Your Tax Dollars At Work: Drug Warriors

Imagine if this was your home these men came to:

That is how quickly lives are lost in the war on drugs. When police invade private homes in search of drugs, anything and everything can go wrong, and even the slightest misunderstanding becomes a matter of life and death. The victim in this case, Todd Blair, brandished a golf club in terror as armed men stormed his home in the night. We'll never know for sure if he realized they were police. But we do know that only a small amount of drugs were found in the raid that took his life.

That drugs and violence often go hand in hand isn't a mystery to many among us – the bloodshed gripping Mexico is old news by now – but this is a very different kind of drug war violence than the infamous turf wars of the cartels. This is a rare glimpse into the unbelievable level of force our own public servants unleash routinely in order to protect us from ourselves. This man was just a drug user. Whether he ever sold drugs is in dispute, but there's no question that he lived and died in poverty, and not from drugs, but from police who gunned him down in his own home.

Warning: you're about to watch a man get shot to death by his own government because he wanted to decide for himself what he could put into his own body:


Your tax dollars funded this man's death, and they pay the salaries of every politician in Washington who votes to continue their tragically unsuccessful War on Drugs against the American public.

(via)

TCR: Salvatore Giunta

I've been reading about and watching this guy all week after he became the first living soldier to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor since the Vietnam Conflict and he's always been the very definition of humility. We need to find some way to clone Giunta whilst imprinting his sense of duty and bravery upon the DNA:

Something Someone Else Said

" I guess I don’t think it’s entirely preposterous for Americans to see themselves as a people. But any conception of the American creed sufficiently general to encompass most widespread American conceptions of individual freedom, equality, tolerance and so on is going to be so general that it will do very little to distinguish American identity from, say, Canadian identity. And that’s clearly not what Glenn Beck or the staff of National Review have in mind when they talk about American values, promote a conception of American identity, or encourage Americans to see themselves as a people. ...

The conservative conception of American identity is so selective and so specific that it tends to suggest to its adherents that many (maybe even most!) Americans aren’t real Americans, or are Americans who betray real American ideals," -Will Wilkenson.

(via)

Advertisement Of The Day

This is a symptom of the "nanny state" mentality, on the political left and right, that I'm constantly decrying:

The forthcoming Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg flick The Other Guys may yet be riddled with pot shots from film critics. Poor Ferrell and Wahlberg -- on Muni, they can't shoot back.

While the official poster for the film features a maniacal Ferrell and the menacing Wahlberg sailing through the air, guns drawn, the version in Muni stations features Ferrell brandishing a vial of pepper spray and Wahlberg relying upon his bare fists. This is not a coincidence.

"Well, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency does have an advertising policy that states ads should not appear to promote the use of firearms or advocate any violent action," explains spokesman Paul Rose. You can read the stipulations against promoting "the use of firearms" and "imminent lawlessness or violent actions" right here.

Do we as Americans really need the agency in San Francisco that makes the trains and buses run on time deciding for us what exposure we should have to depictions of firearm use and violence? I love living in Northern California and The City's great but it does wear on my nerves at times. Be it instances like this or prohibition of illicit drugs or prostitution or gambling or even unpopular/offensive speech it all amounts to one thing: PC bullshit espoused by those who would tell you how to live your life because they supposedly know better than you what's good for you. Well, they don't (and this movie actually looks like it isn't half bad).

(via)

The War On Cannabis

And all of its attendant societal woes:


(via)

Sucker Punch Trailer

I have no idea what this movie is about but I'm fairly certain that I'm going to end up seeing it:


(via)

Iron Baby

Because why not, right?


I posted Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee by the same creator last year.

(via)

Something Depressing Someone Else Said

"Nobody is winning," -Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Commander of US Forces in Afghanistan.

I'll admit, I can't see any way for us to get out of either Afghanistan or Iraq without the security situations in either country going south like a duck in winter but in order to prevent that from happening we'd have to permanently occupy both countries for what increasingly looks like forever and we cannot afford that on many levels. I say we leave both now while we can still do so on our own terms and then provide whatever support we can to at least staunch the bleeding. Otherwise we're just going to have to do the same thing a few more years down the road when we're forced to for lack of money, troops and equipment. It's not a pretty option but as far as I can tell it's the best one we have. The very nature of these two wars and how they were prosecuted has made "winning" highly impractical if not outright impossible. It's almost as if neither conflict was thought out too well from the start, huh?

(via)

SWAT Team Drug Raid Video

Radley Balko at Reason.com revisits a previous post:

In February, I wrote the following about a drug raid in Missouri:

SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family's pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on.

They found a "small amount" of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.

So smoking pot = "child endangerment." Storming a home with guns, then firing bullets into the family pets as a child looks on = necessary police procedures to ensure everyone's safety.

Just so we're clear.

Now there's video, which you can watch below. It's horrifying, but I'd urge you to watch it, and to send it to the drug warriors in your life. This is the blunt-end result of all the war imagery and militaristic rhetoric politicians have been spewing for the last 30 years—cops dressed like soldiers, barreling through the front door middle of the night, slaughtering the family pets, filling the house with bullets in the presence of children, then having the audacity to charge the parents with endangering their own kid. There are 100-150 of these raids every day in America, the vast, vast majority like this one, to serve a warrant for a consensual crime.

But they did prevent Jonathan Whitworth from smoking the pot they found in his possession. So I guess this mission was a success.

Here's the video:


Look at the house. It isn't a drug den or a crack house, these are your next door neighbors and their kid. This happened in America. Per a discussion in the comment section of a previous post, this is one of the costs beyond the billions we spend every year on the failed War on Drugs. Of course, this video doesn't definitively prove that it's a failure (as Balko says, they did successfully stop this guy from smoking his cannabis) but is this what you imagine when you think of the drug war succeeding?

(via)

Something Someone Else Said

"Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose." -Tim Wise, Ephphatha Poetry.

He posits several other examples that force one to view the recent anger on the right in quite a different light if the tea at their parties was black. There are corollaries on the other side that Republicans will inevitably point out and they should but that will make these examples no less poignant. I encourage you to read the entire piece here.

(via)

Schwarzenegger Reviews The Predators Trailer

I've posted the Predators trailer here and the 160 greatest Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes here so it was only a matter of time before I found this clip combining them (and yes, I know it isn't really him but it's still damn funny):


(via)

Elementary School Production Of Scarface

Yes, it's fake (it's a viral video from the director of Lady Gaga's Pokerface) but that does nothing to diminish it's amateur awesomeness. My one complaint? Tony Montana doesn't bury his face in the big pile of popcorn before he loads up to exterminate the cockaroaches:


(via)

Chart Of The Day

Sarah Palin's political action committee's map "targeting" House Democrats who voted to pass health care reform legislation, coupled with the tweet "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" Now I'm not saying that Palin wants these people to literally be shot for voting the way they did, just that it's an irresponsible (I'd also call it tone deaf but I suspect that her people know what they're doing here) metaphor to use for this issue when congressmen and women are receiving actual death threats. How is this supposed to improve the discourse?

(via)

[Update: "'Take up your arms’ means voting,” -Sarah Palin. Sure, it's the first connection I make with that phrase. Again, irresponsible.

(via)]

Something Hilarious Someone Else Said

"Violence and racism, these things are antithetical to the whole idea of freedom and everything that we stand for. It goes against my basic political philosophy. We judge people based on their individual character and merit, not on some group identity politics. That's what the left does, we don't do that on the right. That's not something I engage in." -FreedomWorks Grassroots Director Brendan Steinhauser on Your World with Neil Cavuto, commenting on the threatening and racist voicemail messages being received by members of congress after the health care reform bill was passed earlier this week (transcribed by me).

So let me get this straight: you claim that you evaluate people as individuals and don't unfairly lump them into groups or judge them based on group identity politics and you back this statement up by... casting aspersions upon and condemning an entire group of people based on group identity politics. "We don't make broad generalizations or judgements about large groups of people, but that large group of people over there does it all the time, and they're horrible for doing it." Look, I make a point to never say ignorant shit like "The right always does this..." or "The left never does that..." because people who say these things, on both sides of the aisle, sound like partisan idiots. Neither side of America's political divide has an exclusive claim on ethics or morality and I find it equally annoying when people from either party say that they do or condemn the other side as bereft of these concepts. The vast majority of people on the left and the right in this country are basically good people who are usually overshadowed by outspoken morons on their respective teams, and of course the media focuses on them. Controversy means ratings, which mean money. I don't think I'm saying anything new here.

As to Mr. Steinhauser's complaint (he blames the media for colluding with Democrats to portray all teabaggers as violent racists based on the recent words and actions of a few), going on television and stating that you condemn violence and racism is all well and good but it's also pretty much the very least you could do to stop it from happening within your organization, aside from completely ignoring it of course. I'm just saying, I see teabag protesters holding up signs advocating violence and racism against Obama all the time and I never see any of their fellow protesters or organizers confronting them about it. Yes, I understand that they make up a tiny minority of your group but if you don't adequately police yourselves or make any kind of effort to weed those people out because they help to swell your numbers and fuel your outrage then you are also tacitly approving of their message. What do you think the words "If Brown can't stop it, a Browning can" on the sign at the top of this post are supposed to mean? Freedom of speech is great but I don't see anyone else at least trying to get him to put that sign down out of concern for how it portrays your movement as a whole. Until you make the effort to remove the people holding these signs or leaving threatening voicemail messages or spitting on congressmen from your organization, you will all rightly be lumped into the same ideological camp regardless of your protestations to the contrary. That's not media bias, it's political reality.

Predators Trailer

OK, I loved Predator, Predator II was pretty damn good (Busey scared me more than the predators, but what else is new?), Alien vs. Predator was fairly interesting yet also fairly boring and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem literally put me to sleep so I'm giving this franchise just one more sequel before I finally give up on the off-world dreadlocks (and leave the acidic aliens out this time, please):

(via)

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

"When I raise my flashing sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance upon mine enemies, and I will repay those who haze me. Oh, Lord, raise me to Thy right hand and count me among Thy saints." -The Boondock Saints

Iron Man 2 Trailer Compilation

I loved the first Iron Man flick so I've been meaning to post the new trailers for the sequel but then I came across this fan-made mashup. It's not the smoothest compilation I've ever seen but it's chock full of enough actiony badassery that I'm already looking forward to the second round:


(via)

Chart Of The Day

Every terrorist John McClane and his black sidekicks took out in and around Nakatomi Tower in Die Hard. Welcome to the party pal, now I have a machine gun ho ho ho, yippee-ki-yay motherfucker, etc. Classic.

(via)

The A-Team Trailer

Liam Neeson as Hannibal? Really? From the looks of this trailer I think I'd rather watch reruns of the show.

(via)

Star Wars/A-Team Opening Credits Mashup

Why? Because I'm reaching the age now where everything that was once cool and significant in my world as a child is now being recycled, repackaged and repurposed to facilitate my growing sense of nostalgia as I slowly start to realize that I'll never be young again and plus, Hollywood really wants as much of my discretionary income as they can get no matter how shitty the resulting product (I'm looking at you, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra):


So yes, when the inevitable Transformers/MacGyver mashup is eventually created you will of course see it here first. Rest in peace, childhood.

(via)

[Update: Some bonus nostalgia I could share with my grandparents if they were still alive:

(via)]