Yawn

It's release night, so to speak. I'm on the second shift, starting at 6:30AM, so it's been going for a while. All is going pretty smoothly.

I read this gem:

"Rep. McKinney appearing with the star of "Lethal Weapon"? Not exactly the message you want to be sending," said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Hastert must have balls the size of sand grains if he has to have his spokesman deliver this one. Who are two of the republicans biggest heroes? Reagan and Schwarzenegger. Well, Danny is not a politico, and he is at least a good actor. (Though Arnold worked at it, and was growing in the art before he whored himself.) And who is the porn star who is a republican activists? Not that she should be kept from politics, it just tells you something about the consistency of the party of discrimination for anyone outside their specific, er, demographics.

The whole things strikes me as sadly funny. Generally I give cops the benefit of the doubt, as it is usually a thankless job. When I saw the headline my gut reaction was I bet this would not have happened to a white male. This would not have been my initial intuition on such a story even a year ago. First were the under-reported instances like armed white officers and civilians turning blacks away from their parish who were trying to flee Katrina, followed by the well reported syrupy denials by the ruling conservative class of any racist motives in the response. The government conducting unjustified and illegal domestic spying based on racial profiling and dissenters. Widespread and systematic abuse of prisoners foreign and domestic, with
a concomitant refusal to follow or acknowledge either international or national law. If you can't see we have created a culture of abuse in this country it is only because you're saying "When they came for the I remained silent..."

There is a slew of these little incidents. They appear on a daily basis. They are overlooked because of the huge abuses of power conducted in our name. Which is worse? The big flashily packaged power grabs and corruption or the way abuse and corruption has found it's way into the little daily affairs directly affecting all of us?

Ahhh. Complimentary breakfast is available for this shift. Not the greatest quality, but it hit the spot. Things are quiet, so I'll go catch up on my class journal blog. I have the last three class days to post. Sunday and Tuesday's entries have been done for a while, I just haven't had a chance to post them.

I'm glad it is raining. I find it harder to be inside on a nice day when I wake up early.

Addendum: I caught up on my class blog. I was late for class yesterday, as a result of what turned out to be a very nice experience.