Seattle/Tacoma airport wants to seize a nearby mom n’ pop parking garage to replace it with . . . a parking garage run by the airport. Government officials have generously offered $2 million less than what the family paid for the land two years ago.
Lots of you have sent me this one: Canadian sci/fi writer Peter Watts says he was detained and beaten by U.S. border officials in Michigan.
Amish man arrested for horse & buggy DUI.
Poignant Joseph Galloway column on the war in Afghanistan.
Top Google search on December 2, the day Tiger Woods released his first statement about his scandal: “transgressions.” #4 Google search: “transgression definition.”
Good post from Scott Greenfield on a really sad case.
Another wrong door drug raid in New York City.
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on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
Under Kelo the airport will get that property.
Two points on the Drug Bust.
1) It’s good that these things are coming to light now. I’d argue that not long ago, a couple of women harassed in their apt in Washington Heights wouldn’t be news.
2) “Authorities couldn’t say what led them to believe Ruiz or drugs were inside Guerrero’s home.” read: “We don’t have to answer that, because police are allowed to kick down any goddamn door they want without justification. And you little people would be better off if you didn’t ask such questions.”
DUI with a Horse and buggy? Boring!
DUI with a vehicle in a Santa Claus parade? Now we’re talking!
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2009/11/15/11756981-cp.html
The masses don’t know the word ‘transgressions’?
Dam illiterates.
#4 MattH
“Damn” illiterates…
Forty years ago, MC5 had a great tune that touched on police brutality and the way their victims were charged with assault. A few people are starting to notice how commonplace it is. Maybe in another 40 years the average American will wise up. Unfortunately, it will be too late.
Shit Tsu Dho Nihm, at this rate 40 yrs from now, we’ll be lucky if our thoughts will be on a disk, on a shelf somewhere next to the Diary of Anne Frank.
Let me just mention how super expensive it is to park a car at the Seattle airport. We’re talking around $24/day the last time I was there, and that was 2007. The nearby lots like this one were about $10/day and a comparative bargain.
Of course, if Sea-Tac didn’t lease half the garage to the damn rental car companies, maybe they wouldn’t need to buy more land to build more garages.
The mother who left her infant daughter with a 12-year-old is the criminally negligent one. It’s so obvious, I want my time and effort back for having to point it out.
I’m wondering why the horse&Buggy DUI is news? It’s Lancaster County. Lots of Amish there. I won’t say it happens often but it’s no bigger news than DUI with a bicycle, 4-wheeler, or scooter.
Oh, and what goes “clop clop clop clop BANG clop clop clop clop”?
An Amish drive-by shooting.
#9 Cynical
Your time and effort is never wasted here. I’ve read some truly douchebag comments, sometimes here, sometimes there, but yours never fuck-up my thought patterns. Shit, was that a guised compliment? My bad, never happen again.
it’s about time we addressed the ‘canadian sci-fi writer nerd’ threat…
I hope he comes out of this wealthy enough to free him up to write a good story- I’m tired of all the ’1984′ and ‘animal farm’ references. It’s time for an update.
I really don’t have a problem with giving the Amish guy a dui. If someone driving in opposite traffic hit the horse, it wouldn’t end up pretty.
#12 | MacGregory
Thanks MacGregory! [I think ....]
Since we’re coming to the end of the year, please let me take this opportunity to thank everyone for being patient with my anarchomania. I feel that I have turned the corner a bit from unchecked idealism and come into irredeemable pessimism. Sincere gratitude goes out to The Agitator and certain commentors (you know who you are) for assisting in my rehab, I could not have done it without the mountain of anecdotal evidence of the terminal condition of American society this blog generously provides.
Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to everyone!
Man Dies From Marijuana
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,580083,00.html?test=latestnews
Well, at least that’s how it’s going to get spun. LOL.
Actually died from prohibition.
#16 ktc2
Yeah first ever recorded death. Couldn’t even hardly read that junk. I, personally, am waiting for the first ever recorded death by masturbation.
Oh and fuck you all. Not like we’re gonna be swapping natural light beers at the republican benefit for the democrats for freedom committee’s annual expose’ on transparency. Bring a camera, get fucked in the ass by big bubba, your temp cell mate. He’s not really charged with anything; just think of him as “the third arm of the law.”
#5 John
“Damned” illiterates…
Point of clarification on the SeaTac parking story. It’s not the airport that’s looking to condemn the property and build its own garage, it’s the TOWN of SeaTac that’s doing it. Yes, there’s actually a town that decided to call itself SeaTac because it’s between Seattle and Tacoma and/or because of its proximity to the airport. And yes, that is pathetic beyond belief.
In some sense, I think the horse is more of a driver than the actual driver — a good horse can take you back home without you ever touching the reins.
In the UK it’s illegal to be in charge of a Carriage when you’re “unfit to ride through drink or drugs”. And bicycle are legally a form of carriage, incidentally (heh). Completely separate offence to traffic ones, which only apply to motorised vehicles.
The natural outcome of the bubba mentality of state goons is obvious… folks are going to start donating to OrgA pools… and at some future date, when the donut-inhaler is at home without his kevlar, he will experience ‘no-knock’ first hand and the pool will be scooped.
And if you think being their buddies is a good idea… try and find a single individual from the former Soviet union who will admit to having been a ‘stukach’. The Russian countryside is filled with little shallow 6-by-2 depressions that house former stukachi whose past caught up with them.
‘Enforcer’ jobs attract a specific psychotype: the only tame enforcers are those who have been the recipients of a quiet chat in the comfort of their own home/bar/etc when someone else’s hired-enforcer gives them the lay of the land.
Markets solve problems – including the futility of direct confrontation with tyranny and it’s spear-carriers: the division of labour furnishes quite well-paid jobs for sociopaths on liberty’s side, too.
Chin chin.
David Carradine would like a word with you.
Apologists will say it was suffocation, not beatin’ it that killed Caine.
Marty, you might like Peter Watts’ sf. None of it is in the brilliant allegory category, but it’s very intelligent, and quite paranoid and cynical. I expect the two latter traits to get amped up, if it’s possible.
I’ll give him a shot, Nancy- thanks!
#25 Wins the thread.
So Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge emptying cities, selling tons of rice to China which could have fed the starving people, and leaving rice fields to rot while retreating from the NVA as a tactic had such a negligible effect on the humongous death toll that it was nearly all from Kissinger’s bombings?
Mr. Galloway, are you getting your history from Noam Chomsky or something?
The US should have stayed out of Vietnam and Iraq, and Afghanistan, if anything, should have been a quick fight wrapped up at Tora Bora. But the fact is the communists had already murdered tens of thousands in N Vietnam before JFK was elected. Communists murdered on the order of 100 million in the past century.
Kissinger is scum, but blame him proportionately for what he actually did.
Elliot,
You may not realize this, but Kissinger was a supporter of Pol Pot. He knew the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese were enemies and thought that the Khmer Rouge would launch a guerilla war against Vietnam.
In fact, all thought he 1980′s the Untied States continued to claim that the Khmer Rouge were the legitimate govt of Cambodia long after the Vietnamese had sent those genocidal monster fleeing into the jungle.
Since I don’t see anything up for Sunday:
http://www.militarytimes.com/offduty/technology/offduty_blogger_120809/
Parent (who just happens to be an Army First Sargent) goes to PTA meeting to protest mid-term school uniform requirement. School board calls his chain-of-command to shut him up. Army demotes him.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and I’m sure it will get deleted AGAIN. But…. cops are scumbags. Yeah, Radley, ALL COPS are scumbags!!!!
#21 Aaron, you are correct about the horse knowing the way home. I worked on and off in Romania for 15 years and in the outlying regions there are many who do not own a car and rely on “carutza.” When sloshed, the horse knows the way home and no one is driving under any influence but hay.
I know someone who once had a DUI on a bicycle.
Now, isn’t the whole point of DUI with a motorized vehicle to prevent injurious or fatal accidents?
Who the hell are you protecting when you arrest someone for DUI on a bike or a horse and buggy?
Have you seen Terry Gilliam’s Brazil?
#19 Michael
“Damn” (v. or n.) or “Damned” (adv. or adj.) – they’re equally correct, linguistically – e.g. “Damn Yankees” – or- “Damned Yankees…”
The DHS is using the odious “SSI” classification to seal discrimination lawsuits now.
http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AB/20091212/NEWS0103/912130335/
34,
Do you know what happens when a car hits a deer? Head on, the deer goes through the windshield. Now imagine a horse, an animal that can weigh well over 1000lbs crashing through your windshield. The horse may very well be smart enough to get home, but if it ventures into the opposing lane of traffic, a motorist heading in that lane may hit it, especially in areas where visibility is limited, like hills and curves. This isn’t a defense of some of the absurd DUI policies that are in place now, but if someone is so drunk that they are passed out behind the wheel or their horse, they deserve to get a DUI.
re:34
One of my friends had a deer come through the windshield. She was lucky. The antler broke off in the passenger seat, not in her.
Likewise, a drunk guy on a bike won’t do you any good if he goes through your windshield or if you hit a tree while trying to avoid him.
You can be cited for DUI if you have a couple of beers and are using a riding mower to cut your grass.
Apparently a case of “contempt” of cop. How dare that lousy Canuck poindexter question our brave border patrol officers? Of course, they then had to pepper-spray, shit-kick and throw him in jail. Can’t have people questioning police–what kind of example would that set?
“I will love everybody–I will love the police as they kick the shit out of me on the street…”–Frank Zappa, 1968