Month: April 2021

What Will It Take to Get Biden to Go Bi‑Partisan

Republicans have publicly demanded that our President cooperate.

They have gone on record, explaining the extreme lengths they will travel to force Biden go bi‑partisan.

One Congressional Representative went further than anyone else, even resorting to this:

He asked to participate.

Ruthless bastard.

Ma’Khia Shooting, Chauvin, Police White Supremacy, Racism, Nugent

Alert reader and friend Trey has what he describes as the QAnon/Republican/”conservative” theme song

  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz contrasts the safeguards afforded to former Officer Derek Chauvin with the instant street justice inflicted on young Ma’Khia Bryant.
     
    In a few minutes yesterday, Ma’Khia Bryant received what young people of color have so often received since America’s inception: total disregard by those charged with protecting her (those she trusted to keep her safe)—and now in the aftermath of their failure, the salivating partisan television hosts and neighborhood bigots, who will engage in the wildest of intellectual gymnastics and desperate story-spin in order to make this radiant, fully alive 16-year-old honor student somehow responsible for her own termination.
     
    I dunno.
     
    It does seem unlikely that nearly all of the nearly thousand police shootings each year that result in death would be legally determined as completely justified. The videos we see so often seem to suggest that many of those are capricious at best, malevolent at worst.
     
    But I am unwilling to conclude that police shootings are never justified. And I am unwilling to judge individual cases simply by scanning overall numbers. The tragic death of Ma’Khia Bryant does not, so far, seem to fit a malignant pattern.
     

  • Tommy Christopher watches CNN as anchors Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo accuse much of the media of journalistic malpractice in the police killing of 16 year-old Ma’Khia.
     
  • MadMikesAmerica walks with convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin through the daily routine he will be following for the foreseeable future.
     
  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson reflects on the Chauvin verdict and on the progress and institutional vulnerability represented by the fact that the charge, the prosecution, and the conviction would almost surely not have occurred had it not been for one teenage passerby, armed with a cellphone and an abundance of courage.
     
  • Julian Sanchez has a couple of thoughts on a new Minneapolis rule about police officers who join white supremacy groups.
     
  • At The Onion, Milwaukee launches an ad campaign, billing itself as a hip, more affordable, alternative to Chicago, with comparable white privilege and police brutality at a fraction of the cost.
     
  • NOJO projects the date in the US when white people will no longer be a majority, thereby improving our communities. NOJO adds a comment, supported by polling: Not all white people are racist assholes. Just, to date, a majority of us.
     
  • Dave Dubya has little sympathy for the latest celebrity who gleefully told audiences that COVID-19 was a liberal hoax, then suffered horribly when he was infected. Anyone care to guess who?
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil gets the answer, and manages to contain his sorrow at the COVID travails afflicting COVID denier Ted Nugent.
     
  • Nan lives in Oregon where churches will now get preferential treatment that may prove deadly to those who don’t know they know someone who doesn’t know knowing someone who now will unknowingly know someone who may have attended COVID worship.
     
  • Andy Borowitz covers Republican accusations that President Biden has made millions of Americans’ arms hurt.

Continue reading “Ma’Khia Shooting, Chauvin, Police White Supremacy, Racism, Nugent”

War Withdrawal, Collude, Cap Riot, Trump the Ripper, Sydney Unreasoned

Shamelessly stolen from She Who Seeks:

  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger goes to Afghanistan (figuratively) right to the the point of greatest success, after which nothing has been accomplished: Which is why we should leave ASAP.
     
  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson reviews President Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan as what she suggests is an aggressive, forward thinking, strategy against terrorism and cyber attacks. Biden, she says, seems to be fighting the wars of the next 20 years instead of war as it was fought in the last 20.
     
  • Vixen Strangely, at Strangely Blogged, is happy that the record is now unambiguous. The degree of certitude on Russian behind-the-curtain manipulation to get Trump installed in 2016 has graduated from reasonable speculation and obvious conclusion to established fact, even though that is unlikely to sway a political party that, as reported by Tucker, sees Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a documentary.
     
  • Those of us who watch idealized police procedural television shows can tell you that criminal conspiracies are most vulnerable at the seams. Plotters eventually compete for the best plea deals. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit watches fiction turn to reality as the first of January’s big, bold, lethal insurrectionists becomes a springtime canary. That one should be the first of a growing number, as more are primed to push each other aside in a mad rush to take positions in the great right wing circular firing squad. Ready, aim, witness protection.Interestingly, those who are not talking don’t know who is. So suspicion, anger, and fear in the ranks is producing more stress.
     
  • Dave Dubya reminds us of last week’s startlement (is too a word) as last year’s Trump donors discover that the campaign has been raiding their bank accounts, giving a whole new meaning to Stop the Steal.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara defends the right of social media platforms to ban Citizen Trump for violating their guidelines and to decline to prohibit documented falsehoods. They are private organizations and are not obligated to act as public utilities.I’m not familiar enough with libertarian nuances to know what Michael feels about defamation laws. If we accept as a premise that those who are harmed have a right to sue, then should platforms that decline to prohibit harmful falsehoods be made legally vulnerable as well?
     
  • Trump supporter and sometime conspiracy aficionado Sydney Powell is being sued for billions of fists full of dollars for falsely charging a voting machine company with stealing the election from rightful president Donald Trump. The Propaganda Professor takes a look at her legal defense, that no reasonable person could have believed her weird accusations and why the defense is a logical absurdity.I share a lowbrow common reaction. There is a certain twisted irony in her my-followers-are-dumb-as-a-rock defense.
     
  • First Delta Airlines, then Coca Cola are attacking the Georgia’s wild new voter suppression law. Then hundreds of corporations condemn the voter chokeholds, and previously planned movie productions leave the state. Andy Borowitz brings us the latest as the City of Atlanta pulls out of Georgia. Okay, now stop, just STOP tapping that keyboard! I already know it’s satire.
     
  • Green Eagle is stunned that Republicans are now attacking (are you serious) baseball? Really? Green Eagle speculates on what revered icon might be next.Really?
    Baseball?
     
  • nojo has insight about the main reason democracy is a dangerous idea.

Continue reading “War Withdrawal, Collude, Cap Riot, Trump the Ripper, Sydney Unreasoned”

George Floyd Debate:
The No Friends Approach

Run Government Like a Business

found on Twitter by Burr