Sometimes, as our drug war continues unabated, it’s easy to forget just how much progress has been made in fighting prohibition.
Just a few years ago this kind of talk from an active police chief was inconceivable. It’s the kind of talk that encourages honest debate. Which is just what we need because advocates of the drug war will not win an honest debate.
Meanwhile, a much more typical law-enforcement attitude can be seen in Texas: “We can’t just pull out… we are in it too deep to quit.” Too deep to quit. The logic is underwhelming. I’d prefer to stop digging.
How come when I see a headline “Woman Loses Home Over $362 Water Bill” I just know it’s talking about Baltimore? Where else could this happen? Sho ’nuff…
It’s Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! I love free speech. I also like South Park a lot more than I like religious zealots. I also like being able to write this without being arrested (or killed).
This is the cartoon that started it all:
Since I can’t draw, I’m just going to reprint the drawings of others.
There’s an article in the New York Times that isn’t actually supposed to about police. An academic study asked participants how often they experienced eight “workplace conflict scenarios.” These are:
* Someone treating them unfairly
* Someone blaming or criticizing them for something that wasn’t their fault
* Someone failing to do the work that needed to be done, or doing it in a sloppy or incompetent way
* Someone getting annoyed or angry with them
* Someone gossiping or talking behind their backs
* Someone teasing or nagging them
* Someone providing unclear directions about work they needed to do
* Someone making too many demands
Er, isn’t this every day in your average police department?
Though maybe the study isabout policing. It says that conflict is highest with men who held supervisory roles in their early 40s.
This is so bizarre I first thought it was satire: A robbery victim gets arrested and the robber gets fed wine and cheese! Classy. But it’s not satire.
Trots op NLmeans “Proud of the Netherlands” and is a fringe right-wing political party that is playing on racism and fear of crime.
Is white people drowning in a swimming pool too subtle for you? “But I do like,” writes my wife, “how because it’s European, the white-people-about-to-drown image has a certain avant-garde-theater vibe to it.”
The video is all in Dutch. If it makes you feel any better, I can’t understand a lot of it, either. But the visual is good enough to get the message. Party leader Rita Verdonk is going to make the streets safe and you proud of the Netherlands. Some parts I can understand has her saying:
This is the Netherlands. It’s not safe anymore on the streets…. This is what our daughters put up with everyday.
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We’re fed up! Government makes the wrong decisions for years and hands you the bill. Out with bureaucracy. No welfare for those who don’t want to work. No more foreign aid. We need that money here for elderly and handicapped.
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Too many regulations. Too much tax. Out with the tax agency. One tax rate for everybody: 25%!
Why it’s a regular Dutch Tea Party!
My emigrant brother says, “The only unexpected thing is her pitch for one tax rate. Now it is 42% (or 52% for the wealthiest). The poorer have a few lower levels, too. I’m not sure how she will pay for her plans.” Brother Andrew continues, “The funniest thing is the people that live in these (targeted) neighborhoods are not in fear of crime.”
Even with all her happy Dutch supporters (the butch, the baker, the candlestick maker), Verdonk doesn’t even pretendto hang around any racial or ethnic minority. I mean, even Republicans politicians like getting photographedwith black people standing around, even if almost no blacks actually vote Republican.
“The only distinctively ‘Dutch’ people she can muster at the end,” continues my wife, “is the chick in the silly white bonnet? You’ve got to admit, it’s sort of flimsy in terms of national icons.” Indeed. But Americans might have to be reminded that this is supposed to represent conservative Holland. To my American eyes, it looks like the start of a crazy liberal costume party in Portland or something. I mean, somebody even biked there on an orange bike!
Harry Moskos–journalist and streetcar advocate (also my uncle)–writes in the Albuquerque Journal, “Obama’s Birthers Should Check Out My Daughters’ Papers.”
Our two daughters, like Obama, were born in Honolulu. We lived in Hawaii from 1963 to 1969.
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Obama was born at Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women & Children, the same hospital where our daughters were born.
