- Well, here’s a big suprise. The (former) records supervisor for the Albuquerque cops has filed an affidavit stating that the notoriously violent and corrupt police department routinely altered or deleted videos of them shooting people.
- Kit Perez on the laziness of digital self-surveillance by freedomistas.
- They haven’t reached wheelbarrow stage yet, but Venezuelans now can’t carry their inflated currency in ordinary wallets.
- Other socialist tyrannies have other ways of dealing with their own funny-money problems. When I saw this proposal to tax ATM withdrawals, I didn’t consider it an immediate worry. Just something to file and be aware of. Then I immediately turned around and spotted that Greece may be on the verge of doing just that. They’re desperate, people. They’re out of control, out of options, and moving fast in their panic.
- While everybody’s had their eyes turned toward Italy (where a potentially EU-shattering referendum is happening this weekend), little ole Denmark made a small, polite move against the EU. Small, but they clearly reserve bigger moves on a wait-and-see basis.
- So lessee … Trump thought Hillary should be in jail for her mishandling of state secrets. But he’s considering Petraeus as Secretary of State despite the fact that the guy gave state secrets to his girlfriend then lied about it to investigators. Yeah, that makes sense. There’s also the fact that the ex-general is a gun banner.
- Matt Taibi, no friend to Donald Trump, nevertheless slams the WaPo hard for the vast depths of its idiocy in printing (on the front page, yet) that weird, ridiculously sourced story accusing everybody not-a-neocon of being Russian pawns. Justin Raimondo, one of the accused pawns, also lays into the nutty witch-hunters of the senile, paranoid Post.
- I’ve always loved the story of Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr and the dissolved prize medals. I just never knew the details, which are even better than the shorthand version I’ve heard all these years.
- The art of monkeywrenching is not dead. On the contrary, one anonymous soul has used it to great effect to get his local government to take care of a long-neglected problem. (NSFW or for innocent little children.)
- And Merry Christmas — and more freedom — from the ever-outrageous Texas Law Hawk. (Short video; subtitles available for the hard of hearing.)
Hmmm…
“His best-selling item is cigarettes, which have climbed in price from 250 bolivars to 2,000 bolivars, now worth just over $1 on the black market. The sale of one pack of cigarettes alone will add a fresh batch of 20 100-bolivar bills to his earnings.”
Wait. What did I see?
“the biggest bill — 100 bolivars — is worth about 5 U.S. cents on the black market.”
2,000 bolivars = US$1
A buck a pack. “New York clocks in with the most expensive, at more than $14 a pack.”.
Wanksy: I’d have chosen… a different sort of genitalia for holes.
Every collapse I’ve read about, people who can’t find food will still buy cigarettes. Which is why I added tobacco seeds to my stash and learned to carve pipes. It seems in any situation, vices will still create a market.
Ellendra, that’s exactly why I have a good number of books with details of producing a great many things from herbs to alcohol. I won’t be worried about making fine wine, obviously, but one can produce alcohol from darn near anything that grows.
Really enjoyed reading about Banksy’s exploits. I hope they get wider exposure; it’s a great idea. And I like the fact that he uses “industrial chalk” rather than spray paint, so it’s not even (permanently) damaging to the asphalt. I need to see where I can find that and lay in a store of it!
In the ’90’s a significant number of the instructors at Thunder Ranch were from the Albuquerque PD. They all were thoroughly decent individuals. I remember one telling us every round that goes downrange has a lawyer attached to it. Another, Steve Gonzales, was a marksman with the department. He was exceptionally decent and had to shoot five people; a subsequent chief didn’t like the numbers or the PR so Steve was let go. All the people I talked to said Steve did nothing wrong. In one case a man was holding a baby by the ankles over the edge of a bridge. Steve ran about 1/2 mile in full gear through stopped traffic. He had no communications, so he had to make the decision. When the man brought the baby back where it wouldn’t fall over the side, Steve shot him. Of course the family sued, fortunately without success. I have no idea what went on during the time frame of the former records supervisor.
Wanksy is such a spectacularly funny name; the English can be remarkably clever at times. It no doubt derives from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/wanker?s=t which is a word not to be used in public. I only know of it from following English sports, as in “The referee is a w*.”
Regarding Petraeus, anybody John McCain likes is thoroughly suspect. One of the other people noted in the article, Mike Morell, did radio ads for the election. He remarked that he had served under x number of presidents and had been the director of the CIA (I looked him up and he had been the acting director twice). He emphatically stated that Trump was a danger to this country and Hillary would keep us safe.