AtticaFlinch

A new study reveals the only pure humans are sub-Saharan Africans. Everyone else is a mixed species mutt.

I hope this clears up any racial purity arguments for the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.

A better analogy than a freeway or stadium is a Wal-Mart. They have maximum allowable times that customers are supposed to stand in line that guide their staffing policy at any given time of day in any given season. When the lines start to back up, they add more staff and open more lanes, thus alleviating the problem.

You must never shop at the Dunvale Wal-Mart.

I was fascinated to learn Texas leads the Nation in producing wind power.... I guess that makes Texas the tree-hugging, hippy liberal of the wind power producing states... lol.

Texas kills the competition in this. Had the state legislature not dropped the ball last summer, we'd be so far ahead we'd have no rivals anywhere in the world.

Although they passed a resolution that stated we wanted to be number one, so it's all good. Why incentivize being number one when we can simply say we want to be the best?

Saying you want to be the best matters, right?

It is quite clear that you did not read the link provided.

If by "read", you meant "skipped entirely", then this time you'd be wrong.

I hope they stick an oil drill right directly in the middle of each one of these giant fans.

Maybe they can use the electricity generated by the fans to power the drills.

I thought gingers had no souls? Or do engineers who are gingers truly have no souls?

Gingineers?

We have souls, but only the ones we steal from our victims.

My kid's got a touch of ginger, just like her dear ol' dad. Let's just hope she doesn't become an engineer. I don't want her to have to supplement her soul with stolen ones.

Just don't refuse to take a breath test when you're sober.

Or when you're stoned, or effed up in any way other than drunk. Breathalizers can only detect alcohol.

It's an implied consent by the government for getting high and driving. Just don't bring your stash with you.

The point is, people who think critically and that can't be herded like barnyard animals into their appropriate pens are dumb. You are dumb. Move to Portland, dummy.

I'm going to move to Portland so I can be different like everybody else.

Anybody got some skinny jeans I can borrow so I can fit in?

Pretty strange statement.

No doubt. Everyone knows Scandanavian Euro porn is actually all the rage.

And I think Houston's a top city for married white dudes too.

Hey look at that, ebony and ivory and married and single are all benefiting from our humble hamlet.

In any event, I thank you for your contribution to my city's budget, just as I am sure that you appreciate my daily donation of cigarette taxes...and I am not even violating the law.

Are you saying you support using valuable police resources as nothing more than as collectors of alternative taxes?

The HISD stat is a scary one. That said, the graduation rates are about on par with an big city public school system.

It's pretty close to the national average - 7 in 10 vs 8 in 10 - and that includes all the suburban and rural school districts as well.

This is six years out of date, but I imagine things haven't changed too much. Oakland (part of the San Francisco metro) has the worst drop-out rate in the US. And to make Coaster happy, Dallas is in the top 10 worst drop-out rates in the country. Houston didn't make either ten best or ten worst.

Correction: Oakland isn't the worst, it's the tenth worst. Detroit is the worst. One in four students graduates high school in Detroit.

Im pretty sure he is guilty.

Well if your Magic 8 Ball says he's guilty, then that means it's time to beat the crap out of him.

But it's a different kind of mentality. Few firefighters want to be cops and vice-versa.

Still, would you want someone on your team who'd lost his nerve, or in some other way didn't have all the necessary mental faculties to perform his job as intended. I know firefighting's a team effort, and if even one member of your team sucked at his job, it could cost lives. The same is true of cops, so we as citizens shouldn't accept sub-par performance and write it off and accept it as just being caused by job-related stress. Maybe there can be some form of stress management classes so the good cops can stay good cops. Post-Hassan in Ft Hood, the army has taken a much stronger interest in PTSD counseling, and perhaps HPD can do something similar.

Totally agree but that would require a big increase in pay and some way to attract more educated personnel and I just don't see it happening.

It's tough to change the general public's opinion that more cops equals good. I know I give the impression that I think all cops are bad, but I don't really feel that way. I just know many of them are, though still probably fewer than 10%. I think a purge of all the bad cops would be good. Many corporations have used this down economy to eliminate bad or redundant employees. There's no reason the City of Houston can't do the same.

I hate to break it to you Attica but Houston is not Mayberry.

You used to be a firefighter, right?

The reason I ask is because that job takes a special mentality too, correct? If someone doesn't have the mentality, or if they lose the mentality during the course of the work because of the difficulty of their work, wouldn't you think it better they not be on the team? Bad firefighters can lead to lost lives. So can bad cops.

Perhaps their should be a limit to the length of time someone can be a beat cop. Perhaps it'll save the good cops from become bad cops due to the apparent extreme disillusionment that comes from working in Houston versus working in Mayberry.

I think we could function considerably better with fewer, but better, cops than with a bunch of crappy cops.

Quantity =/= Quality

All the kid had to do to avoid this was NOT COMMIT CRIMES. Easy.

Do you know he committed a crime?

And, as you noted, traffic finances much of the rest of the department through ticket revenue. Eliminating that revenue, which is paid by traffic offenders, as opposed to law-abiding taxpayers, would trigger even more cuts to the department.

How much of the budget is generated from traffic violations, and what is the cost of the traffic division? Also, could the grants for DWI, seatbelt and speeding enforcement be transferred to other departments, or are they specifically tied to those goals?

You wouldn't last 5 seconds doing the job that they do.

Well, considering that's not what I chose to do for a living, I don't know why you brought it up. It was an interesting ad hominem though. I think we need to keep you liquored up so you'll be more fun.

Let's live in a community where the cops are known as limp wrist tartars.

I'd rather not live in a city with a corrupt and violence-prone police force. There's a time and a place where violence is necessary, mainly in response to violence, but rare is the day when violence is justified. Wanting even-tempered people to be charged with policing my community doesn't mean I want them to be pansies. I just want them to follow the same laws they're there to protect.

Also, I'm not sure what a tartar is, but I enjoy their sauce with fried shrimp.

There's not a one of them - "Bad" or good that would hesitate one second to give their life for you in a burning car, or the middle of a ghetto. It's evident you wouldn't help them if they pleaded.

And what is this evidence? The point that I generally distrust cops means I would divest myself of all my humanity in the presence of a cop? Show me the connection between those please.

I had two police officers from HPD muscle some punk gang bangers that had threatenned my family ( my father was 87 years old at the time ).

I'm detecting a pattern. When something's affected you personally, you become dogmatic in your rhetoric towards it. It's pretty pointless to even continue going on about it with you then, huh?

I would have paid money to watch them kick the stinkin' teeth out of those animals.

And then you'd have been committing a crime. Which would have made you no better than the gangbangers. In which case, I'm sure those gangbangers had mothers who would gladly have paid money to see you get your teeth kicked in by those same cops.

And had the cops been corrupt enough to take your money, doubtless they'd be corrupt enough to take the mother's money too.

(let's note you were the first to call illegals insect pests, and the hispanics specifically cockroaches)

Analogy.

Equation.

These aren't the same thing.

and you have to write a check

And the check is for the entire value of your house. We can modify each other's analogies until the cows come home, but it doesn't change the fact Arizona Republican legislators amended the wording with 1070 because they were caught being classless, xenophobic pricks. They haven't changed their minds about being classless, xenophobic pricks. They've just succumbed to the political pressure of needing votes, and they realized alienating 1/3 of their constituents was a stupid idea.

There are just too many variables at this point, and I'm choosing to take the cops side since everyone else in here is one post short of accusing him of doing it because he's racist against Chinese people.

I'm not making any accusations of racism at this point. I just have a tendency to believe that cops abuse their position and will manhandle citizens for any variety of reasons, and racism is just one of many, many reasons.

The fighting has begun.... someone left a death threat on a tortilla... ugh.

http://www.ultimatec...ssage-tortillas

That was no death threat. It was just an image of Jesus.

Edit: Ahem, excuse me... Hay-seuss.

Yes, let's just close our eyes and pretend that 99.9% of the illegal immigrants in Arizona are not Mexicans. There, now we all feel better and happy! Let's go adopt an injured kitty! Profiling, schmofiling, the thought that police (probably at least half of which are hispanic) were going to start arresting everyone who was hispanic looking is still silly.

People need to stop wasting their time being offended at every pointless thing and if they want to make a difference actually come up with an idea of how to efficiently locate and process illegals according to whatever laws are in place.

If you say so.

To me, circumventing the Constitution in order to send some illegal immigrants home is like burning your house down because you've got cockroaches... cockroaches with an excellent cuisine and work ethic. Sure, Arizona's solution reduces the number of illegal immigrants, but at what price? Our moral compass and the very foundational law of our country? Are a handful of illegal immigrants even worth that to you?

Apparently the mayor and the chief of police take kylejack's point of view; police should be at least given an opportunity to know what they're doing, especially if it involves chasing and physically restraining people and international relations. This doesn't seem like some trivial detail - are you advocating that the police remain ignorant of the whereabouts of Houston's various consulates?

I'm sure what he meant to say is, "Ignorance of the law is no excuse... unless you're a cop."

It appears some of the verbage has been quietly changed in 1070 to minimize its negative implicit impact.

It must be awkward to have risen to the vigorous defense of legal language that even its authors, in the end, could not defend. But the law’s advocates are making the best of things out on their sawed-off limb. The law is now more “explicit” about its true intention. It is a “clarification.” But this isn’t a clarification; it is retreat. The authors of the Arizona law initially wrote it as broadly as they thought they could get away with. But they were caught. Their retreat does not confirm their intentions were good. It confirms that the original law was deeply flawed -- a dramatic, disturbing overreach.

It appears all the cries of "sanctimonious libruls!" coming from the right couldn't make the new law legal nor ethical. Interesting.

Edit: Non-editorialized AP version here.

Out of Katy ISD, the areas north of I-10 are inferior to the areas south of I-10. And Cy-Fair ISD really shouldn't be considered part of the I-10 corridor; try driving south towards I-10 during morning rush hour traffic and you'll no doubt agree with me.

I have to agree.

Plus, driving 290 during rush hour is the most soul crushing commute this city has to offer. At least with Katy you have two options to pay your way out of traffic.

Again with the drama. Who do you think would win in a shootout? The Houston Chinese Consulate or the historically "trigger-happy (and deadly accurate) HPD.

I think you're confusing HPD with the Bellaire PD.