- Here’s a good sign that you’ve ingested, snorted or smoked a bit too much cocaine: police find you at a nice hotel, trying to eat an elevator door. not exactly your run-of-the-mill stoner with the munchies, that’s for sure. William Catoe of Virginia Beach, Va., it appears you may have a drug problem. I’m not a doctor or addiction specialist, but generally people without drug problems don’t attempt to eat large, metal elevator doors. That, combined with the fact that you told officers who showed up at the Westin Hotel in Virginia Beach that you were high on cocaine and then brawled with the officer who tried to arrest you, would seem to indicate that you are indeed a drug addict. Officers described Catoe as "out of control" when they found him sinking his teeth into the elevator door on the hotel's 11th floor. That might be an understatement, if anything. Officer Brandon Foss was the one who tried to arrest Catoe for public intoxication but wound up on the wrong end of a drug-addled physical assault. From there, it was off to the hospital for Catoe. While being treated, he reportedly admitted injecting cocaine that was "crazy and bad." He was apparently telling the truth, because when officers searched his room they found syringes and a glass container with blow inside. Catoe’s tally for the day: charges of malicious wounding, assaulting a police officer, attempting to disarm a police officer, disorderly conduct, drug possession and destruction of property. One incident brought on by Colombian nose candy, a nice six-pack of charges, not bad for a day’s work….for a drug addict, that is………
- Believe it or not, life got worse for Jack Bauer last night on 24. The action picked up with Jack fleeing the hospital after Ryan Burnett was killed by John Quinn (not Quentin as I wrote last week, although to be fair, Jon Voight has terrible diction when he says Quinn’s name), an assassin working on behalf Jonas Hodges’ (Voight) Starkwood Industries, a major defense contractor for the U.S. government and basically a fictional Blackwater. Jack managed to escape the hospital, find a car to steal from the parking garage adjacent to the hospital and use the laptop on the car’s passenger seat (who leaves their Mac Book sitting out in plain view on the front passenger seat of their car in a dark parking garage?) to pull images off a disc of surveillance footage he stole from the hospital security center. Once he identified the man who’d attacked him and killed Burnett, Jack used a Sprint wireless card to send the image to Renee Walker, who was back at the FBI field office cleaning out her desk, turning in her badge and signing paperwork for the indefinite suspension she’d been given for going over Larry Moss’ head to get Jack a chance to interrogate Burnett in the first place. Before Larry arrives back at the office, Jack also calls Renee and asks for her help in tracking down the man in the photograph. When Renee runs the face through a facial recognition program and tells Jack that the man he’s looking for is Quinn, a former black ops commando who works for Starkwood, Renee suggests that Jack talk to Sen. Blaine Mayer, the very man leading the crusade against Jack and his former stomping grounds, CTU. This is the same Mayer who hauled Jack before his congressional committee less than 24 hours prior to be grilled and likely face prosecution. However, Starkwood is another of Mayer’s targets and he’s been digging into their dirty deeds and trying to shut them down for six months. Renee digs up Mayer’s home address and current whereabouts from the White House visitor log, encrypts the data and sends it to Jack. That’s her last move before Larry comes back, pops his head in her office to talk before she leaves for her suspension and comes out of the mini-meeting convinced that Renee has talked to Jack and is still helping him. Larry orders Janis Gold to pull up Renee’s phone logs for the past 15 minutes and also see what activity she’s been up to on her computer. Janis finds the sent data and phone call to the stolen cell phone, but Renee refuses to ‘fess up and Janis, tech wiz she is, can’t decrypt the sent data. Renee is on her way out of the building when security stops her and Larry confronts her. He demands she tell him what she knows, an order she refuses. Off Renee goes to a holding cell, while Jack is on his way to Sen. Mayer’s home in Georgetown to see what he can find out about the connection between Starkwood and Gen. Juma’s attack on the White House. When the senator arrives home, Jack startles him by appearing out of nowhere, but Jack taunts Mayer that, “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead.” Jack explains why he’s come and even though Mayer insists that no connection exists between Starkwood and Juma, Jack demands to see his files. While Jack searches, he and Mayer have an interesting talk about loss, duty and whether the United States can remain safe and secure in the world without crossing lines like Jack has done torturing people. The conversation is interrupted when Jack comes across a picture from a fatal car crash involving an informant Mayer had against Starkwood. The crash was ruled the result of drunk driving, but when Jack spots none other than John Quinn at the crash site, dressed as an EMT, he realizes this was no accident. Reading testimony given by the informant prior to the crash, Jack finds the man alleged that Starkwood was developing bio-terror weapons, the same type of weapons Juma allegedly tested on a village of people in Sangala before firebombing the entire village to cover his tracks. Jack theorizes that Juma gave Starkwood a safe haven for testing its weapons in exchange for its help with the attacks against the American government. But before Jack can get much further, Larry Moss pulls a slick maneuver back at the FBI office to find out where Mr. Bauer is. Morris O’Brian, Chloe’s husband, has come to the office to find out why his wife has been taken into FBI custody after showing up at their office to work for them. Larry offers Morris an interesting option: help crack the encrypted data Renee Walker sent to Jack and all charges against Chloe for deleting information from the FBI server to assist Jack previously will be dropped. If Morris doesn’t help, Chloe faces a minimum of 15 years in prison. Morris decides his wife is most important and is able to decrypt the file in mere minutes. Chloe is livid when she’s released from her holding room and learns what Morris has done, but he informs her that if Jack really is innocent in Burnett’s death, he can explain it when he’s captured. As the FBI and local police close in on Mayer’s home to make that a reality, another body gets thrown into Jack’s path - literally. A knock at the door is accompanied by a shout of, “Metro Police!” Mayer convinces Jack that he can talk to the police and convince them that Jack’s theory about Starkwood and Juma is legit and get Jack cleared. However, when Mayer opens the door it’s John Quinn waiting for him, not the police. Quinn drops Mayer with an automatic rifle and goes after Jack too, but of course J. Bauer escapes. He flees on foot and ends up in a local junkyard of some sort where he scales a fence and is soon followed by Quinn. Jack lays a trap, leaving a trail of blood right up and into a small trailer in the middle of the junkyard. Quinn follows the trail inside, with Jack pouncing and using a front end loader to turn the trailer over on its side, trapping Quinn inside. That doesn’t stop him for long and soon enough, Jack and Quinn are brawling on the trailer and around the junkyard. Jack finally gets the upper hand, stabbing Quinn in the chest and managing to coax one key piece of information out of his adversary before he dies: that the bio-terror weapons are already in the country. A search of Quinn’s person turns up his cell phone, from which Jack gets the location where the weapons are coming in: the Port of Alexandria. With every law enforcement agency in the area looking for him, Jack knows he has to go after the weapons and calls Tony Almeida to meet him at the port and help with whatever is there. The final storyline from this episode took place at the White House, where President Taylor learned of Jack’s alleged involvement in Burnett’s death, the fact that her chief advisor Ethan Kanan authorized the interrogation and the fact that one media outlet has uncovered the incident and is planning to report it. As the president addresses the nation about the attack on the White House, Kanan confronts Olivia Taylor, the president’s daughter and newly appointed advisor, about the leak. Because Olivia leaked information about the president’s opponent during the election, Kanan accuses her of being responsible for this leak too. Olivia denies any involvement and is eventually able to prove her innocence, but the tension between she and Kanan is definitely not over. On the surface, not a huge episode but it was actually very interesting and took several storylines forward in leaps and bounds, so a big thumbs up from where I sit. Until next week……..
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! My boys (and girls) in Belfast are the ones to thank for this edition of everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the globe. There have been multiple riots springing up in and around Belfast over the weekend after the arrests of three men in the killings of two soldiers in Northern Ireland last week. The best action has unquestionably been in Lurgan, a town in County Armagh, 20 miles west of Belfast, where some kick-ass rioters have hurled petrol (gas) bombs at police. Gangs of teens are roaming the streets, causing chaos and best of all, there have been no arrests or injuries. That’s doubly ironic because police announced the arrests that sparked the riots on Saturday and said the three men have been taken to the police service's Serious Crime Suite in County Antrim. One of the men, and I beam with pride at the description given of him by police, is Colin Duffy, a dissident republican from Lurgan. So one of their locals is arrested, the residents of Lurgan aren’t down and so they riot, good times! This is absolutely no reflection of my feelings about the tragic shooting of those two British soldiers at a base in Massereene, in Antrim, as they were preparing to ship out for duty in Afghanistan. There’s no way to condone anyone committing that sort of atrocity, period. However, those arrested haven’t been proven guilty and until they are, I can enjoy the riots of their supporters. As far as I know, a militant splinter group, the Real IRA, claimed it had carried out the attack on the soldiers, and I don’t know if any of those arrested are members of the group. What I do know is that I loves me some riot action and any time people are lobbing petrol bombs at police, count me in for a riot-tastic good time………..
- One thing you don’t want to do in life is toss the term douche bag around arbitrarily. If you’re going to call someone a douche bag, you want to make sure they really, truly deserve it, because that’s the type of characterization you just can’t take back. That being said, I feel very confident in calling e 63-year-old Hayden Hitchcock of Reno County (Kan.) a total and utter douche bag. What makes him such an ideal candidate for douche-baggery, you ask? The answer is simple: a record 11th freaking DUI conviction. Right, because 10 would just be mildly offensive, why not go for 11? How someone is not behind bars after DUI No. 4, I don’t know. One is a mistake, two is a total lapse of judgment and beyond that……look, I realize jails everywhere are crowded and that there are murderers, rapists, burglars, etc. who need to be behind bars. But you’re telling me that you can’t find a spot in a cell somewhere for an ass clown who has gotten behind the wheel drunk that many times, putting dozens of lives in danger every single time? Besides, if Hitchcock has been arrested for driving drunk 11 times, you know he’s driven while hammered a couple hundreds times, minimum. Someone like that rolls out of bed in the morning with alcohol fumes oozing from his pores and knocks down a fifth of Jack Daniels for breakfast. Thus, I share the outrage of prosecutor Amanda Voth, who decided to list all of Hayden Hitchcock’s DUI convictions in court. "He has convictions from 1984, 1984, 1986, 1991, 1994, 1994, 1996, 2000, 2003, 2007 and this one," said Voth. I also support Voth’s request to the judge to hand down the maximum sentence, which Judge Richard Rome did. "You're just addicted to whiskey and it's really sad," said Rome. "I can't express that enough. You've become a threat to people on the highway or street and it's the only thing we can do is lock you up." Threat? That’s putting it mildly. And no, I don’t care that Hitchcock’s most recent crash was on a moped, which is theoretically less dangerous than if he were driving an automobile. Fact is, he had a blood alcohol level of 0.14 when he was arrested. Someone needs to work on toughening up the DUI laws in Kansas, because under the current law, the maximum sentence Hitchcock could receive is a year in jail and a $5,000 fine. The only way to kick the penalty up a notch is if there is a person killed or seriously injured in the incident. Another big problem with the current law is that the penalty is the same regardless of the number of previous offenses. Right, because the fact that a person has done the same thing over and over, showing total disregard for the lives of every person on the road with them should have no bearing on their punishment. I don’t know the specifics of the two separate DUI bills currently in the Kansas Legislature, but since both would toughen penalties for drunk drivers, I’ll throw my support behind both of them. Really, the only silver lining here is that Hayden Hitchcock will have to spend an additional month behind bars because he didn't have a required ignition interlock device on his moped, which gives legislators an additional month to get their act together and toughen up the DUI laws. Clearly, people like Hayden Hitchcock have no regard for the current law, otherwise he would not be getting plastered and driving while on parole for a 2006 drunk driving incident where he drove into a set of fuel pumps and set them on fire. Step you game up, Kansas legislators……
- Sunny, happy news is so difficult to find these days. The economic crisis around the world has everyone in a gloom-and-doom mood, there are wars, drug epidemics, political crises….how’s about some upbeat news? Let’s try the environment, where….the world is facing an increasing risk of "irreversible" climate shifts because worst-case scenarios warned of two years ago are being realized? Damn. That’s neither happy nor sunny. Thanks for nothing, international panel of scientists who have dished out that disturbing warning. This panel claims that temperatures, sea levels, acid levels in oceans and ice sheets were already moving "beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived.” As a three-day conference in Copenhagen, Denmark came to an end, the panel presented its findings to nearly 2,000 researchers gathered to discuss climate change. Predictably, they called on policy-makers to use all tools available to reduce dangerous emissions of greenhouse gases. Actually, the chance of that happening is probably better at this moment than it was at any point in the past eight years, as the United States actually has a competent, non-ass hat in the Oval Office, a man who doesn’t actually deny that global warming is real. So if President Obama is listening, he needs to know that the current climate situation on the planet may be as severe as the worst-case scenarios predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. The IPCC issued warnings in 2007 of a future rife with flooding, drought, storms and mass extinction of species. According to this panel, that situation has done nothing but get worse the past two years, threatening to add potential social costs across the planet to the litany of physical, geographical and environmental problems because of climate change. If you believe this particular scientific panel, temperature rises above 2 degrees Celsius would lead to climate disruption for the rest of the century and disproportionately affect poor nations. “Recent observations show that societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk,” the report said. These conclusions and many more reached at the conference will be presented to politicians when they meet in Copenhagen in December. The politicians will be discussing a new global agreement on greenhouse gas emission levels to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Here’s hoping they choose not to adhere to the W. doctrine on the environment, which basically is comprised of equal parts stupidity, ignorance and war-mongering……..
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