Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Police Departments Are Battling It Out Through Lip Sync Challenges

You never know what will be the next weird "it" thing. Pokeman, planking, bad jackets worn by Melania Trump. You know random.

The latest Big Thing is police departments from all over the nation are battling it out on social media through lip sync challenges.

Police personnel in various cities have been taking popular songs and lip syncing to them. I guess for bragging rights.

On one hand, some of these police departments look like they have too much time on their hands. On the other hand, police do need to blow off steam occasionally, and this, at worst, a harmless way to do that.

This seems to have originated in Texas, but might have been inspired by a viral video from about three years ago, in which a dash cam video inside a Dover, Delaware captured an officer hilariously performing Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off"

A lot of these latest lip sync battles are on YouTube. Here are a couple good ones I've found.

This first one is from the Flower Mound, Texas Police Department:



Of course, somebody had to do "Uptown Funk" and the Norfolk, Virginia police department obliged. The lead guy in this video looks very much like a massive version of Bruno Mars:



The San Francisco office of the California Highway Patrol does "Bohemian Rhapsody" The driver in this video has quite a blonde version of a Freddie Mercury mustache.



I have to say that many members of the Rapid City, South Dakota Police Department are definitely eye candy:



Finally, the rather white Cleveland, Tennessee Police Department go both Latino and chill doing Camila Cabello's "Havana."  I hope they didn't take their service revolvers into the pool with them:

Thursday, July 5, 2018

First World "Discrimination" Taking Toll On Rich Trump Fans

Scott Pruitt resigned from the EPA today because he says people have the
gall and rudeness to question his corruption. How rude! 
Today, we received word that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is finally calling it quits.

He's under 18 federal investigations, and Pruitt seemed to trying to set some sort of record for the greatest number of scandals he could self-generate.

You don't  know where to begin: The $50 a night stay in a gas lobbyist's condo - a real sweetheart deal. Trying to use his influence get his wife a job at various places, including a Chick Fil A franchise. He re-assigned or demoted staffers who questioned his exorbitant spending.  

And there's silly ones, like using his vehicle's emergency sirens to cut through traffic to get to his favorite restaurant. And using government assistants to try and buy a used mattress from a Trump hotel. I hope we figure out what's up with that.

Amid all this wrongdoing, Pruitt's resignation statement is the most self-pitying I can remember:  "....the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us."

Got that? People dared to criticize Pruitt's constant grifting. He should have run his corruption racket in peace without pesky media types and critics exposing the (alleged) crimes for what they were.

Pardon me while I fail to cry me a river.

Other rich Trump partisans are suffering under the weight of "discrimination" against them. Out on posh Martha's Vineyard, the lawyer Alan Dershowitz complained in an op-ed in The Hill that all his rich but liberal buddies have "shunned" him because of his apparent support for Donald Trump, and his opposition to a special counsel to investigate Trump's ties to Russia.

In response, reports the Boston Globe, Walter, Teller, a prominent Los Angeles entertainment lawyer, and a Vineyard resident, sent Dershowitz a scathing email, which read in part:

"You thereby gave Trump an opportunity to use you and your positions in his own defense, to wave you like his pom-pom. How unfortunate for all of us....You defended and gave cover to this president who relentlessl disrupts and destroys all that we value and causes massive and lasting damage to our political system, our courts, our standing in the world, the environment, and more. In all of that you are complicit."

Ouch! So during this hot summer, the coffee klatch at the Chilmark General Store on Martha's Vineyard is disrupted. Oh well.

But shunned in tony Martha's Vineyard! How tragic! I'm sure the people who have had the cops called on them for barbecuing while black, campaigning while black, working while black, etc think they're lucky compared to Dershowitz's unfortunate fate.

Another in this series of poor rich people getting discriminated against for liking Trump is the actor James Woods. His agent dropped him over the Fourth of July holiday because he was feeling "patriotic."

James Woods, misunderstanding the Constitution, says the fact that
his agent dumped him over his political views was a violation
of his First Amendment rights. 
Woods has been a big Trump fan on Twitter and other outlets.

Woods lamented that his agency dropped him basically to violate his First Amendment rights, which proves Woods does not understand the Constitution.

Woods can spout all he wants about Trump, and nobody can stop him. His agent dropped him, but can't do a thing about Woods expressing his opinion. Which is as it should be.

The agent, Ken Kaplan, was expressing his own First Amendment rights by dropping Woods. Kaplan disagrees with Woods so much that he can't work with him. Some might call that rude, but Kaplan can respond to Woods' free speech any way he wants, as long as it's not threatening.

Again, cry me a river.

I'm sure James Woods, Alan Dershowitz and Scott Pruitt will come out of this "horrible" experience just fine. Maybe it will make them grow as people. But you can't count on that.

Let's just talk instead to the black, Hispanic, LGBTQ and other groups whose members are not necessarily rich, but are experiencing true discrimination. Then maybe I'll be more sympathetic to Pruitt, Dershowitz and Woods.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Convenience Store Crime Goes Hilariously Off The Rails

The video in this post is so ridiculous I at first I thought it was fake. A set up.
Watch the video at the bottom of this post to find out why the shelves
in this Alberta convenience store are slightly bent. 

But apparently, it's real.

As Deadspin described it: 

"A man and a woman visited the King Street Reddi Mart in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada.... and the convenience store owner eventually called police on the suspicion that the man had been using a stolen credit card. 

By the time the couple left the store, they had lost a shirt and shoe, gained a deep understanding of the store's layout, and earned themselves a smorgasbord of charges: Using a stolen credit card, resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, attempting to disarm a police office, resisting arrest from someone aiding the police, among others."

You'll see at about two minutes into the video why the CBC reports that some store shelves are now "slightly bent." It is one of many highlights in this video.

Exciting day at the convenience store, I guess.

Watch: