Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Once might be a fluke.  Even two or three, as every case is different, police do have a difficult job and make decisions under pressure, and the USA is a seriously big country,  300 million people stretched out from coast to coast, and on any given literally millions of them are drunk, stoned, and/or engaged in criminal activity.  But this is clearly  becoming a trend, you’re hearing about stuff like this almost as often as you see cat videos on the internet.

Miriam Carey RIP

I’m talking about  the  police using lethal force, when no lethal force is necessary.  There was the case in Los Angeles where the cops killed a man’s Rottweiler (I love Rottweiler’s.  Despite their size and strength, every one I have ever known personally has had a gentle personality, and they tend to be very good with children).  There was the case in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where the police shot and killed a 107 year old man.  Admittedly, he was waving a gun around and shooting at people, but everybody had already got away from the house and all the police really needed to do was wait.  Then there was the case in a Chicago nursing home where the police killed a man because he wouldn’t go willingly – to the hospital.  He was also extremely old.  There was the football player who was shot 12 times by police as he approached them looking for assistance after an automobile accident.

I had a similar incident once.  I’d been mugged and was on my way to the police station to report it when I was stopped by the police and arrested – for not having ID – and had to spend the night in jail.  That was in Casablanca, Morocco.  I guess I’m lucky it didn’t happen in the U.S.

It happened again yesterday, in Washington, D.C.  A woman driver kind of flipped out, apparently, and was running from police – on Pennsylvania Avenue, from the White House to the Capitol, which automatically adds a political significance to the story, whether she intended it or not.

The police managed to stop her car.  They got her to step out of her car.  Then they shot the fuck out of her, killing her on the spot, while her toddler watched from inside the car.

In all of these cases, the police could have avoided the problem by not shooting.  By taking a second, waiting for the danger – which, in all of these cases, was only in their fevered imaginations – to pass.  All of these cases should be investigated.  In some of these cases, I think the cops should be charged with murder (but that’s for an investigation to decide), but in all of these cases, the police involved should, at the very least, be sacked.

They panicked, they misinterpreted the level of danger, they screwed up.  If we want this trend to stop, they can’t be allowed to  just get away with it.

There are conflicting headlines, some say that enough Republicans are willing to defect and vote like normal people and end this nonsense, others say there’s no end in sight, and I’ve got no inside information on that, and there’s apparently nothing else happening in the world today except Tom Clancy died, which is a shame, only 66, but spy novels is not really my genre so I’d never read any of his books.  RIP anyway, great writer.

I’ve got an early start tomorrow, first class is at 7 a.m., it’s pretty far away but in a fairly straight line Yellow line to Andel and a short bus ride from there but the schedules mesh so as long as I’m out of the house by 6:10 I will be there in plenty of time but, still, 6:10 is 6:10 which means I have to get up at 5:30 and it’s 10:30 now so whether I have anything to write about or not, nonetheless, it is time to write my blog.

A bit of a rough day today, my 1st class wasn’t so terrible but my 2nd class is pretty much in open revolt, there are one or two good students but I can’t even get anything out of them because the second I try to answer somebody who has an actual question, the noise level behind me starts to rise, like crickets in the jungle.

Then I realized I’d left my phone at home and was heading home to pick it up when I realized I didn’t have time for that so got back on the Metro to go straight to pick up Isabel from school and take her to ballet, then I nipped home for the phone because I had to phone Helena to remind her to buy a birthday present for my aunt, who is going to be 100 in 10 days time (Helena’s just a better shopper than I am), grabbede a quick sandwich, too, and headed back to ballet, got there in time, and wrote a little poem on the way, which raised my spirits quite a bit.

I forget which famous writer said it, but I love the quote “I don’t like writing.  I like having written.”

We had Chinese for dinner.  That’s another thing that always raises my spirits.  Have a good night, everybody.

I guess most people use facebook to show photos of their  kids, and swap recipes, and link to funny videos of cats doing normal cat stuff but with human voices dubbed in, because that’s actually pretty easy to do, I guess, and there’s a chance that lots of people will look at it because lots of people like cats and other cute animals, for some reason sloths seem to be big right now.

I suspect that most people don’t get involved in a lot of political arguments on facebook.  But,  I do.  Today’s argument was all about the South, and whether or not slavery was the main cause of the Civil War, and I raised the point that you can’t very well be flying a Confederate flag on the one hand and on the other saying that you’re the “Real Americans,” and waving giant American flags at teabagger rallies and wearing American flag shirts at Nascar races, because it’s one or the other.  The two are diametrically opposed.

Michel Bachmann, vowing to keep open the memorial she just voted to close, today

Pretty soon, as these conversations do tend to go, the talk turned to Barack Obama.  War monger Barack Obama, as he put it.  He cited Syria as an example.  I pointed out that Obama had actually not, in the end, bombed Syria (touch wood).  Then he said that Obama was a big weenie.

You can’t have it both ways.

The Republicans in the House got their government shutdown.  So, a lot of government employees will have their paychecks delayed (but not House members) and a few National Parks and things got closed.

In one interesting case, a group of Veterans found the WWII memorial closed.  This was largely a technicality, because it’s a standing, outdoor thing and doesn’t actually require any employees to be there on a permanent basis.  But, there were barriers up and signs saying it was closed.  The vets said screw that, moved the barriers, and went on in.

Good for them.

Right there, getting her picture taken with these radical lawbreakers, was Michele Bachmann.  Michele Bachmann, leader of the Tea Party.  Michele Bachmann, megavocal supporter of the government shutdown.  Michele Bachmann, the reason those barriers were there in the first place

Michele Bachmann, trying to have it both ways.