Holly does rock. Got a virus warning from that first link, though.
Hmm. It's an Andrew Sullivan link, so not too unknown.
That Sullivan guy ought to get himself checked out, I guess.
Not sure if it's at that link, but this interview with Maniatti, where she talks a bit about her process, is really interesting.
Hmm. It's an Andrew Sullivan link, so not too unknown.
Hmm. It's an Andrew Sullivan link, so not too unknown.
My clinic director at my horrible first job in Far the Fuckaway was the sort of Long Islander who came into the city maybe twice a year. One recent time had been, unsurprisingly, for Billy Crystal's one man Broadway thingy. She told me it had been very poig-nunt. I got to feel superior for mo. It was one of about three positive emotional experiences in my 10 months there. Poig. Nunt.
Sorry, I sometimes think of that when I read that word.
It's not exactly sadness, because it's a really nice recognition, but it's not exactly happiness. Closer to poignancy or something.
Buck and I just had a really fun dinner out with an old friend and his new(ish. New to us, but they've been together for a while) girlfriend. And she was absolutely great, which is wonderful, because he's been kind of sad as long as I've known him. I got the slight impression that we were being asked for approval, a bit, as his nice-stable-married-but-still-fond-of-each-other friends, and to the extent that I was right about what they were thinking, it was delightful getting to be unequivocally approving.
We all got terribly drunk and had a blast, and it's a little sad that I know myself enough to know that I'm not actually going to put in the effort to make contact and be friends with her independent of maybe seeing her once or twice a year. Knowing that I'm not so much antisocial because people suck, as because I'd rather lurk at home than make an effort with all the fantastic people out there, depresses me a bit. And then I have another cup of tea and a nap and forget about it.
My trainer at the gym once corrected my pronunciation of a word. You never live that down.
Question, how is the case reported in the first paragraph here anything other than obvious entrapment?
Going by the evidence of various friends with computer-y black marks on their records "entrapment" is essentially mythical.
(Like the guy who was approached at an AA meeting by a gentleman with a plan to forge some funny kind o check. Dude had all the equipment, knew how to do it, had a whole plan ready to go, and just needed a partner. Several months later he finally managed to talk to my friend (pretty down-on-his-luck and, per AA, a recovering alcoholic) into a trial run. Haha, surprise!)
Or there was that guy who the government mailed stacks of kiddie porn every day for years in the hope that he would eventually send back in a subscription slip.
(14 doesn't refer to a friend of mine, rather to a news story I read.)
That seems like a bad strategy. Why subscribe if you're getting it for free?
If I recall right he eventually sent one back in the hopes of getting it to stop. (And then got arrested and convicted as a sex offender.)
My cousin and his wife are visiting from North Carolina for the long weekend. It's been great because we've gotten to do All the Fun Things.* We always have a good time together, even if we see each other like twice each decade. Poignant. But not poignant enough to get me to NC any oftener than (half) that.
* People should come visit more often.
I get increasingly sad about the fact that the vast numbers of supercool people I have known in my life are gradually dispersing. It's not as if I left my life behind in some particular place and I can go pick it up again. It isn't anywhere anymore.
(And now my wife has browbeaten them into getting Facebook accounts, so I'll see them every day.)
OP1. She's pretty good but I'm still annoyed by the whole trend. Probably for no good reason!
I'm in London! I'm very jet lagged. Now I'm going to a barbeque to hang out with lots of people who know more than one sign language AND are charismatic and fun to hang out with. I don't think there will be any tie-ins to Mexican rock though.
I never get any reunion notices, because my high school and old classmates, every one including blood relatives, apparently either doesn't know I'm alive or pretends presuming correctly that it is my preference.
19 I hate Friend Diaspora. Everyone just move where I go, ok? Perversely, I am hoping my best friend in NYC will leave (he has talked of LA...his job is pretty geographically constrained) so I can think of myself as Holly Golightly fixing her face in the back of a cab, saying "this town is finished for me" rather than pining a lot.
Question, how is the case reported in the first paragraph here anything other than obvious entrapment?
The South, baby, you live below the Mason Dixon and you takes your chances (partially joking, but the South really does seem to dominate in his examples). On a more serious note, Balko is ridiculous. Him and all the other libertarians are second amendment absolutists and now with the rise of the "sporting rifle" market of the last thirty years we've got literally millions of semi auto rifles floating around whose rounds penetrate the standard issue soft armor worn by beat cops. Aaaand here comes "buy my book decrying cops wearing hard armor and carrying rifles."
13.1: You mean "entrapment" as a defense against arrest/prosecution? Because otherwise I'm confused.
Right, there's no defense needed because he's dead. Bygones.
I'll defer to Messily on this but there's something that rubs me wrong about the idea of [Non-Deaf] America's Favorite ESL Interpreter! I am itching to break the analogy ban, but will be strong.
18: What's more fun -- summer stuff or winter?
26: yes, obviously it's no longer directly relevant. Also perhaps as a consideration that the detective might have heeded, something like "if someone is making $50 bets, and I lure him over the course of months to make bets forty times larger so that I can charge him with something, that will obviously be entrapment.".
25: Dude, you're nuts. I disagree with plenty of things Balko says, but he is doing yeoman's work in shining a light on wildly overreacting use of firepower in no-knock raids by US law enforcement.
Seriously, have you read some of his linked Twitter stories? Heck, how about the UVA kid in Charlottesville who was arrested by 6 cops for buying bottled water (that they thought was beer)?
You don't have to have any kind of opinion on the Second Amendment to think that giving people in positions of authority even more weaponry will increase the likelihood that they'll use it, necessary or not.
I've got to head to work, but people should think long and hard about where Balko's coming from and where he's going with these arguments before getting on that bandwagon. I don't think it's a coincidence that his examples are mostly from an area of the country where the anti govt. types have held sway for a couple hundred years.
One of the examples in comments is of a dog shooting in Des Moines, hardly a stronghold of anti-government protest. A woman asked police for help when the dog got out. It's true that it was a mistake to involve someone with a gun in finding her dog. But it's certainly not an expression of fear or hatred for police. They got to the panting dog before she could and shot it to death.
The lesson here is pretty simple: don't ever assume police will not use their guns if there is any way for them to imagine how to describe the situation as dangerous.
Can I dislike both Balko's politics and paramilitary police forces? Or do I have to choose sides?
I don't think it's a coincidence that his examples are mostly from an area of the country where the anti govt. types have held sway for a couple hundred years.
What's the significance of that? The actual examples don't involve interference with "anti govt. types", just the normal ethnic minorities (plus the baffled suburbanites swept up in anti-gambling stings).
To enumerate, the examples are from...
Fairfax County, VA
Virginia Beach, VA
Baltimore County, MD
Suburbs of Charleston, SC
San Mateo, CA
Cary, NC
Greenville, SC
Orange County, FL
New Haven, CT
Atlanta, GA
Rapides Parish, LA
Manassas Park, VA (near Fairfax County)
West Virginia
Bedford County, VA
Denver, CO
Maricopa County, AZ
26, 27: right. As a specific thing that police are enjoined from doing, and for which redress can meaningfully be sought.
Messily, do ASL users actually go to such concerts (vibrations or partially-hearing or some other reason) or are the interpreters sort of an affectation?
Usually the only reason a concert or play venue or anything would pay for interpreters is if deaf people specifically request it. And often have to argue about it a lot. I'm sure that's not 100% but I'd assume its not affectation the vast majority of the time.
I wouldn't really call it affectation anyway though. I think universal access is a nice goal.
I'm not so much antisocial because people suck, as because I'd rather lurk at home than make an effort with all the fantastic people out there, depresses me a bit.
God, me too. I was invited to a poker game last night that I backed out of at the last minute, then for the rest of the night I was kicking myself and wondering why I had done that. (On the other hand, per the Balko article, maybe it was for the best.)
I don't and will not few Balko because I refuse to truck with libertarians in any situation. Whatever your criticism of the cops, defunding, stigmatizing, and creating unsafe work conditions is as bad for cops as it is for any other set of public employees. Or, worse, because scared cops are more, not less, likely to engage in acts of uncontrolled and dangerous violence. Community policing and cops who are involved and good citizens requires money, a lot of money, and a lot of training. If you want good policing, you have to pay for it.
FWIW, the Balko article we're discussing here doesn't actually advocate cutting police funding, or any other specific policy actions. The book it's excerpted from very well might, of course.
Don't care, won't read. He and his crew are committed to far worse changes for America (including, in part for the reasons I stated above, for levels of violence in America, especially to the poor) than pretty much any police department could possibly do.
Tell me, Halford, how do you apply this no-libertarians policy in real life? Do you ask everyone you meet a set of questions to determine their political ideology? Or do you just refuse to interact with anyone unless you already know their politics?
Mostly, I just avoid the issue by not hanging out with libertarian fuckheads. If I'm in a situation where I can't avoid one, and can't be insulting without hurting myself somehow, I usually just ignore and move on. It's not that hard to do.
Sure, if you already know who they are. But my question is, how do you know that?
And, of course, if someone's not affirmatively political, I don't really give a shit. That's not the case for Balko, who's a hyper-active foot soldier for the force that is destroying everything. Fuck him and fuck his professional friends.
I still feel like authoritarianism is at least as big a force for evil in practical terms as libertarianism (it's certainly much more popular among the US population), but whatever.
My view is that that is pretty much completely wrong. Or, more precisely, that the biggest force (in America) for creating "authoritarianism" that actually matters, which is the dominance of the wealthy over the non wealthy, the haves over the have nots, and the complete evisceration of the social-democratic welfare state, the best force known to modern history in controlling those forces, is libertarianism. Police officers are, at their core (or at least can be) about creating civic order and a regulated society under control of society as a whole. What Balko and his types really want is a world of private ordering by the dominant, made safe (in their fantasy land) by unregulated second amendment types taking action into their own hands. Fuck that.
And, of course, I in turn think 51 is pretty much completely wrong. But I don't think arguing over this is likely to be productive, so I'll stop.
I imagine that the libertarians are mostly just useful idiots for the authoritarians. They're useful because they seem amenable (but are not) to evidence--they've got a nasty case of a priorism priapism.
Tell me, teo, how do apply this nonproductive-activity rule in real life?
Doesn't Balko pretty much only talk about police overreach et rel.? I mean, I like Halford assume he has or had all sorts of unsavory political opinions just because he worked for the Cato Institute, but he hasn't actually expressed them in real or virtual print much, has he?
His selection of non-pb links at his old blog betrayed his retrograde beliefs quite neatly.
When he would do omnibus posts, I mean.
we've got literally millions of semi auto rifles floating around whose rounds penetrate the standard issue soft armor worn by beat cops.
I have wondered why cops aren't more vocal in supporting an assault rifle ban...
Sometimes, shooting is a real time saver for the police. (Repeat, but topically so.)
On the other hand, I do want one of those blue laser pointers that sets things on fire, so maybe I am part of the problem here.
54: I spend my time on the non-productive activities that are less likely to upset me. Thanks for asking.
It's sought.
(If I'm not paying attention, I believe I am >50% likely to make that error.)
23: I hate Friend Diaspora.
Relax, it doesn't last. Much sooner than you would believe possible, they'll start dying off and you'll find out about each one in diverse ways sooner or later. Then they'll all be together in your memories and nowhere else.
66: You bastard. I was feeling good tonight.
67: I'm finally coming to terms with it. It hasn't been easy. Each one punches another hole in your life until there's nothing left of your past.
So, speaking of Mexican rock, I like this Spanish-language cover of the Secret Agent Man theme song.
Though apparently the Plugz were from LA.
Did anyone listen to the show from OP2? I want to re-listen, I liked it so much.
69: That reminds me of "The Book of Lost Things."
66: Yeah ok that does not make me feel better.
The first time I lost a good, old friend was a year or so ago, and then in the same day I found out about a second. I guess I'm awfully lucky it didn't happen until I was almost forty.
The lesson here is pretty simple: don't ever assume police will not use their guns if there is any way for them to imagine how to describe the situation as dangerous.
Bah. I've just passed my five year mark in a department of 400 cops that handles like 200K calls for service a year. I've seen one dog shooting in that time and most of the guys I work with in patrol have never shot a dog.
What's the significance of that? The actual examples don't involve interference with "anti govt. types"
That's not what I meant. What I'm getting at is that an area of the country that has a lot of hostility to funding govt. agencies and things like federal oversight of those agencies should pretty much expect to see a lot of shitty govt. in action, including police departments. Basically, what Halford's been saying. There's solutions to these problems but the ones coming from Balko and the Cato crowd are likely to be a tax cut + George Zimmerman.
Much sooner than you would believe possible, they'll start dying off
Ain't it the truth. *Much* sooner. I really haven't come to peace with it yet, but it just keeps happening.