- It’s time for another edition of “Whose police force is
the most corrupt in the world today?” and the journey for the day takes us to
Puerto Rico, an island nation where 16 former and current police officers have
been charged with running a criminal ring to generate money through bribes,
robberies and drug sales, authorities said Thursday. The law enforcement heroes
are accused of planting evidence to make false arrests and then extorting
victims, demanding money in exchange for their release, according to U.S.
Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez. But wait…there’s more. Lots more. In addition
to bogus arrests and extortion scams, the officers are also are accused of
entering homes used by suspected criminals to steal money, drugs and other
items. On the surface, it’s a smart play. You target criminals, you arrest
criminals and when they’re hauled off, you take their loot. Maybe you don’t
even wait until they arrested because after all, where is a drug dealer going
to go to file a complaint if his drugs and money are stolen? He sure as hell
can’t go to the police – they’re the ones who stole his sh*t in the first
place. Toss a few hundred cases of allegedly providing false testimonies,
manipulating court records and not appearing in court to force the dismissal of
cases in exchange for bribes and you have yourself a genuine mess that spanned
a long stretch from 2009 until January 2014. In one reported incident, two
officers allegedly conducted a traffic stop and stole some $22,000 in what
authorities say was illegal drug money. None of this would appear to be good
news for Puerto Rico's police department, which is undergoing a 10-year
federally mandated reform after a 2011 report accused officers of illegal
killings, corruption and civil rights violations. Reform can be a relative
term, but not this relative……..
- Paul McCartney is a blazing liar. Sure, Sir Paul has been
knighted by the Queen of England and he is one of two living members of
arguably the biggest rock band in history, but that does not make him infallible
and if he’s going around doing indefensible sh*t like telling Jared Leto that
he has musical greatness in him, then McCartney has gone several steps too far.
Sure, Leto won Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards earlier this year for his
role in “Dallas Buyers Club” and that seems great, but it doesn’t mean
that his band 30 Seconds to Mars, isn’t a steaming pile of musical monkey turds
that sounds like the unholy union of a broken synthesizer and Lady Gaga if
someone woke her up in the middle of the night and demanded that she sing a
song without the benefit of auto tuning. Yet there was McCartney, telling Leto
that it was a good idea for him to get to work on new music for his band. "I
was talking to Paul McCartney at one of these events during awards season –
always great to drop Paul McCartney's name, don't worry, I'll do Bono next –
anyway, I was kind of prodding him for some advice,” Leto said. “And he just
talked about something I've heard many creative people say before. He said,
'You know what? Just write. Show up every day and write something. And
keep writing. Even when you think you don't have something to say, just do it.
And wonderful things will happen.'” In all fairness to McCartney, he may not
have had any idea who Leto was and merely thought, “Hey, I may as well
encourage that long-haired hippie and his garage rock band. What harm could
that possibly do?” If only someone could slide Sir Paul a copy of 30 Seconds to
Mars’ latest album before he encourages them to write and record, ugly
incidents like this could be avoided………
- No credit for undoing something you shouldn’t have done in
the first place, United States House of Representatives. Sure, you 435 Brooks
Brothers suit-wearing ass hats finally passed legislation to end the National Security
Agency's bulk collection of American phone records, but don’t pretend you would
have gotten to this point if not for a series of embarrassing disclosures by
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Hell, even this measure is a diluted,
weak-ass version of what should have been passed and Democrat Jan Schakowsky of
Illinois knows it. "We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the
good," said Schakowsky, an intelligence committee member. The bill passed
by a vote of 303 to 120, with 9 members not voting. Schakowsky acted as if he
represented the feelings of many Republicans and Democrats who voted for the
measure but wanted tougher provisions, but if those men and women had any real
stones, they would have found a way to force through a requirement for an
independent public advocate on the secret intelligence court that oversees the
NSA. Dubbed the USA Freedom Act, this impotent piece of legislation is the
solidification of a proposal made in January by President Barack Obama, who
said he wanted to end the NSA's practice of collecting the "to and
from" records of nearly every American landline telephone call under a
program that searched the data for connections to terrorist plots abroad. Under
the proposed law, the NSA would have authority to request certain records from
the companies to search them in terrorism investigations in response to a
judicial order. If the Senate can pass a version of this bill, then America
will take one very tiny step in the right direction……..
- Verrrry bold, golf
equipment manufacturer Callaway, very bold. Companies such as Callaway are
always looking for new ways to promote their brand and boost their bottom line
– with a bare minimum of risk and expense, of course. Callaway just may have
found the least-risky idea ever for generating publicity while simultaneously
offering a juicy reward that it most certainly will not have to make good on. In
a thinly veiled effort to jolt the struggling golf equipment market, the
company is offering golfers a chance to win the same amount of money that Phil
Mickelson wins at this year's U.S. Open. The "Big Big Bertha
Payday" promotion seems like a nice offer: Golfers who demo the brand's
Big Bertha drivers or fairway wood at retailers before the final round of this
year's U.S. Open will be entered into a drawing and the winner will get a lump
sum payment of the exact amount of money Mickelson, who endorses Callaway, wins
at Pinehurst. If this were 2009, this would be a great chance for weekend
hackers everywhere to win some sweet cash and possibly even the $1.5 million
that the winner of the tournament takes home. As is, Mickelson has been
no-showing for events and missing cuts all year long and if he misses the
36-hole cut at Pinehurst, that means he gets no money at all and neither does
the contestant whose fate is tied to his. Those who demo the product will be
given a code and entered into a random drawing. Mickelson has tried to win
money for strangers before and in 2010, golf retailer Golfsmith offered a full refund on
Callaway drivers purchased in the month before the Masters if Mickelson won. He
did, and the company paid back $1 million in refunds. The risk of that
happening to Callaway this time went out the window right around the same time as
Mickelson’s habit of actually winning tournaments………
- Tablets are surging in popularity, but they’re not a
ubiquitous item for people the way a smartphone is. In some sense, they remain
a luxury item for many and although Apple’s
iPad and iPad Mini retail at a consistent clip, rivals such as Android tablets
have seen a decline in sales of late and their relatively hefty price points
don’t help matters. The quest for more affordable tablets that still deliver
quality performance is always in swing and in that spirit, HP has released a
new Android tablet, the HP Plus 7, that aims for the sweet spot of solid
performance while retailing for a modest $100. While its durability and
reception by users with a taste for non-chintzy hardware that doesn’t feel like
an overpriced children’s toy are to be determined, the HP Plus 7 features a
1024-by-600 display with quad-core ARM Cortex A7 processor at 1 Ghz with 1 GB
of RAM. A basic Google search of computer terms for the ignorant will reveal
that those are not impressive numbers, nor are the tablet’s 8 GB of onboard
storage with a MicroSD slot for expandable storage and 802.11n wireless
connectivity. Even the ear-facing 2-megapixel camera and 0.7-megapixel
front-facing camera are yawn-worthy and when prospective buyers realize that
this glorified Etch-A-Sketch does not include Bluetooth and is accompanied only
by the feeble offer of 25 GB of cloud storage via Box free with every purchase,
there enthusiasm is going to be tougher to locate that Mitch McConnell’s
personality. Oh, and the HP Minus 7 has a weak 2800mAh battery that will only
last for about six hours. Sure, it will include all of Google’s services, but
the best part of this technological train wreck is that it weighs in at about
0.65 pounds, making it easier to throw off the nearest cliff if someone
actually gives it to you as a present……..
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