Category: Video

When Republican Presidential Candidates Have Lost Megyn Kelly, the Race has Jumped the Shark

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Shoot me, I agree with Megyn Kelly

Specifically, the latest candidate whine fest over debate moderation has Kelly lambasting them, which means that they have truly jujped Jumping C. Megalodon*.

She suggested that the candidates might want a massage as well:

Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Monday night mocked the letter drafted by Republican presidential campaigns listing a series of rules and questions for networks hosting future debates.

 After listing some of the demands, including that networks not allow lightning rounds or candidate-to-candidate questioning, Kelly jokingly suggested, “And then maybe the foot massage?”

 She then criticized the campaigns’ request that they approve any graphics about the candidates ahead of the debate.

 “Can you imagine having to submit our graphics for approval to the candidates? Good luck with that,” she said.

It really is pathetic.

*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.

Why Videotaping Cops Needs to Be Universal

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Roid Rage

Does anyone out there think that Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields would have been fired if his assault hadn’t been caught on video tape?

The South Carolina Sheriff’s deputy captured on video forcefully removing a student from class has been fired, the local sheriff said Wednesday, less than a week after the incident at Spring Valley High School first came to the public’s attention.

 Richland County Senior Deputy Ben Fields was already suspended after videos of him flipping and tossing a black female student across a classroom went viral online.

 Fields was told of his firing late Wednesday morning

 “What he should not have done is throw the student,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said. “Police officers make mistakes too. They’re human and they need to be held accountable, and that’s what we’ve done with Deputy Ben Fields.”

 Lott said he wouldn’t describe Fields as remorseful, but rather sorry it all happened.

Of course he is sorry that it all happened.

He’s lost his job.

BTW, in addition to being a school resource officer he was a football and strength training coach:

………

 Fields said in during his deposition for a federal lawsuit filed against him that he is a competitive power lifter, saying it is a “sport,” where you “try to lift as much as you can at one time.”

 In his deposition, Fields says he does not take steroids, but has not been tested for steroids in the past. He said he has taken supplements, including Creatin, to help build muscles.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah. We believe him when he says that he’s not juicing. (not)

If his behavior had not been caught on video, this steroid addled loon would still be abusing school children.

For all of the wanktastic tirades against police accountability by the FBI director, the problem is not cameras, it’s bad cops and a culture that coddles and protects them.

FBI Director Blames Public Accountability for Murder Spike

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James Comey is arguing that because everyone has a camera on their cell phone now, police are unwilling or unable to do their jobs:

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said on Friday that the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers in the wake of highly publicized episodes of police brutality may have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities as officers have become less aggressive.

With his remarks, Mr. Comey lent the prestige of the F.B.I., the nation’s most prominent law enforcement agency, to a theory that is far from settled: that the increased attention on the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals. But he acknowledged that there is so far no data to back up his assertion and that it may be just one of many factors that are contributing to the rise in crime, like cheaper drugs and an increase in criminals who are being released from prison.

………

Mr. Comey’s remarks caught officials by surprise at the Justice Department, where his views are not shared at the top levels. Holding the police accountable for civil rights violations has been a top priority at the department in recent years, and some senior officials do not believe that scrutiny of police officers has led to an increase in crime. While the department had no immediate comment on Friday, several officials privately fumed at Mr. Comey’s suggestion.

………

After civil rights leaders and the Justice Department accused the Seattle Police Department of discriminatory policing and excessive force, the number of officer-instigated stops declined and crime ticked upward, said Kathleen O’Toole, the police chief.

Chief O’Toole said it was up to police leaders to insist on reversing that trend. The critiques made the department better, she said. Crime is down this year, and her city has hosted police officials from places such as Baltimore wanting to understand why.

“There’s never been as much scrutiny on police officers as there is now,” Chief O’Toole said. “We should embrace it.”

Yes, we should embrace greater police accountability.

Being a cop may be a tough job, but it is also one which pays relatively well, and when juxtaposed with its good job security, it means that you can generally find people willing to do the work.

This means that to the the degree that bad cops are flushed out of the system, they will be replaced by good cops.

Then you have to flush the bad attitudes and practices out of the system.

Also, as I have noted before, I think that a significant portion of the police force is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a counselor friend of mine believes that it is nearly universal after about 5 years, and mentally ill cops are not going to be good cops.

In terms of addressing PTSD, I would start with the following:

  • Eliminate routine overtime in police departments.
  • Forbid moonlighting by cops in security positions.
  • Make vacation longer, at least 6 weeks a year, and mandatory.
    • Also, again, no moonlighting on vacation.
  • Mandatory counseling for all police officers on at least a monthly basis, because if all cops have to talk to a counselor, there is no stigma.
  • Stop having cops act as revenue agents through ticketing and the like.  Everyone has a God given right to hate the taxman, and being widely loathed is not conducive to mental health.

Understand that these changes would require a significant increase in base pay, probably by at least 20%, but we are living the alternative, and it ain’t pretty.

Canadian Election Update

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Pretty much says it all

Election Results
Party Current Seats Election Results
(Preliminary)		 Net
Liberal 36 188 +152
Conservative 159 101 -58
New Democratic 95 38 -57
Bloc Québécois 2 10 +8
Green 2 1 -1
Strength in Democracy 2 0 -2


John Oliver lays waste to Harper

The Canadian election tonight has turfed out the Conservative Party after 10 years.

It really does amaze me that they reelected Stephen Harper 3 times.

He has always been very straightforward on the fact that he dislikes the idea of Canada as a modern western nation.

He vision of Canada appeared to be a white Christian Saudi Arabia. He makes Dick Cheney look like an environmentalist, and he was trying to starve the Canadian health system into oblivion.

I kind of figured that the game was up when Harper tried a Hail Mary by campaigning with: crack-smoking former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford.

Still, that did not stop John Oliver from risking the wrath of Canadian authorities by suggesting that Harper is Canada’s dick boyfriend. ($5,000 CDN & 6 months in jail, but the video is worth it)

The NDP has completely cratered, largely because after unprecedented electoral success in the last election, they were the official opposition (2nd place) for the first time ever, Jack Layton the party leader, up and got cancer, and was replaced by Tom Mulcair who tacked to the right, promising no deficits, which meant no austerity, and so ended up to the right of the historically more centrist Liberals.

One of the longstanding criticisms of the LDP is that they are seen as ineffective, and can be relied on to waffle* rather than have the courage of their convictions.

So they gave up their ideology this time around, and got clubbed like baby seals.†

It will be interesting to see how much the young Trudeau, the new PM to be, will be able to undo the damage that Harper has done.

My guess is that many of the changes that Harper has made will be very hard to roll back.

H/t Obsidian Wings for the kitty pic.

*This is an obscure Canadian political and historical pun.
†A somewhat less obscure pun involving Canada.

Trinidad Scorpion Peppers 1 : Charles Saroff 0

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Am I a bad parent for taping this?

We went to the Reisterstown Farmers Market, and Max’s Heat was there hawking their spice mixes.

Charlie wanted something hot, so he was offered, with appropriate warnings, a sample of 4th Degree Burn, a spice mix made of Trinidad Scorpion Peppers (1.2 million Scovilles) and pink Himalayan Salt.

I whipped out my camera to record the coming conflagration.

BTW, the URLs for Max’s Heat are here and here.

Note that I have received nothing of value, beyond this really funny video, from Max’s Heat for posting this.

Also, their curry mix was kick ass.

It’s Official, Elon Musk Is Now a Bond Villain

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On Colbert last night, Elon Musk, internet tycoon turned electronic car manufacturer turned space entrepreneur wants to colonize Mars, unleashed a literal bombshell:

The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors appeared on the second episode of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show last night (Sept. 9) to discuss his various business ventures. Colbert asked him about his plan to send people to Mars, which Musk described as a “fixer-up” of a planet. That led to this exchange:

“Eventually you can transform Mars into an Earthlike planet,” Musk said. “By warming it up.”

“With a blanket?” Colbert asked.

No, Stephen, not with a blanket. With a great number of thermonuclear bombs:

Musk has publicly supported this idea for a long time, but we’d wager it’s the first time anyone’s suggested it on a late-night talk show. The idea is that the nukes would melt the Mars’ polar ice caps and kickstart a greenhouse effect—similar to the one we’re currently experiencing on Earth—that would quickly make the planet warmer.

I will make a couple of points here:

  • First, you can get the same sort of effect, sans radiation, by dispersing a few tons of carbon black on the poles.  The increased albedo does the rest.
  • Second, this really is Bond villain nuts. Batsh%$ insane

Oops!

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Someone is getting fired

On the Chicago TV station WGN, they did a story on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, and their likely soon to be fired graphics guy called up the badge that the Nazis forced Jews to wear in concentration camps:

The news director of a Chicago TV station apologized after a staff member mistakenly chose a symbol of Nazi Germany to illustrate a story about Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.

“Regrettably, we failed to recognize that the artwork we chose to accompany the story contained an offensive symbol,” the director, Jennifer Lyons, said in an apology on Wednesday. “This was an unfortunate mistake. Ignorance is not an excuse.”

The apology came the morning after Tom Negovan, an anchor with WGN-TV Chicago, read a 20-second description of the holiday. Over his shoulder, viewers could see a graphic of a Star of David badge emblazoned with the German word “Jude,” or Jew, on striped material of the kind used in Nazi prisoner uniforms.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

Maybe Ron Paul Should Hit Marco Rubio with a Folding Chair at the next Debate

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Looks to me like a sucker punch

Because if Rubio’s staff is going WWE Raw on Paul’s Staff, responding in kind might be well advised:

Video footage appears to show a top official for the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio punching the national political director of a rival candidate, Rand Paul.

The incident is alleged to have occurred during a conference on a Michigan island on Thursday night.

In a Facebook post early on Friday morning, John Yob, a Michigan-based political consultant who serves as national political director for the Paul campaign, said Rubio’s deputy campaign manager, Rich Beeson, punched him in a downtown bar on Mackinac Island.

“I ran into a guy named Rich Beeson, who frankly I didn’t even know who it was at first because he isn’t relevant in our political world,” Yob said.

“He literally physically assaulted me by punching me in the face. The state police are looking for him. I have it on video from multiple angles. This will play out in the national media in the next few hours.”

Shannon Banner, spokesperson for Michigan state police, told the Guardian it was not involved in the investigation, which is being handled by the Mackinac Island police department.

“It wasn’t a brawl,” the Mackinac Island police chief, Brett Riccinto, told the Guardian on Friday. “If anything, it was a shove. Literally, it was a shove. This thing has been blown way, way, way out of proportion.”

Riccinto, however, said a complaint had been made for assault, and it had been forwarded to the prosecutor to decide if charges would be filed. He confirmed the alleged incident occurred at Horn’s Gaslight Bar & Restaurant.

It really is the silly season in Republican politics.

Damn! Genuine Emotions………

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One of the criticism of Hillary Clinton is that she is, or comes across as artificial and emotionally detached.

She was talking about the shootings today, and as this clip from CSPAN shows, she appears to be genuine and emotionally attached to the issue of sane gun laws.

If she wants the win the nomination, she needs to can the “Ice Queen” bullsh%$ and show more of this.

Normally, I Avoid Super Hero Racial Casting Issues, But………

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In the new Fantastic Four movie, Sue Storm (later Storm-Richards), the Invisible Girl, and Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, are being played by Kate Mara and Michael B. Jordan respectively.

Ms. Mara and Mr. Jordan are both talented actors with impressive CVs, but she is white, and he is black, and Sue and Johnny Storm are brother and sister.

I went to the Wiki page, and Papa Storm is played by Reg E. Cathey, a black character actor, so I am assuming that Sue is adopted, (well, duh!) and that there will be which means that there will almost certainly be 10 minutes of back story to explain this in the film.

If not, you are going to have a lot of stupid people demanding back story anyway.

My problem is that when one reintroduces a series, this is the sort of sh%$ that you don’t need.

There is a going to be a Lot of back-storying in this film anyway (The first Thor movie was pretty much just backstory, for example, which left me unimpressed), and I think this adds thing that don’t need to be there.

As I noted in my comparison of Captain America and Thor, (link) backstory cannot take precedence over plot and character, and this choice by the director and/or producer points that they have not learned this lesson.

So I think that this points to bad cinematic decision.

And don’t get me started on the fact that Ben Grimm is not wearing pants. The Thing wears pants.

Finally, a White Prosecutor Indicts a Cop for Murder under the Color of Law

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Warning: This is a video of a police officer shooting a man in the head without provocation

University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing has been indicted for felony murder:

A white police officer who gunned down an unarmed black man in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been indicted for murder by a grand jury, as the county prosecutor described the shooting as the “most asinine act” he had ever seen committed by a police officer.

Samuel DuBose, 43, was killed on 19 July by a single shot to the head fired by University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing during a routine traffic stop, in which DuBose was pulled over for not having a front license plate.

Tensing had maintained he was “dragged” by Dubose’s vehicle after the two entered into a physical altercation and was forced to shoot, but Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters said body-camera evidence completely contradicted this account.

In a frank assessment of the officer’s conduct, Deters said Tensing had “purposely killed” DuBose and that he “should never have been a police officer”.

………

Deters, who was visibly angered at points during the press conference, continued: “He [Tensing] wasn’t dealing with someone who was wanted for murder, OK? He was dealing with someone who didn’t have a front license plate. This is, in the vernacular, a pretty chicken-crap stop, all right? And – I could use harsher words.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” he added. “This is the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make, totally unwarranted.” Deters also said the death reflected poorly on the university police department and had advised Cincinnati police chief Jeffrey Blackwell that the force be disbanded and replaced with a new city police precinct on campus.

If the university police department, it would be a good thing, because it’s not just this guy, two of his fellow officers obstructed justice to protect him:

Police officers in Cincinnati appear to have corroborated a false account of the fatal shooting of Samuel DuBose in the immediate aftermath of the incident, a detailed analysis of body-camera video released on Wednesday shows.

………

A Guardian analysis of the nearly 28 minutes worth of Tensing’s body-camera footage released by the prosecutor’s office also shows the aftermath of the shooting and reveals that on three occasions, two other police officers repeat Tensing’s account that he was dragged by DuBose, and one of these officers claims to have witnessed it occurring.

Tensing repeats, multiple times throughout the footage, the claim that he was dragged by DuBose’s vehicle. But at five minutes and 44 seconds into the video, he states: “I think I’m OK. He was just dragging me.”

To which a second officer, who stands out of the frame, replies: “Yeah, I saw that.”

Tensing continues: “I thought I was going to get run over. I was trying to stop him.”

Then, at six minutes and 54 seconds into the footage, while Tensing is seemingly conversing with the same officer, he states: “He was dragging me, man.”

The officer replies, “Yeah.” To which Tensing continues: “I got my hand and my arm caught inside.” The officer then replies, “Yeah, I saw that.”

………

The Hamilton County prosecutor’s office did not reply to a question from the Guardian after Deter’s press conference over whether any other officers were being investigated in relation the incident.

The officers engaged in felony conspiracy, indict them as well.

We need to go zero-tolerance/broken window on this sh%$.

Out Mutha F%$#ing Standing Family Experience

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Scaramouche, Scaramouche,
can you do the Fandango!

The whole family went to the 2015 Artscape, billed as “America’s largest free arts festival!” (Yes they use the exclamation point).

It’s one part an arts festival, one part local music, one part classic Baltimore weirdness, one part corporate PR, one part an enormous concentration of stall food, and one part block party.

A great time was had by all, and on the way home, the Queen song, Bohemian Rhapsody, and, at my prodding, we all sang along.

It was a truly brilliant moment.

BTW, no one caught it on a cell phone video, and if we did, we wouldn’t share it with you.

It’s a family thing.

I Am Shocked That This Is Not Florida

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You know the saying, don’t mess with Alligators


And the inevitable Taiwanese computer animation

I asked a number of people about this, and they all guessed that it was Florida, but instead it was Texas where a man shouted f%$# that alligator and jumped in an infested lake, where he was promptly killed by an alligator:

The man in question, 28 year old Tommie Woodward, mocked warning signs cautioning against getting in the water because of the alligator before jumping in and meeting a grizzly end.

Alligators had been spotted around the marina previously, with plenty of notices being placed around to warn people not to get too close to the water, let alone jump in and go swimming.

Woodward and an unidentified woman decided to ignore said warnings and get in the water, and while Woodward was tragically killed by the animal, the woman was thankfully unharmed.

The first gator death in Texas in about 180 years.

It’s been 8 years since a Florida gator death.

Also, Florida is cray cray, so it is not surprising that we all jumped to this conclusion.