Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

He really is that stupid.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

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

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Their freedom requires your slavery.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

You are here: Home / Politics / Media / Friday Morning Open Thread: One Step At A Time

Friday Morning Open Thread: One Step At A Time

by | 148 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

… Twitter’s policy of adding a warning to, rather than deleting, tweets that break its rules when it comes to major public figures was announced in mid-2019. But the social network has never used it on Mr Trump – nor deleted any of his tweets before.

The same post remains unaltered on Facebook, without any warning attached…

The move means that other users will not be able to like, reply, or retweet it, Twitter said – but would still be able to retweet with a comment attached.

In a Twitter thread, the social network said: “This tweet violates our policies regarding the glorification of violence based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today.”

The “historical context” is a reference to the late 1960s, when the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” was coined by Miami Police Chief Walter Headley, in reference to his aggressive policing policies in black neighbourhoods…

“We’ve taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts, but have kept the tweet on Twitter because it is important that the public still be able to see the tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance.”…

Reader Interactions

148Comments

  3. 3.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    A lily white Minnesota State Police squad just arrested Omar Jiminez and his entire CNN production team. Live, just now. Just to do it – streets seem mostly clear and peaceful, and he was doing what he was told.

    I’m ready to burn down some police stations myself. That was a fantastic demonstration of how our “heroes” in blue are incompetent, corrupt control freaks.

  5. 5.

    low-tech cyclist

    Should I even ask what ‘WWG1WGA’ is? (From the responses to Biden’s tweet.)

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    Long read profile from last summer on the bag of blech that is Pompeo. Worth at the least a skim if you missed it at the time.

    …Even more bluntly, a former American ambassador told me, “He’s like a heat-seeking missile for Trump’s ass.”

  10. 10.

    WereBear

    Response designed to create the very circumstances they claim happens all the time. Like arresting the CNN crew: it’s a reflex now.

  11. 11.

    WereBear

    @low-tech cyclist: Too many police departments these days seem to believe they’re a law unto themselves.

    They have always had this tendency. But it was pushed out of control under the W administration.

    1. dropped standards for military service during Iraq war and police departments favor such training
    2. paramilitary training and outlook for police during War on Terror
    3. fostering the mindset that they were an occupying army with deliberate training and command support

    Layer that on already existing arrogance and prejudice…

  12. 12.

    raven

    @WereBear: that is this supposed to mean?

     

    “dropped standards for military service during Iraq war and police departments favor such training”

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    I said in the Covid-19 thread that the White House’s censorship of CDC advice to churches was a malicious act against churchgoing Americans. Indeed, the entirety of its conduct has been self-interested and malicious toward Americans and the world. That Trump guy has got to go before he kills us all.

  16. 16.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @WereBear:

    I’m hoping that more than a few people watch that clip and get to thinking about how policing like that inspires rage among the occupied.

    Cops say “you can go here”, but other cops say “you’re not supposed to be here, you’re under arrest”.

    It is demonstrably the result of poor training on an institutional basis, and a fundamental lack of professionalism.

    Nowadays, police professionalism is defined as making sure to call you “sir” while they’re clubbing you.

  17. 17.

    CarolDuhart2

    Have you heard the rumors (or maybe more than rumors), that undercover police are behind the incidents of burning and lootings so that the blame could be put on protestors?  It reminds me of something I saw briefly during the 1992 riots: that the looters were mostly Hispanic along with a few opportunists.  Also an undercover cop was the first one to break a window at an AutoZone (what would a looter do with auto parts, anyway?) And these days, everything is locked down behind some kind of counter anyway….also the stereotypical looting of liquor stores.  Ever wonder why?  I mean, booze is cheap, so cheap that they just about give it away anyway  Unless you steal high end stuff, there’s no profit in it.

    The stereotypical looting of liquor stores is designed to uphold an ancient stereotype of black people only caring about liquor.  Admittedly seeing the way we have been treated over the years, alcohol-the only legal sedative allowed is not a surprise.  But where does it all go after the riots anyway?

    Since the 1960’s there has always been a suspicion that agents provocateurs have been behind some incidents-or the cosplay black block crowd who believe that throwing rocks into a store would somehow start the revolution (with them leading it)

    Who caught the undercover cop?  Store cameras.  Guess the rest of it.

  18. 18.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @raven: As I remember, they started taking people with not insignificant criminal records and poor educational backgrounds.

  21. 21.

    Patricia Kayden

    I’m old enough to remember when Senator  Kamala Harris was derided for suggesting that Twitter should kick Trump off its platform. ??‍♀️

  23. 23.

    CarolDuhart2

    During Ferguson, the residents had to run off the cosplay Socialists who wanted to accelerate the tension in order to start the Revolution.

  24. 24.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:

    Didn’t notice the arms yet, but I can hear the exchange if they’re there:

    ”Runes? No, that’s a double lightning strike that I saw once and I wanted to commemorate it – it doesn’t mean anything else. Now, where do I get to go to boot?”

    Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Brad Parscale’s forearms….

  25. 25.

    Baud

    People are dumb.

    Biden losing economic argument to Trump as U.S. begins to re-open

    ….

    Though the former vice president has an edge on Trump in overall support ahead of the Nov. 3 election, Reuters/Ipsos polling this week showed Trump with a 42% to 34% lead over Biden in terms of which candidate was trusted more on the economy.

     

    Americans were split between who has a better plan for a national recovery: 37% favored Biden while 35% favored Trump.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    Not overly concerned as I attribute it to a combination of minor heartburn, news induced stress build-up and something blooming in the neighborhood which is playing footsie with the sinuses but if I lie down it feels as if a pygmy pachyderm is perched on my chest. Not painful, just very, very uncomfortable.

    May choose to seek sleep later on tonight in the semi-reclining wing chair.

  27. 27.

    WereBear

    @raven: W changed military standards for recruits, to let in people with criminal records and lower mental capacity. Because they had to fuel the war without a draft.

  29. 29.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    The governor could fix this in an instant. You eat the ass of your state police commander immediately, and instruct him he has two minutes to either keep his job or see to the immediate – not after processing, but immediate – release of the crew. You then demand an immediate reassignment of everyone in that squad, but only after they each report to your office for a recorded for broadcast dressing down.

  30. 30.

    WereBear

    According to “police studies,” a branch of psychology, a good department is supposed to weed out applicants who just want power to push people around.

    But in an authoritarian age, can they tell? When the ones choosing are just like that, themselves?

    Yes, policing in the US started with hiring guys big enough to break up riots by breaking heads. We’re supposed to have evolved from that.

  31. 31.

    Patricia Kayden

    Now seems like an important time to remind everyone of 1990 interview with Playboy where Donald Trump praised China for killing hundreds of civilians and injuring thousands in response to Tiananmen Square protest pic.twitter.com/n4gBh8HhA0— Angelo Carusone (@GoAngelo) May 29, 2020

  37. 37.

    danielx

    Arresting a CNN reporter and crew – just wonderful. Cops are pissed about that precinct station getting burned down, evidently.

  38. 38.

    CarolDuhart2

    @raven: No, we are talking about people who went to jail, who were part of gangs while in jail, about people who were at best illiterate.  People that the military always rejected no matter what.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    @debbie

    And rotating shifts so that, say, one week each month is spent walking a beat rather than patrolling inside a car.

  43. 43.

    debbie

    @raven:

    Here, over the past couple of decades, they’ve lowered the education requirements, shortened the training programs, even eased up on psychological evaluations, all to increase police recruitment.

  44. 44.

    CarolDuhart2

    @raven: Ex military-one of the pools of people who know anything about weapons-preferred for supposed discipline.

  45. 45.

    debbie

    @NotMax:

    Right. “Community policing.”

    There were large protests at the Statehouse here last night. When I went to bed at midnight, they were relatively peaceful, mostly yelling. When I woke up this morning, a lot of windows had been busted around the area. Even to heritage sights.

  47. 47.

    Gvg

    @raven: Ruckus has mentioned in the past, but soldiers and police are really very different things and good police training should not make police think us versus them about the whole population. Somehow we as a population, not just police themselves have slipped into mistaken thinking and started things like referring to the general population as civilians and not demanding enough respect from the police for ourselves.

    Since at least after WWII police forces have been encouraged to favor ex military in new hires. The mindset of a soldier returning from war is not similar at all to an ideal police force with de esqulation and non violent arrests. Giving police used military equipment has also contributed to changing everyone’s views on what police are. That also leads to attracting more of the worst authoritarian personalities into the police, former military or not. Andy Griffin is a long way in the rear view mirror.

    To reverse it will take someone who is better at words than I am and can express it so many people can see it.

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    @CarolDuhart2

    Have long advocated an equal amount of time be given to unboot camp prior to anyone being separated from the military. Just as they require training to become military, so they require training to again become civilians.

  49. 49.

    danielx

    @WereBear:

    Police forces are paramilitary organizations, and they are going to draw a certain percentage of people who get off on confrontation no matter how much screening is done. How much latitude those people have to indulge their prejudices is a function of training, leadership and organizational culture, all of which vary by department. One thing that doesn’t vary is that the less contact you have with any police forces, the more tranquil your life will be. There is no situation they can’t make worse.

    ETA: which is not to say they don’t have shitty jobs. They see people at their worst every day, and see things nobody should have to see.

  55. 55.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @NotMax:  Sweet cartwheeling Jesus. Go to the ER. When I had my heart attack, one of the symptoms they asked me about repeatedly was whether it felt like there was an elephant on my chest.

  57. 57.

    Jeffro

    There’s a WaPo piece up that describes the massive budget cuts to K-12 education that are coming if Congress doesn’t provide additional aid. Costs to schools for cleaning, additional bus runs, etc were already going to go up…to say nothing of the additional counseling needs that are anticipated…and now they are looking at making cuts of 15-20% or more.

    Most of a school division’s budget is tied up in staff salaries, so that is going to mean serious layoffs. That’s after everything else (sports, arts, supplies) gets cut. Given the cuts and the additional costs of running Covid-capable schools, the only way school divisions can make those numbers work is by keeping most kids learning remotely for most or all of the upcoming school year.

    So now I know what I’m doing today: writing an op-ed to point out to parents that if they don’t get their act together and start pounding on Congress now, in May, to provide relief to the states and backfill these budget shortages, they should expect that it’ll be their kid who is home “learning” remotely all next school year. It’s a lot easier to make a few phone calls to Congressional offices in May than it is to try and manage little Johnny’s 2nd grade home “education” for the entirety of the 2020-2021 school year.

    Shoot, just the Fairfax and Loudoun parents alone should be able to turn this thing around. ;)
    We’ll see how it goes…

  58. 58.

    Tony Jay

    By the Wig of Shatner, some of the ‘responses’ in that Biden tweet-thread make you curious about a direct link between severe aquilaphilia and vulnerability to far-Right online melodramaganda.

    It’s Revolution by Meme, and they ‘think’ they’re winning.

  60. 60.

    Chris Johnson

    @CarolDuhart2: Yes, absolutely. You know I see plenty of talk about this in the ‘dirtbag left’ circles and the argument there is that ‘libs’ don’t see, won’t see, or won’t acknowledge that reality, but it’s not true. That can’t be a divide-and-conquer tactic, Democrats have got to acknowledge that police have become a dirty-tactics occupying army.

    That’s not rumors you’re hearing about, it’s tactics. Some people call it terrorization of the working classes to keep ’em in check. It sure as hell is terrorization of black people to keep ’em in check and it goes waaaaay back but being white doesn’t protect you from that anymore, not like it used to.

    Yes, crooked police do this. Some’ll tell you all police are crooked police. I guess there are historical times, like now, when all police are crooked police because the ultimate authority is as crooked as can be?

  62. 62.

    WereBear

    @raven: Police departments like hiring military personnel, especially military police training. They come with experience, a recent, documented, background, and performance reviews.

    So by lowering standards for the military, W automatically lowered police standards, too.

  63. 63.

    Gvg

    @raven: um yes we do, and you just actually gave an example. Not an exact one, but supporting the premise. During the Vietnam war, our military got pretty messed up. After the war, it’s leadership raised standards and rebuilt it with volunteers. During the next unpopular war, Iraq, they had to lower standards again to meet recruitment goals. That’s a fact.

    and Raven, you turned out to be a pretty good guy, but it’s not actually good for the military itself to be regarded as someplace to dump troublemakers and screwups. A fair number of those are not fixable and can be real malicious malcontents. It’s especially bad if they cluster together and learn to get others blamed. You are more the exception that excuses continuing a bad policy.

    But I was actually trying to talk about how our police got milaterized which I don’t think is that connected to lowered military standards.

  68. 68.

    Gvg

    @Jeffro: if you don’t mind, post it here, I may need to pass it around to family and friends who haven’t thought of this.

  69. 69.

    satby

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: @NotMax:  The military recruiters helped my foster son get a GED and then got his arrest record cleaned up (all minor, non-violent offenses like shoplifting) so that he could qualify for W’s glorious Afghanistan – Mesopotamian adventures. 5 combat tours of duty, artial deafness, PTSD and lots of minor rule infractions after he returned home, and a general discharge (I think). He was a very poor candidate for military service, but he did ok. Still, after twisting the rules to get cannon fodder, they discarded him and kids like him when they didn’t need them any more. Same as it ever was.

  72. 72.

    Gvg

    @Baud: trump administration is trying to use it for re election. I don’t think it’s getting much traction, at least in ways that help him. He is pretty lazy and a bad planner. He couldn’t manage D day for instance….the horror of imagining that..

  75. 75.

    NotMax

    @Dorothy A. Winsor

    “A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.”
      – Aldous Huxley

    “Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.”
      – Douglas MacArthur

  77. 77.

    John S.

    @Tony Jay: All the Q people are deranged, but they think of themselves as brilliant. It’s like Dunning Krueger on steroids.

  78. 78.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: You’ve seen where trump declared himself a
    war time president”. Of course, you’ve also noted how he silently surrendered too.

  80. 80.

    rikyrah

    Sounds about White ?

    Just to reiterate… just to get my head around it … Minneapolis police had no problem immediately arresting a black reporter for covering what they’re doing, but they cannot and will not arrest the officers who participated in the killing of George Floyd. Do I have that right?— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) May 29, 2020

  82. 82.

    satby

    @Tony Jay: I just had to school one of your fellow citizens online (a casual friend) about being careful about her Facebook sharing, because she shared a U.S. right wing meme about Covid tracking. Either that or the U.K. has gone to a system of states and federal government.

  83. 83.

    Tony Jay

    @CliosFanBoy:

    And Yea Verily, Lions will lay akimbo with Lambs, and the Deplorable will violate the Bald Eagle in Word and in Deed.

    And the Almighty looked upon His Works and saw that it was Good, for Q has Sent Him.

     

    These people are as mad as Brextremists, and I say that in the opposite of an admiring manner.

  86. 86.

    Tony Jay

    @John S.:

    Well, to be fair, the only information they’ll willingly expose them to tells them they’re absolute geniuses for seeing through the lies that They have wrapped around the minds of the insufficiently clear-minded.

    Must be an attractive delusion when, deep down, under all the rolls of fat, you know you’re just a racist tailthumper whose brain is swimming in a toxic mixture of unfaced resentments and ‘Bobby-Lee Blonde’ hair-dye.

  88. 88.

    rikyrah

    Let’s be honest Omar Jimenez was arrested because he is black. The rest of the CNN crew, who is white, did not get arrested. He has since been released and now the Governor is coping a plea and apologizing. This is Amerikkka. https://t.co/pV51MAkjbm— Sassy_Tiff ⚖️ (@tify330) May 29, 2020

  90. 90.

    danielx

    @Gvg:

    Manage D-day?

    He couldn’t manage an orgy in a brothel. If FDR had possessed Trump’s management skills we’d all be speaking German. The only thing at which he excels is self promotion.

  91. 91.

    Tony Jay

    @satby:

    Those who think they’re in the know believe that’s the endgame, 51st state and all that.

    Those who are really in the know understand that the status is going to be a bit more Puerto Ricoish, and the operative legal term is more like Oblast.

    Four and a half more years of this, thanks British Media and all those fuckwit voters.

  92. 92.

    Baud

    @rikyrah:

    According to this, they were all arrested.

    A CNN reporter and his production team were arrested this morning in Minneapolis for doing their jobs, despite identifying themselves – a clear violation of their First Amendment rights. The authorities in Minnesota, including the governor, must release the three CNN employees immediately,” CNN wrote on Twitter.

  93. 93.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @rikyrah:

    The governor’s apology is worthless without action. He needs to end the careers of several state police commanders immediately and make it clear that he doesn’t care about police morale of their feelings. If merit boards eventually grind toward reinstatement, so be it.

  95. 95.

    MattF

    Seems to me that the Trumpian libels against Joe Scarborough were a tuning point for Twitter management. Disconcerting that it required repeated, deliberately false tweets to get there, but it’s a step up.

  97. 97.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud:  Another crew led by a white reporter operated without being molested a block away.  I was watching it in real time – it was the finest example of why people are rioting that could have been presented.

  98. 98.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Trump and conservatives in general seem to believe that if they pretend that Covid-19 isn’t a continuing threat, it will somehow go away, or at least people will forget about it. Hence the war on face masks, which help limit the pandemic but remind people that the virus is still out there.

    One way to put it: Trump and his allies don’t want us to wear face masks but do want us to wear blinders.

    – Paul Krugman

  101. 101.

    Betty Cracker

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: “A fundamental lack of professionalism” — that’s it. How do we fix it? It’s such a complex problem. There’s racism, of course. And the fact that we’re ass-deep in guns, which makes the cops even more trigger-happy. And the militaristic, us vs. them mindset.

    I got some fresh insight on the problem when I moved back to my home county a year and a half ago and realized the worst bullies and sadistic rednecks from high school are now running everything. Seriously, the worst fucking people.

  102. 102.

    mrmoshpotato

    @danielx: Hell, Dump would’ve gone “The Japanese tremendous bigly deny attacking Pearl Harbor, and I believe them with my good brain.”

    Would’ve made Chamberlain look like he decided to go kick some Nazi ass in ’38.

  103. 103.

    rikyrah

    We tried to warn you. Too many of our colleagues in the media treated Trump’s racism as a grotesque spectacle. Titillating, but not disqualifying. And now, he is threatening use state force to bludgeon and kill black people. Trump was always life or death for us.— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) May 29, 2020

  104. 104.

    Kay

    Hakeem Jefferson
    @hakeemjefferson
    · 11h
    First, let’s look at how people felt about Biden’s comments. Here, we plot reactions and perceptions by race and partisanship. Interestingly, Black Democrats in this sample are no more upset by Biden’s comments than White Democrats. Who’s most upset? Republican respondents.

    Guffaw.

  105. 105.

    MattF

    @Betty Cracker: Being aggressive and making it clear that complaining will make you a target is effective. Eventually, the thugs get careless, particularly once the worst have floated to the top of the org chart. Giving power to the thugs fails eventually, but there’s a big price.

  109. 109.

    Immanentize

    @Betty Cracker:

    the worst bullies and sadistic rednecks from high school are now running everything. Seriously, the worst fucking people.

    That is the point of “A Clockwork Orange.”. Droogies inherit the power.

  111. 111.

    prostratedragon

    @Gvg: A friend with quite a bit of advanced infantry training in Vietnam used to make this point about the difference between military and police. He’d say things like, people here are supposed to have rights. What marines or soldiers did in the war was not about rights (though I think he was bothered by Geneva violations he might have somehow seen).

  115. 115.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Betty Cracker:  Yup. And ask yourself why every single police union seems less interested in pay and benefits than they are in assuring members that they can exert power without consequences.

  116. 116.

    rikyrah

    These protests are important and I hope they continue but they help Trump because white voters will always vote Republican when we start to assert or demand our humanity. They fear Black resistance more than anything and want to see it put down immediately.— (((RuggedAmethyst))) (@GrooveSDC) May 29, 2020

  118. 118.

    WereBear

    @Betty Cracker:

    I got some fresh insight on the problem when I moved back to my home county a year and a half ago and realized the worst bullies and sadistic rednecks from high school are now running everything. Seriously, the worst fucking people.

     
    You just described one of the myriad reasons I got out of the town where I went to high school. I “wasn’t from there” and so I would be forever behind the eight ball.

  119. 119.

    mrmoshpotato

    @MattF: What’s that about 100k+ deaths, millions unemployed and no national COVID-19 testing strategy?

  120. 120.

    rikyrah

    The reason the president threatened mass murder in response to looting is the same reason the police thought they could kill George Floyd on video and get away with it. Some people are protected by the rules and others are simply subject to them.— Adam Serwer? (@AdamSerwer) May 29, 2020

  122. 122.

    Barbara

    @rikyrah: Of course, that is the fear.  That anything you do is like a ratchet.  It can only get tighter.  This incident, though, with a police officer intentionally, slowly, choking someone to death, impervious to pleas to stop is beyond shocking. Just as the white dude jumping out of a car and shooting an unarmed black jogger is beyond shocking.

    So I don’t know.  I think protests are fine.  I think violence and burning are likely counterproductive.

  127. 127.

    rikyrah

    No lie told

    Trump has said black lives don’t matter, called them thugs who should be shot, waged a relentless campaign to suppress their votes & massively downplayed pandemic that has killed them in hugely disproportionate numbers— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) May 29, 2020

  130. 130.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    “A fundamental lack of professionalism” — that’s it. How do we fix it? It’s such a complex problem.

    I thought the LA and NYC police departments had made progress since their worst days.  Probably the biggest obstacle is political will among the electorate to stand up to police interests. The problem is everywhere, but if we can start to make progress in the cities, which tend blue, it can go a long way to improving things.

  134. 134.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @satby:

    @NotMax:

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    NotMax, I agree with DAW and Satby. Get the hell to the nearest ER. Or, at the very least, call your doctor or the hospital or 911 or someone who can run through a list of symptoms to determine if further steps are needed. Dead serious about this.

  135. 135.

    Amir Khalid

    Physical attacks on health workers have been a disturbing aspect of the pandemic. The Guardian‘s coronavirus liveblog reports on the latest one:

    Monkeys mobbed an Indian health worker and took coronavirus test blood samples, spreading fears that the animals could spread the pandemic in the local area.

    After making off with the three samples earlier this week in Meerut, near the capital New Delhi, the monkeys scampered up nearby trees and one then tried to chew its plunder.

    The sample boxes were later recovered and had not been damaged, Meerut Medical college superintendent Dheeraj Raj told AFP on Friday, after footage of the encounter went viral on social media.

    “They were still intact and we don’t think there is any risk of contamination or spread,” Raj said.

    He added that the three people whose samples were stolen were retested for the virus.

  136. 136.

    WereBear

    The problem is that powerful people get the policing they want.

    We have to stop giving hateful people power. Trump thrilled the base by saying everything out loud; but it’s death to hidden agendas.

  138. 138.

    Kristine

    @Tony Jay:

    severe aquilaphilia

    I thought I knew what this meant, wanted to look it up to make sure, but was reluctant in case images popped up along with links.

    Luckily, no images.

  139. 139.

    Ohio Mom

    Not Max: I feel that way sometimes and I take an OTC antacid (Pepcid or whatever was cheapest the last time I had to restock).

    This thread is reminding me that if the antacid ever doesn’t work, I need to at least call my PCP.

    Maybe this is a protocol you can adopt — if this ever happens again, because right now the consensus is, you need to consult with a medical professional.

    Keep us posted.

  142. 142.

    Robmassing

    I somehow find it vaguely reassuring that the flying monkeys hating on Biden’s tweet are almost all conspiracy theory wackos.

  143. 143.

    Pappenheimer

    If the monkey squad that mobbed the Indian health worker was composed of Hanuman Langurs, I wouldn’t be surprised. They are numerous in Indian cities, are accomplished thieves, and most have little fear of humans. Also, if I recall my childhood in Calcutta correctly, they are assholes. Hanuman the Monkey God, though, is a revered friendly figure in Hindu culture and lends cover to his less mannerly brethren.

  145. 145.

    J R in WV

    @Origuy:

    This is incredible, thanks for sharing the link !!!

    I’m a huge fan of archaeology and what they discover.

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