Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

“woke” is the new caravan.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

We still have time to mess this up!

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

When we show up, we win.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Worst Kept Secret Ever, Ferguson Edition

Open Thread: Worst Kept Secret Ever, Ferguson Edition

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This post is in: ,

Looks like Tim F. nailed it to the wall.

[UPDATE] Or maybe not…

…The hell is going on here?

[UPDATE 2] Now the FBI is being dispatched to Ferguson ahead of the decision to set up a command center. This is getting insane.

Reader Interactions

142Comments

  5. 5.

    beth

    So that’s why the leaked stories that Darren Wilson is in talks to resign? Maybe hoping that’ll calm the protesters? Good luck with that.

  12. 12.

    Seanly

    Maybe we’ll all be pleasantly surprised and there will be an indictment. And then right after the unicorns fly out of my butt I will buy a winning lottery ticket.

    I tend to be cynical – mostly because whenever I think happy thoughts, I end up disappointed.

  14. 14.

    burnspbesq

    After the way Duke shat the bed last night, the only way for karmic balance to be restored is for there to be an indictment.

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    Open Thread?

    Project which had been procrastinating about at home, which in younger days might have taken 45 minutes, stretched out to 4½ hours.

    This gettin’ old stuff does take a toll. 9 in the morning, and exhausted.

  16. 16.

    Tommy

    @Linnaeus: Of course they will. If you have not been following this case closely, well this happened with the same DA:

    In 2001, McCulloch oversaw a particularly controversial fatal shooting case in which two unarmed black men, caught up in a small-time drug sting, were shot 21 times in broad daylight by undercover officers at a Jack In the Box drive-through. In presenting the case to the grand jury, McCulloch said the men pulled forward at the officers, prompting them to open fire. The jurors decided not to indict the officers–who both testified–based on the evidence McCulloch presented. “These guys were bums,” McCulloch said of the deceased. The case became a flashpoint of racial tension that has been seared in the minds of many members of St. Louis County’s African American communities ever since. A subsequent investigation by The St. Louis Post Dispatch found that only three of the 13 officers involved in the sting said the vehicle moved forward; the two officers who shot and a third officer whose testimony McCulloch later described as “completely wrong.”

  18. 18.

    Timurid

    I mentioned this in a previous thread, but… a few knuckleheads will go out and start fires tonight, but anyone with brains is going to wait a week and do something a whole lot nastier (for the people in charge).

    If I was organizing the protests I would tell everyone to stay home tonight and this weekend… so they’ll be tanned, rested and ready for Black Friday. That is, BLACK Friday. That’s when they lock down the malls, shopping districts and key intersections (focusing on the most affluent areas) with picket lines, masses of protesters, strategically parked/abandoned vehicles, etc. The biggest shopping day of the year, up in smoke. Not entirely legal but totally nonviolent. If the authorities want to do something stupid, it’s on them. This would be orders of magnitude more terrifying for the local elites than a bunch of fools looting and throwing rocks…

  20. 20.

    am

    “…The hell is going on here?”

    They’re lying. Guarantee it’s a game of chicken w/ the officer to resign vs him being sure that the grand jury will not choose to indict him. But they can’t have it seen as quid pro quo. Alternately, if they are not indicting, he might just be polishing a pair of brass ones and rescinding his offer to resign (and the leverage is being applied the other way: resign or limbo).

    Anyway, just my 2 cents. Surely Tim F. nailed the essential dynamic of all this.

  22. 22.

    Tim in SF

    I just read on the great orange satan breaking news that brown died 145 feet from Wilson’s car, not 35 like they’ve been claiming this whole time. That’s quite a difference.

  23. 23.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    Sorry, but you can’t dampen my mood today. I should be getting the first round of edits on Becoming Phoebe back today, giving me something to work on for a few weeks. I’m like a kid waiting for his parents to tell him he can come downstairs to open presents on Christmas morning.

    And I had a meeting today to start the process of creating a cover. I learned why I liked or disliked the covers of comparable books that I found with someone who could explain how the effects are created. And we got a bunch of notes put together to send to the designer so he can start.

    And have I mentioned that ruemara sent me some awesome stills of the animation she’s putting together? Maybe she and I should go into business together; she’ll do the artwork and I’ll do the accounting.

  24. 24.

    Amir Khalid

    I dare not guess whether the grand jury will indict Officer Wilson. Even though Omnes Omnibus wisely cautions us not to read anything into the incidental details, the fear that it won’t seems entirely reasonable.

    It’s my guess that Darren Wilson has become toxic to the St Louis PD and the city wants him gone. If the city is trying to persuade him to quit, as rumoured, it might mean only that the city wants to protect itself against potential lawsuits — from Michael Brown’s parents if Wilson is not indicted, or from Wilson if he is not indicted and then fired. It won’t really help if Wilson just moves on to some other town’s police force.

  25. 25.

    Spinwheel

    So you jump on a BREAKING story to be first and then you walk it back and wonder what happened?

    What happened is you’re as bad as the “villagers” and “Team WIN THE MORNING” that you constantly bitch about.

    You’re no different.

  26. 26.

    Tommy

    @Timurid: That is good strategic thinking. Very good in fact. Shut down Black Friday. But I almost hope they don’t. I live about 30 miles away and I’ve only see one of these stories get much of any national coverage, but the “white” owner of the cell phone store that had all his windows broken and the place looted said he didn’t blame the locals. When he got to his store people he didn’t know were guarding it and helped him clean up.

    In the local St. Louis media that story has been told ten to one. Meaning ten no blame placed on the locals by store owners to one placing blame.

    I’d hate to punish those small business owners. I have a client that owns two stores in a metro area outside a major US city. This time of the year is 60+ percent of his yearly income.

  27. 27.

    Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)

    @Amir Khalid:

    I dare not guess whether the grand jury will indict Officer Wilson. Even though Omnes Omnibus wisely cautions us not to read anything into the incidental details, the fear that it won’t seems entirely reasonable.

    I think lamh36 has been misreading Omnes. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that Wilson won’t be indicted but the basis for that has nothing to do with the procedural steps that have been taken. Those have been perfectly reasonable and explainable. The basis for thinking that he won’t be indicted is that prosecutors rarely indict cops for shooting people.

  29. 29.

    Tommy

    @Tim in SF: Yes, yes, yes. The Riverfront Times, the alternative weekly in St. Louis (our City Paper) has noted this often. Brown’s poor body was in the street for four plus hours. Wilson’s SUV there as well. I maybe a lifelong golfer and good with yardage, but from the detailed analysis at Daily Kos and just the pics I’ve seen many times in the past you don’t have to be good with yardage to know that isn’t 35 feet.

  30. 30.

    Gin & Tonic

    In other news, one year ago today, then-President Viktor Yanukovych announced he was withdrawing Ukraine from talks which were leading toward an EU association agreement, and a young Afghan-born journalist living and working in Kiev sent out a Tweet calling for a demonstration that night at 22:30 on Independence Plaza (Maidan Nezalezhnosti.) A thousand or so gathered in response. Things built from there.

  31. 31.

    Spinwheel

    @Belafon:

    But it is entirely Zandar’s fault for jumping on this tweet within minutes as a front page post here, with no corroboration.

  32. 32.

    Tim F.

    Seems a bit early in the day. I think he’ll speak around 4:30-5 to give the commuters a chance to scram. No indictment of course, unless McCulloch had a stroke and underwent a personality reversal.

  33. 33.

    Hal

    I have always been under the impression that a prosecutor’s job was to push for charges in front of a grand jury. If this prosecutor doesn’t want Wilson charges then don’t convene a grand jury. Instead, he convenes and then does everything he can to influence the grand jury to not indict. That isn’t some kind of ethical violation?

  34. 34.

    Tommy

    In an open thread a clearly sad, sad, fucking sad story with a happy ending:

    After nearly 40 years in prison, a man convicted in a 1975 Cleveland slaying has walked out of the county jail as a free man.

    Fifty-seven-year-old Ricky Jackson was dismissed from the Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH’-guh) County jail and walked out of the adjoining courthouse Friday about an hour after a judge dismissed his case.

    The dismissal came after the key witness against Jackson and brothers Wiley and Ronnie Bridgeman at trial, a 13-year-old boy, recanted last year and said Cleveland police detectives coerced him into testifying that the three killed businessman Harry Franks the afternoon of May 19, 1975.

    I think Josh Marshall said he best with a headline to this story of “Horrific and Heartwarming” and then “Look at the picture in the article. I can almost can’t bear to look at it.”

  37. 37.

    Mike in dc

    @Hal:
    Depends on the state bar’s interpretation of their ethics rules.

    I think it’s highly irregular to show exculpatory evidence to a grand jury. Also irregular to not advocate to the grand jury for specific charges. They have defined degrees of murder and manslaughter to them, but I have never gotten the impression they were presenting evidence with an eye towards building a case for indictment.

  40. 40.

    Tommy

    @Mike in dc: Isn’t that why there is the saying a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich?

    The question of course then comes if that is true, and in many cases it seems it is, why it is so hard to indict a cop (clearly they work in the same legal system, and rely on each other, to answer my own question).

  43. 43.

    Seanly

    @Spinwheel:

    Are you aware that this is a personal weblog, commonly called a blog? It is not intended as a source for news, but rather a place for people to share their opinions.

  45. 45.

    ? Martin

    The announcement will come at the end of the day so the police that will be on full recall can get maximum weekend/overtime pay.

    There is no aspect of this that hasn’t been gamed in favor of the authorities, I see no reason to suspect that will suddenly change now.

  47. 47.

    Omnes Omnibus

    It is my understanding that McCulloch will give a three hour notice if a decision is expected on a weekday and a 24 hour notice if it is expected on a weekend.

    Also, it is my understanding that, under MO law, a grand jury indictment cannot be announced until the defendant is in custody. A “no true bill” decision could be announced immediately.

  48. 48.

    Tommy

    Open thread so as I often have, I have questions. I use Pandora. Pay their monthly membership fee. Enjoy the service, find their music in some channels I like, for example, Ambient, gets redundant (and no Brian Eno for fuck sake). But I like I get it on my Roku on my two TVs. Got 30 days free with Beat Music through Target awhile ago when I bought a $150 Jawbone Up 24 fitness band, but almost never used it. Of course, I know there is Spotify and the new Google Play service.

    With that said I don’t mind paying $10/month for a music service. Playlist are not big for me. I use this music when I am walking, working, or cleaning. I got no desire to make a 2015 “mix tape.” I just want to know the “best” music service where I then them what I like to listen and they give it to me, at times surprise me. I don’t have to think about it too much (if that makes sense at all).

    Note: I am moving a lot of my stuff to the Google cloud. Android user. The Google option is looking the best. But I can’t seem to delete a ton of “free” music I got through promotions on Google Play Music that last few years so it clutters up things. That might be a deal breaker.

  49. 49.

    Seeya

    @Amir Khalid:

    If he did go to another police force, it would be his third in a few years. He and the rest of the officers in the department were fired in 2011 from the Jennings Police Force due to massive corruption and racism. The entire department got shut down.

    If he’s not indicted, I’m sure the Browns will be at the courthouse Monday morning to file their lawsuit (as well they should).

  51. 51.

    srv

    The John Cole’s of the Left overreact:

    Frequently drinking too much booze does not mean you’re an alcoholic.

    In fact, it means that only rarely.

    A new study by the CDC and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration finds that 1 in 3 American adults meet the definition of heavy drinking—for men, having five or more drinks in one sitting or 15 or more in a week; for women, having four or more drinks in one sitting or eight or more in a week.

    But of those so-called “excessive” drinkers, only 1 in 10 also meets the definition of alcoholism or alcohol dependency, which the CDC says involves “a current or past history of excessive drinking, a strong craving for alcohol, continued use despite repeated problems with drinking, and an inability to control alcohol consumption.”

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Amir Khalid: Either a warrant or he could surrender himself.

    ETA: In a case like this, he would probably turn himself in. More dignified that way.

  53. 53.

    Barry

    @chopper: “I’m imagining every news helicopter in the country is heading there as we speak.”

    Last time, they banned news helicopters.

  54. 54.

    NonyNony

    @Tim F.:

    Spinwheel is Zandar’s stalker. Complaining about Zandar is what Spinwheel does. And pretty much the only thing Spinwheel does.

  55. 55.

    Barry

    @Hal: “I have always been under the impression that a prosecutor’s job was to push for charges in front of a grand jury. If this prosecutor doesn’t want Wilson charges then don’t convene a grand jury. Instead, he convenes and then does everything he can to influence the grand jury to not indict. That isn’t some kind of ethical violation?”

    If you assume that ‘prosecutorial ethics’ means ‘cover up for police shootings, no matter what’, then no, it’s not an ethical violation.

  58. 58.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Hal: @Barry: The throw everything in front of the grand jury approach being used here does occasionally pop up in high profile cases. It allows the prosecutor to try to spread the blame by saying “hey, the grand jury saw everything and made up its own mind. McCulloch will use it toward the public if there is no indictment and he will use it toward the police if the grand jury does indict.

  59. 59.

    Pogonip

    The Reuters headline up now says “Lawyers descend on Ferguson ahead of grand jury decision.”

    My God, haven’t the citizens of Ferguson suffered enough?

    Even the ten plagues of Egypt didn’t include swarming lawyers.

  60. 60.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Pogonip:

    Even the ten plagues of Egypt didn’t include swarming lawyers.

    That would have been the 11th, if the 10th plague didn’t work.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    Since this is an open thread, I ran across an interesting charter school story from here in Los Angeles. To me, this is the kind of thing charter schools should be doing — in this case, the school teaches classes in both English and Nahuatl, which is one of the Aztec languages still spoken in some parts of Mexico:

    scpr.org/programs/offramp/2014/11/14/40329/how-an-el-sereno-charter-school-fought-for-and-won/

    I actually don’t mind charter schools acting as de facto private schools with specialized curriculums that wouldn’t otherwise have a wide audience. It’s when they start trying to replace ordinary public schools that I have a problem with them.

  64. 64.

    Villago Delenda Est

    The Grand Jury has obviously elected to ignore the evidence and not indict vile murdering shit Darren Wilson.

  65. 65.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Spinwheel: You have been asked, politely, numerous times, to find a fire to go die in.

    If you continue to ignore these polite requests, we will be compelled to become less polite.

    You are on notice.

    Thank you for your attention, and do have a grand day!

  69. 69.

    Mike J

    @Villago Delenda Est: Missouri law allows a cop to shoot somebody fleeing a felony. If Brown reached for the gun, that was a felony. Only two people could see what happened inside the car, and one of them is unable to testify.

    If you ever shoot somebody, make sure you don’t just injure them.

  70. 70.

    Pogonip

    @dmsilev: The Egyptians were given a choice, locusts or lawyers. We know which they picked.

    My uncle’s a lawyer (corporate-type, so he only swarms on private jets). I gotta call him up and tease him about that headline.

  72. 72.

    pat

    From some of the reports, it seems that the grand jury is actually operating like a regular jury, which would be convened after a bill from the grand jury, i.e. hearing evidence from both sides.

    Since lawyering is the farthest from my expertise, I could be wrong about that. But if so, it explains why the asshole prosecuter did not recuse himself (didn’t he have some relative shot by a black man or something?) He knew going in that this is the result he wanted, and saw to it that he got it.

    I will be astonished if Wilson doesn’t get off.

  73. 73.

    dance around in your bones

    I’m sorry – I just cannot – I just cannot read about these kind of news stories any fucking more. I’m already weepy and depressed enough……even though all my roommates will tell you they hear me singing at all hours of the day and night. It’s something I have done all my life and I ain’t gonna stop it now. It’s a coping mechanism, I guess.

    Better than heroin. no?

  74. 74.

    Shakezula

    I would suggest that the good citizens of Ferguson remain in their homes. One volunteer can set off a firecracker where the crowd of white supremacist yahoos and geared up cops is thickest.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Mike J: Shoot to disable, or shoot to kill?

    This is every bit as fucked up as SYG. It makes murder legal.

    Which means the law is an ass that needs to be put down.

  79. 79.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @chopper:
    Hens love rosters
    Geese love ganders
    Everyone else loves Ned Flanders!

    Homer: Not me!

    Everyone who counts loves Ned Flanders!

  82. 82.

    The Other Chuck

    Anyone using my Troll-B-Gone userscript having trouble with it remembering who it’s supposed to be blocking? I suspect it may just be my browser going awry but I wanted to see if anyone else had the same problem before going nuclear on my browser installation.

  84. 84.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Tim in SF: Shaun King has been doing yeoman’s work since day one.

    And he has been strong and ignoring the haters on DKos, god only knows it’s crawling with them.

  85. 85.

    The Other Chuck

    @Villago Delenda Est: “Shoot to disable” is not a thing in cop training. Center of mass is what they go for, and that’s lethal force. I’m not too keen on the way cops are trained in the USA on the use of force (to put it mildly) but that part always made sense to me. Aiming for an arm is more than halfway toward missing, and the bullet still goes somewhere.

    Would be nice to see unarmed cops, but I think we’d have to demilitarize the goddam country first.

  86. 86.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Tommy: Protest Walmart, Tommy. Protesting Walmart is a day after Thanksgiving tradition.

    As long as I’m not battling a fever like last year Ima gonna be there.

  87. 87.

    dance around in your bones

    @kindness: Well, I’m waiting for the man, $26 in my hand (not really, but what a great lyric?, no?)

    eta: woops! wrong lyric for the topic!

    4 dead in Ohio…….”and if you saw her lying dead on the ground.”……fuck, I depress myself sometimes.

    PLEASE come home, young hookup dude!!! Best thing that’s happened to me since….well, a long fucking time.

  88. 88.

    Belafon

    About your second update: That may be the only good thing happening. There might be some federal observers for what might happen.

    My not-very-happy scenario for things blow up in Ferguson goes like this:
    1. Wilson is not charged.
    2. Citizens of Ferguson protest.
    3. A lot of gun buying, white, non-Ferguson citizens show up. Some support Wilson, some are there to cause trouble.
    4. Someone standing with the citizens does something, and a non-cop with a gun on Wilson’s side starts shooting.
    5. Things fall apart after that.

  90. 90.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Zandar: It’s all about the ethic of letting someone other than a white male speak.

    That’s why Kluwe drew no death threats for what he said. They’re not angry gamers, they’re angry revanchists.

  91. 91.

    NonyNony

    @chopper:

    He’s basically homer simpson to zandar’s ned flanders.

    That makes it sound far more innocent (and funnier) than it plays out in the comments.

    He feels more like the “lady who broke into Dave Letterman’s house multiple times to get Dave to notice her” to Zandar’s Dave Letterman.

  92. 92.

    Another Holocene Human

    @srv:

    a current or past history of excessive drinking, a strong craving for alcohol, continued use despite repeated problems with drinking, and an inability to control alcohol consumption

    Did you not read your own link, genius?

  93. 93.

    Gravenstone

    @beth: Even if he resigns, he’ll just be absorbed into another department, likely nearby. Guys like that can’t quit the need to shit on everyone around them, with the added bonus of acting in an “official” capacity while doing so.

  95. 95.

    Another Holocene Human

    And @srv, while you’re minimizing alcohol’s effects, my grandfather never had to go to rehab … he stopped. That didn’t change the fact that he is a problem drinker. If he drinks he turns into a raging angry scary drunk. That is why he drinks Buckler and orange juice.

    Sure, sometimes alcohol concern is overblown. For many people, a bad patch at work leading to massive anxiety might be temporarily be better handled by drinking when you go home than many of the other chemical substances subscribed for such issues. Long term, though, it tends to cause its own problems. But for people with drinking problems, including addiction, it’s no trivial matter at all. Susceptibility to alcohol tends to be genetic, but psychological issues and mood disorders can also drive dependence on alcohol and other substances.

    6 visits a year is not adequate mental health services for people with mood disorders or unresolved trauma. Also, while psychiatrists are great with helping people with personal and relationship problems, the only person who ever helped me change my thinking was a clinical psychologist trained in CBT–more schooling, more expensive, and not just the random therapist you get at the crisis clinic.

    We have a whole generation of vets who need PTSD therapy with a trained clinical psychologist but a petulant congress doesn’t want to pay the bill. We’ll pay, of course, in shattered lives, lost potential, and, in the worst scenario, violence.

  98. 98.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Gravenstone: He’s benefiting from all those tiny, tiny municipal boundaries and tiny-ass PDs with no money and low wages who’ll take any asshole.

    Hate to say it … especially as police unions are pretty hated right now … but history has shown again and again that low paying police departments are breeding grounds for criminal and anti-social behavior by cops on a massive scale.

    Cops need outside accountability, which is hard because they seem to get laws passed to make that hard. We need to change that. Who watches the watchers indeed. But we also need larger, more professional, better paid, much better trained, better vetted departments that reflect the communities they serve and that may mean recruiting within high schools and steering kids into criminal justice degrees at junior colleges/community colleges or even 4-year or online institutions.

    Better pay means more applicants, better training and vetting means weeding out more of the shits, that means the PD is not in the desperate situation of hiring people who are more motivated by murder than money.

    Very tiny rural PDs tend to be parasitic institutions that subsist on speeding tickets and since any sort of enforcement drives lawbreaking down they have to do the speed trap game. That’s crap.

    And why is all the federal support to hire cops about hiring narcos? The crazies of the crazies. Fuck that shit. Hire cops to investigate murder and property crime.

  99. 99.

    dance around in your bones

    @SatanicPanic: You know, I LOVE to sing. I’ve had a couple[people complain to me about it, but my husband (bless his dead heart) used to say “I know dance is happy when she;s singing!”

    Gawd damn, I miss the man……

    I grew up in the Episcopal Church (St. Mark’s On The Mesa in ABQ) and sang in the choir all my young life. I used to love wearing the white robes and carrying candles and singing like a lark. I even got to do a solo once in a while, which was kinda cool.

    Singing and playing music is soul-satisfying, which I see when I watch guitar players fucking hugging each other after playing together on a song.

    Or, watch Keith Moon go fucking insane on the drums

    I’d trade his short life for my longer one. He had fucking fun. (Well. I did, too – but
    the music!! The music!!

  100. 100.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mike J: My impression from the start is that Darren Wilson beaned himself with his own car door in his frenzy to get to Mike Brown.

    Just from what the survivor and witnesses said. And the minor degree of injury.

    Like that murderous sidewalk … dead men tell no tales … and sadists will even inflict injuries on themselves to back up their lies.

    You are victim blaming.

  101. 101.

    Another Holocene Human

    I’m tired of the argument that Mike Brown shoulda got onto the sidewalk. This was essentially a cul de sac. This was a big project with access roads to the buildings and parking and the police themselves had blocked one of the entrances so there was no thru traffic. So why not walk in the street?

    Prior to automobiles, everyone walked in the street. If it’s okay for white people to advocate for themselves (pedestrian malls, etc … that smug feeling is coming from Burlington, VT)…

    Darren Wilson rolled up on them for no damn reason.

    Oops, there was a reason, they love to give out bogus-ass traffic violation tickets to residents so I’m sure there was a jaywalking ticket coming … a technicality only. With no thru traffic that was nothing more than a parking lot. How do you jaywalk in a parking lot?

    As someone said recently, it’s as if our criminal justice system read Kafka’s DER PROCESS and were all “We can beat that.”

  103. 103.

    The Dangerman

    Based on little more than gut feel, I still say Wilson gets indicted; this whole Grand Jury feels like a CYA for the Prosecutor that couldn’t find his gonads to do it himself…

    …and, Wilson will probably be found not guilty (note I didn’t say innocent). I just don’t see a conviction.

  105. 105.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Belafon: If I were protesting I would not be in Ferguson. I’d be in front of the courthouse which I believe is in the STL core. Take the fight to the assholes. I’d be protesting at the state house and in front of the governor’s mansion too. They’re all guilty.

    Probably get arrested in front of gov mansion accessway or courthouse. They like to arrest people there. State house would be interesting. When Dream Defenders staged a sit-in in Tallahassee there wasn’t much kerfuffle. That’s because the GOP in Florida was completely freaked out by what happened in Madison, WI and had a bunch of plans in case labor flooded The Penis. That never happened but then the Dream Defender kids showed up.

  106. 106.

    samiam

    As far as I can tell the only thing that is getting insane are bloggers like Zandar in a hurry to go insane and getting anxious to be pre-outraged before they become post-outraged.

    Yet another reason I no longer want to be associated with left wing bloggers any more than right wing bloggers.

  107. 107.

    John Revolta

    @Mike J: Missouri law allows a cop to shoot somebody fleeing a felony.

    How about somebody facing you, with his hands in the air?

  108. 108.

    princess leia

    I am sorry I tried to link to this NPR story:
    “When an assisted living home in California shut down last fall, many of its residents were left behind, with nowhere to go. The staff at the Valley Springs Manor left when they stopped getting paid — except for cook Maurice Rowland and Miguel Alvarez, the janitor.”There was about 16 residents left behind, and we had a conversation in the kitchen, ‘What are we going to do?’ ” Rowland says.

    “If we left, they wouldn’t have nobody,” the 34-year-old Alvarez.”

    More at the unable to attach link.

  109. 109.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mnemosyne: They used to call those magnet schools or technical/alternative high schools. There is absolutely no reason for a private operator to be in there to do that.

    Montgomery County, MD has all kinds of magnet schools (it was their bad faith response to desegregation orders) and there are elementary schools that do french immersion, a high school that focuses on STEM, an IB school, etc.

    They got in trouble when they wouldn’t let some Vietnamese children matriculate in the French immersion school. Because the parents started making a fuss and it ripped of the mask that all the magnet programs were for whites only. Oops.

    But without the racism, not a bad idea! NYC has STEM high schools, a fashion high school, a high school for GLBT students, etc.

  110. 110.

    dance around in your bones

    Ok, “undefined” is me, dance around in your bones – I got interrupted during my VERY important comment (hahahaha) and am now watching a little ol doggie that misses her mum.

    She barking like a little fuck.

  112. 112.

    Kate P.

    My daughter works in St Louis Public schools. At end of day today they told staff to lock everything up and take their laptops and other belongings home with them.

  113. 113.

    Mnemosyne

    @Another Holocene Human:

    It sounds like the only reason they have a private operator is that, frankly, no one in the public school system was interested in teaching primarily Latino kids indigenous languages and culture. Since there does seem to be a niche population who wants their kids exposed to that, I don’t have a problem with a private operator stepping in and offering to people who are interested.

    Also, charter schools in California are different than in other states — they are still considered public schools (and IIRC use union teachers) and are monitored by the local public school authorities, but they’re allowed to do curricula that are different than regular public schools. I don’t think that the kind of charter schools they have in, say, Michigan or Ohio that are meant to replace regular public schools are permitted under California law.

    ETA: We also have magnet schools, but they’re different than our charter schools in ways I can’t remember at the moment and am too lazy to look up.

  117. 117.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mike J: You said ‘don’t injure your attacker’. Well, mothafucka, that’s not dispositive. Just because your attacker appears to be injured after he attacks you doesn’t mean you injured him.

    You’re blaming somebody for fighting back (victim blaming number one) when it’s not clear they even did that in the first place (heads attacker wins, tails victim loses).

    You know what? Fuck you.

  118. 118.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Mnemosyne: You’re right, Cali laws are a bit different. Usually in a good way, for example the way they ride herd on home skoolers.

    Florida shole’ don’t. My wife could tell you stories from when she was an undergrad at UF. Aside from the ignorance, the faulty socialization was … a problem. Especially with the males from the patriarchal cults.

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne

    @Another Holocene Human:

    I think you misunderstood what MikeJ was saying — he wasn’t giving advice, he was cynically stating that if you’re a cop who wants to get off scott-free, you should make sure you kill the witness since it will be your word against a dead man’s.

  121. 121.

    Pogonip

    @SatanicPanic: The most fun I ever had was getting to dance at a festival where I had my very own drummers! Whee! The real dance troupe had had to leave early so the drummers just said, Come on, come all! And a good time was had by all.

  122. 122.

    dance around in your bones

    @SatanicPanic: Keith Moon was just one of the best fucking drummers on the planet.

    I AM sorry that he died so young, but then many of our greatest rock stars did, oddly – at the age of about 27.

    I know what kind of temptations Keith faced, because we met Tommy Chong back in the day in Canada, and immediately ran back to our van to grab a block of fine hashish for him. It was like – an honor to give it to him.

    I mean, Up In Smoke? That was fucking hilarious, man!!!

    I still remember the scene where their car is filled up with smoke and a cop pulls up, and asks them like, WTF? And they have NO idea they’re just on the side of the road.

    Ok, maybe I have to go watch it again…….

    eta: ok, just watched the 1st scene from it, and the tiny chain metal driver’s wheel was SO in when I lived in ABQ – and then, the spliff that Tommy pulls out? Cheech asks him, “Is that like a quarter pound, man?!!”

  123. 123.

    dance around in your bones

    Remember the scene where the girls are snorting Drano becuz they think it’s cokane?

    Jeebuz, they don’t make movies like this any more, do they?

    I remember an SNL skit waaaaay back in the day, where a couple of cops bust into a nice couple’s apartment, and catch them smoking pot. Somehow the couple throw themselves out of the window because of the cop’s threats. and the cops look at each other and say “Another marijuana related death”.

    Cracked us the fuck up. And SNL used to be on like in the middle of the night . in SoCal, when we were usually good and baked. It was funny then…..so was Star Trek, The Original Series.

    Ok, if y’all haven’t seen Galaxy Quest, please rectify that situation inmediamente.

    Gawd damn, I demand it!

  127. 127.

    sylvainsylvain

    @SatanicPanic:

    Just start slow, & remember-

    If you can fvck, you can play drums.

    You might not be very good, but there are fewer drummers than anything else. It makes a real difference to play with a drummer, as opposed to jamming w.o. one.

  128. 128.

    dance around in your bones

    @sylvainsylvain:

    Really? I can fuck, does that mean I can drum too? Does it apply to guitar as well? ‘Cause I’d like to be a hot girl guitar player in my dotage.

  129. 129.

    Corner Stone

    @sylvainsylvain:

    If you can fvck, you can play drums.

    This is crazy balls. Anybody can stick it in or ride it. A good drummer has to keep time through all changes and keep others in line.
    Last time I checked I wasn’t saying, “A one, and a one two three” when some beautiful person was working it.

  130. 130.

    dance around in your bones

    @Corner Stone: Corner, please watch the Keith Moon video and how he plays the guitarists and singers top melodies – he doesn’t just keep the beat.

    The guy was a fucking genius. Plus, he had beautiful eyes and a right JOY for living! Except he died when he was 32. :(

    No one and a two and three for Keith. He was the fucking real deal.

  131. 131.

    Cain

    @Tommy:
    So who killed Harry Franks? And I expect a massive civil lawsuit against the police department and those detectives.

  132. 132.

    Corner Stone

    @dance around in your bones: No, I don’t mean to imply that that is the only job.
    Some may scorn (because they don’t know any better) but my favorite band is Tool. And their music is written for the drummer, if one listens to it enough.
    He changes time and does things that are insane.
    Anyway, my main point being. Anyone can fuck. The statement about rhythm, drums and fucking is nonsense.

  133. 133.

    Cain

    @Kate P.:

    If they were smart, tehy would have done this on black friday or something.. nobody is going to riot then. Everybody will be out waiting at the shops…

  134. 134.

    mclaren

    Now the FBI is being dispatched to Ferguson ahead of the decision to set up a command center. This is getting insane.

    Not enough. We need to alert NORAD, send in the Nuclear Emergency Search Team, and put all nuclear missile bases on DEFCON alert.

    This is Shithole America, after all, where the feces meet the species — land of the twee and home of the graves.

  136. 136.

    Uncle Ebeneezer

    @Corner Stone: Danny is a monster. He is one of my favorite rock drummers. I actually saw him in the audience at a Living Colour reunion show down in Anaheim about a decade ago. He’s a tall dude so he literally stood out. I was tempted to go introduce my self as a fanboy but decided to leave him be since he was obviously enjoying the show. Will Calhoun (LC’s drummer) is also a phenomenal drummer. There were times where I even saw Danny shake his head in disbelief at some of the stuff Will was doing on the kit.

    I think that just about anyone can play drums at a basic level (assuming they have SOME rhythm.) But as you progress beyond a simple beat the learning curve on drums is pretty steep. (I’m a drummer and guitarist, play both at fairly high level.) Especially when you get into Latin beats, world rhythms and jazz where not only does the complexity increase exponentially but so do the dynamics. Being able to play with deep pocket, perfect timing, loud, soft, with brushes, on the rims, etc. and being able to find ways to be melodic with an instrument that has no strings. To me a bad drummer wrecks a band worse than a bad guitarist. There’s lots of great bands that I love whose guitarists are pretty unimpressive, because sometimes simple strumming is all you need or that slightly-out-of-tune guitar actually works. But if the drumming isn’t solid, at least, it’s much easier to be a trainwreck.

    I’ll check out the Moon clip later. Always preferred Bonham, but Moon was amazing too.

  137. 137.

    Corner Stone

    @Uncle Ebeneezer:

    To me a bad drummer wrecks a band worse than a bad guitarist.

    Oh man, so much of what you said. First, I am a bad bass player. I slap a funky bass like a mofo, but it’s just for me and just for my downtime.
    I have a very good friend who can play a steel guitar, acoustic, bass and is primarily a drummer. That’s mainly what he enjoys doing when jamming with others.
    But he speeds up and slows down. It’s impossible for a cover band (not including me) to keep time with him. Great guy to jam in a garage with, absolute killer in front of an audience.

  139. 139.

    dance around in your bones

    @Corner Stone: Oh, so sorry – I really think you’d enjoy it if you gave it a chance.

    Tool? Don’t remember them…. I’m prolly a bit older than you.

    @PIGL: Well, shit,. I still want to be a hot guitarist, and I can fuck like nobody’s business and I’d love to do that Pete Townsend thing with the rotary arm, or maybe even Keith Cobain who wrecked his voice the way he sang or possibly Keith Richards who has survived against impossible odds, or even Keith Moon and his very brief but entertaining life.

  140. 140.

    dance around in your bones

    KURT Cobain!! Dance, you ignorant slut!

    I can still remember every place I was when Janis, Jimi, Jim, John, Kurt, and numerous others died.- it was shattering – especially John Lennon’s assassination because it was so fucking unexpected!

    Kurt, not quite so shocking – dude was obviously in pain and should have been allowed to take all the fucking heroin he wanted for his stomach probs. WTF. Maybe he wouldn’t have blown his head off if he was allowed to take whatever the fuck he needed for his pain. I was in a car driving through Arizona when I heard about his death, and I just broke down in tears. Poor guy – so talented, and in so much pain.

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