Your Debate Prep For Tonight
Before you settle onto your favorite chair or couch, laptop or smart phone in hand to track all the witty things I will unlikely say on Facebook during the debate, spend a few minutes and review two things:
First, Brian shared this video about the NYPD's stop and frisk policy. It's one of the more disturbing things I've watched in a while. In a nutshell, the NYPD sets quotas for its officers to do what are known as "stop and frisks" of suspicious people. In the link, you get to hear the only known recording of one of these stop and frisk incidents. It is bone chilling to hear what these cops did and said. And to hear the NYPD officers talk anonymously about the practices of their department - where one supervisor told his subordinates to go out and "violate some rights" - should disturb all of us.
And then there's this piece from the New York Times. It's not often I link to an article in the Times, but even Jayson Blair got a few things right from time to time. The article conclusively states that our CIA is arming Islamic militants (that's code for Al Qaeda) in Syria.
So on the eve of debate number two, where Team Blue and Team Red will roll out their guys to regurgitate the usual talking points ascribed to them, remember what you've learned from the links above: We have to take our shoes off at the airport screening because a) Al Qaeda b) who we're arming in Syria with our tax dollars might c) blow up the airplane we're on allegedly because they despise the freedoms we have guaranteed in our Constitution which d) a major law enforcement agency in the United States routinely violates anyway.
Friends, that is the debate we should be having tonight.
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