Mayor Bloomberg tries to defend Stop and Frisk in this horrible piece in the New York Post: Frisks save lives
He basically takes the position that Stop and Frisk has been responsible for a decrease in violent crime, even though he has no evidence proving it (in fact, other cities without Stop and Frisk saw the same reduction in violent crime).
Even if it were true (which it isn’t), Bloomberg acts like that’s all that matters. He simply justifies the acts by the supposed results. But we have a Constitution, and therefore you can’t just do anything to people simply because it… works. What would otherwise prevent him from simply creating concentration camps for minorities if he could show that it would reduce violent crime?
He complains:
Throughout the trial that just concluded, the judge made it clear she wasn’t at all interested in the crime reductions here or how we achieved them. In fact, nowhere in her 195-page decision does she mention the historic cuts in crime or the number of lives that have been saved.
Exactly. Because that was, quite frankly, irrelevant to the question of whether the use of Stop and Frisk was unconstitutional. What did he expect her to do? “Well, what you’re doing is unconstitutional, but it works so well, so we’ll just ignore it.”
Bloomberg has shown, in various ways, a complete disrespect for the law. And here he does again.
And he has company.
Kal Penn is, once again, proving that he doesn’t have anywhere near the smarts of the stoner character that he plays in the movies.
He tweeted:
Great op/ed by @MikeBloomberg on the merits of “stop-question-frisk”. http://t.co/QVeGVqlNDF
When asked if he forgot his “snark” tag, he responded:
@Only4RM nope. It’s a good policy. Sad to see such activist judges ruling against public safety
…and he kept digging in even further…
@CWmsWrites lol well already been a victim of violent crime. It’s a sound policy and we need to stop trying to get rid of it
…to bordering on racism…
@CWmsWrites and who, sadly, commits & are victims of the most crimes?
@BridgetMarie it angers us all but the stats don’t lie. We need to do better to uplift our urban & rural communities.
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The Daily Show has a delightful piece where they turn Stop and Frisk around.
Today I have learned that black and hispanic men should be grateful for being harassed by police.
Kal Penn just landed with a thud on my shit list. Check out Harold and Kumar’s newest adventure: “Harold and Kumar Go Into the Trash”
“Uplift” My Mencken-meter just went ‘ding’:
“What could be more delightful than the endless struggle of the Puritan to make the joy of the minority unlawful and impossible? The effort is itself a greater joy to one standing on the side-lines than any or all of the carnal joys it combats.
Always, when I contemplate an uplifter at his hopeless business, I recall a scene in an old- time burlesque show, witnessed for hire in my days as a dramatic critic. A chorus girl executed a fall upon the stage, and Rudolph Krausemeyer, the Swiss comedian, rushed to her aid. As he stooped painfully to succor her, Irving Rabinovitz, the Zionist comedian, fetched him a fearful clout across the cofferdam with a slap-stick. So the uplifter, the soul-saver, the Americanizer, striving to make the Republic fit for Y.M.C.A. secretaries.
He is the eternal American, ever moved by the best of intentions, ever running a la Krausemeyer to the rescue of virtue, and ever getting his pantaloons fanned by the Devil. I am naturally sinful, and such spectacles caress me. If the slap-stick were a sash-weight, the show would be cruel, and I’d probably complain to the Polizei. As it is, I know that the uplifter is not really hurt, but simply shocked. The blow, in fact, does him good, for it helps get him into Heaven, as exegetes prove from Matthew v, 11: Hereux serez-vous, lorsqu’on vous outragera, qu’on vous persecutera, and so on. As for me, it makes me a more contented man, and hence a better citizen.”
It was these ‘uplifters’ of the so-called ‘Progressive Era’ who saddled us with drug prohibition. As is typical of the breed, they did it for all the best of reasons, but by their unthinking, ignorant, arrogant righteous machinations, found themselves joined at the hip with those they would happily send to Hell were they able…completely oblivious that, by being joined to what they proclaim they hate, they’d be following their targets to Perdition. And in the process drag most of us with them, like as not, all ‘for our own good’.
When, oh when will this country realize the inherent value in the old phrase, “Mind yer own business!” We’d at least have been spared the destruction to our society caused by drug prohibition if we had…and the world might have been spared a lot of History, too…
From whence came that italicized quote?
H L Mencken: “On Being an American”
My Grandpa’s favorite writer…….
On Being an American – by H.L. Mencken?
When I encounter one of those “uplifters” (puritans) I usually throw this phrase from the Bible at them:
However, let none of you become as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer OR AS A BUSYBODY IN OTHER PEOPLE’S AFFAIRS. 1Peter 4:15
Having never witnessed a mayor taking office does a mayor swear to uphold the constitution? I realize the LA mayor will probably have to add that he will holdup his pants instead of the constitution.
In NYC he swears to “keep layabouts of color off the streets and out of sight of their betters”….
and to “protect the profits of banks, brokers, and insurance companies by sweeping the sidewalks clean of the demographically undesirable”….
I believe that was the Mayor of San Diego, not LA.
@BridgetMarie it angers us all but the stats don’t lie. We need to do better to uplift our urban & rural communities.
That was Bloomberg’s problem. Too much uplift , not enough downdraft. There’s a conflicting aerodynamic involved here.
Bloomberg was feeling great, high, in fact, because he believed he’d outdone Ronald Reagan’s record as a lifeguard by more than 7,000 lives. The next day, his balloon pops. Bloomberg’s accomplishment is an invisible friend. He didn’t even save the Constitution. A federal judge had to do it for him.
The decline and fall of a politician is a perilous thing to watch. To think it all started because Bloomberg liked to bust black and brown kids for pot.
NYC Comptroller and Mayoral Candidate Supports Marijuana Legalization, For the Children
http://tinyurl.com/pn83thv
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I can’t find the words to accurately express what I think about the comment under the story which I’ve copied & pasted below:
Oh wait, silly me just remembered that Benjamin Franklin described my feelings very well, very well indeed:
But the space isn’t blank…..Mind blown…..
My favorite quote along these lines:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
C.S. Lewis – “God in the Dock” (1948)
That second part isn’t always included, its often cut off at the *own conscience* point – But, I think it actually fits the present political climate more than it has in a long while… at least in my lifetime.
This idea of treating those who choose to use cannabis as ‘diseased’ or ‘addicted’ – “drug abusers”. You know, the whole treat it as “Public Health Issue” crappola = they’ll do you the favor of letting you pay more to go into Rehab & treat any instance of future use as “recidivism” and ‘proof’ of addiction…
Because, it you choose to use it again knowing you might be ‘punished’ again, = be sent back to involuntary treatment – then surely you’re an “addict” to risk this – and which if you even attempt to argue about – they’ll quickly call/spin as “denial”.
Well that sounds just like, being “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease…”
Kal Penn is an embarrassment. He used his position as a famous sycophant of Sen. Obama to get a sinecure in the the administration. (Note to Kal Penn: this means that you got a symbolic position for which you were woefully underqualified. You had no political experience and little in the way of dramatic chops. At least you’re young and handsome, I guess.)
There is a word for people who will repeat transparent lies in order to further the political agenda of corrupt and malicious regimes: they are called “useful idiots.”
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Doesn’t the fact that he gave up a significantly high paying job to take his current position figure into the equation? I know I’ve noticed that yet another liberal has demonstrated that he’s no friend of essential liberty.
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Correction, Mr. Penn left the White House job in 2011 to act in the Harold & Kumar sequel, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. I presume that it flopped since I’ve never heard of it.
It was suitably awful. A fitting third sequel.
Mr. Penn is not a liberal, as his presence in the Obushma regime would suggest, he’s a NEO-lib.