The phrase, “That Don’t Make No Sense.” from the Coen brothers’ movie O Brother Where Art Thou?, comes to mind every single time I read news from the U.S.
Amnesty International: Time For Stricter Controls on Taser Use
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/amnesty-international-time-stricter-c
According to data collected by Amnesty International, at least 500 people in the USA have died since 2001 after being shocked with Tasers either during their arrest or while in jail.
“Among the cases reviewed, 90 percent of those who died were unarmed. Many of the victims were subjected to multiple shocks.”
When a cop shoots an unarmed person, and they die on the spot, or later in the hospital, that’s “bad.” But if a cop zaps somebody with a taser and the zapee dies on the spot, or later in his cell … it’s an Oopsie??!!
Where are the investigations? 500 people killed by cops is a headline. When cops kill 500 people, 90% of them unarmed, it means the Firesign Theatre was correct when they said on one of their albums, “Help … It’s The Police!”
In other news … From Police State to Crazy Catholic Capers …
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. The Catholic Church Elite went bananas recently because under Obamacare they’d have to pony up the dough if women in their employ want birth control pills. Obama neatly sidestepped the issue by saying insurance companies will foot the bill because pills are cheaper than paying for delivering babies. Catholic employers are out of the loop. They won’t be forced into an “occasion of sin” by providing contraceptives.
End of story?
Nope.
Fox News brought on Father Jonathan Morris, premium member of the Legion Of Christ, who said the clergy should be “ready to die” to fight President Obama’s mandate that health insurers cover birth control.
The Legion of Christ is a Roman Catholic right wing sect founded in Mexico in 1941 by Marcial Maciel, who was its General Director until 2005. The Vatican denounced Maciel following revelations that he was an equal opportunity monster who sexually abused numerous underage seminarians and fathered at least three children with two women.
The "very serious and objectively immoral acts" of Maciel, were "confirmed by incontrovertible testimonies" and represented "true crimes and manifest a life without scruples or authentic religious sentiment," the Vatican said. The Vatican also stated, the Legion, " ... created a "mechanism of defense around Maciel, sheilding him from accusations and suppressing damaging witnesses from reporting abuse.”
Let’s pause here for a moment. The Vatican has protected pedophile priests for … oh I don’t know … hundreds of years … so just how unspeakably evil does someone have to be to get denounced by the church?
Father Jonathan Morris was an advisor on the Mel Gibson Jesus snuff film, The Passion of The Christ, and joined FOX as a general news contributor in 2005.He said to Liz Cheney, who was filling in for Sean Hannity, “We recognize it goes against my conscience to kill. The president is saying, 'You know what? Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to kill that person any more. We’re going to just make sure you pay somebody else to do the bidding for you, to kill that person for you.' That’s an analogy but that’s exactly what it is.”
If a night manager of a convenience store said something like that I’d pay for my cheese puffs and get the hell out of there as fast as I could. But when a Legion Of Christ member, a sect created by a sex criminal, lectures Americans on birth control with the daughter of Satan on national television … the mind reels … and then bursts into flame.
We’ve been living in Canada for about 7 months. There are serious environmental and social issues on the table up here. The Conservative government, led by Stephen Harper, is as scary as any group of conservatives anywhere.
But …
There is no nationally televised crazy up here. Not even a little bit.
Starting 25 miles south of where I’m typing this … crazy is institutionalized. The familiar has become normal and the normal is crazy.
Have you ever watched a FOX News program from start to finish? I can’t. I tried a couple of times to watch Bill O’Reilly, or Glen Beck when he was on, but I could never make it to the first commercial break. It hurt my head too much. 10 minutes of FOX and I’m yelling at my television in pain and outrage.
I used to work at a cable television company in Los Angeles. The Public Access channel pumped out some of the weirdest programs imaginable but it was okay because the only people who watched them were the people who produced the weirdness in the first place. The crazy was contained. But FOX and their mouthpieces aren’t broadcasting their gibberish on public access channels or short-wave radio stations from some garage. They’re mainlining crazy directly into Americans’ brains. 16 years of FOX and 24 years of Rush Limbaugh have turned millions of Americans into people who literally don’t know right from wrong.
Forget E pluribus unum. I suggest we go with Non compos mentis. It’ll come in handy in case there’s ever a trial.