Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

T R E 4 5 O N

Republicans don’t trust women.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

I was promised a recession.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Revolutions Always Keep Coming Around

Reader Interactions

104Comments

  1. 1.

    jibeaux

    Wow, that’s a great shot. I haven’t read Time in decades, I wonder if the piece is any good.
    The mister recently pointed me to a piece called something like 61 times Bill Kristof was reminded of Hitler, Chamberlain, or Churchill. It’s already happened 8 times this year! Do you think he has a biweekly calendar alarm that says “compare president to Chamberlain”?

  2. 2.

    Renie

    Excellent cover and sad that it is so true. Huge demonstration in NYC yesterday.

    OT: Today is the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Our Vietnam vets still struggling; what a disgrace. Too many low info people in the US fall for Republican line of them supporting our troops when in fact they support the defense contractors.

  3. 3.

    Crashman

    This, plus the rest of the police shootings, the psychotic fanatics in the middle east, the human suffering in Nepal, climate change… It’s all so devastatingly sad. Things feel hopeless sometimes.

  6. 6.

    Interrobang

    Give Mr. Devin Allen a Pulitzer. I haven’t seen a shot that powerful since the Hooded Man from Abu Ghraib,

    That said, this shit was old in ’68, and it’s been almost 50 years.

  7. 7.

    Cervantes

    @jibeaux:

    I wonder if the piece is any good.

    Have not looked at it yet — but the author, David von Drehle, is usually pretty good — certainly by news-magazine standards, and his book on Lincoln (Rise to Greatness) was not too bad, either.

  8. 8.

    mainmata

    @jibeaux: I think you may be confusing Bill Kristal (the man who is always ridiculously wrong) with Nicholas Kristof, the NYT columnist who I seriously doubt ever compares the President to Chamberlain.

  9. 9.

    Germy Shoemangler

    This week’s Time Magazine cover shot was taken by Baltimore resident Devin Allen.

    That’s a great photo.

    As much as I hate that journalists are struggling (I have newspaper people in my family and it kills me to see them worrying about their future) I sort of like the fact that Devin got a TIME magazine cover with his photo.

    I’m torn. I hate seeing writers and photojournalists getting layoff notices from beancounter newspaper publishers, but I sort of like the leveling of the playing field, with “non-credentialed” writers and photographers using twitter and other social media.

  10. 10.

    slag

    In case you haven’t seen it yet, an important interview with The Wire’s David Simon on Baltimore: https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/29/david-simon-on-baltimore-s-anguish.

    An interesting drug war perspective on how an emphasis on quantitative data can undermine a larger purpose:

    But that wasn’t enough. O’Malley needed to show crime reduction stats that were not only improbable, but unsustainable without manipulation. And so there were people from City Hall who walked over Norris and made it clear to the district commanders that crime was going to fall by some astonishing rates. Eventually, Norris got fed up with the interference from City Hall and walked, and then more malleable police commissioners followed, until indeed, the crime rate fell dramatically. On paper.

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    that this was a even a case before the court is ridiculous

    ………………..

    Breaking News and Analysis: #SCOTUS Upholds Ban on Judicial Candidates Personally Soliciting Campaign Contributions

    Posted on April 29, 2015 7:12 am by Rick Hasen

    In a surprise and very important development, the Supreme Court has rejected a First Amendment challenge to Florida’s ban on the personal solicitation of campaign contributions by judicial candidates. Even more surprising, the Court’s opinion (a plurality in part) is authored by Chief Justice Roberts, who usually sides with First Amendment challengers in these election/campaign cases. This is a case which makes it much more likely that limits on money and speech in judicial elections will be upheld, and it seems to offer some broader important nuances on the scope of narrow tailoring in analyzing First Amendment challenges under the First Amendment.

    This is a HUGE win for those who support reasonable limits on judicial elections—and getting Roberts on this side of the issue is surprising, welcome, and momentous.

    Here are some detailed thoughts.

    1. Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion for the Court, with the four liberals, over the dissent of the four more conservative Justices, is unusual—Roberts usually does not side with the liberals in these cases over the objections of the conservative Justices. So what motivated things? It comes from the very beginning of the case: Chief Justice Roberts says that judicial elections are different, and that therefore the First Amendment analysis is different. This is a huge change in Supreme Court doctrine, where in cases like Minnesota Republican Party v. White the Court did not accept such differences as a basis for restricting the speech of judicial candidates. This is an acceptance of Justice Ginsburg’s White, dissent in which she rejected the “unilocular” an election is an election.

    http://electionlawblog.org/?p=72092

  12. 12.

    Big ole hound

    I’m glad I remember the whole second half of the 20th century so my I can watch history repeating itself. Same problems,same results. Painful.

  14. 14.

    Bobby B

    It’s not 1968 for sure. Tons of hoodies now, now the official uniform for kids under 30. And they’re all holding their phones up in the air.

  16. 16.

    Patrick

    @rikyrah:

    I don’t get it. I thought money equaled free speech. Why the heck would an election to the judiciary be any different than an election to the White House?

  18. 18.

    Karen in GA

    Open thread? I know there are bigger issues, but although one cat is very small in the grand scheme of things, she can be huge to one small schnauzer. (Also, too, Smudge was huge in general.)

    Re Baltimore — I’m very glad I don’t keep in touch with most of my family. I happened to see some Facebook posts my sister vomited up during the Ferguson protests — heavy on the caps lock and prominent use of the word “animals.” This from a woman who, of course, claims she isn’t racist. That’s the trouble — you can’t tell these people they’re racist, any more than you could tell me that my desire to teach my dog to obey me without question means I hate dogs. And I don’t know what the solution is to that.

  19. 19.

    ruemara

    It felt odd to come home from the really remote location we filmed on that day and find out the protests in Baltimore happened.

  21. 21.

    MomSense

    Oh FFS I just saw a headline at google news that a prisoner who was in the police van with Freddie Gray is saying he was intentionally trying to hurt himself and banging against walls. Apparently this report said that the prisoner couldn’t actually see Gray because they were separated by a metal partition.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    Granted that it was published over a half century ago, but do schools still include Black Like Me on required reading lists?

    Do schools even still have required reading lists?

  26. 26.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Karen in GA:

    heavy on the caps lock and prominent use of the word “animals.” This from a woman who, of course, claims she isn’t racist.

    Reminds me of the comments section of my local media. Whenever there’s a crime committed, the commenters go nuts with their remarks. If a black person does anything at all, there’s a string of comments using the word “animals” but then if a white person is caught shoplifting or raping or robbing or driving drunk/drugged there is a weird lack of comments.

    And yet the keyboard commandos probably aren’t even aware of their bias.

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    @NotMax: My high schooler definitely has a reading list. Some of it is the same stuff I had to read in high school (“To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Pride and Prejudice,” for example). Some items on her required reading list are books I’ve never heard of, but they seem worthwhile — novels originating in Africa and India that provide a global perspective we didn’t bother with back in the 80s. I don’t know if “Black Like Me” is on the list, but it’s definitely a more diverse canon than it was back in the day.

  28. 28.

    MomSense

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    Right. I tried a home waxing kit — ONCE– and couldn’t even inflict that level of pain on myself.

    If the prisoner couldn’t see Freddie Gray how would he be able to tell the difference between a “rough ride” and intentionally trying to hurt himself?

  29. 29.

    ThresherK

    @slag:

    Needed to show (some non-all-that-representative numbers of a basic public service function) stats that were not only improbable, but unsustainable without manipulation.

    Wonder if he’s going to jail like those teachers in Atlanta?

  30. 30.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Zandar:

    Us black folk have magical fucking powers.

    OMG… the white folks knew you had superpowers, but they had no idea you could turn that super-human strength against yourselves!

  31. 31.

    debbie

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    But who can sever their own spine? Believe me, I’ve tried.

    I recall that Steve Biko managed to smash his head against the cell’s cinderblock walls until he was dead.

    Or so we were told.

  33. 33.

    debbie

    @slag:

    I remember Simon’s characters in Homicide using questionable tactics, without much consequence. Might Simon be part of the problem?

  34. 34.

    MomSense

    @debbie:

    Or so we were told.

    This is what bothers me. We were informed yesterday that the report wouldn’t be released on Friday as promised and yet we are going to be subject to selective leaks that will establish a narrative for the public of a black man with “magical fucking powers” such that he can sever his own spine while handcuffed in a police van.

  35. 35.

    NotMax

    @Zandar

    That old black magic has me in it’s spell
    That old black magic that you weave so well
    Those icy fingers up and down my spine    …

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    @MomSense

    Lawrence O’Donnell had a decent, if somewhat strained*, take down of the self-injury rumor yesterday.

    *He seemed a bit at sea but his guest was both informed and on point.

  37. 37.

    Karen in GA

    @Germy Shoemangler: They don’t think the belief that minorities are inferior is even bias. They think it’s acknowledging a fact. They believe racism means actively shouting slurs and/or physically attacking. Essentially, “They’re inferior, but I personally don’t go out of my way to rub their noses in it when they’re around, because I’m not a racist. What? You want me to change my thinking too? What other special treatment would those people like?”

    Ugly, ugly shit.

  38. 38.

    inkadu

    Argh. NPR show lead in just now: Hillary CLinton’s undisclosed donors and higher speaking fees for Bill Clinton after Hillary became Secretary of State.

    Holy fucking shit. This reminds me of the Soviet Union, where corruption is the price of doing business, so everyone is vulnerable to be prosecuted. How is the press just noticing this *now*? How about all the senators who mysteriously start making hundreds of thousdands dollars more a year? Or all the activity their spouses have on corporate board of directors? Fuck everything about this.

    I’m bothered because if the press wants to destroy HIllary for corruption by Clinton rules, it ain’t gonna be hard. Then the party responsible for Citizens United can take power and usher in a new era of government independence and accountability and transparency? Argh.

  39. 39.

    Patrick

    @Germy Shoemangler:

    Whenever there’s a crime committed, the commenters go nuts with their remarks. If a black person does anything at all, there’s a string of comments using the word “animals” but then if a white person is caught shoplifting or raping or robbing or driving drunk/drugged there is a weird lack of comments.

    It’s no different when there is a terrorist attack. If a person from the Middle East performs the act, it’s automatically assumed to be a terrorist attack. But if a “one of us’ a white westerner do it, it is automatically assumed that he must have been mentally ill.

    It is also amusing to hear people refer to blacks as animals considering it was our own forefathers who took blacks as slaves back in time. Who acted like animals/thieves/thugs then?

  40. 40.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie:

    I remember Simon’s characters in Homicide using questionable tactics, without much consequence. Might Simon be part of the problem?

    He was portraying the system as it was / is (or as he perceived it). I don’t think he was endorsing it.

  41. 41.

    inkadu

    I read a clueless polo-club type person casually state, “I heard his spine was broken before he was arrested,” which raises the question how he was able to run from the police with a broken spine.

    I immediately thought of the Jeffrey Toombs character from the X-Files, the supernatural contortionist freak that could drip through vent registers… so, you know, maybe this is an X-File.

  44. 44.

    rikyrah

    they are pitiful

    ………………….

    House Republicans try to gut a key American principle

    By Dana Milbank Opinion writer

    April 29 at 6:11 PM

    The Civil War era’s 14th Amendment, granting automatic citizenship to any baby born on American soil, is a proud achievement of the Party of Lincoln.

    But now House Republicans are talking about abolishing birthright citizenship.

    A House Judiciary subcommittee took up the question Wednesday afternoon, prompted by legislation sponsored by Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and 22 other lawmakers that, after nearly 150 years, would end automatic citizenship.

    The 14th Amendment, King told the panel, “did not contemplate that anyone who would sneak into the United States and have a baby would have automatic citizenship conferred on them.” Added King, “I’d suggest it’s our job here in this Congress to decide who will be citizens, not someone in a foreign country that can sneak into the United States and have a baby and then go home with the birth certificate.”

    It’s no small task to undo a principle, enshrined in the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court, that defines the United States as a nation of immigrants. It’s particularly audacious that House Republicans would undo a century and a half of precedent without amending the Constitution but merely by passing a law to reinterpret the 14th Amendment’s wording in a way that will stop the scourge of “anchor babies” and “birth tourism.”

    Judiciary Committee Republicans brought in three experts to testify in support of this extraordinary maneuver (a lone Democratic witness was opposed), and they evidently had to search far and wide for people who would take this view, because they ended up with a bizarre witness: an octogenarian professor from the University of Texas named Lino Graglia.

    This would be the Lino Graglia who caused a furor in 1997 when he said that Latinos and African Americans are “not academically competitive with whites” and come from a “culture that seems not to encourage achievement.” He also said at the time that “I don’t know that it’s good for whites to be with the lower classes.”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/house-republicans-try-to-gut-a-key-constitutional-principle/2015/04/29/a365c4c4-eeb6-11e4-8666-a1d756d0218e_story.html

  45. 45.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: @Germy Shoemangler: John Oliver dedicated a show to judges and fundraising and judges running ridiculous ads.

    I actually learn a lot from his show. That was how I first learned about cops stopping you on the highway and seizing cash and then the feds splitting it with them. Between the cops seizing cash and the judges and net neutrality, I am beginning to think that perhaps the sunshine and ridicule on his show may be making a difference.

    Seldom is the America he shows the one I can be proud of.

  46. 46.

    Germy Shoemangler

    @Karen in GA:

    They don’t think the belief that minorities are inferior is even bias. They think it’s acknowledging a fact. They believe racism means actively shouting slurs and/or physically attacking. Essentially, “They’re inferior, but I personally don’t go out of my way to rub their noses in it when they’re around, because I’m not a racist. What? You want me to change my thinking too? What other special treatment would those people like?”

    And that’s the commenters on my local media in a nutshell. A white woman drives the wrong way down a highway with a BAC of twice the legal limit… no comments. A white guy takes a woman hostage and rapes her… no comments.

    An Indian woman was walking her four-year-old to nursery school. The child was run over and killed by a garbage truck. The story makes it clear that the woman was with her child the entire time. The comments: “Where was the mother?” “Why don’t they supervise their children?” “Arrest the mother”

    Disgusting.

  47. 47.

    NonyNony

    @rikyrah:

    This would be the Lino Graglia who caused a furor in 1997 when he said that Latinos and African Americans are “not academically competitive with whites” and come from a “culture that seems not to encourage achievement.” He also said at the time that “I don’t know that it’s good for whites to be with the lower classes.”

    Wait a minute – you mean that the Republican concern about “anchor babies” and “birth tourism” isn’t outrage about people “not following the rules” but is instead racism being barely hidden under a slim justification that doesn’t make any sense?

    Well I for one am shocked.

  48. 48.

    MomSense

    @NotMax:

    It’s just that USA Today ran with a story that started with prisoner in the same van says Gray was intentionally hurting himself and only later in the article mentions that this prisoner couldn’t actually see Gray. And this USA Today article is now at the top of google news. I’m just frustrated that this is the explanation that people will see first, it’s the explanation a lot of people want to see, and it will take hold faster and stronger than can be countered by facts.

    Selectively leaking information is an effective way to obscure the facts which is why they keep doing this in all these cases of police brutality.

  50. 50.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    I can tell it’s from the sixties because none of the cops are carrying semi-auto rifles.

  52. 52.

    jibeaux

    @Germy Shoemangler: they’re *always* like that. There was once a sweet little story about a 16 year old in Target looking for a tie, because he wanted to apply for a job, and an older white Target employee showing him how to tie it. You wouldn’t think there’d be anything under the sun negative to say, but you’d be wrong. Where are the parents? is apparently always ok. Like a damn 16 year old can’t be in a store by himself. Like little kids learn from infancy how to tie a damn tie. Yes, he was a black kid.

  56. 56.

    Belafon

    @MomSense: Which is contradicted by a tweet a Baltimore reporter sent out on the 23rd, back when the ride occurred. The other prisoner was only in the van for 5 of the 30 minutes, and when he was in there, he said to the reporter that the ride was uneventful and Gray was quiet.

    BPD Comm Anthony Batts says 2nd prisoner in van with Freddie Gray reports no erratic driving by van driver and Gray mostly quiet
    — Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) April 24, 2015

    This one’s going to fall apart fairly quickly.

  58. 58.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Open thread? I know there are bigger issues, but although one cat is very small in the grand scheme of things, she can be huge to one small schnauzer. (Also, too, Smudge was huge in general.)

    @Karen in GA: Fuck, you made me cry, too early in the morning for that. I’m sorry Smudge left us. She looks a lot like my long-gone friend Britt, who I still miss to this day.

    We’ve lost two dogs in the last two weeks in my neighborhood. Used to be every house on my street had at least one. We’re down to two houses with dogs left. It sucks.

  59. 59.

    debbie

    @MomSense:

    Exactly. Under the guise of withholding information to assist in future prosecutions … which may never happen. Wink, wink.

  62. 62.

    a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)

    @jibeaux: I saw a link to the old Tweety episode where RWNJ bloviator Kevin James compares then candidate Obama to Neville Chamberlain, insisting they share “policies of appeasement. Then Tweety asked James what, specifically, happened in Munich in 1938. the conservative host simply had no idea – it was not entirely clear if James even understood who Chamberlain was. As Steve Benen noted in 2013, Kevin James

    thought it’d be provocative to throw around buzzwords popular with the right, but he never bothered to gain even a cursory understanding of his own rhetoric.

    Plus ça change…

  63. 63.

    Karen in GA

    @Germy Shoemangler: My brother-in-law was once insisting his hatred of Obama wasn’t based on race. The conversation eventually ended up with him saying, “Do you know how those people live?”

    At the time, his drug dealing son had just finished a few years in prison for getting wasted at a party, thinking it would be fun to show his friend his new illegally-procured gun, and accidentally killing his friend. (Strangely, the cops didn’t shoot him when he ran.) His other son was busted for beating people up for money. If you’ve ever seen certain Martin Scorcese films… well, yeah, it was along those lines.

    I know how some people live, anyway.

  68. 68.

    Germy Shoemangler

    open thread:

    http://boingboing.net/2015/04/30/legless-tortoise-given-prosthe.html

    Mrs. T the tortoise, age 90, was outfitted with wheels after her legs were gnawed off in a rat attack.

    “She took to them straight away, but she has had to learn how to turn and stop,” says Mrs. T’s caretaker June Ryder, whose mechanical engineer son built the wheel system. “She can get a good speed up, much faster than before. Mrs T is still quite young for a tortoise.”

  70. 70.

    Tenar Darell

    @ruemara: I’ve done that once or twice recently. It feels like old times in the previous century, when there was the 6:00 local and 6:30 national news and the next day’s paper and that’s about it. I remember coming home one evening and finding out the Challenger exploded, and that’s how news worked all the time. Ow, I just blew my own mind.

  73. 73.

    gene108

    You might be a racist, if you are fuming mad at the people killed by the government at Ruby Ridge, but think Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, et. al. had it coming.

  75. 75.

    gene108

    @Patrick:

    candidate Obama to Neville Chamberlain,

    Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchhill were members of the same political party. Churchhill was a member of his Cabinet.

    It’s not like Chamberlain was a member of the limp-wristed liberal pansy party.

  76. 76.

    Karen in GA

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: Very sorry about Britt. Stupid and sappy thing, but on my way to work on my first day back in the office on Monday, I saw a couple of grey clouds parallel to each other. I thought, tabby stripes! And was kind of weepy for most of the drive.

    Very sad about the neighbor dogs. Our relatively new (less than a year) neighbor saw me out walking Iggy the other day and asked if she could bring her dog over to him to say hi, because her dog doesn’t have any friends here yet. Yes! I used to take Iggy to the dog park, but he’s 26 pounds, which means he goes into the 21-pound-and-up enclosure, and he’s freaked out when huge dogs try to play with him and doesn’t enjoy it. This means he needs local friends. I’m going to have to grow some social skills and talk to people around here, I think, as long as they don’t mind Iggy shrieking when he first meets their dogs.

    @MomSense: Thanks. 16 years is a long life, but not long enough.

  77. 77.

    srv

    Maryland State legislator Patrick McDonough, the guest host of a drive-time radio program on Wednesday morning, discussed the possibility of revoking food stamps from the parents of protesting Baltimore youth.
    …
    “That’s an idea and that could be legislation,” replied McDonough. “I think that you could make the case that there is a failure to do proper parenting and allowing this stuff to happen, is there an opportunity for a month to take away your food stamps?”

  78. 78.

    Cervantes

    @MomSense:

    “magical fucking powers” such that he can sever his own spine while handcuffed in a police van.

    According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Database, accidents account for nearly a third of all spinal-cord injuries. These accidents include various events that resemble what could happen to a person handcuffed in a typical police van (“Fall on same level (includes slipping, tripping and stumbling)”; “Fall from bed”; “Fall from chair”; and so on).

    Of course, not all of these events can nearly sever the spinal cord at the neck. Nor do these statistics tell us what happened to Freddie Gray specifically, either before or after he was thrown into the police van.

  79. 79.

    Cervantes

    @gene108:

    It’s not like Chamberlain was a member of the limp-wristed liberal pansy party.

    Someone said the following when Chamberlain died in 1940:

    It fell to Neville Chamberlain in one of the supreme crises of the world to be contradicted by events, to be disappointed in his hopes, and to be deceived and cheated by a wicked man.

    But what were these hopes in which he was disappointed? What were these wishes in which he was frustrated? What was that faith that was abused?

    They were surely among the most noble and benevolent instincts of the human heart-the love of peace, the toil for peace, the strife for peace, the pursuit of peace, even at great peril, and certainly to the utter disdain of popularity or clamour.

    Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.

    The speaker was Winston Churchill.

  80. 80.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Karen in GA: In the bleak world of The Wire, expecting a conventional “happy ending” wouldn’t just be dishonest; it would have been ridiculous.

  82. 82.

    scav

    Escaping into past and elsewhere by listening to old Friday Night Comedy podcasts — Michael Jackson just died and it’s other all Duck Houses in Moats all the time, and then a Mitch Benn song about the Police’s new rule about confiscating cell phones from people they don’t like rolls past.

  83. 83.

    Cervantes

    @debbie:

    I remember Simon’s characters in Homicide using questionable tactics, without much consequence. Might Simon be part of the problem?

    How would this argument run? Police officers, emboldened by their fictional counterparts’ getting away with abuse, followed suit?

  86. 86.

    Karen in GA

    @The Thin Black Duke: Oh, yeah. It never would have worked as a heavy-handed life-lesson-dispensing “crime-doesn’t-pay” morality tale. (I think Debbie was specifically talking about Homicide, but your point is still valid.)

    Besides, the artist doesn’t need to condemn anything. Just show us what’s happening, and hope we’re smart — and moral — enough to condemn it ourselves.

  88. 88.

    Roger Moore

    @Belafon:

    This one’s going to fall apart fairly quickly.

    Not as quickly as it ought to. It’s the big lie all over again; even when it’s disproved, it still manages to affect people’s attitudes toward the case. Sling enough mud at somebody, and people will think he’s started out dirty, even when they’ve seen you throw the mud.

  89. 89.

    Cervantes

    @srv, quoting some legislator:

    is there an opportunity for a month to take away your food stamps?

    The evil beggars description.

  91. 91.

    Alex S.

    @rikyrah:

    Good! It seems that Roberts actually cares about his legacy and does not want to unravel the judicial system completely for political gain.

  92. 92.

    scav

    @Cervantes: We could talk away the tax-exemptions from the affluenza-ridden bad-patenting communities with all their raping/racist/rampaging frat offspring with their fast cars and “recreational” proclivities. Quick blanket-search of the Ivy League dorms might possibly balance a few county budgets.

  94. 94.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Roger Moore: No, the taint will remain. That was the entire point of digging up dirt on Michael Brown and getting it out there. The wingtards, as they are wont to do, immediately seized on it and repeated, over and over again, that look at this guy and what he did and that means that Darren Wilson was fully justified in doing what Darren Wilson did. The guy was a bad guy. Case closed, we’re happy, good day sir.

    I said good day.

  95. 95.

    JustRuss

    @lurker dean: Great link. This quote just makes me sad:

    I know that if I get the right shot at the right time, I can show people things they don’t see on the news.’

    Everything you need to know about our media right there.

  96. 96.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    They don’t think the belief that minorities are inferior is even bias. They think it’s acknowledging a fact.

    @Karen in GA: This is something us decent folk need to acknowledge and be aware of. These people aren’t calling black people animals in an attempt to slur them. They really believe they’re animals.

  97. 97.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @CONGRATULATIONS!:
    I have tried to make this point many times. Racists often, even usually don’t think ‘I hate black people.’ They think black people are inferior. Everything they do and say about black people will be cast in that light. They think Obama is stupid, weak, childish, and criminal because he fits the image of those traits in their brain – a black man. They talk about failed families, because they know black people are bad parents, the women having lots of children with no restraint and the men too irresponsible to become husbands. This infects all of conservative speech and policy, since racism is its main foundation.

  98. 98.

    dww44

    @Betty Cracker: I heard that as well and agree that O’Donnell was a bit at sea but it was probably because the Post had just then posted that statement from the other prisoner, unidentified and by way of a police interview, saying that Gray had purposefully tried to injure himself in that police wagon. That was news to everyone, including O’Donnell. The female guest was the Baltimore TV reporter who’s most informed about the case and said that the most recent report was at odds with the evidential timeline.

  101. 101.

    jc

    1968 / 2015 — what’s changed? The cops are a lot more heavily armed and armored today. Dissent is put down more efficiently now than it was then.

  103. 103.

    fuckwit

    @Frankensteinbeck: Inferior, or dangerous supermen, or in general just OTHER– that’s the real roots of racism. The people who are filled with hate are always a tiny but loud and unbalanced minority. It’s the generally-normal majority who are just, generally uncomfortable, alien, unaware, clueless, that cause a whole racist system to exist and survive. It’s the “them”, the “those people”, that kind of us and them thinking, where problems roost, fester, and grow.

  104. 104.

    J R in WV

    @gene108:

    Wow! That’s a good one. I’m gonna have to give up and quit with trying to be snark, when I’m so overwhelmed with great snark from so many B-J friends!

    Keep up the good work, Gene!

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