Thursday, November 20th, 2008
You mean al-Qaeda is racist, too? Those bastards! Okay, now we should really take the gloves off.
Dear Mr. Obama: Here’s what you should have said: Frankly, I don’t see how college football chooses its champion is any of the president’s damned business.
FBI agent killed while serving drug warrant. Suspect says: “They shot their own guy.” Stay tuned.
Abandoned and forgotten. Website with pictures of abandoned buildings.
29-year-old man dies of “natural causes” a half hour after being tased four times.
UPDATE: Looks like it was the wife of the suspect who shot the FBI agent. Whether she intended to kill a cop or thought the raid was a burglary, it does go to show once again the perils of busting into a house to serve a drug warrant. Why not just arrest the guy at work? Or as he’s coming or going?
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TheAgitator.com
Radley,
As an American, and a sports fan, I think President-Elect Obama has every right to comment on the sports that he likes/loves/follows. Just like you complain about the Colts and what they could’ve done better, I think Obama has the right and the duty as a fan to make comments that he believes will improve his beloved sport/team.
It is another thing altogether if Obama were saying that he was going to submit a bill to ensure that NCAA football had a playoff system. As it is, he is not involving the government directly.
I’m not an Obama fan, at all. He frankly scares the hell out of me; however, good for him for saying something about college football.
The Big 10 is a goddamn joke. USC and the 9 dwarves are a joke. Notre Dame is a joke. If it wasn’t for these assholes trying to retain power the rest of the country long ago realized they don’t deserve, we’d have a playoff system.
If he starts speaking out about the drug war and about the oppressive federal bureacracy, I might actually start liking the guy.
If Obama cared about football, why did he go to school in the Ivy League?
I think we need a bipartisan government commission to study the issue. Perhaps the soon to be unemployed Phillip Fulmer could chair. This would lead to a government bailout of teams with losing records, i.e. troubled assets. Then we’ll need a College Football Czar to oversee the agencies and programs involved. Finally, a comprehensive program to improve the level of play at all schools - No Team Left Behind.
If he’d came out in favor of the players getting some of the billions eared I’d be right with him.The N.C.A.A is almost a form of indentured servitude.
Personally I like the playoff system too. I like bowl games, but it is a piss poor way to choose a champion. Appalachian State has 3 true championships in a row from a playoff format, and this leaves no doubt they are the champions of their division. The bowl system has doubts every year for their division. All that being said his opinion should remain that, and nothing more, no gubment involvement is needed.
If after they investigate, and if they find that Hicks was shot by another FBI agent, and not Christina Korbe will they charge the agent with murder?
That story, per normal, is light on details about the shooting and heavy on fellating the memory of the heroic fallen officer. They even provide a 4-5 paragraph biography of the guy but say earlier that the police don’t even know if any of them fired their weapons. Pitiful reporting on the part of the journalist.
Regarding the taser story, saying the guy died of natural causes was a favor. The only other option (since drugs had been ruled out) would be to claim the guy committed suicide by intentionally provoking a cop, thereby nastily exploiting, to his own ends, a system meant to serve and protect him. The only victims are the poor deputies who were merely trying to do their job as best they could and are now forced to suffer for the rest of their lives knowing they were tricked into doing something they would never normally have done. But alas, there is no point in dragging the name of the dead guy through the mud no matter how evil he was.
“FBI agent killed while serving drug warrant”
Y is the FBI serving drug warrants?
Al Qa’ida is quickly making itself irrelevant. Over the past few years its tightly crafted media machine has become more and more tone deaf. This latest video is a good example of that. Sure, hard corps AQ members in sub-saharan Africa won’t glance twice at comments like that one, but not every AQ member is hard corps, and most sympathizers are swayable. I’m not saying the AQ franchise is going out of business, but the branchs opening around the world are trending back towards local concerns (i.e “the near enemy”).
And Y is any police organization serving a warrant at unappropriate hours? The police knew where this guy worked and also knew there were children in the house. His wife shot the cop thinking he was an invader, which he was,but with a warrant.This has happened too many times.Stupid policy for a tragic outcome.
Right now it doesn’t appear there is any question the wife shot him, the suspect’s statement that they shot their own man stems from the fact that he knows he didn’t shoot but that he is unaware his wife did.
The President has every right to voice an opinion on any subject he feels like, as long as it’s just an opinion, and not a call for government to take action.
I wouldn’t take anything here at face value. I live near where this happened and listened to the original reports yesterday morning. Indiana Township is about 10-12 miles North of Pittsburgh. Out of the jurisdiction of the Pittsburgh Police. Yet the news article has them yelling “This is Pittsburgh police. We have a warrant for your arrest.”. You would think that this would be the Allegheney County Police or the Pennsylvania State Police. Another thing I noticed was how fast Hick’s past criminal history and the FBI agent’s family information made it into the news.
I don’t know what happened and I’m not taking sides here. I’m just giving my opinion on how elements of this incident have been reported by the local news media and how this information may influence public opinion.
I think Obama made the football comment on Monday Night Football, where it came across as a fun halftime commentary on sports. McCain, on the other hand, took his halftime interview to rail against performance enhancing drugs in sports. A real buzz kill, even for a show that had plenty of beer commercials.
I agree with Z - it looks like the husband said that based on his lack of knowledge of his wife’s actions. I would be more sympathetic here if the husband hadn’t been downstairs flushing cocaine while his wife was on her own. This isn’t a wrong-door raid, and she had to know the police would show up at some point.
“Dear Mr. Obama: Here’s what you should have said: Frankly, I don’t see how college football chooses its champion is any of the president’s damned business.”
Some of those players accept federal student loans, all of the schools accept federal aid. Then there’s the Commerce Clause. So there is some foundation for a national government interest in the way the NCAA conducts itself.
I, of course, don’t buy the premise, but there’s a million to one against me who do.
Regardless who’s at fault for the woman’s death. A mother, who was more than likely a good person, invaded another mother’s home and in the process get shot and killed leaving her child(ren) motherless. All this for enough cocaine you could flush down the toilet. Is this what a little cocaine is worth, the life of a mother and a motherless child?
I missed the part about the husband flushing cocaine. The way I read the article, they were serving an arrest warrant because the husband had been indicted for selling cocaine through September 2008. It’s not September anymore. Who even said they would have drugs in the home? Isn’t that the reason for the raid?
I wish we could wave a wand and jail all those who have used drugs in their life time.The 10 people left could try to run the country.Yes I’m being a bit over the top but you have to think.Any law that has been broken by so many(including the president and president elect) is a law with out reason to be.
Skimming through the site about abandoned places in the USA.
There is some seriously good scrounging to be had in those places.
I wondered about this over at my place:
Pittsburgh is one of the few cities in the US with a Citizen’s Review Board. The FBI is, of course, not subject to review by the CRB. Given that Pittsburgh has a tool for citizens to hold their cops accountable, I wonder how many raids of any sort are conducted by local police, and how many are simply outsourced to unaccountable federal agencies.
Why not just arrest the guy at work? Or as he’s coming or going?
Or, you know, not arrest him at all…
Radley, I’m pretty sure his comment on th college football system was as a fan, not as President. Jeez, can’t the guy have an opinion about anything?
Ganja, how did Sam Hicks end up becoming a woman? All the references I see indicate that the FBI agent shot was a “he”, not a “she”.
“Regarding the taser story, saying the guy died of natural causes was a favor. The only other option (since drugs had been ruled out) would be to claim the guy committed suicide by intentionally provoking a cop”
If the death was listed as natural causes as a favor, then some medical examiner needs to be fired. One of Taser’s current claims is that they have never caused death serious injury. Marking this death as by natural causes just allows them to keep making that claim. Cops use tasers with that assumption and are more likely to use them.
Personally the idea of a favor in an autopsy report is almost as scary as
Why not arrest the suspected drug dealer at work?
Or, coming to/from his residence to work, etc?
Reason: Obeidiance Training for the rest of us.
Why do you think the police blow down residential doors in the middle of the night surving No-Knock warrants.
They know it is very dangerous for everyone involved, ESPECIALLY the resident.
Someone in the Ruling Class wants everyone to be Afraid.
Very Afraid.
#19: Michael, it’s ironic, but I’d be one of the ten left over–yet I absolutely agree that our prohibition policy has been a disaster. But that’s fine for the drug warriors because you get discredited for (presumably) having smoked a joint or used some drug at some point in your life and therefore becoming “one of them” who only wants drugs legalized so you can spend the rest of your life in a chemical stupor. I, on the other hand, only think drug use should be legalized because I haven’t had first-hand experience of its horrors.
Of course, come the revolution when all those who have used drugs are locked up and me and my nine friends are running the country, the drug warriors will be the last ones I plan to bring the dinner trays to.
Mike (#25) you need to turn up your sarcasm detector, especially when reading Dave’s posts. Try it again, assuming that he means the opposite of what he says.
You’ll feel better.
Bill,a few years ago ,I was on a white water trip to the Gully River in WV.We were sitting around the fire drinking beer and the topic of drugs came up.To my suprise I was the only one who had not tried coke,speed,or LSD.This from 4 friends that were 2 engineers,a DO, and a Phx.I have smoked pot a few times years ago though.
Looks like a mid-air “wrong door” drug raid with deaths:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,455128,00.html
It cracks me up the way Americans simultaneously complain that “regular seasons mean nothing” in most sports, and that the BCS doesn’t have a playoff. Consistency matters. Every single college game counts in a way that isn’t true even in the NFL. College football is the only American sport where this is the case.
A playoff where key players on certain teams are injured still leaves the true “best team” in doubt anyway. There will always be those kinds of arguments, and they’re fun to have. Leave college football be.
It’s nice their videos come with subtitles. But if you wait for the Platinum Edition, you’ll also get outtakes and a behind-the-scenes featurette!
Where is the fun in that? Can you use your flash bang grenades? No. Can you get dressed up in full battle gear? No. Do you get that adrenaline rush crashing into a house shouting “Get the fuck down!”? No. Might you get to shoot someone while arresting them sitting in their cubicle at work? No.
Regarding football, I find it amazing that people are getting so worked up over this one rather irrelevant and trivial issue. Oh and for the rest of you, get your head out of your fourth point of contact Cynical is totally right. If Obama decided that he wanted to mess around with any college sport he could for precisely the reasons he stated. Federal funding, federal student loans and the commerce clause. There is pretty much nothing Obama/the govenrment can’t mess with thanks to those things.
Why not arrest the guy…
Because the purpose to put the fear of the government into the people. The purpose is NOT to punish criminals.
David Koresh is the most visible example. He want to breakfast evey morning at a local Waco restaurant. He could have been arrested any time without incident and especially without the murder of innocents at the compound. But the government wanted an example so that the people would get into line.
Ain’t working is it?
“… he could for precisely the reasons he stated. Federal funding, federal student loans and the commerce clause. There is pretty much nothing Obama/the govenrment can’t mess with thanks to those things.”
NOT “Thanks to those things.” It’s Thanks to a lying, cheating court system that has totally trashed the Constitution and claimed a lot of things that ARE NOT and never have been in the Constitution. So please don’t give them an inch. Federal funding of colleges, etc is unconstitutional (not for the general Welfare of the united States - how many colleges must be funded for it to be general Welfare? 1, 10, 100, a million.) Please show me the constitutional clause allowing for federal student loans. And don’t even try to justify the BS about the commerce clause. The commerce clause coverrs NOTHING that the feds claim. It was simply a verrrrrrry limited power to keep one state from screwin with another, no more. The restrictions in Article I, section 9 prove the there is no authority to control “things”.
Dominus providebit!
What I don’t get is all the people who think Obama was being serious and actually proposing policy. I watched the interview on Sunday night. The question was the final question, and asked as a joke, something along the lines of “and finally, regarding the most pressing issue of our time…..what will you do about the BCS?” Michelle started laughing, Obama put on his “I are serious Obama” face, saying “honey, I’ll handle this one”, and then launched into a “serious” speech about how bad the BCS was, before laughing. He said there should be an 8 team playoff. which was the extent of his opinion. He then said he would throw his weight around. He was joking, and I thought that was plainly obvious, both from his gestures and the entire tone of the conversation.
#35
I don’t know if he was joking, but he definitely didn’t appear to be calling for government action. I think he knows just by talking about it he’s throwing his weight around.
I think this all stems from Jon McCain’s self-seriousness. When asked about a problem confronting sports he assumed that it was one that the question was asking about government involvement and responded with steroids. Obama just took it as what bugged him most about sports and said the college football system. McCain then said he didn’t think government should be involved with that. But Obama had, and has, never said he thought government should be involved. He has just given his opinion that he didn’t like the system.
Um, the entire 4th paragraph of the linked article? It’s not exactly buried. For your edification:
“The affidavit indicated that Hicks, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, looked inside the house and saw a man running, at which point, authorities said Robert Korbe, 39, went to the basement to flush cocaine down the sink.”
I could’ve arrested Koresh with a tap on the shoulder in Waco any number of mornings.
Not adrenline pumping enough I guess, but all those babies would still be alive.
It didn’t matter though. Worst case of use of exessive force ever and we ended up just exporting across the country.
Michael Pack you have a friend who is a Phoenix?
RB,
The CIA IG has been kind enough to provide to you one new international chapter in the next edition of your book. This is really, really ugly. Fox News also has video of the shooting. Really ugly.
From WaPo:
“Washington Watchdogs,” a periodic feature of the Post’s Investigations blog, looks at the findings of the federal government’s official investigators.
A CIA report released by a congressional lawmaker could reopen the controversy about the 2001 shootdown of an American missionary plane mistakenly identified as a drug smuggler flying over Peru’s Amazon region.
The CIA withheld reports about the incident from the National Security Council, Justice Department and Congress, according to excerpts of an inspector general’s report released by the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
Re: Abandoned buildings
Here is a big one they missed in Detroit. The old Cass Technical High School was replaced by the New Cass Technical High School built right next to the old. This is the premier Detroit Public Schools high school, Lily Tomlin, Diana Ross, John DeLorean and The White Stripes are among the graduates.
The new school is a beautiful building.
http://www.designshare.com/portfolio/project/1/560/Image4_CassTech.jpg
Here is a picture of the old school in its prime. It was a beautiful building as well.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~roni55/Cass%20Tech%201939/page30.jpg
Here is a picture of the old building (remember, right next door to the new) today. Apparently abandoned by the school district.
http://www.mywjr.com/user_files/images/CassTech.4.jpg