saddened as i am to admit it, is funnier than i am as well. If this interests any you in the least her blog is called "welcome to the monkey house" (after a Kurt Vonnegut book) and is in my "blogs i like" list. Check her out, she's got a sardonic wit i'm jealous of to say the least.

Moody

The portion of our society that have ordained themselves "conservative" have also taken it upon...er... themselves to align (what the hell) themselves against the environmental movement. Somebody needs to explain something to me, how did Republicans convince their base (Jesus freaks and bible beaters alike) that blatant disregard for the environment is CONSERVATIVE? The first hypocrisy of this development of opinions is that hundreds if not thousands of species of flora and fauna have been put in jeopardy do to the current administration's policies which emphasize the almighty dollar rather than the preservation of the earth for future generations, which is, as far as i know, decidedly un-Christian. The second hypocrisy undertaken by our fundamentalist counterparts is in the actual syntax of their moniker. They call their ideology CONSERVE-ative. I hate to have to connect the dots for everyone but there might be "one of them" reading this. The term that quite a few of our liberal community have been inclined to call this cause is CONSERVING the environment. Are we starting to get the picture yet? According to the title they have given themselves the conservative community should be acting to CONSERVE the "blessing" that has been bestowed upon us. Some how the Republican party has snowed their base into believing that they are the party of all Christians everywhere. Here's something to chew on; the current administration, outside of the mental midget G-Dub, would say that abortion was mandatory for all babies projected to be born on next Tuesday if they thought it would keep them in power. Which brings us to the inspiration for this post; I came across an article while "surfing the web" (holy shit does someone need to come up with something better to call it). This article illustrates the dishonest way in which the present regime treats all unfavorable information, whether from the press or from sources within our own government, and in this instance it happens to be information involving the environment.

1/30/2006 4:45:00 PM
Copyright 2005 E&E Publishing. All Rights Reserved.


The director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies has accused the Bush administration of trying to prevent him from publicly calling for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, after giving a lecture on the subject last month.

James Hansen said the administration has ordered NASA public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

But the agency denied any attempt to censor Hansen. "That's not the way we operate here at NASA," said Dean Acosta, deputy assistant administrator for public affairs at the space agency. "We promote openness and we speak with the facts" (Andrew Revkin, New York Times, Jan. 29).

Hansen has been speaking out on global warming since 1988, having briefed Vice President Dick Cheney twice on climate issues. A registered independent, Hansen said he thinks the Bush administration should change its policy on climate change. In 2004, he accused NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe of cutting off one of his presentations (Greenwire, Oct. 26, 2004).

But Hansen's warnings have taken on an urgent tone as research shows the Earth is warming much faster than some researchers had predicted. Hansen last week said that 2005 was the warmest year on record, with the average temperature having risen nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 30 years. Hansen said that another increase of some 4 degrees over the next century would "imply changes that constitute practically a different planet."

"It's not something you can adapt to," Hansen said. "We can't let it go on another 10 years like this. We've got to do something" (Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, Jan. 29). -- LK

To see more of Environment and Energy Daily, or to subscribe online, please visit http://www.eenews.net.


Is this what the Right wants for our country? The information is available. The question is, do they see it and turn a blind eye or just swallow the jagged little pill (did i just reference Alanis Morisete?) in order to keep from recognizing the bitter truth. Whether it's denying environmental issues or overt attempts to cover up information that comes in conflict with their oversimplified view of the world the current administration is neither conservative nor religious. Son of a bitch, i should have guessed the phone would ring. I suppose its no longer surprising that it was for anit-eviromentalist. Hey nature haters, the jerk store called. They ran out of you.

Moody

I know it's a bit odd that I’m straying from the topic of politics the day after the state of the union address but I’m going to be cleaning up the projectile vomit I reflexively spewed last night for weeks as it is and I don' feel like picking chunks of chili-mac out from between my keyboard keys which would surely be the result of recalling the debacle that was last nights "speech".

The next members of our glorious society that have displeased me (in all of my infinite wisdom) are the yokels that keep the wolves and bald eagle merchandising conglomerates in the state of prosperity they must be enjoying. While I’ve never seen anyone buying these gaudy knick-knacks I am forced to assume that they are flying off of the shelves like cherry flavored Skoal outside of a Toby Keith concert, because, as anyone that has ever gotten gas on a road-trip can attest, truck stops stock these ceramic baubles and purple silk-screened sweatshirts in amounts that would have us believe that long haul truckers need these things to survive almost as badly as they need their nazi meth. Come on people, do you really want the first thing people see as they enter your residence to be your sick addiction to ceramic wildlife figurines. The visitors to your home are not likely to be awed by the majesty of such trinkets when they had to walk around the obligatory broken down dryer on their way to your front door. Worse than that are the bass ackwards off-roading aficionados that we've all seen at a friend or country relative's wedding that think the most appropriate attire for this special day in their loved ones lives is a pair of skin tight black jeans some high top Reeboks and a dirty heather gray t-shirt with a dip spit stained bald eagle taking to flight behind the bust of a fading timber wolf (the shirt is tucked in obviously because, after all, it is a wedding). To those of you that are offended by this post I recommend you stop buying these shining badges of white-trashdom and spend the money on living arrangements you don’t have to drive off when you cant afford the rent on your lot anymore, and oh yeah, the jerk store called. They ran out of you.

Moody