Le Sequoit

Back At It

That was a bit of a break. I'm sure my legions of fans have been wondering if I had joined the millions of ex-bloggers, moved on to sudoku, become infatuated with The American Idol, or taken two weeks to tour the South of France. No, a little, good god no, and I wish. Alas, this is the time of year when I have to work sixty or so hours a week, putting a damper on less ostensibly productive pursuits.

Plus, golf season approaches, and a certain amount of mental preparation is required to fine tune the talent of over thinking. A little practice is in order, as the muscles must again be properly estranged from any type of repetitive motion memory, lest they become uncooperative in the eventuality that no two swings will be alike.

It's not like there aren't things to go on about. April 15th has passed, and the median has contributed their 10% to the feds while the rich have coughed up their 5.9%. The war we are at but not really in drones on to more and more disinterest from the American public. Parade ran a front page story about how some lucky vets can get state of the art prosthetic devices. Vet funding continues to flounder under the crusaders of the Bush Administration.

In a side note, I remembered that the owners of Parade, tied for 25th of Forbes' 400 richest Americans and apparently thinking that 5.9% was too high a price to be rich in America, were once indicted on a billion dollars' worth of tax evasion. I've just wasted a half hour on the free side of the internet trying to discover the outcome of all that, but the only possible source I could find that didn't involve credit cards was The Nation's archives, currently down for rebuild. Assuming a deal was made, I'm thinking that a billion dollars would have bought a lot of prosthetics.

And then, of course, there is the ongoing investigation of the Valerie Plame outing, where it has become known that the President himself ordered the selective dissemination of classified information in order to more fully inform the American public in defense of WMD claims. Of course, he was more fully informing us with previously discredited information. His defense? He was not aware it was discredited information. How desperate must a supposed world leader be to continually rely on ignorance as a last defense? Astonishing, but again, largely ignored.

Gas prices rise steadily as big oil grabs all it can before the inevitable walk down before the congressional elections.

By far the most disturbing news in this corner of the woods is the sad case of the beating taken by a Frank Jude, Jr. The story is that a bunch of cops were at an all-white party, and Jude, no saint himself, walked in. He left soon, but the cops' story is that one of their wallets with badge was missing, as it's apparently a common practice for a cop to leave these things lying around at a big drunken party.

The story continues to where Jude was beaten savagely by a dozen or so of Milwaukee's finest, having been dragged from his truck. There were many more witnesses. The woman who'd brought Jude to the party was on the phone with 911 the whole time, until the phone was grabbed away from her while she reported that the responding on duty cops had joined in the beating.

Two officers eventually came forward with details, after having first lied on their reports. Many others testified that they had no idea who specifically was doing the beating. Three were indicted. All three were acquitted by an all white jury.

It's an old story, but the part that always gets to me is the inevitable comments about the overall integrity of the police force, as if they are not responsible for the few "bad eggs". Where is the pressure within the force to get to the bottom of this? It's obvious such pressure is no match for the collective resistance put forth within the force.

It's not about a few "bad eggs", is it?

posted by sequoit @ 1:50 PM