- There are few professions a city can less afford to have
go on strike than John Q. Law. When there are no police officers to keep order,
people tend to do whatever the hell they want and anarchy reigns. Such is life
for authorities in the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo, who have threatened
striking police officers with criminal charges as the federal government sends
in more troops in a bid to end a week of madness and mayhem that has left more
than 120 people dead. Espirito Santo is one of several Brazilian states trying
to find answers for a growing budget crisis that is hampering essential public
services for millions of citizen and police in Espirito Santo have apparently
decided that if they don’t get paid, they don’t protect or serve and therefore,
they’ve created a security vacuum and led to rampant assaults, heists and
looting, often in broad daylight. Such issued caused limited protests by police
in nearby Rio de Janeiro, where terrified residents of the packed city of 12
million people already deal with certain regions of their town where even paid
police officers refuse to go due to constant violence between rival drug gangs.
According to a spokesman for the local police union in Espirito Santo, the
death toll from a week of chaos has risen to 122 and while police claim that
many of the dead are believed to come from rival criminal gangs, this isn’t
really the preferred method of thinning the criminal herd………
- Soccer fan, keep being yourself, keep senselessly killing
people for no good reason and never, ever use your brain to do basic reasoning
for even a single second. Keep doing things like stampeding the gate at a
stadium before a league match in Angola, leaving at least 17 people dead and
dozens injured and leaving the friends and families of those you killed asking
why their loved ones had to die just for trying to attend a match. This ugly
incident happened in the northwestern town of Uige when hundreds of people
rushed at one of the stadium gates, creating a pile of humanity that caused
some people to fall and be trampled underfoot. Ernesto Luis, director general
of a local hospital, confirmed that there were 76 casualties, of whom 17 died,
among them some children. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has instructed
officials to assist the injured and to open an investigation, but at this
point, finding the right person to point the finger at is going to a) be very
difficult and b) do nothing to bring back those who senselessly lost their
lives simply for going to the stadium to watch the inaugural game between home
team Santa Rita de Cassia and Recreativo de Libolo in the national Girabola
competition. Nothing says decency and respect for your fellow man as he or she
lies dying on the ground in order to get the best seat at the big game…….
- The South has never been shy about its love of guns. For
that reason, it should surprise no one that Mississippi lawmakers want to bring
back the firing squad, electric chair and gas chamber as execution methods, following
in the steps of three other states that have gone gun-ho (pun intended) for
different reasons. Oklahoma reintroduced the gas chamber, Utah the firing squad
and Tennessee the electric chair, all due to a nationwide scarcity of lethal
injection drugs for death row inmates on account of those drugs being produced
in European countries that do not believe in the death penalty. That’s not the
issue at hand for Mississippi, where legislator Andy Gipson said he introduced
House Bill 638 in response to lawsuits filed by “liberal, left-wing radicals”
challenging the use of lethal injection drugs as cruel and unusual punishment. "I
have a constituent whose daughter was raped and killed by a serial killer over
25 years ago, and that person's still waiting for the death penalty. The family
is still waiting for justice," Gipson said. Gipson’s bill passed the
House, 74-43, and has moved to the Senate for more debate. Mississippi has had trouble obtaining the
execution drugs it once used and hasn’t sent an individual shuffling off this
mortal coil forcibly since 2012 and with 47 people on death row - including
some who have been there for decades - Mississippi needs to find, or create, ways
to make their legally mandated demise a reality……..
- It takes a lot of chutzpah to malign the character of
little people, especially years after their demise. The ex-husband of the late
acting icon Judy Garland has just that level of kahones, claiming that his
then-teenage wife was groped on the set of “The Wizard of Oz” by a number of
the actors who played Munchkins in the film. The film, adapted from L. Frank
Baum’s novella, was released in 1939 and starred Garland in the lead role as
Dorothy, directed by Victor Fleming. It’s largely considered to be the iconic
cinematic adaptation of the story, but it apparently came with a lot of bad
memories for Sid Luft, who was Garland’s third husband, holding that role from
1952 to 1965. Granted, Luft himself has been dead since 2005, but he reached
out from beyond the grave to mock the Munchkins in his memoirs, “Judy and I: My
Life with Judy Garland,” was just dropped. In the book, Luft alleged that the
actors who played the Munchkins got a little too handsy during filming. “They
would make Judy’s life miserable on set by putting their hands under her
dress,” Luft wrote. “The men were 40 or more years old. They thought they could
get away with anything because they were so small.” Yes, who would ever notice
those tiny hands intruding into places they shouldn’t be? This isn't the first
time someone from Garland’s camp has bashed the actors in Munchkin suits, as
the actress, who died in 1969, denounced the actors as “little drunks… [who]
got smashed every night. They [the producers] picked them up in butterfly
nets.” Yes, but if you play “Dark Side of the Moon” on vinyl backwards with the
movie, it still provides an awesome soundtrack to which you can watch the
(allegedly) gropey Munchkins do their thing……..
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