Asians Attacked, Defund, Capitol Riot, Dirty Dozen, Ron Johnson, Immigration

@momwino98 explains how she maintains a contented, pleasant outlook:

@momwino98

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• After a gunman kills mostly Asian women at three locations during a bad day, Max’s Dad looks at killing sprees at Black and Jewish religious gatherings, mass murder of Latinos at a grocery store, a murderous riot at the nation’s Capitol Building, and detects a pattern.
   
• Police seemingly accepted at his word the shooter’s assurance the murders in Georgia did not constitute a hate crime. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit tries to understand that strange investigative procedure, by looking into the targeting of Asians, with a bit of help from a description of growing up Asian in Georgia. Not all physical violence results in death. Not all harassment is physical. But the toll can still be high. And the environment may affect the occasional police spokesperson.
   
• Okay, so it looks like the guy had to be targeting Asian women. But Glenn Geist at MadMikesAmerica protests. Yeah, there is a lot of anti-Asian bigotry in our history, especially in the century previous to the century previous to now. But this shooting? A pattern? Those three massage establishments each happened to be owned by Asians. If you shoot a lot of folks at random with eyes closed at those locations, you’ll hit a lot of Asians. Besides most every sex-for-sale establishment is overwhelmingly Asian, something I didn’t know.
   
  Well, Glenn sometimes writes such things. He recently encountered the phrase Jesus used to describe the chance of someone of great wealth making it into the Kingdom of God, that it would be easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle. Glenn responded that Jesus would never have voiced that socialist malarkey had he taken a walk through today’s America.
   
  Glenn is my brother-in-Christ, a self confessed Christian, as am I. One day, perhaps, he will teach me how to reconcile his belief that the vision of the Son of God is limited to His own place and time on earth, and that we ought not take what He says in scripture as Universal Truth.
   
  Just for the record, Cherokee County Georgia, where the suspect is being held, is less than 2% Asian. Atlanta, where two of the three shootings happened, is less than 4%. In little Acworth, where the other murders were committed, Asians make up about 2% of 1%, or .0002 of the population. But hey! Who knows who you’ll hit if you close your eyes on a bad day, especially if you target Asian owned businesses that, by some strange coincidence, also happen to have a lot of Asian employees.
   
• Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo join once more in podcasting from Rewire News Group. This week they react to the shootings.
   
• Like me, she was born during the Truman administration. But unlike me, this elderly Asian woman was the target of unprovoked street violence. Tommy Christopher has the story as this 76-year old Chinese woman, attacked while waiting for a bus, put her attacker in the hospital.
   
  Sounds like a feel good story, like she’s a bit of a super-hero, or at least a hero. But reports are she was angry, frightened, injured, and lucky. She was yelling at her assailant as he was wheeled away on a gurney, but she was also bleeding from multiple punches to the face, and she was in tears.
   
  Let’s not feel good. We should be mad as all hell.

• PZ Myers is about ready to defund police in Eureka, California over text messages contemptuous of women, the homeless, those who are mentally ill, along with promised violence against protestors, hippies, and drug addicts. So much for preserve and protect.
   
  For the record, and for the most part, I consider defunding police to be a really bad idea. Defenders explain that they don’t actually mean to abolish the police. Which makes it a really dumb slogan. And it probably cost Democrats some Congressional and Senate seats, which makes it much trickier to accomplish much on other fronts.
   
  As I understand it, Eureka is a small coastal community, with an oscillating economy, a crime problem, and a police force that is largely undertrained and undersupervised.
   
  Reminds me a little of Ferguson, Missouri, a few miles from my home. Because the economy is soft, Ferguson’s city budget is cash strapped. So pressure is put on police to help meet budget gaps. Which means police are pressured to write tickets. But not on well-to-do folks who can cause a commotion if you take advantage. Minorities reside in and around, so guess who gets ticketed for minor things. A police officer does not have to be a racist to be affected. That is what is known as systemic racism – racist actions that do not need any racial motivation, although personal racism does help motivate at least some participants.
   
  The St. Louis County Police Department, on the other hand, is internationally known for professionalism. They are not expected to meet budget goals.
   
  So why have dozens of municipal police departments around the county when St. Louis County Police know what they’re doing? Think budgets and shortfalls and tickets and available powerless minority populations. Then think text messages.
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged is shocked that an Army Sergeant is shocked that an alleged Capitol rioter who had served as a reservist under his supervision is now smeared by the national press for his views as a white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer.
   
• So 12 representatives, all Republicans, voted against recognizing the heroic actions by Capitol police in protecting legislators during the January 6 Trump riot. Besides the officer who died hours later, and 2 more who died by suicide shortly after, nearly 140 police were injured. For the most part, those legislators who voted against the police officers objected because they felt the resolution was unfair to the rioters. Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger brings us a list and a photo array of the dirty dozen.
   
• Lots of folks became familiar with U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) when he defended the January 6 Capitol Building rioters. He declined to call that little bit of disruption an insurrection, because he felt completely safe during the incident. They were law abiding patriots, after all, in spite of the deaths of 3 police officers and the hospitalization of a few dozen more. If the rioters had been Black Lives Matter activists, he might have been scared.
   
  Sheesh!
   
  There seems to be a division of opinion on whether the good Senator is an idiot or a racist although, strictly speaking, the two are not mutually exclusive. There was talk about Johnson running for Wisconsin governor, but he says that won’t happen.
   
  Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has little patience with the riot or with those who excuse it. He considers the reasons Johnson has dropped out.
   
  Johnson says he was never in the race for Governor and has no idea how the rumor started. James points out that the rumor started with Johnson himself when he listed his name as a good possibility for Governor.
   
  Senator Johnson describes himself as a victim of a Cancel Culture. James observes that the Senator has no trouble obtaining lots of accurate media coverage of his words.
   
  James goes on to refute Johnson’s argument that the right wing is mostly peaceful and the left has an unquenchable taste for violence.
   
  James Wigderson has developed a bad habit of contradicting my hard-nosed kneejerk liberal stereotypes of conservatives. He has a bothersome sense of integrity.
   
• We’ve heard the story. There is an overwhelming tsunami of immigrants flowing over our southern border, bringing a flood of COVID infection from the infected, and terrorism from terrorists. Iron Knee at Political Irony says Whoa, Nellie! Let’s take a look and see whether it’s all true.
   
• John Scalzi at Whatever got his first Pfizer anti-COVID vaccine.
   
  Me too. Thursday afternoon. Being in Missouri, with a Republican governor and GOP legislative branch, I had to register in a gazillion sites to find a place to get started.
   
  To those of us not in the rarified atmosphere of distant policy mountaintops, it does look like no system is a really bad system.
   
• Students of history may recall the famous luncheon of January 20, 2009, when Mitch McConnell outlined plans for the following four years. Republicans would oppose anything and everything new President Obama might propose, no matter how critical to the country, no matter how popular, no matter the urgency. The impulse was quickly picked up by the Republican portion of the electorate. It has never died. Andy Borowitz reports on Obama’s new can’t-fail strategy to contribute to the national health and well being. Obama will urge Republicans not to take the vaccine, thus ensuring that they will.
   
  Frankly, Obama missed his opportunity years ago to enhance our country’s place on the arc of history when he failed to come out against suicide while he was President. A whole lot of Republicans would have been under the ground within days.
   
• Scotties Toy Box covers the coverage of a Texas official who was recorded assuring investors that he would protect utility profits during the prolonged cold snap and power failure in Texas.
   
  In his defense, Texas Public Utility Commission Chair Arthur D’Andrea did try very hard to keep his secret promise to the big money folks.
   
• driftglass recounts newly declassified intelligence that the Hunter laptop story was a bunch of hokum invented by Putin’s guys and passed on to the American right – like Tucker Carlson – by Putin sympathizers like Glenn Greenwald.
   
  Allow me, once again, to remind anyone who listens that I was critical of Greenwald when criticizing Greenwald wasn’t cool.
   
• Hackwhackers notes that President Biden is causing some heartburn in Moscow, and suggests that refusing to kiss Putin’s ring is a welcomed change from the previous administration.
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson listens as Matt Gaetz and others in government take the side of Vladimir Putin when President Biden points out that Putin is a stone cold killer, or when they imply that the January 6 riot wasn’t a big deal, or that just maybe Biden isn’t the real President. That’s when she despairs for America. But then she sees what the American public, away from Washington corridors, think.
   
• News Corpse watches the increasing horror among conservative public figures, and on the Fox network. Seems that Joe Biden is boring.
   
  They do have a point. Don’t we all miss the daily swirl of cascading news stories generated by a head of state whose constant goal was enabling us to hang on his every word?
   
  I may be the exception who doesn’t miss that at all. I kind of like being bored by national policy. And by my President.
   
• I had forgotten that Newsmax humor is hilarious. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors covers the fun as the network mocks at Joe Biden’s stutter.
   
  Tee-Hee.
   
• CalicoJack in The Psy of Life explores why our former president is rampaging, destructive, and confused rather than menacing, intimidating, and controlling; and why this befuddles media news outlets who expected the opposite.
   
• One problem with widespread organizational crime is that individual personal lives interfere with essential secrecy. Frances Langum has an example. Seems Trump’s accountant has a son who has an ex-wife still in legal proceedings. And she knows one or two contradictions in the form of tax deductions by one party not matched by income declarations by another. She has the documents. And she is bitter. And she has been meeting with prosecutors.
   
• At The Onion, Democrats are still unable to convince a handful of its members to end the filibuster, but may have reached a compromise. They will consider restoring it to its original form as a drawn out striptease. Okay, now I’m going to spend the whole rest of the weekend not thinking about Josh Hawley.
   
• Every once in a while I hear the argument, as if it has any meaning. Republicans are not racist because Lincoln!. Or Democrats are racist because Lincoln! or some racist or group of racists from many decades ago.
   
  This time it’s a little different. I’m still a bit impatient, but maybe not as much.
   
  At The Moderate Voice David Robertson acknowledges that the Republican party is the comfortable home of racists today, but goes on to make the case that it was not always the case. Why? Well, Lincoln!
   
• Julian Sanchez watches as a video personality commenting against Black farmers goes to all out racism.
  

• I have never met face-to-face my long time conservative friend Darrell Michaels. Through the years, this has not stopped him. He has offered words of reassurance and support through personal anxiety when the fate of our young Marine was in doubt. He was there during family illness and death.
   
  Dave Dubya has been a supporter for nearly as long. His efforts on behalf of this site has been constant, taking the form of thoughtful commentary. He is a friend.
   
  My two valued pals are at it again. Darrell falsely characterizes Dave’s posts as accusing our nation of being “systemically racist, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, and authoritarian.” Yet Dave hypocritically declares himself a patriot.
   
  Dave Dubya scans his past words and his own memory and finds no such accusations. So he neatly skewers my friend Darrell, leaving him in pieces on the floor.
   
  Listen, fellows. I hope you take this to heart. I’m ashamed of you for ripping into each other like that.
   
  And I’m ashamed of myself for enjoying every bruising, blood soaked moment, hoping every second to see a few more minutes of rhetorical mayhem.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz says America has a White male problem. We can consider the misogyny, bigotry, and violent brutality that hits the headlines and dominates our screens. But the pastor is talking about something different.
   
• In Nan’s Notebook, a trend is spotted. Pastors are leaving their churches as those who have followed Jesus are replacing the Son of God with the Q of QAnon.
   
• We remember John F. Kennedy’s inaugural for his “Ask not what your country can do for you” phrase.
   
  I was quite young, but I remember his call to action, that “here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”
   
  In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce takes it a step further.
   
  We have to take it on ourselves to build a kinder, more just world, because your God is simply not here.
   
• Infidel753 has found insight in a quote by the great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Evil is a great enemy to people of good will. But there is another enemy that is much more dangerous.
   
• nojo is always there to cast light onto the darkened highway ahead, cautioning us about dangers before it is too late. This time we are given ten serious warning signs you might be experiencing optimism.
   
• The Propaganda Professor provides a favorable review to Thinking In Bets, a book which describes itself, in subtitle, as a how-to on Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts. One essential proposition is that measuring probabilities, playing the odds, means that sound decisions can bring disaster, and dumb as a rock choices can bring great results. Lessons drawn from past decisions should not stop at results. A thoughtful review.
   
• In a short pictorial, Reductress reviews the strange case of diet sodas that were suddenly taken off the market for opening a portal into a dimension of Hell.
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil really doesn’t like the whole time change thing.
   
• At the California Institute of Technology, The Journal of Improbable Research finds a study in how far a bicycle can travel on its own, without a rider. There must be a lesson here on how the nation survives periodic episodes of Republican rule.