DAILY NEWS – JANUARY 18th, 2010

DAILY NEWS – JANUARY 18th, 2010

DATELINE: FOLLOWING THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD –Former US Vice President Dick Cheney said he would eventually have to consider a heart transplant. Transplant? Perhaps he should instead start singing and skipping down the road through munchkin land in search of the Wizard of Oz… Just because I'm presumin, 'That he could be a human, If he only had a heart.

DATELINE: AT WALMART, BUYING OUT ALL THEIR DUCT TAPE – Why? You might ask? Well, didn’t you hear Sarah Palin??? She will not be shut up. She said it herself. So, because she can’t help but either put her foot in her mouth or spew stupid from her mouth, it is time for a fucking duct tape intervention.

DATELINE: SPEAKING OF DUCT TAPE – It is long overdue to call some of these stupid fucking news anchors on the dumbass questions they ask. It’s bad enough that here in BC we have to suffer through the gallactically stupid morning desk jock, but on all stations, the dumb question has taken on epidemic proportions. This morning, as police officers from all over the country gather to bury one of their own, an incredibly somber situation and one deserving utmost respect, took the stupid to a new level. While interviewing an infield reporter who was standing in front of the police officers as they assembled, she asked ‘what is the mood there?’ Huh? What the fuck does she think the mood would be? It’s like asking someone who just watched a loved one killed ‘how do you feel?’ The absolutely fucking dumb up-yer-ass questions: yet another reason for people to tune out the news. Despite the stupidity, prayers go out to the family of Toronto Police Department Sergeant Ryan Russell, who was killed in the line of duty last week.

DATELINE: IN HAITI, MAKING A BAD SITUATION WORSE – Baby Doc Duvalier still has not revealed his reason for returning to Haiti, but it cannot be coincidental that he arrived as the country is dealing with a totally fucked up election process while the country is in dire need and total confusion. The fact that he is not behind bars is disconcerting, but not surprising. That other countries hide assholes like this instead of making them stand up and account for what they have done is appalling but apparently not going to change in our lifetime, because some countries just don’t have the fucking balls to stand up and do the right thing either, preferring instead for other countries to clean up the clusterfucks they create. As we sit here shaking our heads at the fact that anyone in Haiti could consider his return providential, we also have to bear in mind a couple of little details. The first is that the country is in total chaos, absolutely rudderless and feeling the effects of that in a very real way. Watching loved ones perish to disease and starvation, watching them be abused, raped, and bullied, knowing every damn day is the same struggle for even the most basic of life’s needs makes people reach for any lifeline. Another issue to take into consideration, especially considering the huge number of candidates running for President, is that they have no way to get papers, no way to know what all the candidates are about or what they are saying, because the flaps of their tents don’t come with electrical outlets so they can plug in the radios and televisions they don’t have. More to the point though, the vast majority of the people in Haiti were not even alive when Baby Doc and his Tonton Macoute were running the country 25 years ago.

DATELINE: HUNG BY THE HORSE -- Metaphorically speaking, of course. Stephanie Six (29) was standing outside a bar in Florida, waiting with some friends before they went home for the night, when police approached them and told them to get on their way. The cops weren’t overly polite in the request – nothing new there, these days -- but one of the cops was on a horse, and as horses tend to do, this one shifted a bit, pinning Stephanie against the wall. Stephanie, in response, reached out and touched the horse, and set off a shit storm of incredible proportions. She was arrested for ‘battery on a police horse’, put in jail for twelve hours, and has been accused of being an animal abuser. Now, I have been around a lot of horses, have pushed and slapped a number of them when they get their big asses bouncing around. They can be intimidating as hell to someone who is not used to them. This was Six’s first interaction with the police, heinous criminal that she is. Too bad her first one had to be so fucking deep in horse shit.

DATELINE: STARRING IN THE SOAP OPERA OF LIFE – Well, actually the soap is called Chepe Fortuna, a South American soap opera that has been taken off the air… because one of the characters has a dog named Little Hugo. The owner of the dog is named Venezuela and she has a sister called Columbia, and the two, just like the countries, have been known to have their spats. In the various storylines, Venezuela is "repeatedly characterized as associated with crime, interference and vulgarity" and this has caused that laugh-a-minute despot leader (not so little) Hugo Chavez to take issue with the show, and to demand its removal from the Venezuelan airwaves. It has me thinking that my little Poopsie, my pink tea-cup poodle Adolf, needs a brother, a pink yappy Chihuahua named Hugo. The dog, however, will probably have a sense of humor, something the politician is clearly in desperate fucking need of.

DATELINE: NOT HAVING SO MUCH FUN IN THE SUN – Rebecca Rutland (41) and her fiancé were spending New Years Eve In Playa Del Carmen a few weeks back. While there, shortly before midnight, the police wanted to search them, and when her fiancé stated his objection because they had been doing nothing wrong, the two were taken into custody, then the nightmare began. Rutland was tossed in a cell, had her jewelry and money stolen by the police officers, was subjected to a vicious search that ended in her being forced to perform oral sex on the officer searching her, and then was repeatedly raped by several members of the police force. For 18 hours, she was held in custody, raped, abused, despite the fact that a supervisor walked in, watched, then left without doing anything. When she was released from custody, she required hospitalization for broken ribs and bite marks that had already become infected. She was bruised and battered, and yet Mexican authorities deny that anything happened at all. Even if the couple were the most wild partiers in the world, there is nothing that justifies this behavior by police, and based on their reactions and statements, one has to assume the police are more than practiced at lying their way through this. The holes in the story offered by police are big enough for me to drive my rig through, and the audacity and arrogance their lies show are staggering. It is time for people to hold Mexican authorities to account, or for Canadians to take a much harder stance about tourism there, because the reported incidents of this nature are far too common. If it is this bad for tourists going there, how the hell terrible is it for the people who live in that mess? Mexico is now definitely off my list of places I have any interest in visiting.

DATELINE: INTRODUCING POT TO KETTLE – This weekend, Abbotsford Police recommended that charges be laid against Kelowna RCMP Constable Geoff Mantler in the incident of Mantler kicking a compliant man in the face. Abbotsford Police were given the task of doing the official criminal investigation into the incident. But then, what do we see on the news the next day? A video of Abbotsford Police involved in ‘questioning’ two men about a possible drug deal. In the video, both suspects are cooperative, instantly lie down on the ground and put their hands behind their heads. But that’s not good enough. The cop, with his sidearm trained on the one suspect, starts to kick the man, steps on his head, kicks him in the head, while his partner walks over the back of the man’s legs… while he is laying on the pavement. Yes, these are the men to investigate a kicking incident in Kelowna. What the fuck is wrong with the police now? Why are they on such a fucking powetrip, enforcing laws that clearly do not need to be applied to themselves? I have known many, have worked with many, and remember the days when police were trained to defuse a situation rather than instigate, when police respected that a person was innocent until proven guilty, and was not in need of having boots put to them for no reason at all. For the sake of all the good cops out there, and there are some, it is about time the bad ones were reined in and held to account, because the trust and respect will only continue to erode the longer this goes on.