Trump signed a piece of paper that didn’t mean shit a while ago. CNN’s account of the Sharpie action notes that by signing an executive order on “police reform,” Trump is taking “his first concrete steps on Tuesday to address growing national outcry over police brutality.”
Yeah, right. It’s a bullshit feint at “reform” because Trump doesn’t give a shit about changing a broken system, but he does very much want to be reelected. To his surprise, the unrest isn’t helping him like it helped Nixon in 1968 — no matter how many times a day Trump tweets “LAW & ORDER” and “SILENT MAJORITY.” That’s because, unlike Nixon, Trump is the incumbent.
He’s also mind-bogglingly stupid. Here’s a quote from the idiotic signing ceremony that shows how unserious/dumb/deluded/inarticulate Trump is on the topic:
Trump on how prevalent bad cops are: "They’re very tiny. I use the word tiny. It’s a very small percentage. But nobody wants to get rid of them more than the really good and great police officers."
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) June 16, 2020
If “the really good and great police officers” wanted to get rid of the shitty cops, they’d speak up instead of ignoring or covering up for psychopathic colleagues. Until that starts happening a lot more frequently, it’s not unreasonable for the public to assume all cops are okay with the status quo. More from CNN:
Trump said Americans “demand law and order” and hailed the efforts of law enforcement to quell violence during protests against police brutality earlier this month.
“Without police, there is chaos,” Trump said.
There was a lot of chaos WITH police last week. In Tampa, they repeatedly chased, tear-gassed and fired projectiles at peaceful protesters and needlessly arrested people. In Bethel, Ohio, local cops stood by while violent, gun-toting pro-Trump creeps assaulted peaceful protesters right under their noses. In New Mexico, cops referred to armed right-wing agitators who menaced protesters as “heavily armed friendlies.”
Trump signed a piece of paper today. It didn’t mean shit. Nothing will change at the federal level until Trump and his GOP enablers are out of power. But the real fight will happen at the local level, if it happens at all. And it will take more than paper and a Sharpie to fix this mess. Open thread.
WaterGirl
He’s totally ignorant, absolutely tone-deaf, and utterly dishonest.
It’s a shame that there is so much evil competence on the part of the people pulling his puppet strings.
senyordave
They’re very tiny. I use the word tiny. It’s a very small percentage.
WTF? My granddaughter is ten, and I would be worried if she spoke like that. Seriously, I would wonder whether there were some developmental issues.
Miss Bianca
Meanwhile, I do think rikyrah is right about this: until there’s actual financial/personal liability for cops – in other words, no more qualified immunity, jacked-up insurance rates – hell, doctors have to carry malpractice insurance, why don’t police?- and union dues going to cover a settlement fund for lawsuits – there won’t be any meaningful incentive for cops to *want* to clean up their act
ETA: Along with this, tho’, I do think we have to boost police salaries. Disincentivize moonlighting in other gigs as well as less savory ways of making a buck off the job…
Kay
It’s such a shame he has to stink up the scene where all these committed and hopeful young people are marching for civil rights.
Yuck. Here come the gross Trump hires to sleaze it all up.
Couldn’t they just stay out of it? No one looks to any of them for anything anyway.
Miss Bianca
@senyordave: “Hold me closer, tiny copster..”
Kay
Speaking of admirable people who are not in the Trump Administration, why haven’t we heard more about the individual BLM leaders?
That’s probably an interesting story. Do they deliberately follow some kind of fragmented, local organization scheme, or are there national leaders we haven’t heard about and don’t know?
I heard one NPR story on the two women who organized the DC march. I would like to hear more.
This thing is HUGE. Just the sheer numbers of people – is it the biggest most sustained protest ever? Where are the stories about the AA leaders?
Calouste
In Seattle the police are no longer allowed to use teargas and the rioting has pretty much stopped. Funny that, you’d almost think that riots happened because the police was using tear gas, and not that the police was using tear gas because riots happened.
Leto
I feel like after this nightmare is over the word “very”, and anything ending with an “-ly”, have to be retired for all eternity. You had a good run, but you’re too associated with the orange assclown. Maybe in a thousand years we can pull them out of the vault and give them a test drive.
Brachiator
As tiny as Trump’s tiny hands.
And can the God Emperor really change every police force in the country via a divine decree?
He is so tiresome. But he is trying to pretend to thread a needle here, which may work with his base. He can claim to be the law and order president by backing the police and say that any problems are because of weak Democrat mayors and governors.
WereBear
Trump is a fool I don’t even pity.
Kay
I mean, we all know the names of the 1950’s and 1960’s civil rights leaders. What are the names of the BLM leaders? Who are they? I bet people would be interested in that.
What they accomplished here is huge. There were marches in hundreds of tiny, blood red areas of the country. There are something like 500 police reform laws and rules and regs being considered in cities and states – all over. How did they do it?
JPL
@Leto: Sad!
The Moar You Know
Everyone knows, coming from him, that this is utter bullshit. EVERYONE.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I am interested in the people who organized the protests too. There was some local coverage of a teenager who led some of the protests in Tampa. On the other hand, maybe it’s for the best that there are no national figures.
It’s rare for people to be able to handle that level of scrutiny and responsibility without fucking up. The Parkland kids were wonderful on that score. I kept waiting for them to completely screw up and lose the plot, and they mostly didn’t! :)
Miss Bianca
@Brachiator: Yeah, except I wonder how many people are really still buying the bullshit. I feel like along with plague fatigue we’re starting to see Trump fatigue as well – both the public and the media appear to be less willing to just uncritically gulp down RW talking points.
I’m taking nothing for granted, tho – got to get out and hustle the vote.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
But think about what a switch it is. Sure it’s cynical and self-serving and gross, but he had to do it. His racist stance was unpopular enough that the Trump Administration had to go out and pretend they’re different people than they are.
That’s a victory for the idea. It’s a validation. Even them.
Leto
@Kay: maybe we haven’t heard anything from more media outlets because of things like this:
Top Voice of America editors resign amid strife with White House, arrival of new Trump-appointed director
Idk, I feel like the two go hand-in-hand. Typical media reporting (shitty and corporation/establishment focused), combined with Trumpov’s attack on any free press. Also the Post’s update of the story has turned it more into a drama piece than what it was earlier.
geg6
@Kay:
I don’t have the link, but Rolling Stone has a supposedly very good article about them.
NotMax
The Bloviation Proclamation.
Jeffro
Did he slur his speech today? I didn’t watch. It looks like the pace of questions about his health is picking up – good.
In other news: J-Rubs had a brief post up earlier this morning in the WaPo about the release of a report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences called “Our Common Purpose: Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century”. It gets a little into the weeds and seems a bit vague in some of its later sections, but Sections 1 & 2 are especially detailed & good and should be flat-out adopted by the Democratic Party.
(You can read the whole thing at the link above, and/or download the pdf, and/or order up to 5 print copies for free).
My only three gripes are:
1) It doesn’t say anything about raising the requirements to run for president (a big bugaboo for me, as you all probably have heard a gazillion times)
2) It doesn’t say anything about expanding the federal judiciary (which is odd, because item 1.1 is to expand the House)
3) It gives a favorable, but thankfully brief, nod to David Brooks. Thank god this was later in the report or I might have stopped reading LOLOL
See what you think! I like the no-Constitutional-amendment-needed SCOTUS solution in 1.8
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
So funny. I thought of that too “oh, the coverage will be horrible. Best they don’t bother” :)
I read Trump twitter though- I believe in understanding your opponent and they all post 1960’s civil rights photos of MLK and such, ya know, defending, and I thought “we have new young uns we could be getting to know!”
It’s fucking HUGE this thing. I’ve just been blown away at the size and persistence.
bemused
@WaterGirl:
Psychotic trump has got to be the dumbest person on earth that isn’t in prison or committed to a mental institution.
The Moar You Know
@Miss Bianca: Do you have any idea what cops make? Jesus, they are flat-out fucking overpaid, EVERYWHERE, and I’d consider them such even if they were as effective and helpful as they advertise themselves to be.
Average national police salary from BLS: 65k per year. Here in CA for starter cops it’s over 100k. Doesn’t include overtime. There are school districts in this country that are paying teachers federal minimum wage: $7.25/hr. Teachers don’t get overtime. Ever.
Jeffro
@Kay: I agree. His numbers are so bad, they felt he had to get out there and at least say the words.
No one on our side will believe him for a second, and his people will be demoralized. I’ll take it.
Leto
@Miss Bianca:
I had Trumpov fatigue when he rode down the escalator. I had it when he was talking about his investigators in Hawaii. There won’t be enough guards at his funeral site to stop the yellow/brown wave heading his way. He needs a Bin Laden burial.
WaterGirl
@Kay: I think it may be better that we don’t know all those details about the leaders. The Republicans would spend all day, every day, discrediting them. No detail from their past would be too small to condemn them for.
On this front, I’d just as soon not turn over those rocks, even if it’s mostly butterflies beneath them.
WaterGirl
@Leto: Good point, but sorry, “beautiful” has to go first.
Kay
@geg6:
Say their names, right? Who’s the Rosa Parks or MLK of the new civil rights movement? If they don’t want that kind of acclaim or if it’s the kind of organizing that is (deliberately) loose and locally led that’s fine, but I’d like to hear about it either way.
The two women in DC put that thing together in 2 weeks. Amazing.
Miss Bianca
@Leto: “Voice of America” is “The Voice of the Soviet Union”?! And “communist”? Meanwhile, Trump gets talking points from Russia Today?
At this point, I really can’t tell anymore whether they actually buy their own bullshit or they’re just phoning it in with the trolling. I just want it to STOP. It’s so fucking tiring, living in a nonstop Political Theater of the Absurd piece.
Aziz, light!
I would view providing personal info about the organizers of BLM and other protests as a form of doxxing that will lead to their being harassed and threatened or worse by MAGAt goons.
Miss Bianca
@The Moar You Know: Meanwhile, in my county, the sheriff’s deputies were making $11/hr. You can argue whether or not they’re worth even that, but don’t try to argue that that makes a living wage for most folks.
Kay
@Jeffro:
Right, Because recall how they first responded. They were gleeful that it was “1968 and Nixon” and they were going to break heads against hippies…whatever, that usual backward-looking bullshit. “THIS is like THIS so let’s do THIS”.
They had to switch gears. It wasn’t what they expected. Arguably half their base will now be mad that they’re not racist enough.
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: To be honest, I’m glad these brave BLM organizers are under the radar. They’d be targets otherwise.
The Moar You Know
@Miss Bianca: It’s neither. WRT VOA, they have an agenda. Not one you or I get to know about.
Pretty easy to figure out who benefits if VOA goes off the air or starts pumping out a Fox News feed (which I think is the goal here). It’s not America!
Mallard Filmore
@Jeffro:
I hope he stays healthy until its too late to get him off the November ballot.
Kay
@Jeffro:
Just the change in kneeling during the anthem. 4 years ago they used that to promote themselves and divide the country. Now they’re reduced to Trump petulantly tweeting as an individual that he won’t watch sports, like anyone gives a shit.
The Moar You Know
@Miss Bianca: I wouldn’t. That’s poverty-level wages anywhere in America.
SiubhanDuinne
Personally, I rather liked this oratorical pearl:
Belafon
I’ll have to go home and dig it up becase I can’t get on Twitter at work, but there was a thread about how a cop in 2009 tried to report corruption in the NYPD. For that, his house was raided, and he was commited to a psychiatric institution.
Baud
What is it with this guy?
Brachiator
@Miss Bianca:
I hope that more people are starting to see through Trump, but a lot of his base are digging in deeper. While having a dine-in lunch for the first time in weeks the other day, I overheard some other diners hit the “law and order” line hard. And a friend I had not talked with in a while mentioned some people she knew who still love Trump with a passion and still see him as exactly what the country needs.
The Moar You Know
@The Thin Black Duke: It’s not like this fucked-up society is not full of opportunities to get fame, however fleeting, if you want it. The organizers have obviously made a very deliberate choice to lie low. Which I think is VERY smart.
NotMax
@Miss Bianca
One step shy of a McCarthyesque “I have here a list of names.” The R playbook runs on a loop.
UncleEbeneezer
BLM fashions itself as a Leaderless/Decentralized organization. There are prominent leaders like Patrisse Kahn-Cullors and Dr. Melina Abdullah, here in Los Angeles, but for the most part these protests are being organized by lots of local groups/organizers/activists sometimes BLM-affiliated but sometimes not.
If there are so many “good” cops, then surely they could direct their Unions to stop getting in the way of ANY attempts to hold bad cops accountable. Or quit the Unions. But they don’t. And that speaks volumes…
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
True, but wouldn’t it be nice to acknowlege that it isn’t “history”? That there’s people who weren’t even alive in 1960 who brought millions of people out to protest this? Someone – a lot of someones- did this work. We all didn’t just appear spontaneously. I, for example, had absolutely nothing to do with it. I did nothing. They have medics, for God’s sake. They seem quite organized.
piratedan
@WaterGirl: not to mention a review of what types of countertops they have in their homes and if they had any parking tickets or if they said something stupid on Facebook 6 years ago ad infinitum. Plus, noting who they are, also conversely puts a target on them for those 2nd amendment nuts who feel emasculated because of having to wear a mask to deal with a disease that won’t die no matter how big your clip capacity is. If there’s one thing I’ve learned its how incredibly vindictive these people are, from chasing out state medical directors, trying to provide guidance on dealing with the pandemic; to how they treated the Sandy Hook parents.
randy khan
I’ve read the order. You will be shocked to know that it gives the Attorney General plenty of discretion to decide not to do the things the order purportedly requires done. Also, the processes described in the order could take years to set up, particularly if you’re not interested in getting them set up.
HumboldtBlue
Narrated by Sir David Attenborough #TrumpIsNotWell
Kay
President Trump used us again for a campaign event and we meekly provided silent , free coverage of it.
I look forward to their wall to wall coverage of his rallies, which they have already started, and it’s not for 4 days. Thousands of hours of free campaign ads. Again. No wonder they’re going out of business. They don’t charge for ads.
Leto
@WaterGirl: added to the list. Jeebus, how could I forget? =/
@Miss Bianca: Right??? I know Repubs have wanted to dismantle VoA for a while, or to make sure it pushed all their talking points. I agree, their Theater of the Absurd is exhausting. I’m hoping this is the beginning of making it stop.
Gin & Tonic
@Miss Bianca:
I’m too lazy to look this up, but last week or the week before somebody went through the Boston budget in great detail, and there are at least a dozen members of BPD who earned over $300k last year. So a hard no from me.
Kay
@randy khan:
EO’s that apply to state and local government are always bullshit. Unless it’s a dedicated and exclusive federal issue, like immigration, it’s not a form compatible with the US system.
Pure theater. Trump may not know it but Barr does.
MagdaInBlack
@The Thin Black Duke:
My thought too.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: He’s a hack.
Another Scott
@Miss Bianca: Yup.
Too many cops are apparently trained using the well known documentary Dirty Harry.
“If you want to go home every day and collect your pension in 25-30 years, you have to get them before they get you!!” – pretty much a direct quote for some of the “training” that a bunch of cops got in a conference in Cleveland (according to a report featuring Mary Louise Kelly (which I can’t find again)).
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jeffro:
I honestly don’t know why the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929 hasn’t been repealed yet. I’ve seen speculation that Dems never bothered for the same reasons the GOP never did: doing so would limit the rapid takeovers of the House by the opposite political party
Another Scott
An entertaining meme going around…
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Their reasoning is probably that if they don’t cover them Fox News, or even worse, OANN, will. So they have to provide an opposite perspective
Kay
Trump or no Trump I’m thrilled for BLM and impressed with their success. They have the GOP Senate scrambling to throw together some piece of shit and get it out. They read it wrong. They thought it was 1968 and then they thought it was 2016 and it was neither of those things.
I know it isn’t sincere. It doesn’t matter. They won.
gwangung
@piratedan: Might know about them if you look to black run media. There’s a healthy distrust of mass media outlets, i.e., white run media outlets.
Matt
The only difference between the cops there and the Y’all Qaedas is that the cops are getting taxpayer checks to go start a riot.
Jeffro
@Kay: They had to switch gears because cellphones mean everyone can document the atrocities now, and there’s just no defense. Everyone can see the original crimes being perpetrated by the cops, as well as seeing cops beating the snot out of peaceful protestors.
Plus, everyone else is coming around on this. The sports leagues, big businesses and small ones too. Enough people finally ‘get it’ about “Black Lives Matter”. Heck, for that matter, enough folks ‘get it’ about what “Defund The Police” means. The demagoguery isn’t sticking, isn’t spreading.
The GOP really is on its way down to its basest of base voters…the ones terrified into thinking that blessed ‘Antifa’ is hiding behind a bush in their backyard, just waiting to steal their kids’ Big Wheels out of the yard and set their Washington Times on fire in the driveway. Sad!
rikyrah
Nothing but bullshyt ?
Benw
LAWN ORDER!
Sure thing, President Tear Gas Bible Photo Op
pamelabrown53
@Miss Bianca:
I just googled ave. salary for police officers here in El Pas, TX. Answer: 47, 078k. Said to be 13% lower than national average.
A caveat was a list of common police benefits. These include:
Life ins.
Employee asst. prog.
Flexible spending accounts
Dental ins.
Retirement plans
Disability ins.
AD&D ins. (?)
Vision ins.
Tuition reimbursement
Health ins.
Paid time off
Bereavement leave
While it’s great that the police unions can negotiate good benefits, there seems to be a real problem with protecting bad/ problematic officers to the extent that the good ones are coerced into having little options but to resign or STFU.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Yep, that they felt the need to bestir themselves at all is telling. As noted above, such feeble efforts can only hurt the phonies with their base while not moving the needle at all with people who really do want to see changes.
Jeffro
@Mallard Filmore: I’d like him to limp into Nov 3rd as well, just for historic landslide/well-deserved humiliation purposes.
But for the country’s sake, I’m fine if he quits or strokes out at any time. The whole GOP is complicit in trumpov’s many cruel and stupid policies, and I’m not really worried about Biden/? making the case that Pence/? would just continue the horror.
WaterGirl
@Belafon: Somebody linked to a story about that – in the last 2 weeks or so, but I don’t recall where. Horrifying!
Barbara
@Another Scott: And if your philosophy is to kill first no matter how small the risk or slight the provocation, then stop trying to justify all manner of benefits and pay outs on the “danger” of the job. Police are very clearly externalizing that danger.
WaterGirl
@Baud: There was a time that I liked Van Jones. Did he get bitter because Obama let him go over some dust-up? Or was I just fooled into thinking he was something he was not?
bemused senior
@The Moar You Know: your numbers for CA are wrong. My daughter just finished her probation year in the LAPD and makes substantially less than that. Their salary schedule is on their website.
Jeffro
@Baud: take your pick
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: I hear what you’re saying Kay. InaIn comparison to how Occupy Wall Street fizzled out in the end, what BLM is doing is incredible, and I can see some of these heroic protesters in the House, the Senate and White House in the future. However, I feel that the misgivings I have are legitimate. Choosing to step into the media spotlight right now is volunteering to step in front of a Bull’s-eye. I’m old enough to remember what happened to the Black Panther Party. I remember the FBI’s harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And we already know that these monsters have no problem killing black people.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Baud: Self-promoting media whore says what?
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: Because of a ridiculous amount of overtime, as I recall. Appalling.
Salty Sam
We’ve all heard the old chestnut about “Leadership= finding a parade and moving to the front of it.” The energy that is moving this along is pent up anger and frustration at police brutality, pandemic fatigue, and disgust with right wing policies.
People have finally reached “Popeye Level Anger”: “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”
The Thin Black Duke
@Kay: I hear what you’re saying Kay. In comparison to how Occupy Wall Street fizzled out in the end, what BLM is doing is incredible, and I can see some of these heroic protesters in the House, the Senate and White House in the future. However, I feel that the misgivings I have are legitimate. Choosing to step into the media spotlight right now is volunteering to step in front of a Bull’s-eye. I’m old enough to remember what happened to the Black Panther Party. I remember the FBI’s harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And we already know that these monsters have no problem killing black people.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@The Moar You Know: Keeps things focused on the mission, not the personalities. But the media loves a personality…
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
The base had to switch gears too, which was amusing. That’s why they post pictures of MLK. He’s wearing a SUIT. This is meant to prove there was a better class of civil rights marchers back in the day.
Except right after the picture was taken the dogs came out, and MLK was quite the Lefty anyway, but that’s not part of our sentimental story. He’s wearing a suit, libtard. THAT’S why he was respected.
piratedan
@gwangung: and I hope that they get the credit needed for getting the word out to see how a peaceful protest is organized and made real, I just don’t care to see them go thru the RW hate machine that tends to follow when people step up and do something that offends the ones enabling the problem.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@WaterGirl:
Agreed. Some of the most visible folks during the BLM Ferguson protests years ago have wound up dead. Some under very suspicious circumstances.
Barbara
@The Thin Black Duke: OWS refused to have any structure or organized plan for reform. I don’t know why, I wasn’t tapped into it, but I was following its “leaders” on various websites and they very clearly had no plan. I don’t know a lot about BLM, but it seems to have leaders and an agenda that goes beyond protesting (though obviously considers protests to be an important part of its activities) and it coordinates with sympathetic elected officials.
Jeffro
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): well, whatever their reasoning, it’s past time for the House to expand by a very large number of Representatives. Build a bigger Capitol, if necessary – who cares?
The AAAS says adding 50 is the ‘opening bid’. I say 150-200 more would be better.
Also just dawned on me that this report says nothing about reforming the Senate…which desperately needs it.
Mike in NC
Other words that Fat Bastard has ruined forever include “Perfect” and “Tremendous”. I won’t watch coverage of the Tulsa hate-fest, but expect there will be protesters on the outside tangling with the cops, and plenty of Confederate flags and maybe a swastika or two banner waving inside the building. When informed that the Navy and Marine Corps have banned the public display of such filth, he’ll claim “nobody told me” and he might be right because Trump listens only to the voices in his head.
low-tech cyclist
Plus, it isn’t 1968, and we’ve got a very different electorate now than we did then.
Nixon really did have a Great Silent Majority on his side in 1968, unfortunately: the overwhelmingly white electorate was largely against the hippies and the antiwar protesters, and afraid of the riots: scary black people, you know.
Now the electorate’s still majority white, but far from overwhelmingly so. And even plenty of whites have come to realize that black people are getting killed by cops for stuff that the cops would barely notice if a white person did them.
And on top of that, they see the cops clubbing other white people who are out in the street, for no crime other than exercising their First Amendment rights. And it’s sinking in to a lot of minds: this must be what it’s like for black people, far too much of the time. Either you’re OK with that, or you aren’t, and most people aren’t. There is no Silent Majority anymore, no matter how desperately Trump tries to invoke it. It’s gone.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
This is Louisville this afternoon, two blocks from me right now. A young lawyer is harassed in his own monthly parking lot.
For anybody who ever wore Uncle Sam’s uniform, there’s a pejorative about the first officer.
My favorite, though, is the Project Runway judge who walks up to state his doubts about the lawyer while munching a donut.
I have a really awesome, tacky hat that I’m putting on to go have a chat with them for shits and giggles. I’m also in shorts and sandals, my ink prominently displayed
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay:
Sorta like how for yrs I thought Rosa Parks acted on her own, just spontaneously got angry and took action?
Yrs later I learned the story/history of the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Maybe there’s a major need to keep leaders secret. I imagine there’s real desire to ‘get em!’
Kay
@The Thin Black Duke:
True and that’s not ancient history either. Some of the protestrors are being interviewed by the FBI – they’re looking for “antifa” ties. Some poor woman got pulled out of line for no reason she can ascertain- she literally had no idea what antifa was.
I started to have doubts about the efficacy of the FBI when they couldn’t find the abortion clinic bomber who was leisurely camping for 2 years right under their nose. Nothing that has happened since has changed my estimation of them. Frankly, I feel like they’re all wingnuts and they don’t protect huge swathes of the US public.
randy khan
@Jeffro:
I assume that you know who would decide whether a Constitutional amendment is required to do this, and it’s not apparent where you’d find 5 votes for the idea that this is Constitutional. (You might find zero.) The current system for retirement of lower-court judges, which looks vaguely similar on its face, actually is entirely voluntary, in part to get around the Constitutional issue that this report assumes doesn’t exist.
MisterForkbeard
This is CNN’s headline:
This does not look like it succeeded at all, even from a propaganda standpoint .
Kay
@Ladyraxterinok:
I had a great, great civil rights history class in law school. I had no idea. That and the course on state constitutions is all I remember about law school. Two classes. I spit out the rest on the exams and promptly forgot it.
Benw
One thing that’s amazing about the organizers and people coming to my local protests is that they are SO YOUNG. The kids are turning out in a way that makes it clear that Black Lives Matter is not the fringe but the future. The cops and all their bullshit enablers are losing the next generation.
NotMax
@Another Scott
(Repeated from earlier.) Look at who’s doing the ‘training’ (emphasis added). And surely not the only vicious, virulent, hate-spewing outfit so engaged.
Kay
The thing I can’t figure out about Senator Scott being repeatedly humiliated by security in the senate is that there are only 100 senators – really? They cannot remember the AA senators? It’s Corey Booker and Scott, right?
Racism aside, why are they so incredibly dumb and bad at their job? They stand there all day and after 5 years they still can’t recall who he is?
Gin & Tonic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Jesus, that guy is morbidly obese, why is he on the force?
sdhays
@Jeffro: IANAL, but 1.8 actually sounds plausible. The other problem with the life terms is that it gives Supreme Court Justices the power to choose who chooses their successors, which is a fundamentally corrupting practice. Imposing (long) terms where they then rotate out to a lower court not only (seems to) get around the Constitutional requirements for life-long terms, it has the added benefit that Supreme Court Justices would also have to consider that they may have to be personally bound by their own decisions after their term ends, which might change some calculus once in a while.
catclub
or publish case studies of what happens to any cop that testifies against another cop. not pretty,
mrmoshpotato
@Leto:
I’m tremendous bigly at being luxurious and classy! Many peoples are saying I’m the bigliest at everything – including hands! Normal, adult-sized hands! Not a Soviet shitpile mobster manbaby! No assclown! No assclown! You’re the assclown!
Ohio Mom
Bethel, Ohio is a small town about 25 miles east of Ohio Family so I am taking a special interest in following that story. In many ways, the demonstration there was an outlier.
The demonstration’s organizer is Alicia Gee. I’d guess she is in her late twenties; she’s white, a freelance tutor (she has a fairly recent Masters in education), and the former volunteer coordinator for a dark horse Democratic candidate for Congress (we share the same gerrymandered Congressional district and I was a fan of her candidate).
She says she is a lifelong resident of Bethel and that the demonstration was her idea; she had no help organizing it. Apparently the main
thing she did was announce the gathering on Facebook.
About 80 kindred local souls joined her on Sunday, as well as 700 (!) armed, right-wing terrorists, from both out-of-town and out of state. They were incensed that there was a BLM in event in a small white town. Somehow, they felt invaded, even though they don’t live there. Says a lot about them, doesn’t it?
The town has a population of around 2,800, and according to the Washington Post article, the town’s entire police force consists of SIX officers and that all were present (as well as a small unspecified number of county sheriffs). I’ve never been a fan of police but I am willing to cut this half-dozen Barney Fifes some slack.
Just Chuck
@Jeffro: It does seem that Rubin has gone full John Cole. Would be a major coup to get her to do a guest post here, but she probably has some kind of exclusive contract.
artem1s
to be fair, he’s only angling for the FOP vote here, and this kind of symbolic nonsense pleases them immensely. It’s just one more task completed to start their long awaited race war.
Kay
This is another cherished myth that needs to die:
That this is a southern problem or a rural problem or a problem of a lack of sophistication. It has nothing to do with any of that. They may patrol a diverse place, but they’re pretty backward.
I saw a member of political media baffled how Donald Trump, who is “cosmopolitan”, ended up as bad as any rural county commissioner out of Alabama. Wow. That’s parochial.
Just Chuck
Again they trot out the “few bad apples” argument and forget how the rest of the saying goes.
NotMax
@Kay
On top of that each senator is issued a special pin to wear which is meant to provide identification as an officeholder to security and other Capitol staff on sight.
catclub
you could double the senate, but I am pretty sure each senator would have to be elected statewide, and the small state advantage continues.
why bother.
Kay
@NotMax:
A pin! There’s two possibilities here, and neither of them are good. It seems like if your job is security for 100 people you could manage to remember them. Especially because the truth is black senators are quite rare.
I mean, we have a school principal who knows the names of every grade schooler. Paying attention, he is. They should all worry about their security. They’re asleep.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Belafon:
They shot Frank Serpico, so it’s an improvement.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
I agree. BLM went from being taboo to being mainstream in a matter of weeks. It does make me laugh that Republicans honestly thought it was going to be 1968 or 2016 again. They forgot Trump is the incumbent
sdhays
@NotMax: I didn’t know that the Capitol Police have trouble recognizing Tim Scott. That’s just appalling. And, I guarantee you, if they had a similar problem with a white male Senator, those offices wouldn’t be working at the Capitol anymore, probably after the first “problem”, and definitely after the second.
sdhays
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well, to be fair, so did the RNC and the Dump Campaign since they just stuck with the 2016 Republican platform which criticizes the incumbent.
NotMax
@Kay
IIRC the pins were first used to better allow elevator operators to grant unimpeded ingress to members only cars.
pamelabrown53
@Kay:
LOL. Maybe they’re worried about Senator Booker/Senator Scott look-a-likes? Or is it that all black people look the same?!
Dadadadadadada
@Kay: The leaders of the 50s and 60s got murdered fairly often. One suspects that BLM leaders now are engaging in self-defensive decentralization.
Kay
We’ve had huge, violent labor uprisings over fewer worker deaths than this. It’s just sad how powerless low level US workers are. You can kill bunches of them and nothing happens.
No one comments on it but I have noticed how the US labor department is just MIA on the worker risks from Covid. They did nothing to protect US workers. Justice Scalia’s son is in charge, so we get our usual (gross) nepotism in high places on top of the obscene lack of regulation.
Gross.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Gin & Tonic:
Free donuts, my guess, along with the ability to have a crowd of people backing him up when he wants to throw a fat fist at somebody. Scut Farkus’ Grover Dill, to draw a comparison.
Not sure if he’s LMPD though – his patch doesn’t look right.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ohio Mom:
It really does. It says they can’t handle any kind of dissent, especially in spaces they believe “belong” to them. It’s ethnonationalist, tribal bullshit
Kay
@pamelabrown53:
I read Scott’s statement, which was quite affecting, and as usual all I could think was “and they’re also really bad at their jobs” :)
I mean, people who make 9 dollars an hour at the desk in a motel do better than that. They’re like “hi, Jim! Welcome back!”
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: If they want to work under the radar, I think we should respect that.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Then there is a third option. That they stop him because they can, and pretend that it was just an honest mistake.
mrmoshpotato
Need a laugh? Well done!
WaterGirl
@pamelabrown53: There are so many possibilities, all of them bad! No, make that TERRIBLE.
Jeffro
@Just Chuck: let’s tweet at her and see if we can at least get her to put up a note in some thread or another! =)
Jeffro
@catclub: I think there are other ways to reform the Senate (doubling the membership probably requires a Constitutional amendment, to not much good as you’ve noted)
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jeffro:
Oh I agree
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Eh, fuck Scott. He said ending qualified immunity is a “poison pill” for Republicans
Ladyraxterinok
@Kay:
Do I recall correctly that the FBI labs messed up the evidence they got from the OKC Bombing? I remember being super disgusted
Also freaked out when I learned Hoover used FBI to try to get dirt on MLK
Ohio Mom
Many, many years ago, in a previous life, I took some public administration classes and ended up with a summer internship in Cincinnati’s Department of Internal Audit.
The project I was assigned to help on was a review of police compensation across similar-sized cities. I was in way over my head.
Anyway, I learned that the varieties of police compensation are numerous: straight and double time of course, and triple time too, something called court time (if you have to go in on your day off), uniform allowances, dry cleaning allowances, allowances for weapon upkeep, and that’s all I remember, there could have been other categories as well. Oh, and health and disability insurance.
It adds up: police were about a quarter of the city’s budget, and fire another quarter. So half the budget going for the paramilitary.
We often defund education, social services, arts and cultural organizations, parks and recreation, and public works from water/sewer to roads and bridges. I’m more than okay with giving “public safety” a haircut too.
sdhays
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): He didn’t say that it’s a poison pill for him personally (although maybe it is). It’s just a fact that it’s a poison pill for Republicans. Any real reform will likely be considered “poison” by those folks. That they’re feeling the need to pretend otherwise just demonstrates how much has changed
ETA: If he’s being humiliated by the Capitol Police, he’s being humiliated because he’s black, and even being a Republican in one of the most exclusive clubs in the world isn’t shielding him. That’s not about Tim Scott. Black people should be able to go into their jobs without extra harassment.
Just Chuck
@Ladyraxterinok: Barr makes Hoover look like a saint.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
Oh my god. LMFAO!
“Please vote for the man I called my wife ugly.”
Paid for by Pathetic Cowards for Trump
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sdhays:
Oh, I only read the headline. I just assumed he thought so as well. And I agree that he should be able to do his job without dealing with racist bullshit
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@catclub:
Reforming the Senate would happen by default if
MisterForkbeard
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): No. Scott said “modifying” Qualified Immunity was a poison pill. Ending it was how it was reported, but Scott doesn’t believe any bill that changes QI at all can be passed through the Republican Senate.
He’s even more radical than you’re suggesting. :(
MisterForkbeard
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: CA doesn’t want #3.
In particular, Los Angeles REALLY doesn’t want Northern California to split off for a number of resource-related reasons. And I don’t want to start splitting states without a national consensus that it’s the right thing to do.
ciotog
laura
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: No on splitting California. Oh. Hell. No
And “heavily armed friendlies” is the most bullshit excuse for providing realtime accommodation to the white power civil insurrectionists.
The Moar You Know
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
As a California native and resident, it will be a sweet-scented day in Donald Trump’s shitstained pants before I vote to split this state. No fucking way. For so many reasons, no fucking way.
As for Puerto Rico, they keep having votes on statehood (at least five recently that I can recall) and keep saying “NO”. The last one, in 2017, was a rather resounding “FUCK NO”. They might change their minds about it now, and are due for another vote, but I’m totally willing to let them make that call for themselves.
DC should be a state and I think they’d vote for that.
Antonius
Can we stop calling it the “broken” system ? The system is working exactly as designed.
Maybe we can call it the “wrong” system? Open to suggestions.
rp
Much better to combine North and South Dakota into one state.
opiejeanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: California is not going to split in two. It’s something the Republicans want dearly, oh so dearly, because they want to carve it into red and blue states, as many as five total.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
OK. I know the GOP wants to split the state into coast vs not, so they can have more political power. However, North vs South wouldn’t do that. If you have North(San Francisco+San Jose+Sacremento) and South(LA+San Diego) in separate states, you would have two blue states instead of one. The residents of CA would get twice the Senate representation they are getting now. And yes, there are so few people in the Dakotas, they should be one state.
Arclite
Also, during Nixon’s run, whites were 88% of the US population. Today that’s under 70%.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I wonder if it was not trying to be in the limelight. Having the message and the millions of people worldwide delivering it, rather than a cult of personality. Any rational, logical leader knows that asking for what you want, accepting what you can get and thanking everyone for their efforts, without getting personality in the way gets far better results. So, do you actually need to know who they are? They, whomever they are, took an opening and ran with that idea, that was overdue to take out of the oven and let it cool off. And what happened, classic big idea which hit a lot of people at the same time reverberated through out the world. And maybe I’m full of it and it’s just a great idea, taken over social media that happened to strike a cord with a lot of people. I happen to believe that social media on your communication module in your pocket is also a big part. That and that shitforbrains is so obviously bad that you don’t even have to be paying a lot of attention. I wonder if faux news viewership is in the crapper. Because while the true believing idiots are still having conniption fits, the rest of humanity is outraged.
Ruckus
@Leto:
The guards will probably have a cash register and a price list for everything anyone could think disgusting enough to do to his grave.
O. Felix Culpa
@Dadadadadadada: Yup. See: Fred Hampton.
J R in WV
@Kay:
It’s called a mass movement. I’m not sure there are leaders in the older sense of that term. Mass movement, a mass of people, all united to change things. Not organized by any organization, in most cases.
Sure, some of these are organized by the NAACP, or by BLM groups… but mostly, it’s a true grass roots movement by a huge mass of people who hate cops killing people randomly.
mapaghimagsik
@The Moar You Know:
Agreed. Fuck the high salaries. Criminals gonna crime, no matter how much you pay them.