We Dodged A Bullet!

by hilzoy

From CNN:

"A top Mexican drug cartel suspect has been arrested along with 12 accomplices, including five women, federal authorities said. (...)

Rodolfo Lopez Ibarra, known as El Nito and believed to be a top lieutenant in the Beltran Leyva cartel, was arrested Monday at an airport in Nuevo Leon state, said the Mexican National Defense secretary.

Along with the suspects, officials said they also confiscated a Cessna 550 airplane, two cars, a large quantity of drugs and cash, firearms and a hand grenade. (...)

The Beltran Leyva cartel is one of the top drug organizations in Mexico, allied with the Gulf cartel in its battle against the Sinaloa organized crime syndicate. The Beltran Leyva group was formerly allied with the Sinaloa cartel, considered the largest drug-trafficking organization in the nation. The two other major drug organizations in Mexico are the Juarez and Tijuana cartels."

I am so, so very relieved that we didn't arrest Mr. Lopez Ibarra here in this country. Unlike Mexico, we do not have secure facilities here in the United States. We do have "prisons", but they are just a charade designed to lull unsuspecting citizens into complacency. In fact, all of our prisons were eliminated years ago as a result of Republican budget cuts. When Ebenezer Scrooge asked "Are there no prisons?", he was thinking of us.

I have it on good authority that the leaders of the Cali Cartel slip out for eight hours every day to pursue their boyhood dreams of working at Applebee's. Ramzi Yousuf rearranges his body into a highly diffuse gas, slithers between the molecules of his cell walls, and floats about in the sky above his supermax facility in Florence Colorado. The Blind Sheikh manages to bend steel bars through the sheer force of his faith, leaps through the opening onto a winged white horse, and he is taken to paradise, where, much to his disappointment, he is given bunches of grapes.

And he's blind! Just think what an actual drug kingpin could do, with all five senses intact and an army of henchmen at his back waiting to terrify the local citizenry. Thank God he was captured by a country that actually has secure prisons in which he can be safely locked away. The damage he might have wrought from the "confines" of a supermax "prison" in this country is too dreadful to contemplate.

Comments

[Eric Martin]

Seriously though. Sarcasm is all this deserves.

[tgirsch]

Great bit of snark, I love it.

[davey]

Holy crap hilzoy. I would so read a comic book about those super-villains.

[Ugh]

Huh, you mock now, but I've seen these drug kingpens, and if they were captured in America, they would consume the Americans, with firebolts from their eyes and bolts of lightning from their arses. Plus, they shoot frickin' laser beams out of their nostrils. And even if we were to capture them, it would only be temporary as they would escape into the fire swamp where no American dare follow due to the lightening sand, flame spurts, and, though some doubt their existence, the R.O.U.S.'s.

And even if we were to follow them, they would unleash what appears to be the most harmless thing, something we loved from our childhood, something that could never, ever possibly destroy us, but is nevertheless the form of the Destructor: the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

[S]

Try to take deep breaths, Hilzoy. I know you're enraged, and so we should be, but if you let their nonsense drive you completely round the twist we won't have anyone to call them out on their bullshit. The loving detail you've invested in this bit of snark makes me concerned about your stress levels.

Seriously, go lie down for a bit and imagine you live in an alternate universe in which the U.S. doesn't torture people and Harry Reid has balls until your heart-rate drops back to normal. Do it for your readers. We're going to need you.

[ThatLeftTurnInABQ]

"imagine you live in an alternate universe in which the U.S. doesn't torture people and Harry Reid has balls"

Somebody should get John Yoo on record as to whether, if the President needs to uncrush Harry Reid's testicles so as to protect the American people, does he in fact have the constitutional authority to give that order?

[jonnyflynn]

"Somebody should get John Yoo on record as to whether, if the President needs to uncrush Harry Reid's testicles so as to protect the American people, does he in fact have the constitutional authority to give that order?"

I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

[cleek]

Sarcasm is all this deserves.

yeah, i dunno.

i wouldn't be too upset if someone put a viable primary challenger up against ol' HemHawin' Harry Reid. he deserves at least that much.

[Scamp Dog]

I'm starting to think we should drop "home of the brave" from the national anthem, if the leaders of neither major political party can show any courage.

[The Crafty Trilobite]

Look, Hilzoy, if our prisons were any good, how could Dr. Octopus keep breaking out to vex Spider-Man? Really, now.

Wait, which reality am I in this week? Must check meds schedule...

[OCSteve]

Can someone explain to me how MoDo is writing in the NYT and Hilzoy is not? It’s a crime against common sense I say…

[russell]

"I'm starting to think we should drop "home of the brave" from the national anthem"

O say does that star spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free
And the home of the highly nervous

"Can someone explain to me how MoDo is writing in the NYT and Hilzoy is not? "

Word.

And hilzoy has a real job. She does this as a hobby.

Take that, Dowd.

[cleek]

waterboarding ? merely the tip of the iceberg.

"According to Bradley, when Mohamed was first held at a CIA prison in Morocco, “They started this monthly treatment where they would come in with a scalpel or a razor type of instrument and they would slash his genitals, just with small cuts.”"

my legs have crossed and will not uncross.

maybe O'd better walk a little faster.

[cleek]

aw, come the fnck on... fix the HTML-killing bug!!!!!

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/20/worse-than-waterboarding/

[JanieM]

It is getting harder to know when to laugh and when to cry here in the land of the highly nervous.

[Jon H]

I hear that Mexico has a special all-plexiglass prison to house its druglords, because they can control metal with their minds.

It was in a movie. I seen it.

[Point]

Yeah, this makes a good case for using our prisons, but it ain't the classics:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=216571&title=Guantanamo-Baywatch---The-Final-Season

And with all due respect, a drug lord ain't a brain eater.