September 2007 Archives

You may all rest easier now. In case you hadn't heard, in 2006, immigration officials detained and deported public enemy number one: Ms. Nalini Ghuman. Who's that? What? You mean you haven't heard of the menacing danger of this English-born musician and Edward Elgar scholar?

Well, I'd like to direct you to this NY Times article, which will make everything clear. Or will it?

See, unfortunately, we don't get any answers as to why the DHS and ICE yanked this woman off of a plane, threw her into a holding room, proceeded to mock her, threaten her with indefinite detention if she moved, groped her, and refused to let her speak with someone in her consulate. In fact, at one point she was told:

"They told me I was nobody, I was nowhere and I had no rights," she said. "For the first time, I understood what the deprivation of liberty means."

Funny how that works. People in this country continue to say that we've got nothing to fear from our government while it's so incompetent it can't even figure out that someone who's name is Nalini Ghuman is not "hispanic" as the officers from ICE put down, or that it's even possible she really does speak Welsh, even though that's where she lives. The news is filled with stories of government incompetence, legalized graft, and abuse of rights. Just about EVERYONE acknowledges that your average bureaucrat couldn't find his ass with both hands and a map. And still people believe we should trust them, as if some magical cure for this bumbling and contempt for decency will show up one day.

Can't they see, can't you see that Ms. Ghuman threatens no one, except those who don't like Edward Elgar, oh, and maybe the former leading scholar on Edward Elgar: Lord Rumpole Winnifred Hingebottom. And still, as a non-threat to almost the entire world, she was treated like she was the primary suspect of 9/11. Maybe you've forgotten, but we had the primary suspect for the 9/11 attacks cornered on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan but through incompetence we let him slip through our fingers. Instead we waste time and money on egregiously abusive snipe hunts like what happened to Ms. Ghuman.

Hey, perhaps it was Lord Hingebottom that arranged to have Ms. Ghuman detained. After all, ICE was kind enough to suggest that a jilted lover or rival had written a poison pen letter to the State Department which caused her visa to be revoked.

I realized another great thing about having a young boy in the house, aside from his infernal boob fixation.

My son's at that crucial stage in life: learning how to use the toilet. As with any young man just starting to come into awareness of the equipment he possesses, he...well...let's just say that he's not the most careful about where he aims. And by not careful I mean it's amazing there's not a yellow trail a foot and half off the floor across the bathroom walls. Right now he'll come out of the bathroom with some accidental spotting because he forgets the important rule: "Before you put it back your pants, you give two shakes and you dance", or the urinal's too tall so he steps back and leans back attempting an arching stream, which as any man can tell you, does not end well, but I digress.

Every few days when the women in my house get around to cleaning they'll yell "SOMEBODY MISSED THE TOILET AGAIN!" Well, if anyone looks at me, I point at my son and shrug my shoulders. I no longer have to admit to my wife that I was the phantom puddler because I was trying to hang out the bathroom door, leaning on one leg, shooting at a great distance while watching the Redskins on the TV instead of where I was aiming.

I just say "Well honey, you know that Owen's still learning to aim. You can't really blame him." It's a great great thing. Of course, the other day I had to pay the price for this because while letting him go whizz in a farmer's field on Sunday he let fly all over my shoes.

We have two new items in "This Week In The Police State":

1. This one, I'm sure you've heard of already. A student in Florida was tasered for trying to ask John Kerry a question. He was tased for being a "pest". Here's an article with a video from the Huffington Post, whom I don't normally read, but hey, it's got the video. See if yourself. And can I just say that I think John Kerry's a fucking coward? Any one with a half a sense of decency should have gotten off of that stage and intervened, not let a student get tasered in the back of the auditorium.
2. My favorite though, comes via CNN. A grandmother in Utah was at home when the local police stopped by. They wanted to cite her for her brown lawn, which I guess is against the law. When she refused to give her name to the officer she was knocked to the ground and cuffed. She was injured on her nose and had to spend time in jail. For NOT WATERING HER LAWN. Here's that story.

Again we see examples of the police believing that their primary job is beat up the people they're sworn to protect, the people who pay their salaries. They go out of their way to overpower and physically intimidate anyone, including grandmothers, who doesn't immediately snap to attention.

My son's recently rediscovered the magic of boobs. He's fascinated with boobs and will grab them if he can. It doesn't matter if they're his mother's, my mother's, random visitors...or...mine...he grabs them.

This has, no doubt, caused some consternation in my house.

The women have flat-out said that the behavior has to stop, it's unacceptable, it's embarassing, and I have to be the one to deliver the news that grabbing boobs is not appropriate. Plus he's got the vise grip of a senior steel worker clutching a winning lottery ticket.

I looked at it differently. He's only 3, and right now, his fascination with boobs is still seen as "cute" by some people, and he's free to grab as many as he wants. In another six months it won't be cute, and he really will have to stop (because I'll be hauled before a judge for raising the world's smallest letch), at which point he won't have an opportunity to touch boobs until at least 16. If he's as smooth as I was in high school, make that 19, but who's counting? And furthermore, once he's at this age 16 period of fondlage he's expected to be at least something of a gentleman, and only fondle one given woman at a time. He doesn't have that restriction right now. He can be all the three-foot cassanova he wants to be right now, and it's still "cute". I have therefore dubbed this time of his life "The Golden Age". I argued a strong case for letting him carry on for the next six months so he gets to enjoy it.

But as I'm outnumbered, male, and make sense, I was summarily overruled.

We've got some great entries in "This Week In The Police State":

1. This is from 2004, but it's still a good story: Sheriff Joe Arpaio sent his crack SWAT team to an upscale neighborhood in Phoenix to "seize illegal weapons". They instead burnt down the house they were attacking, killing the dog inside, and arresting one of the inhabitants for a traffic violation. After the raid, one of Sheriff Joe's men drove the tank they took with them over a neighbor's car. Full story here.
2. Police arrested a worker at McDonalds for serving an "oversalty burger". The burger's been turned over to the crime lab for investigation. Story here.
3. Police in Singapore arrived in four riot vehicles to put down a protest being staged by tiny plastic figurines. Story here.
4. A Police Office in Missouri became enraged when a motorist refused to explain why he parked in an empty parking lot at 2am. So the officer kindly offered to create bogus charges for an arrest. Read the transcript and watch the video: http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/19/1961.asp
5. Mounted police in Washington DC stormed into a press conference and protest against the war in Iraq arresting the organizers. Story here: http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Police_break_up_anti_war_meeting_in_09062007.html
6. And a few stories from Australia, which just had the APEC summit, which George Bush attended. Police were warned that they should expect "level of violence not previously experienced in Sydney", and that groups of protestors would unleash...well...hell on Earth. So they had snipers everywhere, they had police assaulting fathers in front of their children because they had the AUDACITY to walk across the street to go to lunch. They even had their officers remove their "required" identification badges moments before the police stormed protestors and beat them. Of course, all of this was worth it because, as we found out, the biggest security threat at APEC was the comedy troupe "The Chaser", who were able to infiltrate security posing as a group of Canadian delegates. I guess The Chaser folks didn't know that APEC is strictly a no-mirth zone.

Ah, such helpful tactics from the police you can almost smell the love on the tips of their batons.