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.
- Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged gets her second jab and has a few words to say about weird misinformation bouncing about concerning immunization.
- Hackwhackers brings us prospective California gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner.
Hackwhackers sees it as one more instance of Jenner – Kardashian – Kanye family self-promotion.
- So… Louis DeJoy was appointed by once-upon-a-time president Trump to take over the US Postal Service. He slowed service down just before the election in a vain attempt to keep absentee votes for Biden from counting. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit reads the same investigative reports available to the rest of us, and asks what we all should ask. Why the hell is the investigative arm of DeJoy’s Post Office departing from postal fraud to spy on dissident groups having nothing to do with mail delivery.
- driftglass goes after Republican David Brooks tick-tock style with a year by year one sentence summary per going back more than 20 years. And yes, Virginia, there is a pattern.
- Sarah Cooper talks with a famous journalist and wonders what is distracting him. Then finds out.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara goes to Lenin and Stalin for the classic definition of Socialism. He answers the question on everyone’s mind. If socialists want workers to own the means of production, why do they advocate for state ownership of EVERYthing?
Well, they can pry my toothbrush from my cold dead dentures.
In 1968, some leftist publication was said to have reacted to the assassination of Robert Kennedy with a photo of the dying Presidential candidate with his head replaced by that of a pig.
Ideologues often live in a binary world, a universe in which there exists few gradations. We are their comrades in enlightenment, or we dwell on the outer edge of darkness. The temptation shared by the most extreme is the inability to make or understand nuance. They easily fall into a pattern of hyperbole, defeating with unassailable logic opposing arguments that exist only in their imaginations.
- Scotties Toy Box explores in cartoon form the new and varied forms currently taken by contemporary conservatism, liberated these days from conventional American ethics.
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life details eight ideological variations of contemporary conservatism, ranging from the traditional views we all observed as kids to new-wave weirdness, then goes to six personality categories.
- Maybe it’s projection on my part. Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson seems to realize the Republican party today is bouncing between two extremes: rightwing pro-Trump fanatics on one hand and flat out moon-howling QAnon type radicals on the other. Wisconsin’s Republican party will be holding a political forum and James does not approve of the prospective speakers.
- Green Eagle reminds us that blogs are reporting, day by day, minute by minute, and readers are believing each update, in an ongoing fictional account of Hillary Clinton’s trial in Guantanamo.
- News Corpse sees proponents enter and leave the spotlight but the Trump big lie of election stealing has a zombie life of its own.
- With the help of a current Republican “audit” of last year’s votes in Arizona, Frances Langum explains that the hard right will now and forever remain sore losers about 2020.
- More than a century ago, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was a product of her time, sharing many of the racial attitudes and ideological fashions, leaving the organization and its supporters to overcome today’s conservative attacks. Imani Gandy at Rewire News Group suggests that reproductive rights advocates can finally afford to move beyond Sangers’s racism and her bows to the eugenics beliefs of the early 1900s. Instead they must confront new current conservative rhetoric: the weaponization of the physically disabled.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the data, the studies, the facts, as he makes a compelling case that the U.S. needs more immigrants for a healthy economy.
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reports the happy news about renewal of a federal program to match potential marrow donors with adults and children suffering from leukemia and other diseases. Pretty much everyone in Congress supported it. Except for a couple of the usual suspects. Didn’t want to burden taxpayers with matching all those people.
- Infidel753 explores the many reasons bloggers post their thoughts, then reveals his own.
He imagines himself as seeking simply to catch the attention of like-minded people. My own imagination informs me that many who are not entirely of like mind find him insightful, his wisdom enlightening.
Like me, you may find him to be genuinely, perhaps inaccurately, self-deprecating on several counts. He is brilliant, and that’s a fact, Jack.
- The Journal of Improbable Research finds a university study in the Netherlands on the correlation of physical height with advancement within Dutch police organizations.
- At The Moderate Voice Doug Gibson reviews an account of how Shakespearean actor Bela Lugosi became Dracula of film.
- Iron Knee at Political Irony worries a little about the effect of social platforms on our collective intelligence, then gets snapped to a more positive view by an account of technology in and around history.
- Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes is invited by the company administering his pension to write about his impending retirement. Vincent is still gathering his thoughts, but does have quick observations about the quality of free health care.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, a true believer is convinced, and tries to convince atheist Bruce, that he, Bruce, is an unwitting believer himself. Well, it’s a novel approach. A little more challenging, I think, (and perhaps a little less honest) than that of the Apostle Paul 2000 or so years ago on the Hill of Mars in Athens, speaking about a nearby temple to an unknown god: Let me tell you of the God you have been worshiping all along.
Paul’s speech is probably the outer edge of what I would be willing to tell people about what they actually, unknowingly, think.
- Reductress writes about your 60 something year old dad calling to see how your laptop is holding up. So why the hell pick on me?
Okay, if your dad is 60, I’d say make fun of him. But if he’s my age, respect your elders and cut some slack.
Damn middle age kids!
- At the specific request of a loyal reader, author John Scalzi at Whatever provides a frustratingly vague response that will leave us completely confused.
My kind of guy!
- Ant Farmer’s Almanac seems remarkably unmoved by David Attenborough’s narration of nature documentaries.
- PZ Myers discovers a cat-and-mouse conspiracy between former animal enemies.
- @momwino98 can tell us she has kids without telling us she has kids – in fact, without telling us anything at all:
@momwino98 Every damn time!!! ##tiktokmom ##fyp ##donuts
– Podcasts –
Thank you for including my blog … once again. 😍
Thank you for the kind words. I really appreciate it.