Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

The lights are all blinking red.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

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

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

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

People are complicated. Love is not.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

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

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The way to stop violence is to stop manufacturing the hatred that fuels it.

When we show up, we win.

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

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

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

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Repubs in Disarray Open Thread: Bill Barr & the GOP’s ‘One Bad Apple’ Excuse

Repubs in Disarray Open Thread: Bill Barr & the GOP’s ‘One Bad Apple’ Excuse

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The serious grown-ups of the Permanent Republican Party have decided that TFG is now a liability for them. Bill Barr, Esq, takes leadership in the talk-show brigading, hoping to convince enough voters for his team to thimble-rig another electoral cycle with the argument that Trump was a singular, uniquely horrible exception to True GOP Decency — a human cancer that can be cut away cleanly without impugning the rest of the GOP body.

Barr has the experience. He has the gravitas. He has the amoral lack of conscience required to make this argument. But those useful traits have been seriously devalued since TFG rode down the golden escalator…

Author Donald Ayer “served as United States attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and as deputy attorney general under George H. W. Bush.” As I said, the Permanent GOP is *not* happy with TFG’s semi-ex-spokesmen:

… Barr’s recent trashing of Trump in a manner likely to greatly impair his presidential prospects makes perfect sense when one understands the driving convictions and objectives that have guided him throughout his adult life.

Remember that Barr sought out the opportunity to serve as Trump’s attorney general by submitting a memorandum in June 2018, expanding upon his long-held, breathtaking vision that the Founders created an all-powerful president immune from virtually any limitation on his powers. Those views had occupied Barr’s mind since the 1980s. In the memo, Barr applied that vision to Trump’s then-current obsession, arguing that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was a wholly illegitimate intrusion on those powers…

The nature of those changes, and Barr’s determination to pursue them, were carefully spelled out in a major speech delivered to the Federalist Society on November 15, 2019, in which Barr argued that, contrary to “the grammar-school civics-class version” of the Founders’ government as one of checks and balances, the founding generation actually meant for the president to wield essentially unchecked authority.

Barr’s aggressiveness in defending Trump against those who would second-guess his actions is best known in connection with the lies he told about the Mueller report, while keeping the report itself under wraps so people could not see how inaccurate his statements were. His interventions in ongoing cases—including the criminal cases against Roger Stone and Michael Flynn—to substitute outcomes that were politically desirable for the president for those arrived at in routine course based on the facts and the law also drew widespread objections…

During 2020, Barr misused his official authority in many ways calculated to help Trump secure reelection. He sent law-enforcement officers to cities around the country to “suppress violent rioters and anarchists” who he said had “hijacked legitimate protests”—thus echoing Trump’s own calls for a crackdown. He oversaw the law-enforcement action to deny the right of peaceful protest in Lafayette Square so Trump could have a photo op at St. John’s Church. His department unsuccessfully attempted to enjoin the publication of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s book, which disclosed facts embarrassing to the president…

For all of Barr’s abuses of authority in an effort to keep Trump in office, it became clear to Barr by early December 2020, when zero evidence of serious fraud could be found, that Trump had run out his string. So Barr resigned. Since then, Trump has made things infinitely worse for himself, by engaging in a conspiracy to overturn the election by deception and violence, which culminated in the events of January 6, 2021. Were that not enough, the saga of the Mar-a-Lago documents reveals beyond doubt that Trump illegally retained, and apparently actively resisted returning, a very large number of highly classified documents, with who knows what grave consequences for national security.

As a result of these events, Barr has realized that Trump, far from being the indispensable person for the realization of his vision of an autocratic president, has become perhaps the greatest obstacle to its achievement. In a party where Barr’s bizarre ideal of an unfettered president holds tremendous sway, Trump can’t win in the general election, and if nominated he would likely take the banner of autocracy down with him. Barr feels the need to remove Trump from serious consideration so that another standard-bearer for that cause can pick up where Trump left off. Who knows? Perhaps Barr can come back for a third turn as attorney general to finish the job.

America is a republic, not a democracy monarchy! One is not supposed to discuss singular autocracy in front of the rubes voters — leave that to the quiet rooms where properly educated men of good background can discuss it amongst themselves, dammit!

Well, Grima Wormtongue is always a favorite in what passes for the popular media…

Reader Interactions

123Comments

  1. 1.

    SpaceUnit

    I don’t think this is terribly complicated.  Barr simply discovered that for all TFG’s popularity with the slobbering, beady-eyed masses, he is on a personal level a deeply unlikable person who demeans everyone who is forced to interact with him.

    ETA:  I hope the humiliations Barr was forced to endure eat away at him for the rest of his life.

  3. 3.

    Cameron

    I realize it’s very shallow of me, but when I see a picture of Barr I see a genetic splicing of John Goodman and Droopy Dog.

  5. 5.

    Shalimar

    @SpaceUnit: I think it is even simpler than that.  Barr, the master of coverups and massaging information so that it isn’t damaging, bailed after the election because he saw that Trump’s barrage of bullshit was going to fail.  Barr didn’t want to be part of the failure.

  7. 7.

    MisterDancer

    There has always been a strain of Authoritarianism in America. From the people who wanted to make Washington President for Life — or even King! — and the abysmal Alien and Sedition acts, there were, even with the Founders, so many early examples of just the most anti-democratic thinking you can imagine.

    Said examples are littered all over our history, even without invoking my own ethnicity.

    Barr’s not unique. He’s certainly not sui genesis. He’s really just the latest in a long, long line as asshats who don’t want to have to think, don’t want to have to put in the work, don’t want to earn True Freedom, if the cost is actually having to have people take ownership of their actions.

    For those people, it’s just much easier to pawn Deep Thinking off on a Daddy Figure — and not in the cool, fun, kinky way.

    (Don’t) Fuck ’em.

  11. 11.

    Another Scott

    I briefly saw a tweet about Kushner saying that DeSantis should be arrested for the MV kidnapping.

    Yeah, it’s everyone fighting over the horde to stay relevant and in power.

    I’ll take these GQRers seriously when they say that people must vote for Democrats now to save the country.  Not before then.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  12. 12.

    MisterDancer

    @HumboldtBlue: You can see why Barack and Joe bonded so well.

    For all their faults, they get being human, being…just a person. And honestly? I think this trait is what truly drives Conservatives so angry about both men; their genuine empathy  and heart shows so many who oppose them as hollow.

  14. 14.

    different-church-lady

    Barr’s entire shtick seems to amount to, “If you’re going to be in the power-hungry, conniving, quasi-fascist American creep club there are rules you have to follow!”​
     
    (P.S. – very similar to what Shalimar said at #5)

  15. 15.

    Craig

    Does anyone have a pointer to where Barr has shown any sort of proof of his view of the Unitary Executive, or is he just asserting some bullshit strung together with lawyerly sounding mouth noises?

  19. 19.

    Edmund Dantes

    To Barr Trump was a tool to achieve his goal. Trump’s ability to achieve Barr’s goal diminishes the more trump looks like he can’t get elected or trump in his ineptitude helps to discount the idea of the unitary executive beings a good thing.

    that is all.

  20. 20.

    Martin

    @Craig: I think the lesson learned from Dobbs and Barr and Cannon is that *everything* is just fucking made up. Executive privilege is made up. No indictments 60 days before an election is made up. Jurisdiction is made up. Unitary executive is made up.

    All of it is made up.

  21. 21.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Martin:

    I can’t imagine what the explanation is other than another vicious, sadistic cop. This is the oddest story I’ve read in a while.

  22. 22.

    SpaceUnit

    @Craig:

    Barr’s notion of the unitary executive is like Scalia’s idea of originalism.

    Both get tossed aside the instant the wind blows the other way.

  23. 23.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Martin: Yareni Rios-Gonzalez.  One presumes that answers the question.  [I mean, she’s one o’ those brown ones, eh?  wassamatta?]

  25. 25.

    different-church-lady

    @Craig: ​
      It’s spelt “Lawyerly Sounding Mouth Noises” but it’s pronounced “Throat Mangrove Warbler”

  26. 26.

    Shalimar

    @Martin: She’s lucky to be alive.  And anyone stupid enough to park on the track should never have a driver’s license again, let alone be a police officer.

  28. 28.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Nobody twisted Barr’s arm to brutalize unarmed, peaceful demonstrators. Nobody twisted Barr’s arm to set up a secret police to kidnap pedestrians off the streets of Portland.

    After Hitler offed himself, all his fanatics suddenly found reasons to distance themselves. Chief Wiggum Barr is no different.

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    @Craig:

    IANAL.

    Here’s the infamous 19 page job interview/memo to the DoJ (PDF):

    If embraced by the Department, this theory would have potentially disastrous implications, not just for the Presidency, but for the Executive branch as a whole and for the Department in particular. While Mueller’s focus is the President’s discretionary actions, his theory would apply to all exercises of prosecutorial discretion by the President’s subordinates, from the Attorney General down to the most junior line prosecutor. Simply by giving direction on a case, or class of cases, an official opens himself to the charge that he has acted with an “improper” motive and thus becomes subject to a criminal investigation. Moreover, the challenge to Corney’s removal shows that not just prosecutorial decisions are at issue. Any personnel or management decisions taken by an official charged with supervising and conducting litigation and enforcement matters in the Executive branch can become grist for the criminal mill based solely on the official’s subjective state of mind. All that is needed is a claim that a supervisor is acting with an improper purpose and any act arguably constraining a case – such as removing a U.S. Attorney — could be cast as a crime of obstruction.

    It is inconceivable to me that the Department could accept Mueller’s interpretation of §1512(c)(2). It is untenable as a matter of law and cannot provide a legitimate basis for interrogating the President. I know you will agree that, if a DOJ investigation is going to take down a democratically-elected President, it is imperative to the health of our system and to our national cohesion that any claim of wrongdoing is solidly based on evidence of a real crime – not a debatable one. It is time to travel well-worn paths; not to veer into novel, unsettled or contested areas of the law; and not to indulge the fancies by overly-zealous prosecutors.

    IOW, lots of mouth noises that if a GQP president can’t do what he wants without question then everyone will be unfairly sent to Gitmo for doing their jobs with discretion.

    Or something.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  32. 32.

    James E Powell

    Barr has the experience. He has the gravitas. He has the amoral lack of conscience required to make this argument.

    He also apparently has the everlasting love of the Village & the Shows, though I cannot come up with a reason why that should be so. He is a lying asshole of the first rank.

  33. 33.

    Martin

    @Chetan Murthy: Except they parked there before they pulled her over, and I assume they didn’t know anything about the driver.

    Just a stunning lack of situational awareness by cops.

  34. 34.

    J R in WV

    @Martin:

    It looked to me like the train knocked that “police car” SUV at least a hundred yards into a field. The cops ran a long time to find the “missing” police car which was like a crumpled ball of aluminum foil when they found it. Major stupid on every count.

    She seemed pretty calm when being restrained on camera… “What’s going on?” is a very normal question for an innocent person being arrested. I once took photos late at night of a train wreck during a mining wildcat strike, empty cars parked on a siding, someone took the brakes off and let them coast downhill until they left the tracks, crumpled steel for 200 yards. Empty cars, too. Lot of momentum there.

  35. 35.

    Dan B

    @Another Scott: Gitmo is close to Palm Beach, right?!  Shorter trip than San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard.  Death Santa and Pumpkin Tits together with Jr. and Eric.

    I can haz dream..

  37. 37.

    Dan B

    OT;  TFG said “We must keep our country gay.” at the rally in North Carolina.  Apparently it was “gay pur paa” or something.  Old age?

  39. 39.

    Craig

    @Another Scott: yes. After reading through the piece by Donald Ayer and his links all I’m finding is Barr asserting what the Founders thought without attribution, probably using the power of his mind. He cherry picks a pithy out of context quote from Jefferson, and blows a little squid ink half admitting that not all the Founders agreed about absolutely everything. The Unitary Executive seems to rest almost entirely on a few memos from the OLC when Reagan/ Bush was happening. So, yeah, basically a bunch of bullshit for some Fed Soc fanboys, and sucker ass journos.

  40. 40.

    piratedan

    Mr Barr is applying that ol’ Conservative playbook….

     

    rule 1: rules for thee but not for me

    rule 2: we make the rules

    “We” being the Religious Right, The Narcissistic Rich and their assorted catspaws

  41. 41.

    bjacques

    Nothing but good apples in the GOP, without the self-awareness to realize they’re permanently spattered with bad applesauce.

    I reckon Barr’s fascination with a near-monarch executive waned 1992-2000 and 2008-2016 but came roaring back to life after that.

    The country would have had a better AG in Roseanne Barr than with Bill Barr.

  42. 42.

    sab 🐕

    @Dan B: Oh my.

    OT: In my little city our once rich now not thriving West Hill neighborhood has a a lot of single family mansions now divided into multiple apartments on the side streets. Mansions on the main streets have mostly been knocked down.

    One old house I have always loved and worried about was a three storey Swiss Chalet style mansion with intricately carved timber balconies. It has been sliding into disrepair for decades. It is a block away from St Vincent School where LeBron James went to high school and played basketball. He has done amazing things for this run down neighborhood but not this house.

    Drove by the old mansion the other day, and it has been all spruced up. Out front a big banner: ” Bayard Rustin LBGT Resource Center”.

    Heartening that not all of Ohio is horrible.

    ETA I need to get that cute dog out of my nym.

  43. 43.

    SpaceUnit

    I think Barr going to bat for Trump’s kids shows how ugly things got between him and TFG.  He’s definitely sending a message.  He’s saying, “See, I’ll go on Fox News and defend your family.  Just not you.  Maybe you shouldn’t have called me a pussy in front of the White House kitchen staff.”

    He’s a bitter dude.

  44. 44.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Another Scott: ​
      19 pages? No way Dump reads more than a half page of anything let alone something painful boring.

    I imagine the target audience was Hannity, Jared, Lindsey, Fox and Friends, Chris Christie, Thomas Barrack who would then translate it into baby talk for the Beast.

  45. 45.

    Dan B

    @sab 🐕: Very nice news.

    I was at my parents one Christmas and met a friend from Seattle who was visiting his family.  We headed into town with our Damron’s Gay Guide intent on finding a gay bar.  We went to one which was brightly lot with fluorescent lights and a smattering of bored looking guys.  Then we checked out a dirty bookstore that didn’t know of any gay bars nor did the cabbie outside.  We headed home ahead of a blizzard.

    Seems things may have changed.

  47. 47.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @bjacques: ​
      We would have been better off with Simon Bar Sinister. Though I hear Roseanne does a compelling rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.

  48. 48.

    Subsole

     

     

    @James E Powell: Game respect game, as the kids say.

    At this point, is there any real doubt that most of the network talking (air)heads are sympathizers or outright collaborators?

    They keep sticking Barr in our face because they like him and agree with him and want him to win.

  49. 49.

    Jeffro

    Barr just wants trumpov out of the way, before he can do any more damage to the GOP.  trumpov has definitely outlived his usefulness (mostly because he’s out of office, but also because there are like eight gazillion investigations going on).  The party can only have it both ways for so long before its voters start to wonder why GOP officials aren’t either siding with trumpov or condemning him.

     

    Barr said what he did about the trumpov kids because Barr himself has a daughter who’s in the thick of the Rs’ efforts to undermine democracy and the rule of law.  No need to bring the trumpov kids into it! he says, just bring him down on his own, we don’t need people looking too closely at the children of powerful, corrupt people.

  52. 52.

    JaySinWA

    @Martin: I bet they get more punishment for the destruction of the police vehicle than the injuries to the person under arrest. OTOH the person injured should have one hell of a civil suit.

  54. 54.

    prostratedragon

    @Martin:  I’m struggling to think of a job simple enough that this shit-for-brains could be entrusted with. The train engineer should be at least second in line with him, if not a proxy for the victim.

  55. 55.

    Captain C

    @Jeffro:

    Barr just wants trumpov out of the way, before he can do any more damage to the GOP.

    This.  Barr has always been a coverup artist working to protect the GOP in service of its and his vision of an absolutist, imperial Presidency.  Trump is now an impediment to this goal.

    Barr said what he did about the trumpov kids because Barr himself has a daughter who’s in the thick of the Rs’ efforts to undermine democracy and the rule of law.  No need to bring the trumpov kids into it! he says, just bring him down on his own, we don’t need people looking too closely at the children of powerful, corrupt people.

    I mean, come on!  Isn’t it completely unreasonable that adult children who are in their 30s and 40s and officers of a company should be required, nay even expected to do the proper due diligence that their positions would suggest is otherwise necessary?!?  Whatever is this world coming to?  Scions having to do do their jobs properly and obey the law?  That’s for people who aren’t skilled enough to be rich, powerful Republicans!

  59. 59.

    Jay

    @prostratedragon:

    ” The train engineer should be at least second in line with him, if not a proxy for the victim.”

     

    How Long Does it Take for a Train to Stop?
    According to the Minnesota Safety Council, (Minnesota Operation Lifesaver Inc.) “The average freight train is about 1 to 1¼ miles in length (90 to 120 rail cars). When it’s moving at 55 miles an hour, it can take a mile or more to stop after the locomotive engineer fully applies the emergency brake. An 8-car passenger train moving at 80 miles an hour needs about a mile to stop.

  61. 61.

    sab 🐕

    @Chetan Murthy: Cuyahoga County had Tamir Rice’s body for almost a year. Holding for evidence. They couldn’t even let that grieving family bury their boy in a reasonable time. Hung everything up pending the legal settlement

    ETA Twelve year old (and he looked that young) boy with an obviously toy gun running up to show the cops.  He thought they were his friends.

  64. 64.

    horatius

    @MisterDancer: ​
      Alien and Sedition Act would totally have nailed the shitgibbon though, along with the entire Republican party and the various fascist groups.

  71. 71.

    Jay

    @CarolPW:

    aaaaaah, thanks.

    It’s rare that a train even “feels” the impact with a car, SUV, truck, Semi truck.

    The big impact for Train crews is emotional.

  72. 72.

    eversor

    Bill Barr said he did it for Christianity, repeatedly, in public, just as Alito and the Jan 6 people did.  So again, unless we are going to get rid of Christianity utterly they will win eventually.  And anyone who “not true Scottsmans” Bill Barr on Christianity or “Good Germans” Christianity is just as fucking guilty as Barr and Trump for all the shit we are in.

    Deal with Christianity or we are done as a nation.  And if you are not willing to deal with Christianity than talking about Trumpers or Republicans are laughable.

  84. 84.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)

    William Barr is not in search of a Big Daddy to tell him what to do. He and his ilk see themselves either as Big Daddy or Big Daddy’s wise advisers, leading the mobile vulgus, the common crowd, if you will, along the proper paths to secure the safety of society (that is, them, their friends and family, and especially their property). You can see their precursors in Edward Rutledge & his clique in 1776, and if you don’t recall that, or have never seen it, here is a sample.

    Barr sees himself as an aristocrat, and would say that he and his are meant, by virtue of their superior qualities, to raise up the executive from among their number, and to act as his advisers and assistants. The rest of us should not aspire even as high as Eliot’s Prufrock:

    “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
    Am an attendant lord, one that will do
    To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
    Advise the prince, no doubt, an easy tool,
    Deferential, glad to be of use,
    Politics, cautious, and meticulous:
    Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
    At times, indeed, almost ridiculous-
    Almost, at times, the Fool.”

    We are meant to be nurses, comic gravediggers, jesters, guards, innkeepers, shepherds, strolling players, comical watchmen and the like, sadly necessary to the plot but clearly Common Folk, requiring a firm hand at all times.

    Barr & his like still twitch at the memory of the Peasant’s Rebellion and Wat Tyler’s followers chanting “When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was a gentleman.” They are here, ever vigilant, to guide the state into safer courses. For them.

  85. 85.

    Chetan Murthy

    @JanieM: Saw this just now: dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/24/2124622/-Cartoon-Nina?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_sou…

    A cartoon of Nina Simone, saying: “I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: No fear”.  I remember when I didn’t fear white society.  Now?  I’ll always live in majority-minority areas of Blue states.  Sure, I still fear the po-po, but maybe just maybe I might emerge from an interaction with body and soul intact.  Maybe.

  89. 89.

    Bill Arnold

    @eversor:

    Deal with ChristianityChristian Supremacy or we are done as a nation.

    Fixed. (Many/most people here would agree with that version.)

  91. 91.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Bill Arnold: And then some of us would amend that further, to note that there are religious fanatics of every creed, including Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and they’re all terrible — unsurprisingly, in the same ways!  So it’s not even specific to Christianity.  Just …. in the US, that’s the most prevalent sort.

  102. 102.

    Villago Delenda Est

    major speech delivered to the Federalist Society

    There you go. He’s part of the seditious lot who want to repeal The Enlightenment. No quarter for him, or the rest of the scum of the Federalist Society.

  104. 104.

    Immanentize

    @raven: PS — this probably explains his extraordinary artistic nature:
    “Born in Ogdensburg, N.Y.”
    that is way the hell north on the St. Lawrence.

    ETA Bed for me. Exhaustion has captured my mind. Thanks for the ref to good music (again).

  111. 111.

    Villago Delenda Est

    TFG is the inevitable end product of a 60 year trend in the GQp to make race the central idiom of their electoral appeal. Nixon was more afraid of George Wallace than Ed Muskie. Bill Barr got exactly the candidate he wanted in 2016. Needless to say, fuck Bill Barr and the rest of the GQp “establishment”, who, like the German industrialists in the 1930s, thought they could control a monster.

  113. 113.

    livewyre

    @Omnes Omnibus: There’s no shame in confronting genocidal bigotry when it appears on our own doorstep. As we’ve discovered in the last century, religion and ethnicity are not so easily separated. The only question is what measures to take against such abuse.

  115. 115.

    James E Powell

    Watching My Beloved Buckeyes dominating the Wisconsin Badgers, I’ve seen a Caruso for Mayor of Los Angeles ad every other break.

    Maybe I’m just too jaded, but everything he says is bullshit. He is making promises – I will build homes! – that he couldn’t deliver on even if he had any intention of doing so

    My issue, of course, is that voters are just dumb enough to fall for it.

  117. 117.

    James E Powell

    @eversor:

    So again, unless we are going to get rid of Christianity utterly they will win eventually.

    If I recall my history correctly, Christianity grew rather vigorously when people were trying to get rid of it.

    One of my beliefs about humans – general & not iron clad – is that it is really hard to get them to stop doing something. You have to convince them to start doing something else instead.

  118. 118.

    Ruckus

    @a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio):

    Yep. They are the chosen and we are the help. They do not want an actual democracy because that makes everyone equal. Conservatives like having a false democracy, one where they get the first cast offs from the rich and chosen. That is actually the way the world has been since the invention of a sharp knife, all the way up to nuclear warfare. This is one of the few countries that has become an actual democracy, and we have to keep the shitheads from fucking that up, because they will fight that with every breath in their bodies, because they think that the old way is the only way, that’s what makes them conservatives, never upset the very wealthy because they will fuck us over. But we need to be strong and tax the wealthy like we get taxed. They will still be wealthy, just not as much and our lives will be improved dramatically. But the wealthy are going to throw a lot of their spare change to fight forcing them to be responsible citizens.

  119. 119.

    cmorenc

    @HumboldtBlue:

    I can’t imagine what the explanation is other than another vicious, sadistic cop. This is the oddest story I’ve read in a while.

    I seriously doubt the result was actually intentional by the cops, rather than a textbook example of criminally reckless negligence of the sort that should, had Ms Gonzalez died, have resulted in at least charges of involuntary manslaughter against the cops.  That’s because had the collision been a deliberate setup, the cops would be incredibly stupid to not realize before hand they would be left with no plausible non-criminal explanation that could avoid a charge of premeditated murder – for one thing, the railroad would have an intense interest in pursuing an investigation that would exculpate the railroad and pin likely criminal responsibility on the cops.

    THAT SAID: let’s see if the local county D.A. winds up filing serious charges against the involved cops, or else tries to engage in a protracted investigation designed to foot-drag and obfuscate, with the end result of letting the cops off without any criminal charges.    See, e.g. the D.A.’s tactics in the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Mo.

  122. 122.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    Why the fuck do you park your patrol car on the train tracks?

    Just seeing this post. Glad the woman survived.

    It is beyond incompetence that the idiot cops would park a vehicle on railroad tracks. Jesus fucking Christ!

  123. 123.

    ColoradoGuy

    It makes you wonder if the cops live in a cartoon Dick Tracy universe, where trains can instantly stop because cops order them to. Not that different than MAGA world, where all of TFG’s words are magically and instantly true.

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