If someone showed up to an office job acting like that, grinding your teeth, fidgeting uncontrollably, they would be sent for a drug test immediately…but this officer who drives around town armed for a living almost certainly won’t even be talked to about this disturbing public behavior.
If he’s not on drugs, he has a serious mental disorder or injury and needs to get professional help while on unpaid leave.

was gonna post this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5DEGa0_AAo

...but thought it was appropriate in the discussion.

it's a public safety issue. easy to see if one looks at the actual reality of the situation.

Here are a few of the values listed in the Denver Police Department Operations Manual*...

- Integrity: Faithful performance of our duties and always doing the right thing for the right reason
- Accountability: Demonstrating responsibility in all activities
- Respect: Treating others as we would like to be treated
- Customer Service: Exceeding our customers’ expectations

... so if they ask employees in retail to wear masks, factory workers for drug tests, or a hairdresser to pass hygiene training - it's not a stretch to ask a cop to get a vaccine. their own handbook calls for getting vaccinated.

again, public safety.


Can y̲o̲u̲ respect that?


* http://kpm106.com/LEO/LeoDocs/04-15book.pdf

So you didn't look? It's clear in the photo, and there are plenty of zoomed in versions that are unambiguous. Google image it.

Because being a speed addict explains all the other bat shit crazy shit he's done, and the 3am rambling rage tweeting, the manic paranoia, the inability to form a cogent thought, inappropriate anger, stubbornness, etc. It's not a bit trivial imo. It could be a great reason to insist on random drug testing for presidents.

There's also multiple recent reports that one of his doctors from the 89's-90's was convicted of overprescribing speed to his patients...a Dr feel good. The hippy doctor admitted he was a front, not his main doctor, and admitted he didn't write the medical opinion of Trump's health he produced, Trump did.

Just Say No To Drug Test Kits has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals on that post.

So remember this when your probation officer asks for a drug test and just claim you eat lots of fish.

I wonder what salmon that don't spawn near populated areas have in them. I catch mine on the Klamath and Smith rivers, neither of which are very populated. I'm curious to know if the ocean is so polluted that where the fish is from originally doesn't matter.

Playing devil's advocate...
Even where it's legal, it's usually not legal to smoke in public. It's certainly not responsible to smoke in public where kids are nearby...or others that might be drug tested. You could be doing them great harm. (As a legal smoker, I think about these things). Also, if you're caught and go to jail, you won't be at work, that is direct harm to the company and why most have clauses in the employment contract that criminal activity at any time is grounds for termination.
Sleeping with a 'lady of the evening' is incredibly risky behavior...and illegal. Many people are harmed by STDs, not just the one that contracts them first. Many are easily spread by normal social behaviors, so having someone in the office with, say, a massive herpes outbreak who wipes their face then shakes hands/shares drinks/sneezes/etc is a real safety/health issue. Also, your company is harmed if you're caught and go to jail because you won't be at work.

To the religion example, there's little to be done if people lie and cheat to get around the agreed on rules....but I'll go out on a limb and say that it's wrong, and they'll all burn in hell forever for bearing false witness. ;-)

Didn't watch the video, but did skim the comments... Christ...

First off, moving to Canada and any other decent first world nation be it New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Canada etc... not as easy as just packing up and moving. You need a very narrow set of skills to move to those countries. We looked into all this countries, and all of their entry requirements exceeded what we had to offer them. People always say if you don't like it leave, but that ignores several facts. It isn't we don't like it, we just think it can be improved, change isn't bad. Humanity isn't bad. Caring for those less fortunate isn't bad. Guaranteeing everyone a minimum level of affordable health care isn't bad. Working to insure that all workers get a living wage (the way we used to have before the employers/owners started getting greedy and redistributing more wealth to themselves), isn't a bad goal, in fact it's a very good thing. The famed clip from the Newsroom's first episode when he goes on about how America isn't great anymore but it used to be...

Of course the whole concept of American exceptionalism, or any nation exceptionalism is flawed. We are all humans on this planet. Being American doesn't make you superior to somebody born in China or Mexico, Ethiopia, Syria or anywhere else. Location of birth is an accident of timing... and if it is divine intervention by God that placed you here instead of Ethiopia where you may have starved to death with an inflated malnourished belly despite all your prayers, then God is an ass and not worth serving. So if he's not an ass, then it is pure accident that you are here and not there. To think oneself superior and better than somebody in another nation because of their location of birth, and the religion that comes with that location, is insanity. And I draw that all ways. The Muslims who despise Christianity for not being the true faith, and Christians who despise Islam for not being the true faith. You are your faith by accident of birth, be it location and/or parentage etc... all of which is getting away from the point. Which is simply that to say that Chinese worker doesn't deserve a job manufacturing something that you think you should be building is asinine and not respectful of their humanity and a complete lack of any sort of empathy. Christ, I have Aspergers and I have more empathy in my farts than the entire Tea Party Christian Right.

Yes we need to respect the individual, but "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one"... and that quote is in context and not just a cherry pick sample. If it benefits just one and damages the many, then it is not a good thing. Most every faith in the world has some variation of the Golden Rule, to treat others the way you want others (not that specific person, but people as a general whole) to treat you. Christianity's Christ went further and said the greatest commandment was love, to show love to one another. Greed and selfishness is not love. Collectivism has many faults as well, but it isn't tyranny, and is certainly better for society as a whole in the long run than unrestrained greed motivated individualism. Like Pink Floyd's song, On the Turning Away, says, we are all "just a world we all must share". We can't turn away from the coldness inside towards others. We need to lift all of humanity up. Perhaps showing the Muslims love instead of hate and bigotry would convince them that perhaps Christianity isn't the enemy, that perhaps it is the answer, but showing them hate, and bigotry... and denying refugees trying to flee a horrible civil war is bigotry and hatred, and the fact that a rather disturbingly large percentage of the right can't see that isn't bigotry and hatred is scary beyond measure. I again find it amazing that people could lack that much empathy without a neurological disorder.

To invade others, tell them how to live their lives, to force democracy on them if they aren't ready, to insult them and belittle their faith, and all that isn't world building. It isn't reaching out with empathy. It's hate. It's bigotry and as noted by artician, it's what helps drive people to fly into buildings. They know that they know that their faith is the right one, and the lack of empathy to see that people of the Muslim faith have just as much faith in their religion as Christians have in theirs, that they have the same amount of knowledge and comfort from god that they are the correct faith, is what drives extremism.

And oh my god the guns. Guns would have saved the Jews. American mainland can't be invaded because too many people own guns... ask the Branch Davidians how well having not only military grade weapons but also training on how to use them worked for them against a slightly militarized police force, let alone an actual military. Yes, it would be incredibly hard, and resistance would probably eventually wear any invading force down the way the Taliban wore the Soviets down, or the Viet Cong did against the US Military might. So perhaps that can be counted as a victory, but would be long fought. Look, I support gun ownership. All I really call for is 1) allowing the CDC get back to it's job of collecting the data and finding out what's really going on with gun violence, and 2) closing the gun show loophole unless the CDC's investigation shows that it has zero effect, 3) you have to have a legal ID to own a gun and can't be on the no fly list, 4) the existing background checks kept the same, but also add a drug test, the right wants drug tests for welfare, then we should be testing for gun owenrship too. (I see little reason for "assault weapons" but aside from perhaps having perhaps a slightly better background check, I don't know if a ban yet needs to be called for, but I'm in the middle here.) Once we have have better data points from the CDC then we can really tackle the issue of gun violence. Yes, it will take years to get those answers, but I find it insane that the Republicans refuse to allow the investigation to go on, which says to me that they are afraid of what the data will show.

Unless you are nearly a pure Native American, then you are a refugee to the US.

The primary problem here and around the world is poverty and lack of proper education. This drives people to crime and extremism in religion which makes them susceptible to acting out terrorist acts, be it in the name of Allah (as is the public perceived norm) or Christ (ala the Planed Parenthood terrorist attack, the 2011 Norway attacks, etc). We need to address the growing income and wealth gaps. The way to doing that isn't by giving those at the top even more tax breaks and losing regulations (which is funny thing to complain about, too many regulations here in the US, meanwhile the same people complain about the low quality Chinese goods that aren't safe due to low regulations and poor labor conditions etc). We need to push education, and proper STEM programs, not deflated science trying to force Creationism in via so called "Intelligent Design" or "teaching the controversy" stick to the actual science. Don't object to the "new math" if it's teaching better fundamentals of understanding what the numbers are actually doing even if it doesn't teach the shortcuts we were taught... and lots of the stuff people complain about is just the fact we don't skip right to the shortcut that works. Yes, it works, but it helps if they better understand the underlying fundamentals of the numbers and the actual math. Again, change isn't a bad thing, to object just because you don't understand or don't like it compared to the simplified shortcut we all learned doesn't make it bad. Reading also needs pushed, and understanding of logical fallacies and logical and faulty thinking.

I believe that a post scarcity world is impossible due to the nature of humanity. There are far too many greedy people that will never want the world to get to that point. However, that should be the noble goal. Post scarcity society has many issues, but perhaps by the time we actually got there we'd be able to solve them.

TLDR: Basically it all comes down to empathy. To view everything as the others view it. I get the fear and panic and all that the right has, and not just because I once upon a time was a right wing evangelical Christian who called those who received food stamps lazy bums, who said that Democrats and the liberals just wanted to keep the poor trapped so they would always need help. Yes, I was there and that helps, but I can still empathize with them without that past. I've never been a Muslim raised in a nation dominated by Islam, but I can still empathize with the way they see what the US is doing to them, the way they have to see people like Donald Trump and the scary amount of Americans that support him. It's easy to see why some are driven to extremism. I can empathize with that Mexican who just wants a better life and knows that Mexico can't give it to him so he has to risk it all to try and immigrate to the US. I can empathize with the Chinese worker who has been given an opportunity to build something, to escape the poverty... for while perhaps still poverty, less poverty than before, and I'm thankful that I got that opportunity, and I'm sorry that somebody in the US doesn't get to do it, but I'm a human too. Empathy. Learn it. It can be learned, neurological disorder or not.

So, now they're trying to claim those were all personal 'treats' the officers brought to the raid with them, and not the store's edibles they are discussing as they eat them. Jesus f*cking Christ! Are cops so stupid now that they think anyone will believe that insanity? It's clearly obvious they are eating products from the store, and sharing them with each other, discussing the taste and the strength, and reading the labels (after eating the treat) to see what they're eating.

They also say the officers will eventually be given drug tests for marijuana, but the raid was May 26. No drug tests have yet been given, and likely won't be for another 2 weeks so the officers have a chance to be clean (marijuana can be detected for around a month on most tests). At the very least, they've given them a chance to 'flush' their systems to try to beat the test by announcing that a drug test is likely coming for them soon. If the higher ups were interested in knowing the 'truth', every officer involved would have had a drug test the moment this video was made known to them....but they're still 'investigating', and probably won't be testing until that's done... in a few weeks.

Interesting that they have no excuse, and so completely ignore the (attempted) destruction of the surveillance system and the joking with each other about abusing a wheelchair bound, near blind woman, and the 'playing darts' while on the clock, supposedly doing an inventory and 'securing the property' (which is not supposed to mean securing it in their bellies).

These professionals are acting less and less professional daily, and their 'supervisors' are bending over backwards to let the decline continue....and escalate.

This kind of attitude is depressing. It's none of your business what someone does in their spare time when no one else is affected by it. There are functioning alcoholics turning up for work pissed, flying planes, driving buses, teaching children. But no, let's go after the guy who sits in his bedroom playing music with a joint. Let's prevent him from having a life, even if he is self medicating a mental illness. It serves him right - if he's got an illness, he shouldn't be using naturally occurring medicine like our ancestors have for thousands upon thousands of years, no! He should be paying hundreds of pounds to a big pharma company for a pill that they invented a few years ago.

The premise behind drugs testing people is based on many things i disagree with:
1) the spectacular failure of the war of drugs - not only has drug use increased in the timeframe, but it has ruined probably millions of lives, needlessly turning ordinary, hard working people into criminals for no good reason other than "we like this plant, but we don't like this plant, and now neither may you"
2) the origin of the war on drugs - which iirc from a well sourced and produced video on here recently was instigated by a vindictive racist who wanted to go criminalise things that were seen as "black people" pastimes
3) the bias of the war on drugs - where drugs associated with the poor and underprivileged are relentlessly pursued to the detriment of functioning happy families across the world, but drugs associated with rich white folk such as those boardroom jockeys who snort coke in the office bathroom, nah, give them an easy time
4) the american prison business - which demands a steady supply of low cost, low maintenance, low rights workers who have no choice in the matter
5) the spreading of disinformation through formal education/popular media, and lack of actual knowledge or experience of drugs - which has led to a generation of people who now firmly believe that the moment you inhale a particle of THC (or "inject 1 marijuana" to the uninitiated), your brain turns into a fried egg, and you immediately begin stealing, cheating, and peddling dangerous items to children

Some of the brightest and best humans were influenced and inspired by drugs. If i wrote a list of people that i had the greatest respect for and who i considered to have made a positive influence on the world, half of them would almost certainly be drugs users; and i mean scientists, writers and artists. Your philosophy is a detriment to society, but thankfully as the decades pass, there are less and less with that philosophy. I loathe being blunt, but there is nothing worse than someone who feels the need to dictate to others what they should and shouldn't do on the basis of what they personally do or don't approve of.

We might get about 90 years on this planet with a bit of luck - why the hell do the minority spend so much time trying to dictate to the majority what they do with that time? And why do the majority let them? What sort of control fetish is it that inclines people to want to do that?

This guy's life has been fucking ruined by your adopted philosophy towards drugs, and you offer to help him as long as he bends to your will? How magnanimous of you to stoop to gutter level to help a mere drug-addled cretin... I think he'd tell you to stick your job, he's overqualified to work under you.

You would be about the only American ever to give this guy a decent paying job with his history and only expect a clean drug test in return....oh, wait, you did mean a decent job that adds to one's self worth rather than a degenerating job that eats at one's soul and offers nothing but a way to almost get off the street...

I would give this guy a job in a heartbeat. If he could pass a drug test.....................

Perhaps you are right about the costs of drug-testing. A much better way would be to deny benefits for people with criminal records. Much easier to determine.

I believe somebody ran the numbers once and discovered that only a small percentage of welfare recipients were drug addicts. Also, the cost to set up and run the program that would drug test all people on welfare would cost more than the money you would save by kicking the few drug users there were out of the program.
But that would never fit the conservative narrative that all poor people are lazy drug addicted scumbags.

Pretty sad that Basement Boy has to try and ride the coattails of a losing liberal commentator.

But who knows what reasons the Koch brothers have for doing what they do. As for the Florida law, I think it sounds pretty awesome. People who get gov't taxpayer money should be drug tested. The leading cause of death in the county where I live is drug overdose. Heroin overdoses are now epidemic. My wife just went to a funeral for a girl, 24 yrs old, who overdosed. My wife's best friend's daughter got addicted to heroin. Church-going people.

But instead of talking about something important, Ms. Bloviator sounds like she's just uncovered the greatest scandal since Teapot Dome. She must be very satisfied with herself. Bravo.

If the poor have it so good, why aren't the rich people throwing away their fortunes?

oh wait..that's because the poor don't have it so good.

If Fox news and their pundits want to fix fraud, that's great..more power to them, but it just seems like they could care less about that...they'd rather just demonize the poor even though a number of those poor probably do vote republican.

so hey, way to expand that big tent GOP.

It always cracks me up at how the right might make a genuine observation like fraud in a system, but instead of coming up with a way to fix that fraud, they either come up with a solution that is completely worse or more expensive than the problem (requiring drug tests for food stamps...drug tests aren't cheap yo) or they just demonize anyone who might use that system regardless.

news flash, demonizing an entire class of people isn't a great way to get them to vote for you. more poor people than rich people dumbasses