Tag: Racism

Breonna Taylor Tape is Out

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Two very different accounts emerged on Friday from either side of an apartment door in Louisville, the one that police officers knocked off its hinges in March as they delivered a search warrant at the home of Breonna Taylor.

In newly released audio from closed-door grand jury proceedings, there was conflicting testimony over what happened in the seconds before the police shot and killed Ms. Taylor, a Black emergency room technician whose death pulled people to the streets in protests across the country.

………

The grand jury concluded its work by bringing an indictment against one former officer for endangering Ms. Taylor’s neighbors; it brought no charges against the two officers who shot her.

Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general, released the recordings on Friday after a judge ordered him to do so, but the recordings did not include the instructions that prosecutors gave to the 12 jurors. One juror said Mr. Cameron was deflecting blame by saying it was jurors who had opted not to indict the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor.

………

The grand jurors met in person over three days and reviewed police interviews of officers and witnesses at the scene, 911 calls and body camera videos from after Ms. Taylor was shot. They also met directly with detectives who had investigated the killing.

At times the jurors sound inquisitive or skeptical on the recordings, peppering the detectives with questions and pointing out inconsistencies in some of the officers’ accounts. Below are highlights of the evidence presented in the new recordings.
The audio does not include prosecutors’ instructions, which came into question after a grand juror spoke out.

The audio files do not include statements or recommendations from prosecutors about which charges they think should be brought against the officers who took part in the raid. Mr. Cameron has said that jurors were told that the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor — Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Detective Cosgrove, both of whom are white — were justified in their actions.

Mr. Cameron said prosecutors’ statements and jurors’ deliberations “were not recorded, as they are not evidence.” He has insisted that the jurors were given “all of the evidence” and were free to pursue additional charges.

This is complete crap.

The redacted tapes are clearly a coverup.


His release of the audiotapes came after a grand juror asked for the proceedings to be made public and accused Mr. Cameron of using the jurors to deflect blame over the decision. Grand jurors are given broad powers, but prosecutors often closely guide the jurors and inform them about their role. The process almost always remains secret.

………

After grand jurors heard a recording of the interview that Detective Cosgrove gave to investigators, one juror asked, “Does he have a history of panic attacks?” An investigator with the attorney general’s office said he did not know.

The grand jurors knew that the fix was in, but they were not told that they had sweeping powers to request information and issue subpoenas, even if the prosecutors did not want to.

………

Ms. Taylor’s next-door neighbors said they were awakened by banging but did not hear anyone announce that they were the police, according to interviews they gave to investigators. Once the shooting subsided, the neighbors said, they heard Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend sobbing and screaming for help.

………

In previous interviews with The New York Times, 11 of 12 witnesses on the scene that night said they never heard the police identify themselves. One of them said he heard the group say “police” just once.

Cops lie with impunity in court.  The current state Attorney General is fine with that.

………

The dozen grand jurors appeared inquisitive throughout the proceedings, asking witnesses about the evidence and sometimes sounding skeptical about what was provided to them.

………

The grand jurors asked a detective from the attorney general’s office several questions on the third and final day that they met, just hours before indicting Mr. Hankison.

They asked if the police had recovered drugs or money from the apartment; the detective said no, and that the police had not searched the apartment for drugs or paraphernalia after shooting Ms. Taylor. They asked whether he had diagrams of the scene (no) and why the officers’ body cameras were not activated (the detective said he did not know).

So, when the grand jurors asked for what they considered to be critical information, the response of the authorities was, “¯_(ツ)_/¯,” and they refused to tell those jurors that they have real and significant authority to investigate.

This is deeply corrupt.

It’s clear that the AG decided that they value the support of the cop unions over the over fair administration of justice.

American Exceptionalism , Huh?

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Minnesota has had to Stop Corona Virus surveys in Mennesota because of the racism and violence of the “Real Americans” in the state’s agricultural heartland.

This is not a surprise, but it has gotten MUCH worse over the past few years.

It’s almost as if people were deeply and pervasively bigoted, and they were only waiting for permission.

So, now they are letting their bigotry put their lives, and the lives of their loved ones, to promulgate their racist fantasies:

A door-to-door COVID-19 testing survey has been halted due to multiple incidents in greater Minnesota of residents intimidating and shouting racial and ethnic slurs at state and federal public health survey teams.

The CDC pulled its federal surveyors out of Minnesota this week following reports of verbal abuse and intimidation, including an incident in the Iowa border town of Eitzen, Minn., in which a survey team walking to a house was blocked by two cars and threatened by three men, according to state health officials. One man had his hand on a holstered gun.

………

Surveyors had been fanning out to 180 neighborhoods this month — offering free diagnostic testing for active COVID-19 infections and blood antibody testing to identify prior infections — to understand the true prevalence of the coronavirus causing the pandemic.

………

The surveyors trapped in the Eitzen incident were permitted to leave and did not file a police report about the gun-toting man or the two others who approached them.

………

The frequency of problems became clear last weekend when surveyors discussed their experiences, Yendell said. A Hispanic surveyor was called one slur “more in the last week than in her entire life,” she said.

………

The forced end to the study is an amalgam of 2020’s overriding tensions — the anger over prolonged business restrictions to limit COVID-19 and the racial tensions following police killings of Black people that resulted in protests and riots, and some predominantly white counterprotests.

………

Incidents occurred mostly in central and southern Minnesota, rural areas where there has been pent-up resentment over the spring statewide shutdown, the indoor mask mandate and the bar and restaurant restrictions. Such measures were seen as overkill in small towns where virus transmission has been less prevalent.

If, as the Republicans insist, these sorts of rural communities are the “Real America,” then the “Real America” is a profoundly nasty place.

H/T Stephen Saroff      o o  The Bear who Swims      
                        (_)_____o      
                     ~~~~(______)~~~~~~~~~~
                         oo    oo

Better off Ted is Reality, Zoom Edition

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Algorithms are a Dystopian future

A professor teaching Zoom classes, and he discovered that his head was being removed by the program. 

He called tech support, who trouble shot the problem, and (with said professor’s permission) related the account on Twitter. 

It turned out that he Zoom algorithm was choosing a globe for his head, and removing his actual head when it was doing that background trick thing.

One fact that will surprise anyone who has seen THAT episode of Better off Ted, is that the professor with the problem was Black. (See clip below)

It appears that much like Racist Republicans, Zoom cannot see color.

It cannot see it at all, and so the person is erased, which is one f%$# of a metaphor.

The optimists among us say that computer algorithms will eventually do away with racism.

The pessimists among us say that the computer algorithms will reinforce and extend racism.

The police, of course, are pulling out their wallets, because this gives them a excuse to discriminate, as is evidenced by the false arrest of a black man based on racist facial recognition.

Color me cynical.

The Hysterectomy Doc Story Gets Worse

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It turns out that the butcher who was routinely sterilizing ICE detainees was not a board certified OB/Gyn.

My conclusion at this point is that either Dr. Mahendra Amin was getting all of the sterilization jobs because he was paying kickbacks, or someone at the facility wanted mass sterilizations at the facility, and he was a willing conspirator, or both:

The doctor at the center of a scandal over unwanted hysterectomies at an immigrant detention facility in Georgia is not a board certified OB-GYN, The Daily Beast has learned.

Dr. Mahendra Amin came under scrutiny after immigrant rights groups issued a report accusing him of conducting unnecessary or unwanted gynecological procedures on women detained at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia.

………

ICE declined to comment on the record about Amin’s certification or policies concerning board-certified physicians. The agency has previously said it “vehemently disputes the implication that detainees are used for experimental medical procedures,” and cautioned that “anonymous, unproven allegations” should be treated with skepticism.

Reached by text message, Amin declined to comment on his board certification and deferred all questions to his lawyer, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the issue.

Amin has practiced in Douglas, Georgia for at least two decades, both in his own private practice and as the medical director for the labor and delivery department at Irwin County Hospital. Business records reviewed by The Daily Beast show he also incorporated a new “Amin Surgery Center for Women” in September 2019, and sought state approvals to build the facility two months afterward. Gayle Evans, a consultant for the project, said the surgical center is still under construction and has not started seeing patients.

………

Since then, lawyers representing 17 detainees have claimed their clients received unnecessary medical gynecological procedures from Amin, according to the office of Rep. Pramila Jayapal. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has launched an investigation into the allegations, and the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee said his panel would also look into them.

………

Board certification is a voluntary process meant to enhance a specialist’s expertise beyond state licensure. (Georgia state law requires only one year of education after medical school to obtain a license.) Physicians seeking ABOG certification must pass a written and oral exam and demonstrate experience in treating women’s health care. They are also required to participate in a program to keep them abreast of the latest evidence-based treatments.

………

Court records show Amin has previously settled lawsuits with at least two patients or their family members outside the detention center. In one case, Amin was accused of discharging a pregnant patient despite “life threatening abnormal lab values.” According to the suit, the woman returned to the hospital 48 hours later with contractions, blurred vision, high blood pressure and vaginal bleeding. She received an emergency cesarean section and died shortly thereafter. In a court filing, Amin denied any negligence and any knowledge of the abnormal lab values.

………

Amin and eight other doctors at the Irwin County Hospital also agreed to pay $520,000 to the federal government in 2015, after the Department of Justice accused them of fraudulently billing Medicare and Medicaid for services they did not provide. The complaint named Amin as the owner of MGA Health Management, which was contracted to run the hospital, and also identified him as a part owner of the institution.

………

The complaint further identifies a kickback scheme whereby Amin and other physicians directed patients to ICH instead of other institutions. Because of Amin’s ownership stake in ICH, he allegedly profited off every such referral.

………

Shahshahani said her organization is still working on discerning the total number of women who received surgery against their will. While she described the attention given to the hysterectomies as “well-deserved,” she cautioned against putting all the blame on an individual doctor.

“At the end of the day, it was the doctor that was performing these procedures but the buck really stops with ICE,” she said. “The U.S. government had the responsibility for the welfare and protection of these women.”

So, we know that he’s corrupt, and we know that ICE is deeply and pervasively racist.

You do the math.

Support Your Local Police

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This is f%$#ed Up and Sh%$

Remember when I wrote about a Clackamas County, Oregon Deputy spreading lies about Antifa starting fires?

It gets, worse.  A LOT worse.

The Deputy, who we now know is one Mark Nikolai, did more than spread lies about the fires.

He gave specific instructions on how white supremacist militia could kill people and get away with it.

Please also note, as had been demonstrated time, and time, and time, and time again, this guy is the rule not the exception. 

Most of the cops out there are clearly pro-white supremacist.

It’s why the entire institution of law enforcement in America needs to be torn down brick by brick and replaced with something that is not this corrupt and dysfunctional:

For many of us, September 11 has become a day of remembrance and a time to band together and take care of other people in any small way we can.

But for one sheriff’s deputy in Oregon, it was apparently an opportunity to share some dark advice amidst the wildfires that have spread in the Pacific Northwest.

A video was circulated online after an individual presumably wearing a body camera caught the deputy giving a group of armed White nationalist militia members tips on how to use force and kill civilians without getting caught or being charged.

The sheriff’s deputy has been identified as Deputy Mark Nikolai, who was placed on administrative leave.

………

Nikolai can be heard saying in the video:

“Don’t get yourself in a situation where you lose your rights because you pushed the limit.”

“You all mean to do good, your heart’s in the right place, but the courts nowadays don’t give a s**t where your heart is.”

………

“Now, if you throw a f**king knife in their hand after you shoot them, that’s on you.”

Officials from the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department have denied any affiliation with Nikolai’s statements or point of view.

They can deny it all they want, but we know what this guy was, and we know that he flourished for years in the department, and good cops don’t tell civilians, or other cops, to carry weapons to plant on their victims.

Any cop who has worked with this guy had to know what he was, and they let it slide, which meant that they were bad cops too.

Very Fine People Doing Their Job

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I am referring, of course, to the construction workers and engineers who have just removed a Confederate memorial statue from in front of the Albemarle County Courthouse.

They are doing God’s work:

Engineers in Charlottesville, Virginia worked to remove a 900lb Confederate statue on Saturday, a moment of symbolic reckoning in the university town that was rocked by a white supremacist march in August 2017.

The statue taken down was not that of Robert E Lee, which extremists said they were defending in clashes which led to the murder of a counter-protester. Instead, Charlottesville removed a bronze figure of a Confederate soldier, known as “At Ready”, that has stood for 111 years outside the Albemarle county courthouse.

Around 100 people cheered from behind barricades as bronze plaques were taken off the sides of the monument and a cannon was removed, the Washington Post reported. Police stood by.

………

Donald Trump provoked outrage in 2017 when he said there were “very fine people” on both sides of clashes in which Heather Heyer, 32, was killed when an extremist drove his car into a crowd.

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Albemarle is the first locality to use a process for removing statues that was approved by the state’s general assembly. But activists have said they are disappointed that “At the Ready” will be re-erected elsewhere.

“We feel like it’s just basically toxic waste disposal in another community,” Jalane Schmidt, an associate professor at the University of Virginia, told the Post.

(emphasis mine)

Rats Turn on Each Other

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The police officers charged in the Georgy Floyd murder are beginning to turn on one another.

What can I say but, “Pass the Popcorn.”

The four former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing appear to be turning on one another, with each offering significantly different versions of the infamous arrest that acknowledge Floyd should not have been allowed to die that day but also deflect the blame to others.

The four men have said in court documents that they all thought someone else was in charge of the scene on May 25 — with rookie officers arguing they were deferring to a veteran, and the veteran saying he was simply assisting in an arrest that was in progress. All have said in court documents that the relationship between the veteran officer — Derek Chauvin — and the others is at the heart of the issue, as each officer perceived their role, and who was in charge, quite differently. Chauvin was the officer shown with his knee on Floyd’s neck as he struggled to breathe in videos of the ill-fated arrest.

“There are very likely going to be antagonistic defenses presented at the trial,” Earl Gray, a lawyer for Thomas K. Lane, wrote in a legal motion filed here this week. “It is plausible that all officers have a different version of what happened and officers place blame on one another.”

It’s nice when people who are ordinarily beneficiaries of the corrupt “Thin Blue Line” start turning against each other.

Here’s hoping that they all screw each other into a jail cell.

Finest Journalist in the United States is a Brit

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I am referring, of course, to John Oliver.

He masterfully juxtaposes the lie fest at the RNC with the events in Kenosha.

It’s sad that a comedian is pretty much the only person in the main-stream-media providing good context and analysis.

As an aside, I think that John Oliver is much better than Jon Stewart ever was.

Stewart subscribed to the “View from nowhere”, and Oliver does not hide his opinions.

Signs of the Apocalypse

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I cannot believe that I am writing this, but Delta Airlines has done the right thing.


John Mulaney on Delta

Delta took the side of a Black passenger after a Karen in the seat next to her picked a fight with her, and Delta upgraded her seat on the return flight.

Delta did the right thing, and I still cannot believe that I wrote that:

A Black woman harassed by a white passenger on her Delta flight to Washington, D.C., last week is singing the airline’s praises after it upgraded her flight in response.

Demetria Poe, 25, was flying from Minneapolis to D.C. on Thursday to attend the Commitment March, held last Friday on the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington. Poe, who spoke to USA Today after her Facebook post detailing the experience went viral, says she was already seated when a white passenger, who realized her seat assignment was next to Poe, swapped out the American flag face mask she had been wearing for a Blue Lives Matter one.

“That woman was trying to entice me into an argument because there was no need for her to flip that mask in my presence,” Poe told the news outlet. “She didn’t do it for anyone else. It was as if she was making a statement and wanted me to know.”

Poe did not react to the mask, but after takeoff, the white woman began to goad Poe into conversation, telling her, “I support blue lives because I support our officers.”

………

Poe noted to USA Today that she remained “very calm” throughout the conversation because she suspected her seat mate wanted to provoke her. White passengers around her also intervened and “snapped on this lady” in Poe’s defense. Delta flight attendants also checked on her and offered to move Blue Lives Karen. Once the plane landed in D.C., Delta attendants relayed to her that the white woman would no longer be flying with the airline because they do not “personally or as a company stand for racism and discrimination,” Poe wrote on her Facebook.

“I felt the genuine and sincere concern the flight attendants had for me and the people around me,” Poe told USA Today. “I was shocked. I was happy, but I was still fearful. Living in Minnesota, I have seen how things get blown up. I just really wanted to get off the flight.”

But the story didn’t end there for Poe. On her return flight to Minneapolis, her seat was upgraded, and she received a small bag full of gifts, including a “Black Lives Matter” Delta pin. Poe was moved to tears by the gift and was heartened by the airline choosing to stand in solidarity with her.

“This is a major corporation saying that Black lives matter,” Poe said, adding that she “will only fly Delta” from now on.

After Poe’s Facebook post detailing the incident went viral, the airline dropped a response to her: “When we say Black lives matter, we mean it. You matter to us, Demetria.”

We are living in strange times.

Quote of the Day

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Because I’ve lived most of my life either on the near periphery or within academia, I’ve had nearly four decades of experience with the creepy essentialist language of “racial authenticity” that lives and thrives in more than one corner of putatively liberal academia. As a result, I learned a long time ago that some white liberals expect black and brown people to “perform” in ways that comport with their well-meaning, usually underclass-informed, and fundamentally racist expectations of black people.

—Touré F. Reed in Jacobin on the spectacle of Professor Jessica Krug masquerading as a Black Hispanic woman throughout her career

The entire sordid affair is raises an important question, one which will be studiously ignored in the halls of academe, “What are the (probably racist) preconceptions that allowed for this fraud to be perpetrated?”

Tweet of the Day

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If modern Democrats were around in the 1800s their solution to slavery would be Black slave owners.

— Albert Lee for the People 🌹 (@AlbertLee2020) August 10, 2020

The reality of the situation is that much of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is allergic to any sort of move toward social justice, and so try to do nothing about the carceral state, predatory finance, and inequality.

Instead, they rely on Republican Party racism to define themselves as a party.

Implicit Bias Training Does Not Work

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Yet another study shows that implicit bias training of police does not work.

This is not a surprise. The training was never intended to work, it was intended to do 3 things:

  1. It gives the illusion that the powers that they give a damn, and are actually address the problem.
  2. It provides a bullsh%$ job to a member of the Professional Managerial Class (PMC) who would otherwise be forced to do something productive.
  3. It comforts the comfortable, and assuages their guilt over their privileged lives without actually addressing the fact that they are beneficiaries of a corrupt system..

The late Dave Graeber had this whole phenomenon nailed.

If you want to stop cops from being brutal racists, you have to make sure that when they step out of line, they are punished.

This Was Inevitable

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The right-wing organized a driving Trump rally in Portland, and after repeatedly driving through crowds of protesters, something that has not been covered by the main stream media, one of the right-wingers was shot to death.  

At this point, there is no information as to where the shot came from.

It could have been the protesters, the counter-protesters, or the cops.

Portland Police Bureau (PPB) say the unidentified victim died around 8:45 pm from a gunshot wound to the chest. Videos shared by reporters on the scene show a man lying on his back near SW 3rd and Alder, surrounded by officers and medics attempting to treat him.

A video posted on Facebook shows the minutes leading up to the shooting from across the street. The clip captures several people on a sidewalk in front of a parking garage shouting at each other before the sound of two gunshots go off, accompanied with a puff of smoke.

The shooting coincided with a pro-Trump car caravan winding its way through downtown Portland. It’s not immediately clear if the shooting was directly connected to this protest.

The caravan, dubbed a “Trump cruise rally,” met around 4 pm at the Clackamas Town Center parking lot. In the Facebook page for the pro-Trump event, organizers encouraged attendees to bring firearms with them, as long as they followed concealed carry laws.

After gathering at the shopping mall, several hundred vehicles—many waving large American and Trump 2020 flags—then drove to downtown Portland, where they were met by groups of counter-protesters. Portland police dressed in riot gear stood by as caravan members drove through groups of people in the street. Other drivers jumped out of their cars to confront counter-protesters on the street, some getting into fistfights.

One rally member turns to avoid counter-protesters but another drives right through them hitting several people. pic.twitter.com/i3aLRQg9tJ

— Cory Elia (@TheRealCoryElia) August 30, 2020

This is assault with a deadly weapon, and the cops are ignoring it.

The New York Times coverage, by comparison diminishes the right-wing violence to, “Trump supporters shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks.”

Facebook Supporting Right Wing Terrorists Again

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It turns out that the Kenosha white supremacist militia had been repeatedly reported for threats of violence, and moderators refused to take any action:

In a companywide meeting on Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that a militia page advocating for followers to bring weapons to an upcoming protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, remained on the platform because of “an operational mistake.” The page and an associated event inspired widespread criticism of the company after a 17-year-old suspect allegedly shot and killed two protesters Tuesday night.

The event associated with the Kenosha Guard page, however, was flagged to Facebook at least 455 times after its creation, according to an internal report viewed by BuzzFeed News, and had been cleared by four moderators, all of whom deemed it “non-violating.” The page and event were eventually removed from the platform on Wednesday — several hours after the shooting.

“To put that number into perspective, it made up 66% of all event reports that day,” one Facebook worker wrote in the internal “Violence and Incitement Working Group” to illustrate the number of complaints the company had received about the event.

………

The internal report seen by BuzzFeed News reveals the extent to which concerned Facebook users went to warn the company of a group calling for public violence, and how the company failed to act. “The event is highly unusual in retrospect,” reads the report, which notes that the next highest event for the day had been flagged 18 times by users compared to the 455 times of the Kenosha Guard event.

………

During Facebook’s Thursday all-hands meeting, Zuckerberg said that the images from Wisconsin were “painful and really discouraging,” before acknowledging that the company had made a mistake in not taking the Kenosha Guard page and event down sooner. The page had violated Facebook’s new rules introduced last week that labeled militia and QAnon groups as “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” for their celebrations of violence.

The company did not catch the page despite user reports, Zuckerberg said, because the complaints had been sent to content moderation contractors who were not versed in “how certain militias” operate. “On second review, doing it more sensitively, the team that was responsible for dangerous organizations recognized that this violated the policies and we took it down.”

During the talk, Facebook employees hammered Zuckerberg for continuing to allow the spread of hatred on the platform.

“At what point do we take responsibility for enabling hate filled bile to spread across our services?” wrote one employee. “[A]nti-semitism, conspiracy, and white supremacy reeks across our services.”

All the complaints in the world from Facebook employees who matter, the algorithm folks and the ad folks, not the moderators, start leaving over this, or perhaps when they start demanding concrete actions, like the removal Facebook’s vice president of global public policy Joel Kaplan, who is the most aggressive support of violent white supremacists in the organization.

Kaplan is arguably the most powerful supporter of those who promulgate right-wing violent stochastic terrorism of anyone in the USA.

He is a clear and present danger to public safety and to the Republic.*

He is also a Shanda fur die Goyim.†

*Please not that I am not calling him a רוֹדֵף (rodef), literally a pursuer who is required under Halacha to be stoped by any means necessary, including lethal force. It would be irresponsible for me to call him a He is a רוֹדֵף (rodef).  It would be irresponsible for anyone to call another person a  רוֹדֵף (rodef).  It is an explicit call for the murder of another individual.
† Yiddish for a, “Shame before the nations,” meaning that this person is an embarrassment to the whole Jewish people.

This is a Vintage Month for Schadenfraude

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The confederate general has fallen pic.twitter.com/vbrd7MrjE5

— Davante Lewis (@davantelewis) August 27, 2020

Epic

Calcasieu Parish refused to remove the Confederate “South’s Defenders Monument” when activists demanded that the tribute to to slavery be taken down. Hurricane Laura did the job anyway:

As Hurricane Laura made landfall along the Gulf Coast early Thursday morning, it brought down a Confederate monument in southern Louisiana that community members pushed to remove earlier this summer. Despite requests from residents and support from a local mayor, the government in Calcasieu Parish, where the monument is located, voted to keep it in its place during a meeting held two weeks ago.

On Thursday morning, photos shared to social media showed the Confederate statue, known as the South’s Defenders Monument, incurred significant damages overnight as a result of the hurricane.

“Lake Charles and Calcasieu Parish has been filled with controversy and tension after our parish government by a vote of 10–5 refused to take down the Confederate South’s Defenders Monument,” wrote Davante Lewis, director of public affairs at The Louisiana Budget Project, alongside pictures of the toppled structure.

………

In subsequent comments to Newsweek, Lewis noted that only a few Black members belong to the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury—similar to a board of commissioners—and said the governing body’s vote to maintain the South’s Defenders statue was divided along racial lines. Although Lewis himself is not currently a resident of Calcasieu Parish, his family lives there and father Eddie Lewis is a representative on the Police Jury.

I am amused.

Kenosha

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Blaming the victims, this is pretty shocking

pic.twitter.com/XmUmclMlrO

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) August 26, 2020

Blaming the Victims

A 17 y/o white supremacist, Kyle Rittenhouse, drove from Illinois to Wisconsin w/ an AR-15 to TERRORIZE BLM PROTESTORS

He shot several people ended up killing 2. Then is able to casually walk around police as if he didn’t just murder!

WHAT THE FUCK?!pic.twitter.com/eSdQm5eJ4Z

— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) August 26, 2020


The police don’t care, it’s only black people

Just after the shooting, another member of that militia (who was seen in pre-shooting pictures with the killer) described how the police told him they planned to push the protesters out of the park and towards the militia.

Which is exactly what they did. pic.twitter.com/jFsZQK8Dl1

— Lee J. Carter (@carterforva) August 26, 2020

Police were collaborating with right wing militias

There is a life cycle for bad cops.  They go to the academy at a large city, and eventually wash out, either at academy or after becoming an officer, because of incompetence, stupidity, and bigotry.

They go to a smaller municipality and get a job there, because someone else has already paid for their training, and they are cheap, and wash out to smaller, and smaller towns, because the smaller (and more resource limited) a police department is, the more it has to take on a police officer who got the boot from the big show.

At the end of the line, it appears is Kenosha, where following a domestic violence call, a police officer (or officers) shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back, paralyzing him.

It was caught on video, and there have been protests.

The police have responded with violence and provocation.

Last night, a 17-year-old white supremacist,Kyle Rittenhouse, and his AR-15, were driven to Kenosha from Illinois by his mom, he opened fire on the protesters.

The police blamed the victims, describing premeditated murder as, “The use of firearms to resolve whatever conflict.”

The officers literally ignored him as he walked past the cops, gun in hand, and was later arrested by Illinois law enforcement and charged with 1st degree murder.

The police were caught on video planning with with white supremacist militias, including the shooter.

It appears that the white supremacists are a part of Kenosha’s police auxiliary, and play a major role in the department’s legendary corruption:

“Corruption, lies, multiple evidence plantings, and deceit existed throughout the entire Kenosha criminal justice system,” concluded one report, commissioned by the Wisconsin state Supreme Court in 2017 after officers allegedly lied and planted evidence in a murder case.

Of course, this may not matter to the “Silent Majority” that Donald Trump is so enthusiastic about, but this is already hitting them, because the Milwaukee Bucks are  boycotting Game 5 of their playoff series vs. The Orlando Magic in protest. (They should be calling it a strike)

The boycott has since expanded to include NBA playoff games between Houston & Oklahoma City, and the Los Angeles & Portland, as well as games in Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the WNBA.

All those folks who freaked out over Colin Kaepernick, including the orange inverted traffic cone, can bite my shiny metal ass over this one.

In refusing to respond in a serious manner to a very real problem, they have made more extreme actions, and more extreme protests, inevitable.

Worst Argument for Identity Politics Argument

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I get that these folks want equal opportunity corruption, but that does not mean that they should some sort of special permission to install a revolving door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

A battle is brewing on K Street over an effort by progressives to ensure a Biden administration is devoid of any former Wall Street executives or corporate lobbyists.

Black and Latino lobbyists say a ban of that sort would end up shutting out minorities and could make the administration less diverse if Democrats win back the White House.

The tensions date back to April, when eight progressive groups wrote a letter calling on former Vice President Joe Biden to vow not to appoint any “current or former Wall Street executives or corporate lobbyists, or people affiliated with the fossil fuel, health insurance or private prison corporations” to his transition team, Cabinet or as top aides.

That demand did not sit well with some minority lobbyists, who argue that corporate lobbyists shouldn’t be denied a spot in the administration.

“Given the wokeness of these people, I find it odd they are so comfortable lumping a large group of people together. They have an agenda that is limiting and it has always been limiting,” said Michael Williams, founder of the Williams Group, one of the few Black-owned lobbying shops in D.C.

………

“Vice President Biden has made it clear that he’s going to make it a priority to clean up Trump’s mess by putting in place tough safeguards against the sort of rampant cronyism and lobbyist influence we’ve seen over the last four years, even as Biden ensures that his administration’s staffing reflects America’s diversity,” Biden for President spokesman Michael Gwin said.

Nicole Venable, a lobbyist at Invariant, criticized the effort by progressives, saying their goal to have a Biden administration filled with staff reflecting all of America is undercut by these types of restrictions.

………

Alliance for Youth Action, one of the groups that signed the April letter to Biden, stressed that progressives are particularly concerned about corporate lobbyists serving in a future administration.

“The letter we’ve sent doesn’t call for a ban on lobbyists, it calls for a ban on explicitly CORPORATE lobbyists like the ones who have been able to push a harmful agenda within the Trump administration which have taken away government’s ability to protect people of color, young workers and children from pollutants in our air and water and predatory economic practices which continue to hold them in poverty,” Carmel Pryor, senior director of communications at Alliance for Youth Action, told The Hill in an email.

They are literally arguing for corruption.

You want equal rights to profit off of government service.

I want no one to profit off of government service.

I Thought That the Political Silly Season Started Months Ago

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Bogart Said it Best

I was misinformed.

The silly season starts today, because, as The Root so eloquently states, “‘I’m With Joe’: Punch-a-Nazi Poster Child Richard Spencer Tweets His Endorsement of Joe Biden.

The Biden campaign immediately disavowed the endorsement, but this is the day when the campaign went from weird to being narrated by Rod Serling:

2020 is officially M. Night Shyamalan’s worst movie.*

I mean, I thought this shitshow had already jumped the shark when the mistresses of minstrel, Diamond and Silk, decided they were ready to talk about systemic racism, but this infamous year has apparently decided to pull an Evel Knievel over a mile-long row of sharks as the alt-right favorite with America’s most punchable face, Richard Spencer, has announced his endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

On Monday, the tiki-torch boy-band leader (he changed the name of his group to “White Sheet Boys” because “NSYNC With White Supremacy” doesn’t roll off the tongue very well) tweeted an image of his photo next to the words “I’m with Joe” and a quote from an earlier tweet of his that reads, “Liberals are clearly more competent.”

………

Still, a neo-Nazi like Spencer—who the Southern Poverty Law Center described as “one of the country’s most successful young white nationalist leaders,” a “suit-and-tie version of the white supremacists of old,” and “a kind of professional racist in khakis”—throwing his lot behind the Democratic ticket is one weird plot twist.

Anyway, according to Andrew Bates, the director of rapid response for Biden’s campaign, Biden is rejecting Spencer’s friend request.

“When Joe Biden says we are in a battle for the soul of our nation against vile forces of hate who have come crawling out from under rocks, you are the epitome of what he means,” Bates tweeted. “What you stand for is absolutely repugnant. Your support is 10,000% percent unwelcome here.

Go to link above for a video of someone punching Richard Spencer in the face.

*Obviously, the author is younger than I am, as evidenced by the Serling/Shamalan dichotomy in analogies.†
†Also, I’ve only seen one of his movies, The Last Airbender, which was so bad that it scarred me for life.

What is the Democratic Socialists of America?

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Obviously, they are a political group that has seen explosive growth since the Presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders that claims to support “Democratic Socialism”, though whether that term means actual state ownership of the means of production, or something akin to Roosevelt’s New Deal, is unclear.

On a deeper, and far more important. level, the question is whether the organization is interested in systemic or societal change, or is merely a vehicle for virtue-signaling.

We have an answer now, at least for the New York chapter, and it is that the comfortable merely want to feel comfortable about being comfortable, which is why they black-balled a talk by one of the most prominent African American Marxist scholars in the nation, Adolph Reed.

They did so, because he argues that class struggle is at the core of the current problems in our society, rather than eschewing class analysis to focus exclusively on racial and ethnic oppression.

I will admit that I am not an expert in the finer points of socialist theory, but I cannot see how one can possibly call themselves a Socialist if you deny the centrality of class struggle:

Adolph Reed is a son of the segregated South, a native of New Orleans who organized poor Black people and antiwar soldiers in the late 1960s and became a leading Socialist scholar at a trio of top universities.

Along the way, he acquired the conviction, controversial today, that the left is too focused on race and not enough on class. Lasting victories were achieved, he believed, when working class and poor people of all races fought shoulder to shoulder for their rights.

In late May, Professor Reed, now 73 and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, was invited to speak to the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter. The match seemed a natural. Possessed of a barbed wit, the man who campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders and skewered President Barack Obama as a man of “vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics” would address the D.S.A.’s largest chapter, the crucible that gave rise to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a new generation of leftist activism.

His chosen topic was unsparing: He planned to argue that the left’s intense focus on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black people undermined multiracial organizing, which he sees as key to health and economic justice.

………

Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking moment as perhaps the nation’s most powerful Socialist organization rejected a Black Marxist professor’s talk because of his views on race.

“God have mercy, Adolph is the greatest democratic theorist of his generation,” said Cornel West, a Harvard professor of philosophy and a Socialist. “He has taken some very unpopular stands on identity politics, but he has a track record of a half-century. If you give up discussion, your movement moves toward narrowness.”

The decision to silence Professor Reed came as Americans debate the role of race and racism in policing, health care, media and corporations. Often pushed aside in that discourse are those leftists and liberals who have argued there is too much focus on race and not enough on class in a deeply unequal society. Professor Reed is part of the class of historians, political scientists and intellectuals who argue that race as a construct is overstated.

………

“Adolph Reed and his ilk believe that if we talk about race too much we will alienate too many, and that will keep us from building a movement,” said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a Princeton professor of African-American studies and a D.S.A. member. “We don’t want that — we want to win white people to an understanding of how their racism has fundamentally distorted the lives of Black people.”

What the f%$# does, “We want to win white people to an understanding,” mean, beyond perhaps, “I’m a tenured professor living a comfortable life, so f%$# the poor to keep my taxes low, and stop the cops from pulling me over for driving a nice car.”

A contrary view is offered by Professor Reed and some prominent scholars and activists, many of whom are Black. They see the current emphasis in the culture on race-based politics as a dead-end. They include Dr. West; the historians Barbara Fields of Columbia University and Toure Reed — Adolph’s son — of Illinois State; and Bhaskar Sunkara, founder of Jacobin, a Socialist magazine.

They readily accept the brute reality of America’s racial history and of racism’s toll. They argue, however, that the problems now bedeviling America — such as wealth inequality, police brutality and mass incarceration — affect Black and brown Americans, but also large numbers of working class and poor white Americans.

………

In years past, the D.S.A. had welcomed Professor Reed as a speaker. But younger members, chafing at their Covid-19 isolation and throwing themselves into “Defund the Police” and anti-Trump protests, were angered to learn of the invitation extended to him.

………

None of this surprised Professor Reed, who sardonically described it as a “tempest in a demitasse.” Some on the left, he said, have a “militant objection to thinking analytically.”

Professor Reed is an intellectual duelist, who especially enjoys lancing liberals he sees as too cozy with corporate interests. He wrote that President Bill Clinton and his liberal followers showed a “willingness to sacrifice the poor and to tout it as tough-minded compassion” and described former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as a man whose “tender mercies have been reserved for the banking and credit card industries.”

………

“I’ve never led with my biography, as that’s become an authenticity-claiming gesture,” he said. “But when my opponents say that I don’t accept that racism is real, I think to myself, ‘OK, we’ve arrived at a strange place.’”

Professor Reed and his compatriots believe the left too often ensnares itself in battles over racial symbols, from statues to language, rather than keeping its eye on fundamental economic change.

“If I said to you, ‘You’re laid off, but we’ve managed to rename Yale to the name of another white person’, you would look at me like I’m crazy,” said Mr. Sunkara, the editor of Jacobin.

………

“Liberals use identity politics and race as a way to counter calls for redistributive polices,” noted Toure Reed, whose book “Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism” tackles these subjects.

DSA, at least the New York chapter to be more interested in mental masturbation than it is in either socialism or real change.