The SF Weekly just posted a story today about how cops are busting into parties and fundraisers and ganking people’s laptops and sound systems. When I first heard about this, I got really angry. Like how I get when I hear that someone was brutally murdered and it wasn’t Glenn Beck.
It just seemed so ridiculous and unjust that in a city plagued with dozens of unsolved murders every year the cops would focus on busting up little dance parties. Every night, the streets are crawling with junkies breaking into cars, bike thieves and much worse, yet the po-po’s decide to crack down on consenting adults who want to have a few drinks and listen to loud music after the bars close (we’re not talking about epic raves filled with 14-year-old ecstasy fiends and Special K zombies here).
And this type of “enforcement” is obviously highly selective – you know they would never dream of busting into an “unpermitted” late night party in a Pacific Heights mansion and confiscate every laptop in the house.
But then, I saw this story about a cop tazing a 10-year-old girl in Arkansas – and his chief defending it. And then I saw this other story about Detoit cops stealing millions of dollars from innocent people. And then I saw this article in the Guardian about how SF’s new police chief is probably looking to reduce the power of the Office of Citizen Complaints… and I wasn’t so angry anymore. Just hungry…. Hungry for revenge!
Who wants to bust into a cop party with me and steal all their donuts?!
Don’t call it a comeback, he’s been here for years. Everybody knows that Vladimir Putin is an OG. Homeboy put in work for the KGB and then Al Caponed his way to the top of Russia’s crooked oligarchy after the USSR fell apart like a cheap hair weave.
But last week the Russian Prime Minister “rubbed shoulders with rappers and was hailed with ‘respect’ in a televised concert. Haters are suggesting that the event that took place inside an abandoned Moscow factory building was just a publicity stunt to boost P-Vladdy’s ratings among the youth, but they ain’t saying nothing to Ol’ Dirty Vladster’s face.
No they ain’t.
Just like Trick Daddy, Putin says he just doing it for the kids. “I do not think that ‘top-rock’ or ‘down-rock’ breakdance technique is compatible with alcohol or drugs,” Putin told cheering hip-hoppers who responded with chants of “Respect, Vladimir Vladimirovich”. Respect.
So now that LL Cool Vlad is taking the advice that RNC Chairman Michael Steele gave to the GOP last summer about getting a hip-hop makeover, what can we expect to see from this thuggish ruggish Russian.
Using the “I am T-Pain” iPhone app to auto-tune his speeches
Order more drive-bys on human rights workers and journalists
Here’s the first comment in response to an SF Gate article about how BART is cutting back service during non-peak hours:
“The only purpose of BART is to take people to and from work. Why run the system any other hours and provide thugs, criminals and social terrorists with a transportation network? We would do everyone a favor by shutting down BART 9:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. Who needs BART during weekend evenings hours? Criminals do, that’s who.“
Bernie Goetz couldn’t have put it any better — what kind of sick “social terrorist” would ever want to ride public transit after sundown?
Hey everybody, sorry this blog has been so dead lately. A few of my best homies got themselves into a bit of a jam over in the Middle East and I’ve kinda had to drop everything and focus on trying to help them out. Gotta have priorities, and friends and family comes first, yadadameen?
Anyway, I’ve been so bogged down in serious shit lately that I haven’t even touched my turntables in a few weeks, so I’m gonna sit on the sidelines for this month’s Motion Sickness party. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been rockin’ dance floors for a solid decade now, but I just got too much on my mind to think about mixing beats these days… However, my trusted comrades Peter West (who I also share a music blog with) and Cyclist from the Grown Kids Radio crew will definitely be throwin’ down with special guest and all-around swell guy Shane King of Hacksaw Entertainment, so I encourage everyone to stop by, if you’re in the Bay Area. I’ll probably be on the main floor, trying to dance my worries away…
And hopefully all the bullshit will blow over and everything will be back to fucking normal soon.
PS: Thanks to Tim Simons for the flier design. That boy got skills.
"So then this black dude called me a racist, and I was like, 'What you talkin' about, boy? You're playing the race card. You're the real racist.' That's what I told him."
The Boston cop who was suspended for dropping the term “jungle monkey” into an email about Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. told a Boston TV station earlier today: “I am not a racist.”
Gotta wonder what this guy’s definition of “racism” is. Like, if referring to African-Americans with dehumanizing insults doesn’t qualify… what would it take? This cop’s racism bar is clearly set pretty damn high.
Maybe he’s one of those guys who doesn’t consider getting a blow job “cheating.” Maybe he’s one of those guys who who thinks it’s OK to treat immigrants like crap because “they have it better here than in their own countries anyway.” Maybe he doesn’t take showers because he’s “just going to get dirty again, so what’s the point?”
These are all possibilities which may never be confirmed, but one thing is definitely for sure… this guy is a total douche.
I know that making fun of George W. Bush in 2009 is about as fashionable "jorts" (jean shorts), but some ideas are just so awful they demand to be ridiculed.
Um, I guess since he’s not eligible to run for Mayor of New Orleans and we already have an abassador to the UN, this would be the one other job that he would be totally perfect for. And maybe Dick Cheney could get a “green job” in the renewable energy sector. I bet it would be really good for the old guy’s heart to get a little exercise putting up solar panels, climbing around on those roofs, getting a tan… and I could totally see Donald Rumsfeld as the new president of Code Pink. I mean, Madea Benjamin must be tired of screaming her lungs out and getting arrested all over the place. It’s really time for her to pass the torch, and if there’s anybody who knows about war criminals, it’s ol’ Rummy – I think pink would look good on him, too. Very flattering with his high cheekbones.
Actually, wait a second… now that I think about it… Newsweek must be smoking crack.
In “dispelling” the rumor that all Goldman employees look alike, he writes:
“Several recent newspaper photos have revealed that a surprising number of Goldman Sachs workers are white, male and bald. That non-Goldman people glance at such photos and think “Holy crap, they even look alike!” just shows how deeply anti- Goldman bigotry runs in American life.
We at Goldman represent unique clusters of DNA; if we bear some faint surface resemblance to one another, and to creatures from the 24th century, it is only because our superior powers of reasoning lead us to hold in our minds exactly the same thoughts, at exactly the same time.
A shared disinterest in growing hair, for instance, isn’t a coincidence of nature but an expression of healthy like- mindedness.
“The world is a pool table,” our naked-headed CEO likes to tell us. “And all the people in it are either stripes or solids. You alone are the cue balls.”
Indeed, not a single one of these bandits at Goldman bears a lick of resemblance to the Gordon Gecko archetype that I always envision when I picture Wall Street fat cats…
Neel Kashkari is laughing at us, too, but he's better at hiding it.
Gary Cohn can't wait for you to turn away so he can laugh some more without feeling kind of guilty about the sad look on your face.
Jon Winkelried laughed so hard that he needs to change his pants... and his socks and shoes.
Britney heard the real money is at Goldman Sachs, so she's getting ready for the big job interview.
This guy is just an intern now, but you can tell he's gonna go places, he's got "the Goldman look"
In the first days following the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr, before the story got put under an electron microscope and dissected from a million different angles, much of the debate was focused around interpreting the police report. As the initial headlines appeared, everyone from mainstream pundits to bloggers seemed to include some variation of the phrase “I read the police report” into their commentary. The tone of this phrase often seemed to imply that the police report could be taken at face value.
After President Obama learned the hard way that even mildly criticizing police is like wading into a pool of piranhas, much of the conversation has remained within the confines of discussing relevant and complex, but relatively predictable, issues such as racial profiling. Even among the pro-Gates crowd, most voices seem to be demanding more “sensitivity” from the police, instead of more accountability. Instead of using this as a “teaching moment,” as Gates has called for, to discuss racial dynamics around law enforcement, why can’t this be teaching moment to ask why so many cops lie in police reports and get away with it?
The woman who called 911 on Gates finally came out today and said, through a lawyer, that Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, completely fabricated a conversation that takes place in the official police report – so this incident would seem provide a good case study to examine this issue. I’m not saying at all that racial factors should be absent from this conversation or even that I necessarily believe this woman any more than Crowley or Gates. I’m just pointing out that police demand to be taken at their word – as their collective reaction to Obama’s common-sense remark that arresting an old man with a cane inside his own house after he’s show identification is stupid – proves.
But if the police are going to demand such unquestioning trust, they need to prove that violent psychos aren’t using the power of the badge to go around starting fights,beating the crap out of people in order to steal their fajitas, tasing kids, assaulting women… and getting away with it! Although a new, outrageous police brutality video seems to be popping up every few days now, the police still seem systematically determined to protect every brutal maniac with a badge instead of reforming their organizations. In this example, the cop who pushed the woman down the stairs and charged HER with felony assault was not fired or arrested – he was punished by losing 8 vacation hours and he continues to patrol Orlando with a gun and a badge:
Sometimes, as in the case of this video featuring a drunk off-duty Chicago cop whaling on a female bartender half his size, the lies in the police report are just too egregious to withstand the visual evidence, and the officer actually loses his job. However, even in these rare instances when cops get fired for their criminal behavior, the system still works to protect them from the laws that apply to everyday citizens. Despite the unprovoked ass-whooping he unleashes on this unfortunate woman, Anthony Abbate was sentenced to only two years of probation and anger management classes (mainstream media in Chicago defended this sentence as “fair”):
I could post dozens of other videos from the last year alone that are equally horrifying, and that fact alone should be enough to raise questions such as: Why is demanding police accountability seen as somehow subversive; Why is this systemic abuse of power generally tolerated in our society; and How can we be expected to trust the police when they have proven, as an institution, over and over and over again, that they seem more willing to cover up their own criminal behavior than eradicate this corruption?
Of course, there lots of people and organizations out there asking these questions and working to demand accountability, but if the Gates episode wasn’t enough to elevate these questions into mainstream debate, I wonder how many more Amadou Diallos, Sean Bells and Oscar Grants it’s going to take.
Considering the fact that some cops have actually weighed in on the Gates arrest to say that anyone who mouths off to a cop is lucky not to get shot and that Taser just unveiled their new model of souped-up stun guns (despite the fact that the regular old version has been involved in 351 deaths in the U.S., according to Amnesty International), it doesn’t seem likely that we’re about to see a new wave of “sensitivity” wash over the boys in blue any time soon (Yes, I know there are lots of female cops, but it almost always seem to be the bros who are causing problems).
Now, I’m not trying to say that there aren’t plenty of cops out there who are trying to be the good guys and provide a much-needed service, since there are obviously a lot of scum bags out there. But don’t expect me to take a cop’s word over anyone else’s until I see the police keeping themselves in line instead of just lashing out at everyone who tries to make them play by their own rules. For example, would you still have your job if you called someone a “bitch ass nigger” (just like Tony Pirone did as he was attacking Oscar Grant right before Grant was murdered)? Didn’t think so…
I'm not talking about you guys, you guys seem cool... I'm just going to walk away now.
“Roads will be rougher, classrooms fuller and textbooks more tattered. The odds of encountering someone fresh out of prison will almost certainly be higher. If the budget deal crafted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and top legislative leaders is passed by the Legislature and survives the inevitable court challenges, California will eat the biggest shit sandwich in its history.”
Just kidding about that last part. The article actually said “undergo perhaps the biggest downscaling of government,” but I think the shit sandwich part is actually a better description of what’s really going down here.
In fact, I’ve heard from some “inside sources” that they’re keeping some of the most controversial proposals top-secret… but in the public interest, I’ll share them with you right now. So here it is — these are some of the changes that Californians can expect to see in the near future:
Instead of getting cash prizes, winning the state lotto entitles you to a free backrub from Jerry Brown.
From now on, firefighters will be getting paid to torch buildings for insurance money as opposed to putting them out.
In addition to permitting more offshore rigs, drilling efforts will also be made to extract oil from Gavin Newsom’s dome.
Let’s just say you’re gonna be seeing a lot more endangered California condors popping up on eBay in the next few weeks.
Instead of gym class, students will compete in Thunderdome death matches to see who gets to go to school.
No more prescriptions for “medicine” from doctors, just recommendations on which cheap wine goes best with your condition.
Instead of prosecuting the growing number of poachers who are killing bears in state parks to harvest their gallbladders for black market export to Asia, the Department of Fish and Game will “look the other way,” as long as they get a piece of the action.
In addition to the IOUs that the state has already been using to pay the bills, they will also begin sending out FUs to everyone that it owes money to.
