Quote of the day

"It was a tremendous waste of time and manpower, but we still had a job to do, and our officers did it."

-Kronenwetter Police Chief Daniel Joling, speaking about the raid of a root beer party.

A Good Judge

Many complain that the judges in this country are out of touch, or trying to set their own agendas.  In some ways that may be true, but its not necessarily a bad thing.

Take a look at Judge Olszewski in Pennsylvania.  He recently sentenced three teenage latinos to get GEDs and learn English.  The men were convicted of committing some (relatively) minor street crimes.  They needed translators during the court proceedings.  Obviously locking these guys up for 2 years is going to cost the commonwealth a lot of money and may turn them into career criminals.  This ruling could turn them into more productive citizens and I'm all for it.

DB's Chute?

Update - Guess not.

Some kids in Washington might have found DB Cooper's parachute.  

For those of you who don't know who DB Cooper is, back in the good old days of air travel, before you had to walk through a metal detector (let alone take off your shoes) a man boarded a Northwest Orient (now Northwest Airlines) flight and hijacked it.  The government gave him $200,000 (which would be worth about $1 million now) and he got back onto his commandeered 727.  They took off from SEAtac and he jumped out somewhere near the Oregon boarder (the planes have since been fitted with a device to prevent the rear door from opening in flight).  

He was never heard from again.

A few years later a kid found several thousand of the ransom money in a river.  But since the river is so far from where the parachute was found, if the chute is genuine it means it is highly likely Cooper survived.

Another strange thing about this case is that it was two children who found the two big pieces of evidence.  

Anyway, after 35+ years the case is still open.  If you think your grandpa might be DB Cooper, email the FBI seattle office.  More info can be found here.  

The Ugly America

While sitting down eating Easter dinner, I was privy to the ugly side of America.  As I was eating, not talking politics (as I normally do) two white men in their 40s were talking about Obama.  

They both said something to the effect of "I hope that Obama wins so I can see the first president assassinated in a long time."  

This is some of the ugliest type of language I have heard in a long time.  I told both of these redneck assholes that I equate their language with treason and they they run counter to everything I love about America.  They did not like that too much, so I sit here now at my laptop instead of continuing dinner with such ignorant people.

It is one thing to say you oppose someone based on the issues, their personality, or other things.  But to wish the death of a candidate just because one of his parents was not white is not acceptable in my book.  Unfortunately both these people have children who they probably say the same things to, creating a new generation of white supremacists.  

Now i should issue a disclaimer that these two fucks are just stupid.  I doubt they'd ever hurt anyone, but to say this type of stuff with a straight face, or to say it at all, is not something that should be done.

Luckily, these types of viewpoints have become the minority viewpoint in America, but as long as there are a handful who share these views it's a problem.  It's not clear how you can change viewpoints like this, and I think a lot of it is resentment to minorities since these guys have shitty jobs.  They blame everyone but themselves for the fact that they don't make quite enough money for a good life.

Maybe low income white America isn't Obama county, maybe its not Hillary country, maybe its not even McCain country.  It may just very well be David Duke country.