Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Israel is using food as a weapon of war. Unforgivable.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

No one could have predicted…

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

The real work of an opposition party is to hold the people in power accountable.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

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Reader Interactions

239Comments

  1. 1.

    The Thin Black Duke

    The courage, intelligence and poise of that young woman is awe-inspiring. Oh, and give the photographer their Pulitzer already.

  2. 2.

    Villago Delenda Est

    It’s the DNC in Chicago 1968 all over again.

    The police came to riot.

  4. 4.

    Steve!

    Jesus, what exactly do those three big brave officers think that young lady is going to do to them when they get close enough?

    Maybe they’ve seen too many Matrix movies or something.

  6. 6.

    pat

    The most disgusting thing I’ve read all day is Rudy Guiliani whining about how “black parents don’t teach their kids to respect policemen” or words to that effect. Like he’s never heard of “the Talk” they must have with their kids….
    What a jackass.

  9. 9.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @pat: He must be auditioning for some job in the Drumpf assmalistration. Which will never happen.

    “A small man in search of a balcony” – Jimmy Breslin on Rudy 911

  11. 11.

    Mnemosyne

    @pat:

    As people have mentioned in other threads, Giuliani’s kids don’t talk to him anymore because he’s such an asshole, so he’s got a lot of nerve giving other people parenting advice.

  12. 12.

    lollipopguild

    @pat: There are careers and money to be made by playing a racist jackass in public. Look at all of the people on the Reich wing who do this for a living.

  13. 13.

    Redshift

    @pat: Yep. The problem is not that we don’t teach black kids to respect the police, it’s that we don’t teach our police to respect black kids (and adults.)

  15. 15.

    K488

    That second photo has an iconic look to it, like the one of the student facing down the tank in Tiananmen square. Deeply moving, and one that encapsulates this moment in history.

  16. 16.

    Jerzy Russian

    @pat: Someone should ask Rudy is being disrespectful is a capital crime. If so, then clarify the laws, and apply it equally to everyone.

  17. 17.

    Major Major Major Major

    The old abbess at the SF Zen Center, Blanche Hartman, who just passed, liked to tell a story. The way she ended up transitioning from hippie protestor to the Zen practice started one day at a protest much like that. She walked up to one of the policemen to hand him a flower or somesuch, and was terrified because of recent events and because he was dressed in riot gear. When she got to him, standing face to shielded face, she saw that he was scared too and didn’t want to be there any more than she did.

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    As people have mentioned in other threads, Giuliani’s kids don’t talk to him anymore because he’s such an asshole, so he’s got a lot of nerve giving other people parenting advice.

    I think it would say something worse about him as a parent if his kids were backing him to the hilt the way Trump’s kids are doing. At least Giuliani’s kids learned enough morality to recognize what an awful person he is.

  26. 26.

    Formerly disgruntled Clinton supporter

    @Redshift: Yep, and it’s going to cost us $1 billion to teach them. What’s that say about THEIR parents?

  27. 27.

    Kryptik

    Caption for the 2nd picture:

    “Ma’am, please drop your blackness and place your hands above your head.”

    Because lets face it, blackness is considered a weapon by riot police like this.

  30. 30.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Roger Moore:
    The asshole brought a side piece home with him. In front of his wife & kids. If they learned any morality at all it had to have come from their mother. That guy is lower than whale shit

  31. 31.

    Frans

    @K488: You beat me to it. This image is missing a plastic shopping bag and a few tanks. Brava, young lady!

  33. 33.

    lollipopguild

    @Roger Moore: White people can always be uppity-its an article in the constitooshun- you can look it up! Its people who are not white enough who are not allowed to be uppity. The not white enough people are also not allowed to legally carry weapons in public even if they have a legal permit to do so. Funny all it all works. I guess it is that “secret” constitooshun that white racists blather about.

  34. 34.

    Tony J

    @Pogonip:

    From the look of those ‘Peace Officers’ I’d guess they asked for her Multi-Pass.

    Or what bago said at 8.

  38. 38.

    LanceThruster

    I’ll bet there’s a provision in the Patriot Act that deems that mirror a potential deadly weapon.

    FREEDUMB!!

  39. 39.

    scott alloway

    @K488: What I posted om my Facebook. “Remember the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square? We now have an American version. The whole world is watching.”

  40. 40.

    Botsplainer, Neoliberal Corporatist Shill

    @rikyrah:

    “Look Who’s Back” is sobering, too. It was made in 2014, released in 2015, lots of anti-immigrant, “Make Germany Great Again” language from a reappeared Hitler.

  41. 41.

    MattF

    What people should understand about Rudy… before 9/11, his appeal was all about race– keeping you-know-who down. Then, 9/11 happened and all that racial stuff was forgotten. But now it’s back and Rudy is back to his old ways.

  42. 42.

    Roger Moore

    @lollipopguild:

    White people can always be uppity

    That’s not really true, though. Being uppity is about not knowing your place, and whites who don’t know their place can get into almost as much trouble for being uppity as blacks can. For example, look at all the trouble Bill Clinton got into for thinking he was actually allowed to be president.

  44. 44.

    Hildebrand

    It seems that the ability to immediately get these deeply personal perspectives on the unfolding events into the public’s consciousness could be the thing to allow us to actually make some progress after all of this heartache. The immediacy of it all makes it harder and harder to turn away from the horror. People want this stuff to stop, and having these images sear into our brains on a constant basis, well, to use our 1960s parallel references, social media today is to television then – this time it is power of the images and words, coming from the people, of all walks of life, at the moment they are being lived or uttered, is going to start to get some people to think about all of this in new ways.

    Seems to me that the constant bombardment of the sheer human-ness of the people involved will start to seep into the brains of many. At least, I hope that is the case – I guess I have to hold out some hope, some naive belief that people will turn away from such violence and hatred. Oh, I know, some never will, but I think that it becomes so much harder to hold on to your hate when you keep seeing such immediate images of actual people suffering.

  45. 45.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Roger Moore:

    look at all the trouble Bill Clinton got into for thinking he was actually allowed to be president.

    Oh, yes. The Village has been after the Clintons for a very long time:

    “He came in here and he trashed the place,” says Washington Post columnist David Broder, “and it’s not his place.”

  47. 47.

    debbie

    @Jerzy Russian:

    In RudiWorld, being disrespectful is only slightly less of a capital crime than being a squeegee man. And we all know how he dealt with them.

    Here’s the NYT article reporting his surprise announcement about separating from his wife…which is when she learned about it. This came while he was mayor and while he was considering running for the Senate against Clinton.

    This tiny nugget is the Essence of Giuliani:

    ”I love the people of the city of New York. Some of them love me and some of them hate me, but I think they all have a reaction to me.”

    (Sound like anyone?)

  48. 48.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Mnemosyne: Giuliani must be auditioning for Trump’s VP position. He has the Conservative anti-Blackness spiel down pat.

  49. 49.

    Mike J

    @Roger Moore:

    For example, look at all the trouble Bill Clinton got into for thinking he was actually allowed to be president.

    He wasn’t called the first black president because he was cool and liked jazz and basketball. Toni Morrison called him the first black president because he was treated like a black man.

  50. 50.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    I wonder about the scale of these issues. Clickbait media is great at finding the most outrageous thing and social media is great at amplifying it. This has to distort judgement about events. Josh Marshall points out that this isn’t 1967/68. The Detroit riots are within living memory here, and people remember tanks and .50 caliber machine guns used in the streets. I remember it. We were on vacation when it broke out, 200 miles away. Kept an eye on the newspaper and an ear to the radio. If today’s media environment had existed then we all would have thought it was the end of civilization. And it might have been once we’d all over reacted.
    Serious bad shit is going on, and America has profound problems with guns, race and inequality (to name 3). But I’m not hitting the panic button yet, because this isn’t near ’67/’68, and we got through that.

  51. 51.

    lollipopguild

    @Roger Moore: Whites get into trouble for being uppity when they cross the actual owners of our country-The Conservative White Men in politics and business who are the only Real Americans(TM).

  54. 54.

    debbie

    @Aunt Kathy:

    I clicked on the image and a giant-sized version opened up. Her phone is in her right hand and her keys are in her left.

    I was surprised to see that there were only 2 cops. I’d thought there were 3, their equipment is so bulky.

  55. 55.

    Gravenstone

    Several of the posters in John’s Twitter feed (where I first saw the second image) were commenting about how the cops had to armour up to protect themselves from evil BLM snipers. It’s fucking riot gear. It’s not meant to protect the wearer from high powered rifle cartridges. Hell, it probably doesn’t do much against pistol cartridges outside of the torso ballistic vest. It’s meant to protect from low velocity projectiles (i.e. thrown rocks and bottles) and bludgeoning attacks. Paranoid cops wearing useless (but intimidating) armour that serves no purpose but to buck up their fake courage. Came dressed for a riot, indeed.

  57. 57.

    Roger Moore

    @Gravenstone:

    Paranoid cops wearing useless (but intimidating) armour that serves no purpose but to buck up their fake courage.

    It’s also supposed to show protesters the police mean business. The basic theory is that they won’t riot if they think the police are ready for them. That theory has been conclusively disproven- seeing police in riot gear makes protesters more likely to riot, not less- but that hasn’t stopped plenty police from following it.

  59. 59.

    jl

    Rudy auditioning for Trump veep nom today?
    Lil’ Newtie has gone softer than Trump on the race thing, all ‘intellectual Newt’ and stuff.

  64. 64.

    Feebog

    @Roger Moore:

    I think it would say something worse about him as a parent if his kids were backing him to the hilt the way Trump’s kids are doing. At least Giuliani’s kids learned enough morality to recognize what an awful person he is.

    Doesn’t mean they learned their morality from him.

  65. 65.

    Gelfling545

    The protest in Buffalo Friday was peaceful & thoughtful according to my daughters who were there. I haven’t heard of any arrests. One thing that might have helped that is that they actively recruit minority officers who don’t see just having a dark complexion as a threat. Weird coverage of the Rochester protest: peaceful; 72 arrests. Puzzling.

  66. 66.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Thoughtful David:
    Yes, they’re oddly poised. “A Study in Black”.
    Nearer Cop has some inscrutable piece of black mesh tactical gear in his hand. Like a camera case. But I don’t think he’s looking for a selfie with the young lady.

  67. 67.

    MomSense

    @rikyrah:

    It was so good. I went to baptisms performed by one of the priests. He was beloved by the dad’s family. When I found out that priest was on the list, many things finally made sense.

  68. 68.

    hovercraft

    @Mnemosyne:
    As I said in a downstairs thread, he is a piece of shit who would have performed worse with people of color than even Trump is. Since the media loves ‘Americas Mayor’, they never bothered to look beyond his supposed 9/11 heroics. We in NY knew that he was an asshole with racist tendencies. And yes his son said he was too busy launching his career to support his dad “even if he wanted to”, and his daughter I believe endorsed Obama. So yes his parenting advise is as useful as his advise to put the Emergency Command Center in seven world trade center.

  69. 69.

    Jay C

    @debbie:

    You’re right: I had to look at it again, I also would have sworn there were three cops.
    Still an instant iconic image….

    “Dressed for a riot” indeed….

  70. 70.

    Hal

    I’m in a terrible mood this weekend. First, getting shot down for a job I interviewed for three weeks ago. A job I did at another hospital, that was also a higher pay rate, and that I was very well qualified, if not over qualified for.

    Combine that with how infuriating I’m finding our current political climate and yet more police shootings, with a great big heaping spoonful of total lack of compassion and understanding I’ve seen from friends on social media (thanks Facebook!) and all I can think to respond with is one of my favorite scenes from Angels in America. Current summation of my mood and feelings towards this country right now.

    https://youtu.be/WRr5YKZivkI

  71. 71.

    dogwood

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:
    Twitter, Facebook, the Internet and cable news are in the business of adding fuel to the fire. The best responses to the events of last week from white male conservatives were posted on Redstate and The Daily Caller. The most hateful responses came from guys like Rudy and Joe Walsh. Who do you think the tv producers booked?

  72. 72.

    cmorenc

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Oh, yes. The Village has been after the Clintons for a very long time:

    Such as Maureen Dowd’s verbal carpet bombing in her column in today’s (Sun July 9) New York Times – entitled “The Clinton Contamination“. Geez, it’s as if Dowd thinks it’s Clinton that’s the candidate-from-the-sewer rather than Trump. Sure, Dowd has a long record of dripping contempt on the Clintons in her columns, but today’s is truly over the top of any of her past efforts.

  73. 73.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @gene108: Just FTR, “Lower than whale shit” has never been a value judgment on the worth of cetacean feces but refers to their (alleged) eventual resting place on the ocean bottom. Hard to get lower than the ocean bottom–though from a moral & ethical standpoint, “America’s Grand High Goombah” manages it regularly. /pedant

    (NB Giuliani ["a little man in search of a balcony"] also manages to ignore or discount the existence of the Mafia & other Italian-American hoodlum clans while decrying the alleged lawlessness of minorities. Something about a mote in another's eye & a beam in one's own, as in Matthew 7:1-5)

  74. 74.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @dogwood: Right. Feed the flames. Or start some if it hasn’t combusted yet.
    My problem with modern media is I don’t know how to process it yet. In the Radio/network TV/Newspaper days things happened slower and at a lower pitch. Less urgency. Today you’d think the sky was falling whether it was an acorn or a meteor.

  76. 76.

    hovercraft

    @Jerzy Russian:
    That’s what annoyed me about Bill Bratton’s appearance on Meet The Press this morning, Todd asked Jeh Johnson if he had ‘the talk’ with his kids, he said yes and then Bratton jumped in to say that he had many talks with his 45yr old son about compliance with the police. Are you f**king kidding me, Philando Castile according to his girlfriend was complying. For these white men to lecture black people on how to interact with police is ridiculous, when you run they shoot you in the back, when you stay they shoot you and watch you bleed to death. Obviously most cops are not like this and some people do pose a risk to the cops, but too man times we are asked to give the cops the benefit of the doubt, but we are never given that same benefit and it costs us our lives.

  77. 77.

    leeleeFL

    @Major Major Major Major: I know the police are sometimes as frightened as the protestors, but, honestly, they are generally armed beyond need and where is Russell Honore to tell them to point their guns down and remember that the protestors are citizens, NOT THE ENEMY?!

  79. 79.

    Tony J

    @bago:

    Never been accused of – that – before.

    Have to say I prefer the first picture. That lady is brave and cool and classy and it’s an iconic image, but the guy with the mirror and the message is smart and true. Yeah, Stormtrooper Blue, read it and weep.

  80. 80.

    scott alloway

    @lollipopguild: Yep. I could pull shit with cops that would get non-whites in big trouble. I’m 66, dad was a cop and I would get out of the car, go to the cop car, open the door, sit down and ask, ‘What’s the problem?” Even rocked the hood of a squad car once because he was being a jerk. “Oops, I fell.” The problem seems to be inculcated racism. without the cops even knowing it.

  82. 82.

    LAO

    @Uncle Cosmo: I despise Guliani and found his comments abhorrent but he aggressively prosecuted the mafia when he was the US attorney in Brooklyn.

  83. 83.

    Mike in NC

    All of these freakin’ RoboCops are paid for through our tax dollars. What a deal!

  84. 84.

    hovercraft

    @sdhays:
    He’s not that far behind drumps actual net worth, back in ’08 I read somewhere that his net worth was 60 somewhat million, from his security consulting business, so by now he’s probably worth over 100 million.

  87. 87.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @gene108:
    I’d be OK if Rudy fell in and supplied nutrients to the marine eco-system. But I was referring more to his physical place on the planet not his value to the planet.

    and I see @Uncle Cosmo: got there first – thanks

  88. 88.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @scott alloway: My favorite uncle told me that his mantra was that if he were pulled over by a cop, he would get out and walk back to the car and ask what was up. “There’s no law that says I have to stay in the car!” I did that in Chicago when I was pulled over my first time (I was 18, at a light and my lane was blocked by an illegally parked car through one cycle, so I jumped the light on the next cycle, squealing my tires in the process…). The cops were fine, just told me to pull over out of traffic, then they wrote up the ticket. About 15 years later in Virginia I got pulled over going ~ 33 in a 25 (got distracted going up a hill), I pulled over and got out of the car and almost instantly heard “GET BACK IN THE CAR!”.

    Times change.

    Yeah, I’m a white guy with short hair, no piercings or tattoos, …

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  89. 89.

    hueyplong

    My intense disgust with Giuliani is broken only by those blessed intervals in which I forget that he exists.

  90. 90.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @LAO: Yup. It seems that if one actually accomplishes something (or has a reputation for accomplishing something), then the press treats that as the person’s character and competence forever more.

    Herbert Hoover was almost universally regarded a brilliant, accomplished man before he was elected president. Afterward, not so much, (at least in part) because his prejudices and sclerotic view of the economy and its failure couldn’t adapt.

    If one wants to be President, one has to worry about peaking too soon…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  91. 91.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ultraviolet Thunder:

    I wonder about the scale of these issues.

    While the Dallas massacre was huge in terms of the number of murdered police, which was highly unusual–in other regards, it was yet another American mass shooting. I think the thing that really freaked people out was that it occurred under cover of a BLM protest and that the initial media reports implied that it was the work of an organized group (of armed aggrieved black people!!) rather than a loner. So you get all these “CIVIL WAR”/”1968” headlines. Much in the way, I suppose, that the Orlando massacre initially seemed to be an organized ISIS hit rather than a spree-killer who identified with ISIS at the eleventh hour.

  93. 93.

    patrick II

    I was surprised that Phil Castile, the school cafeteria supervisor who was murdered by police this past week had a concealed carry permit and was carrying a gun — which ended up getting him shot. Then I remembered the NRA has said that more school employees should carry guns to protect the children in their schools. I guess that doesn’t go for black school employees.

  94. 94.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Villago Delenda Est: I’m kinda tired of the “1968 all over again” meme (and the alternate “No it’s not” meme) that has been spreading around, but for shits and grins I just re-read the Port Huron Statement from 1962. Interesting how much hasn’t changed since then. A lot of things have been papered over (Post-racial America, donchaknow), but most of the issues are still hanging around.

  96. 96.

    debbie

    @hovercraft:

    Where is all the conservative outrage at police expecting people to accept they live in occupation? This is America, dammit!

  97. 97.

    dogwood

    @JPL:
    I’ve never understood why The Times keeps her. She definitely has it out for the Clintons, but the her George W. stuff and the O’bambi schtick were awful as well. She’s mean, petty and vindictive and tries to sell it as a point of view. Maybe the Times sees her as non-partisan. She simply has nothing interesting to say, so she just spews nasty nonsense.

  98. 98.

    LAO

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: He was a terrible mayor and a god awful prosecutor. I say this as both a NYer and a defense attorney. I’m just glad he not “my” problem anymore, he’s all of our problem now, but in a meaningless way. If only the media would stop putting him on tv, then I could forget about him, as he deserves.

  103. 103.

    hovercraft

    @debbie:
    The only consistency I’ve seen in the live free or die glibitarian sector has been Matt Welch of Reason Magazine saying that BLM types should team up with them to fight for smaller government. He must not be aware of the fact that the reason government has such a high proportion of black employees is because they were always the employers of last resort for black people who couldn’t get any one else to hire them. See reducing the size of government is a two for, you get to cut government and thereby taxes (theoretically) and you get to push all those lazy blacks out of their comfortable taxpayer funded perches. So I doubt that pitch will work on the us.

  104. 104.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Ultraviolet Thunder: I remember that. My sister and I were home from college and alone in the house because our parents were in Traverse City on vacation. We lived on the east side and were never in any danger, though both of us stayed home from our jobs downtown. A neighbor came over and told us to come to their house if we needed anything.

  106. 106.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: It’s not so much that history repeats as that stuff never really goes away in the first place. It’s kind of like the statements in these threads and elsewhere about how something or other reminds people of a dystopian science fiction novel–that’s usually not any special power of prognostication, it’s just that those dystopias were really about things that the authors saw going on in the dystopian world around them, and these phenomena are evergreen.

  107. 107.

    Tony J

    It appears to me, and this has almost certainly been said often and better many times before, but it’s the Original Sin at the core of the whole idea of identifying as American.

    Citizens of the Republic are entitled to all the rights in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they are the people the Declaration of Independence was about and intended for. ‘Those People’, OTOH, aren’t citizens. They don’t have rights. Killing them is sometimes unfortunate but it’s not a problem requiring any more of an inquest than hearing about another wedding party being blown to buggery in the War of Terror. Shit happens, if they didn’t want to risk accidents they should clean their own house, etc.

    It’s been nearly 150 years since Appomattox, but there appears to be a really strong strain of normal, everyday American identity that doesn’t have a problem with placing people of a certain hue outside the very possibility of being considered an actual American Citizen. They live there, they talk the language, they even appear on TV, but it’s not really – their – country.

    WTF do you do about that other than keep on keeping on, generation after generation, until it stops being normal?

    And yes, it’s sort of the same in Britain. We just don’t have the gun thing or the “Your people didn’t exactly buy a ticket to come here, did they?” thing to make it such a deadly serious matter. We literally don’t have hundreds dying each year because putting holes in problems is harder to do and get away with here.

  108. 108.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @hovercraft: Government is the only thing that has done BLM types any favors. The height of glibertarian bullshit in this country was at the same time the courts allowed Jim Crow to be put into place. Libertarians have a very bad tendency to be racist shit, too…look at the foul Paul family, for example.

  109. 109.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    @Matt McIrvin:
    I was in Canada for several days working my ass off during/after the Dallas thing. Just got back. I didn’t have much media access except the Globe and Mail and national Post at breakfast. The stories were grim but not hyperbolic. I guess I missed the bulk of the hyperventilating.
    ETA: Gotta sign off. Lady Thunder is home. Family time. have a good evening, all.

  111. 111.

    Matt McIrvin

    @hovercraft: These guys also tend to think of “government” as a thing that is exactly the same shade of horrible on all levels–as above, so below. But in this country, when the political situation is favorable, we often have a situation of the federal government serving as a civil-rights check on horrible state governments. They serve as a check on discriminatory private companies and individuals as well–and there, libertarians were fighting those checks all the way, advocating for the right of anyone who wasn’t a government to discriminate. This isn’t anything that is going to be easily papered over.

  112. 112.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @Matt McIrvin: I seem to recall Rand Paul telling Rachel Maddow that a store owner should have the right to refuse to serve African Americans at a lunch counter. She was so shocked that she had him repeat it several times.

  113. 113.

    rikyrah

    Steve Benen
    ‏@stevebenen
    According to Nexis, Maureen Dowd’s written 35 columns calling POTUS “Barry” since 08. She has 11 more columns referring to Obama as “Spock.”

  114. 114.

    Woodrowfan

    @gene108: to be fair, if we dropped Goolianni to the bottom of the ocean he’d provide valuable nutrients as well…

  117. 117.

    dexwood

    Haven’t read through, forgive me if this has been asked and answered… is there a follow up to the brave woman’s photo? I’d like to see what came next. How was she treated? What happened to her?

  118. 118.

    Elie

    The government in the Bahamas (and their was a Middle Eastern country as well), who put out advisories to their people traveling in the US. The Bahamian announcement spoke to caution with police and the advisory (I think) from Bahrain (?) advised businessmen to wear their tribal robes in the US. Apparently some little asshole in Tennessee? complained that there was a terrorist in their hotel and he was a businessman from the ME who just happened to wear his robes instead of a suit and tie. The guy ended up slammed to the ground in his room and hand cuffed.

  121. 121.

    Matt McIrvin

    @hovercraft: This has been going around (I saw it via Andreas Schou on G+):

    http://lawofficer.com/2016/07/follow-commands/

    This guy has a mental model of police/general-public relations in which people used to follow the commands of police instantly and without question, but there’s been a deterioration of respect for authority that has led to an epidemic of disobedience, and now police just have no choice but to keep shooting people dead.

    I get the impression that modern police training focuses heavily, heavily on demanding and obtaining total compliance, with emphasis on the fact that if as an officer you don’t get total compliance, somebody will kill you. When somebody does kill police, it just drives the point home. But the upshot is this attitude that leads to lots of citizens getting executed in the street, especially if they’re black and their being black makes cops jittery.

  122. 122.

    dogwood

    @patrick II:
    Gun culture defies reason. You can show people clear data that the presence of a loaded gun in you home, your vehicle, open or concealed in public increases the chance you or those around you will become injured or killed. It just doesn’t sink in, because guns make some people feel safe, which trumps actually being safe.

  126. 126.

    ThresherK

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: As a radio amateur, I am aware of this: Federal Radio Commission, European Famine Relief, Stanford engineer who actually went abroad as an accomplished mining geek. He’s the kind of person who can be called a technocrat.

    And compared to Harding and Coolidge, he may bethought of as a step up as a public servant.

    At some point it’s amusing (or horrifying) to see conservatives not learn from the mistakes Hoover made. But Hoover’s problems were at least caused by the uniqueness of the Great Depression. This wasn’t like any of the Panics we were used to in the Industrial era. One example, of children starving in this country while farmers destroyed crops and milk in protest because they would not fetch the prices it cost to raise them, will suffice.

    For the Great Recession, I wonder if he’s looking on from the afterlife and screaming at his party leaders, “Didn’t you learn anything?”

  127. 127.

    burnspbesq

    Can’t imagine what it would be like in Baton Rouge if LSU was in session. A few thousand white frat boys is exactly what this situation doesn’t need.

  128. 128.

    Monala

    Yesterday my husband was having a discussion with a friend of his, a conservative white guy. My husband is a very big, black guy. He was trying to tell his friend how these incidents make him feel, and his friend wasn’t getting it. Hubby told him that he had participated in a police-community discussion in which an officer admitted that if he encountered my husband while on the job, his first instinct would be to shoot, because my husband’s size makes him a threat.

    His friend said, “Well, that’s because all those other [black] people have made it bad for you.”

    I jumped in at this point. “So police should treat white people this way, since there are white criminals?”

    “There’s hardly any white criminals!” he argued.

    My husband laughed. “Dude, there are more white criminals than criminals of any other race, just by virtue of numbers!”

    He still wasn’t hearing what we were saying, so I asked him, “How many black people do you know?”

    “A lot,” he said.

    “And how many of them are thugs and criminals?” I asked.

    “None of them,” he admitted. (And his responses, I’m guessing, are what most white people living in major metropolitan areas would say, unless said white people are criminals themselves or involved in some way in law enforcement – that they know a lot of black people and none of them are thugs and criminals.)

    I didn’t get to finish my point, because friend wanted to end it at that point. But what I would have said was, “So you know a lot of black people and none of them are thugs or criminals, yet you still believe the stereotype so much that you find it lamentable but understandable that your friend could be harassed or killed by police, just based on their bias? And you’re offended at the suggestion that white people should ever be treated the same? Does that even make sense?”

  129. 129.

    JPL

    @Monala: You need to thank the news, not only Fox btw. In the Atlanta area, the local ABC station is awful. If it bleeds, it leads.

    I finally convinced a friend to turn off that station, and this is the sad part, she’s darker than I am.

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne

    @hovercraft:

    Bill Bratton is such a weird case, because when he was out here in Los Angeles, he did a great job and got the LAPD onto the right track (believe it or not, a couple of years ago our chief actually decided that a shooting by a cop was *not* within policy and the cop could be fired!)

    But once Bratton gets within NYC limits, he becomes a major asshole again. I don’t get it.

  131. 131.

    dexwood

    @PhoenixRising:
    What strikes me is how her way of dressing could be intended to show the bullies she is not wearing something possibly concealing an explosive device. A backless outfit no less. Bravery, dignity, intelligence.

  134. 134.

    Brachiator

    The second photo is amazing. It reminds of Tiananmen Square and the “flower power” photograph from the 1967 Viet Nam war protest, showing a young, long-haired Vietnam protestor in a turtleneck sweater, placing carnations into the barrel of a rifle of a National Guardsman.

    There was an earlier thread about 1968. There is definitely something in the air of those times again.

    The whole world is watching. The whole world is watching.

  136. 136.

    Steeplejack

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    She slept her way into a column. That’s pretty much it.

    Say what you will about Dowd as a commentator, that is complete bullshit. Unless you’d like to provide a citation to back it up.

    And it’s just the sort of dismissive, offensive sexism that, frankly, I’m shocked to hear coming from you. Dowd can’t just be a biased, muddle-headed writer—like Brooks or Friedman—she must have slept her way into the job. Hur-hur-hur. Christ. You need to delenda est your own ass on this one.

  138. 138.

    Tom

    @LAO: Let’s remember that after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (about 1993 or so, blew up a car bomb in the underground parking garage, 7 people killed) NYC realized they needed an Emergency Command Center. Where to put it? Giuliani overruled the recommendations of everyone else and put it in – wait for it – the World Trade Center. Why? Because it was a convenient place to meet the paramours he was cheating on his wife with. So when 9/11 happens, the NYC Emergency Command Center is KIA. Don’t know how many people died as a result of that one, but Giuliani and his dick will burn in hell for a long time for that one.

  139. 139.

    JPL

    @Patricia Kayden: That’s not true.. According to Rudi they just need to say yessem and yessir.. and then there will be peace..

    Why a news channel has on a racist bigot, is beyond me. Even Rush got fired..

  140. 140.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Monala: So your friend is pretty much ok with the police killing any Black person, including his Black “friends”? Alrighty then.

  141. 141.

    Mike G

    @Steve!:

    Jesus, what exactly do those three big brave officers think that young lady is going to do to them when they get close enough?

    Transform them into Bull Connor’s progeny.

  142. 142.

    dexwood

    @Jay C:

    Thanks, i read that. But as an ex-street/documentary photographer, I can safely assume this was not the last picture in the series. Where are the follow ups? I mean, we have the ability these days to take a helluva lot of pictures from multiple angles in all crowd situations.

  143. 143.

    JPL

    @Patricia Kayden: It’s easy to think that there must be something else, because you just don’t get killed in cold blood. The latest videos are changing the perception, and the tide is turning. imo

  144. 144.

    Brachiator

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    I seem to recall Rand Paul telling Rachel Maddow that a store owner should have the right to refuse to serve African Americans at a lunch counter. She was so shocked that she had him repeat it several times.

    Quite a number of Libertarians get especially puffed up when they utter crap like this. They think it shows their superior principles, and how strongly they are attached to them.

  145. 145.

    henqiguai

    @Elie(#118):

    he was a businessman from the ME who just happened to wear his robes instead of a suit and tie. The guy ended up slammed to the ground in his room and hand cuffed.

    Bahrainian, was in the US for medical treatment – cardiac.

  148. 148.

    Jay C

    @Steve!:

    Jesus, what exactly do those three big brave officers think that young lady is going to do to them when they get close enough?

    Actually, just two BBOs, but it’s hard to tell clearly from the (now instantly-iconic) straight-on side shot.

  149. 149.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @cmorenc:

    It was appalling, even for MoDo. (We talked about it some this morning on, I think, either Anne Laurie’s Sunday garden thread or Richard Mayhew’s open thread that immediately followed.) She is a bitter, spiteful person.

  151. 151.

    Mnemosyne

    @Monala:

    As far as I know, I know exactly one (1) black person who is a criminal (my sister-in-law’s long-term boyfriend and the father of my niece and nephew). He’s not a big guy, more along the lines of Don Cheadle than Ving Rhames.

    He also probably would have avoided becoming a criminal if his severe ADHD and bipolar disorder had been diagnosed before he was 35, but that’s a whole other story. Let’s just say, once you’re in the criminal justice system, nobody bothers to do any kind of mental health screening.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Tony J: The gun issue and race absolutely are intertwined with each other from the beginning. In complicated ways.

    As people have pointed out here before, Republicans and the NRA were pushing for gun control in the Sixties as the result of the Black Panthers arming for collective self-defense and doing open-carry demonstrations–kind of like some of these guys misidentified as being in with the shooter in Dallas. But that doesn’t mean it’ll play out the same way this time.

    But the gun-rights movement for most of the time since then has largely been white, white, white, and in all the rhetoric you hear from these people, there’s the implicit idea that you can instantly tell a “bad guy with a gun” from a “good guy with a gun”, by looking. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out what kind of classification you can get a good handle on by looking.

  153. 153.

    Mnemosyne

    @dexwood:

    And I think we can safely bring the gender politics into it: by dressing that way, she’s making it clear that those two big, brave officers are using all that equipment to beat up a girl, and didn’t their mothers them any better?

  154. 154.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jay C:

    Yeah, MoDo’s latest screed is a real treasure: maybe she’s still suffering the aftereffects of her unfortunate “cannabis tourism” trip to Colorado??

    There’s something about MoDo on her own, in a hotel, with substances to be consumed, that is very troubling. A week or two ago, she had that very weird piece about being alone in her hotel room in Paris and eating her way through the contents of the minibar because she was afraid to go to a restaurant alone, or something. What a truly pathetic life this woman must lead. And all the bitterness comes out in her weekly NYT screeds.

  156. 156.

    henqiguai

    @Steeplejack(#136):

    And it’s just the sort of dismissive, offensive sexism that, frankly, I’m shocked to hear coming from you. Dowd can’t just be a biased, muddle-headed writer—like Brooks or Friedman—she must have slept her way into the job. Hur-hur-hur. Christ. You need to delenda est your own ass on this one.

    Nope, that didn’t originate with Villago, been around for years. I don’t pay one bit of attention to such things, especially MoDo’s tripe, but I’ve seen that expressed for years.

  158. 158.

    Patricia Kayden

    @JPL: We will have to wait and see if the tide is truly turning. I am already seeing the other side desperately trying to demonize the two Black men who were killed by police last week.

    In fact, the police in MN tried to insinuate that Chantille didn’t have a licence to legally own a gun. They had to walk back that claim when pressed by the media.

  160. 160.

    dexwood

    @Mnemosyne:

    You could be right. I wasn’t thinking along those lines. I saw her as intentionally being as non-threatening as possible. Fuck, Big Politics can be confusing enough without thinking about more nuanced finer points.

  161. 161.

    Patricia Kayden

    @JPL: Ratings make news channels do bizarre things like that. Look at how MSNBC has on Rightwing extremists like Hewitt and Coulter.

  163. 163.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    @Elie: mideast guy was in Ohio. Dumbfuck local heard him speaking Arabic and thought he was communicating with ISIS.

  164. 164.

    Roger Moore

    @dogwood:

    Gun culture defies reason. You can show people clear data that the presence of a loaded gun in you home, your vehicle, open or concealed in public increases the chance you or those around you will become injured or killed. It just doesn’t sink in, because guns make some people feel safe, which trumps actually being safe.

    People are terrible judges of risk. It’s the same basic bias that makes people feel safer driving than flying or taking a train, even though the objective evidence says that cars are much less safe than trains or commercial airlines: desire for control. People feel safer driving themselves because it makes them feel in control of the situation, even though the pilot on their commercial flight is almost certainly far better at his job than they are at driving (not to mention the mechanics, air traffic controllers, etc.). People feel safer with guns because they give them the feeling of control, even though they’re just waiting there for somebody else to take them and use them against their owner.

  166. 166.

    Aleta

    Apologize if this was said before: That photo of the lone woman detained by two armed men is from here. Photographer is Jonathan Bachman/Reuters.

  167. 167.

    Mnemosyne

    @dexwood:

    Right, and part of being as unthreatening as possible was wearing a pretty summer dress.

    (I wish I weren’t short, because I love maxi dresses, but maxi dresses look much better on the tall girls.)

    ETA: Note that she’s wearing flat shoes, because she’s unthreatening, not stupid.

  168. 168.

    Baud

    Note that she’s wearing flat shoes, because she’s unthreatening, not stupid.

    Isn’t that one of Saul Alinsky’s rules for radicals?

    ETA: Wear comfortable shoes.

  169. 169.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @LAO: OK, I stand corrected. I lumped him in with the large percentage of italoamericani who act like the Mafia stands for “Mothers And Fathers Italian Association” but bitch&moan constantly about POCs.

    He’s still a goombah to this paesan, thoughh..

  170. 170.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Woodrowfan: And the creatures scuttling across the deep benthos would make more creative & considerate use of those nutrients than Ghouliani.

  171. 171.

    Steeplejack

    @henqiguai:

    Citation, please. It’s widely reported that Sally Quinn slept her way into a job when she hooked up with Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post, but I haven’t seen anything similar about Dowd.

    Dowd definitely has coexistent cases of Clinton derangement syndrome and Obama derangement syndrome, which have rendered her mostly incoherent in her column over the last eight years, but she has had a real career. She joined the Times in 1983 as a metropolitan reporter and moved to the Washington bureau in 1986. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize (for national reporting) in 1992 and won one (for commentary) in 1999. To dismiss all that as “she slept her way into a column” is bullshit.

    It’s fine to disagree with a pundit, or hate her work, but “Haw-haw, she’s a slut!”? Srsly? WTF.

  172. 172.

    lamh36

    @DavidBegnaud
    Baton Rouge home owner “very upset” after police storm her yard arresting protesters who had permission to be there

    video

    Here is the picture: Standoff

  174. 174.

    Aleta

    Shaun King wrote on facebook:
    “I just spoke with the attorney of Mark Hughes, who was wrongly listed as a suspect for days by the Dallas Police Department who openly asked people to help them find him.
    Mark and his family just got surrounded by a white supremacist mob at a Texas hotel who seemed to be tracking him. They narrowly escaped.
    The Dallas PD needs to publicly announce that Mark is no longer a suspect and that he did nothing wrong or illegal in any way.”

  177. 177.

    J R in WV

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Broder is dead, which is a good thing. And it was Bill Clinton’s place, he won the election, it was his White House, and he dealt with the world as he saw fit.

    It will be Hillary’s house if we work hard to elect her, and succeed. FSM help us if it isn’t her house come January!

  178. 178.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Aleta: The media has already clearly identified the suspect who shot the five police officers via the Dallas Police Chief, who spoke about this on Friday during a press conference. Those White Supremacists are just being a-holes.

  179. 179.

    John Revolta

    @Uncle Cosmo: @SiubhanDuinne: Actually, I believe it was about her eating alone in a restaurant because she couldn’t get a date in Paris. I gotta wonder if this is some kinda schtick with her; she ostensibly couldn’t find anyone to smoke pot with in Colorado either. Either she’s pushing some kind of image or she’s not much on social skills.

    Having said all that, I still believe she once had some respectable journo chops. It’s just been such a long time that I can’t really recall.

  184. 184.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Roger Moore:

    People are terrible judges of risk.

    Yes, that’s very much true. But not only that, but people are horrible about always following safety procedures, and with guns it only takes one or a few mistakes to cause a deadly incident.

    My Life Member NRA uncle had a small arsenal in his house. He would occasionally clean his rifles and shot guns and pistols. Once he was cleaning his rifles with his barrel brushes and everything was going fine. Then he started on one final one, pushed in the brush – “Hmm. It’s not going in as far as it should. Must be hung up on something. I’ll push a little harder…”

    BANG!!

    The bullet grazed his index finger and left him with a “nice” scar.

    Of course, he was lucky he (or anyone else) wasn’t killed.

    It only takes a very small number of mistakes to kill someone. (He knows he should always clear a weapon before putting it away, and one should always verify it is clear before cleaning it, and one should never assume that applying more force to a weapon is the right thing to do, but hey, he’s cleaned his rifles dozens of times before so he got sloppy…) He had been around weapons all his life. He reloaded his own shotgun shells. He had a working replica 3-pounder canon that he fired on artillery ranges. And even with all of that, he still made enough simple mistakes that almost killed him (or someone around him).

    Guns shouldn’t be in homes (or in cars, or be carried around in public). They need to be in places where people who are deadly serious about safety are in charge of storing them, handing them out, and making sure they are used safely, and putting them away safely. It’s too easy for people at home to get distracted, to get sloppy, and to be too confident of their ability to never make mistakes.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  187. 187.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @amk: Comprehensive police-shooting statistics are hard to come by because there’s no national requirement. Courtesy of the NRA’s friends in Congress, of course.

    The Guardian has a pretty-good interactive page but it probably doesn’t have what you’re looking for…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  189. 189.

    LAO

    @Mnemosyne:

    They’re lawyers. They’re going to try and get any advantage they can.

    When you say it’s up to the Judge — you’re correct, it’s the Court’s obligation to determine what is relevant evidence and what is not. And, while I personally believe that the victim’s sealed juvenile record is not relevant, I don’t think its fair to describe the defense attorney’s motivations as seeking any advantage they can. A defense attorney has one consideration and it’s not justice it’s the zealous representation of the accused. It’s their job and it’s not playing the system, it is their ethical obligation.

    Mild rant over. It just really bugs me that defense attorneys are always painted as the bad guys. The fact that the government (or state) has an obligation to present evidence and prove a defendant’s guilt in a court of law (as opposed to the court of public opinion) is a fundamental right in this country.

  190. 190.

    ThresherK (GPad)

    @John Revolta: I think the Pulitzers would like a do-over for her Commentary award. Clinton Derangement Syndrome was in full display there.

  191. 191.

    Bobby Thomson

    @LAO: Zealous advocacy means different things in different states, different locales, and different practice groups. Criminal defense attorneys push the envelope pretty hard.

  194. 194.

    DH

    I wrote a blistering comment on Dowd’s screed, and the Times printed it but 8 hours later so it didn’t get many reads. I think that Dowd didn’t sleep her way to the top, she just thinks the Clintons are Uppity White Trash.

  195. 195.

    J R in WV

    @cmorenc:

    So MoDo takes every “possibly”, “may have” and “could be” by that former Ken Starr henchman as gospel fact? Really?

    I don’t. People who have pre-existing prejudices, like Mr Comey, shouldn’t have anything to do with investigations of people they have been attempting to prosecute for 30 years. Or so.

    For whatever reason this despicable Republican rat has been seeking to ruin the Clintons for decades, and this is his best hit so far. But there is no there there. He uses maybe and possible and could be and none of that needs any evidence. He shows himself less reputable than Hillary Clinton in his very exposition on TV.

  198. 198.

    DH

    The New York Daily News pointed out in their article on Rudy 911’s comments that more whites have killed police officers than blacks, and it’s quite a wide difference, around 70% is white

  199. 199.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @LAO: Thanks for the reminder. It is important for us to keep that in mind.

    Mnemosyne can speak for herself, but I get frustrated by the “obvious” problems with prosecution of policemen who have seemingly killed someone and seemingly too often the greatest punishment they face is being forced to resign. It seems like the laws and the standards of proof are too often stacked against effective accountability for their actions. Unless there is video of the encounter, it is almost hopeless. Even with video, it seems like too often the cop only has to say the magic words “I feared for my safety and the safety of those around me” and he can’t be convicted.

    Maybe the laws are such that those really are “stay out of jail” words and judges and juries have no choice but acquit. Or maybe there really are extenuating circumstances that aren’t reported. Even if the killing was somehow objectively justified, if masses of sensible people think it is unjust, then the system needs to address it to fix the disconnect (and ideally fix it so fewer people are killed).

    If it seems unjust, and if the public doesn’t trust that “Equal Justice Under Law” is the way the system works for everyone, then we’re in big trouble.

    So, yes, zealously represent your client. Make the state prove its case to the required standard. But understand my (and many others) frustration when the law apparently lets law enforcement act with impunity whenever they feel like it.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  201. 201.

    lamh36

    Breibart reporter, who was spreading lies about Castile…got arrested in BR…now he has a sad. Karma is a bitch

    @stranahan
    I can’t stress this enough: not only do I believe my imprisonment was unconstitutional but I believe the other protesters was as well.

  202. 202.

    LAO

    @Bobby Thomson: Yes, we do. Cause it’s our job. It seems to me, that when people believe a person has been wrongly accused, there are little to no complaints about a defense attorney’s aggressive conduct. It’s as if defendants that are presumed guilty are entitled to a defense.

  205. 205.

    Davebo

    @LAO: Everyone hates lawyers, till they need one.

    IANAL but having a long term relationship with one turned judge really opened my eyes to the dumpster fire that is our legal system.

  206. 206.

    LAO

    @efgoldman: Asking the tough questions! NY state doesn’t permit prior sexual history so, no and state of dress would be an absolutely loser (rightly so) but on the question of consent, under some circumstances, state of inebriation MAY be a factor. Would really depend on the facts.

    Disclaimer, I’ve never defended a rape case — that’s just the way my career has played out and my focus is now federal appeals, so unlikely to be an issue.

    @Omnes Omnibus: I feel like a moron — one of my favorite movies and I failed to catch the reference.

  208. 208.

    LAO

    @efgoldman: Why yes — Ms. Shawna Cox, in an effort to fire her free lawyer, went full sovereign citizen last week in a court filing. I sent it to Dr. Silverman, but he did not deem it worthy of a post. It was pretty funny. Also, Ammon Bundy decided to forego his rights to a speedy trial and ask for a continuance of the Oregon trial date. Sadly for him, the Court denied his request. Trial starts 9/7/16.

  209. 209.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @LAO: It’s not you. FYWP likes posting the opposite of what we really write, just to mess with us.

    Happens to me all the time infrequently.

    ;-)

    Have a good night, LAO, and everyone.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  210. 210.

    Brachiator

    @LAO:

    Mild rant over. It just really bugs me that defense attorneys are always painted as the bad guys.

    It’s probably been said here before, but there are quite a number of people who hate defense attorneys, until they need one.

    And there have been people falsely accused of horrendous crimes who have lost their jobs and reputations, had friends and family abandon them. The state throws all its resources against them. And the only thing standing between the accused and the abyss is their defense attorney.

  211. 211.

    Joel

    @Steeplejack: Dowd is very much like Brooks and Friedman in that they all comfort the comfortable.

    But she stands alone in her willingness to afflict the afflicted. Which makes her the lowest by a wide margin.

  212. 212.

    J R in WV

    @patrick II:

    When I took my class (at the time required for a concealed carry permit) we were specifically told repeatedly by the instructor, a Deputy Sheriff, to always give the officer our ID and our CCW Permit first thing. Then if they ask if you’re carrying, you tell them yes and where the weapon is.

    I’ve done this repeatedly in multiple states. I’m also an older bald white-bearded white guy. But I follow the process I was taught to follow. You don’t say “I got a gun!” until after they see your permit. Really you don’t ever say that, saying that is a threat You give them your permit and then answer their questions.

    That permit means you aren’t a felon, and aren’t known to your local LEO community to be crazy.

  215. 215.

    nutella

    @hovercraft:

    Jesus. Bratton is studiously ignoring all the statistics about the NYPD treating black citizens with much greater harshness than white citizens.

    By jumping in with idiotic story about him and his son, he denied all of those proven facts about his own department. That doesn’t say anything good about his abilities as a manager.

  216. 216.

    LanceThruster

    @Mike G:

    A C-SPAN lecture on Kent State crowd control (Ohio Nat’l Guard with M-1’s with fixed bayonets) said he had to admit Bull Connors’ firehoses and dogs were downright humane in comparison.

  217. 217.

    nutella

    @Roger Moore:

    People are terrible judges of risk. It’s the same basic bias that makes people feel safer driving than flying or taking a train, even though the objective evidence says that cars are much less safe than trains or commercial airlines: desire for control.

    That’s an important part of how people understand risk, and there’s another factor that comes in: If it looks tougher it must be safer. For example, people are convinced that SUVs as big powerful truck-like vehicles must be much safer than little sedans. Not true at all. SUVs are much less safe than cars but they look safer and actual facts can’t compete with that.

    Edited to fix really bad spelling

  219. 219.

    Matt McIrvin

    @nutella: If I recall correctly, most of the general unsafety of big SUVs comes from them making life unsafe for other people, not for the SUV driver. So there’s a certain collective-action/Prisoner’s Dilemma problem here.

  220. 220.

    Chris T.

    @Matt McIrvin: That’s true now. In the early days of SUVs (and maybe even today but safety rules for trucks have been tightened too), SUVs had to meet only “truck” safety standards, which were far looser than “car” safety standards, on the theory that hardly anyone drove a truck plus the fact that SUVs were converted trucks.

    (Crossovers aka “CUVs” are often if not always based on car platforms. Although CUV and SUV are, I think, not technically defined terms and hence can be freely misappropriated.)

  221. 221.

    Chris T.

    @nutella:

    If it looks tougher it must be safer

    As an aside, using this as a springboard, I have observed that in much (all?) TV advertising, imagery is used to emphasize emotion and undercut logic and bypass any and all sorts of reasoning. SUV ads are therefore full of people driving empty roads—vs the reality that they’ll be stuck in a traffic jam every day commuting—and are shown as amazingly maneuverable and swerving past obstacles like falling rocks—vs the reality that if you come around a curve and face a huge boulder in your lane and are in a car, you might be able to swerve around it, but if you are in an SUV, you are going to either crash into it, or swerve off the road entirely, as the mass of the SUV makes it impossible to maneuver like that.

    (Other ads are designed to counter the obvious, e.g., ads for luxury cars may try to imply that they’re more reliable than a cheap Camry when in fact the opposite is usually true. Or they just go straight for the sex angle: buy a Caddy and beautiful women will instantly all lust after you. The last group of ads is mostly aimed at men…)

  222. 222.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chris T.:

    buy a Caddy and beautiful women will instantly all lust after you.

    Outdated. When is the last time you interacted with actual people or the media the consume?

  229. 229.

    Mnemosyne

    @Mary G:

    Interesting that every (nasty) comment on that page is from someone who says they’re in the US despite it being a UK paper. Things that make you go, “Hmmmm.”

  230. 230.

    Mary G

    @Mnemosyne: For my own mental health, I stay out of the Daily Mail comments. It seems to be the right wing go-to British paper, just like the Guardian is left wing.

  232. 232.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Yeah, if you’re old and white. The young celebs, the athletes and the rappers favor Escalades and, if they have serious money, Bentleys.

  234. 234.

    Emily68

    @Villago Delenda Est: I went to UCSB and we experienced a police riot in June 1970. And it wasn’t even the local police who were rioting. They had to import the LA County Sheriff’s Deputies to do the rioting. From the Wikipedia entry for Isla Vista:

    The local branch building of the Bank of America located at 935 Embarcadero Del Norte was burned to the ground by students on February 25, 1970, after a charge of rock-throwing students drove law enforcement officers out of town. According to Cril Payne, author of Deep Cover, a history of his career in the FBI, the FBI was very active in Santa Barbara and the charge of “students” that resulted in the burning of the Bank of America was a COINTELPRO FBI operation. Kevin Moran, a student who put out a fire in the temporary Bank of America during a riot in April 1970 was killed by police fire, and during a June 1970 riot Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies ran amok, prompting criticism from even William F. Buckley, Jr., the conservative commentator.[22][23]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Vista,_California

    I vividly remember that riot. Even white middle-class kids were getting beaten over the head for peering out their windows to see what was happening. An assistant DA went out in his front yard and got arrested.

    Just from memory, here’s what started the 3rd riot: The Grand Jury indicted a bunch of people for burning down the B of A in February but the indictments were supposed to be kept secret until after finals and most of the students went home. But the indictments leaked out and it turned out that two of those indicted were big-name campus radicals who’d been in jail (arrested the night before) the night the bank burned. And that’s a pretty good alibi and everybody got pissed that they were just indicting people they didn’t like instead of actually trying to figure out who’d set the bank on fire.

  238. 238.

    Paul in KY

    @J R in WV: If I was just stopped for a speeding tic & stop was going OK (about to get one & then I drive away), I would not mention that I had a concealed weapon, etc.

    just injects drama into the situation, IMO.

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