10 things Democrats could do right now - if they actually wanted to stop Trump’s power grab
Democrats control the House, many state Houses, governors’ offices, and the City Halls of major cities. There’s a lot they can do — right now, if they have the will.
1 - Stop giving Trump more police power. Stop working with Republicans to revive the Patriot Act.
How ‘antifa’ became a Trump catch-all www.politico.com/news/2020…
Antifa isn’t an organized group and there’s no evidence they’re responsible for rioting but you do you, Republicans.
RIP Irene Triplett, the last living person to receive a US Civil War pension
Triplett’s father, Mose, fought for the Confederacy and then joined the North and fought as a private. After the war, he had “a reputation for orneriness.”
[He] kept pet rattlesnakes at his home near Elk Creek, N.C. He often sat on his front porch with a pistol on his lap.
“A lot of people were afraid of him,” his grandson, Charlie Triplett, told the [Wall Street] Journal.
Pvt. Triplett married Elida Hall in 1924. She was 34 when Irene was born in 1930; he was 83. Such an age difference wasn’t rare, especially later, during the Great Depression, when Civil War veterans found themselves with both a pension and a growing need for care.
Irene Triplett received a monthly pension of $73.13 from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
She died Sunday from complications following surgery for injuries from a fall, according to the Wilkesboro, N.C., nursing home where she lived.
She was mentally disabled, and lived in the poorhouse with her mother, and later in a series of care homes.
She saw little of her relatives. But a pair of Civil War buffs visited and sent her money to spend on Dr Pepper and chewing tobacco, a habit she picked up in the first grade.
75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice medium.com/equality-…
The systems that protect bad police. www.nytimes.com/2020/06/0…
Conspiracy theories have been fundamental to American history since the Revolution. www.npr.org/2020/05/1…
George Will: ‘There is no such thing as rock bottom for Trump. Assume the worst is yet to come.’
Those who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent people in Beijing and Moscow.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/…
John Gruber at Daring Fireball notes this was published just hours before Trump ordered his goons to use tear gas and flash bang to disperse peaceful protesters for a photo opp at a church. “Trump proved Will’s prediction within mere hours.” daringfireball.net/linked/20…
Minutes before the photo opp, Trump proclaimed himself a friend to peaceful protesters. Even as he was doing that, you could hear his goons attacking peaceful protester’s in the background.
KC Short, the Army veteran who organized Saturday’s protests in La Mesa, CA, the San Diego suburb where I live, said he does not condone the looting and rioting that escalated after the peaceful movement he planned. www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loca…
Fans rally around Crazy Fred’s, a comic book store in the San Diego suburb La Mesa (where I live), which was looted in riots this weekend. www.nbcsandiego.com/news/loca…
I shop in the Von’s supermarket in the same shopping center as Crazy Fred’s. I had forgotten the comic store was there.
Protesting is important, but it's not the hard thing, or the most important thing
To be honest, it’s not that hard to protest. It’s not that hard to go someplace. And it doesn’t mean that it’s not important. It doesn’t mean that it’s not critical. But that’s not the hard thing we need from people who care about these issues. We need people to vote, we need people to engage in policy reform and political reform, we need people to not tolerate the rhetoric of fear and anger that so many of our elected officials use to sustain power.
"It's enough to break a true patriot's heart"
I’m trying to understand why wearing a mask — which is meant only to protect the most vulnerable among us and slow the spread of the virus to everyone else — has become the political equivalent of wearing a bumper sticker on your face. It makes me weep to think about it: Our one ready-to-hand tool for getting this country back to normal as quickly and as safely as possible has become yet another symbol of the seemingly insurmountable schism between Americans. It’s enough to break a true patriot’s heart.
Trump’s bailout czar makes out – how to stop police brutality
Today on Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic pluralistic.net/2020/06/0…
Trump’s bailout czar, Justin Muzinich, responsible for trillions in bailout money, is getting rich sucking on the public tit. Democrats and Republicans alike love Muzinich because he talks like a grownup but doesn’t let that get in the way of thievery.
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Big data shows which policies reduce police brutality: Training and bodycams don’t work. What does work? Demilitarizing police equipment, and predictive policing to identify abusive cops:
… the overall message is just commonsense. Tell cops they’re not allowed to use violence. Don’t outfit them like an army.. Punish and fire cops who break the rules.
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“Broken windows” crimefighting policies are the new Jim Crow, unfairly targeting black people.
Matt Taibbi: “We have two systems of enforcement in America, a minimalist one for people with political clout, and an intrusive one for everyone else.”
Cory:
This is why NYC had to pay $33,000,000 in restitution for one hundred thousand strip-searches performed on people facing misdemeanor charges. These searches don’t merely reflect sadism – they’re also a way of creating new charges, like “resisting arrest.” It’s a twofer.
It’s why cops – correctly – came to understand that the people they were policing hated them and saw them as an occupying army.
Lucky for them, that was around the time military contractors successfully lobbied for a program of low-cost “surplus” sales of military equipment to local law.
That’s when we started to see cops dressing up like infantry on patrol in Mosul. “Dress for the job you want.”
Broken windows was a fraud, and “community policing” (the euphemism for stop-and-frisk) never worked. But it lumbers on as a zombie “fact” whose research was long discredited, claiming Black lives in its wake.
Protesters Dispersed With Tear Gas So Trump Could Pose at Church
Old Yellow Stain declared himself a friend to peaceful protesters, and then ordered in flash bang explosions and tear gas to disperse peaceful, lawful protesters so he could get a photo op in front of a church, waving a Bible.
I’m just a nonobservant Jew but I’m pretty sure Jesus didn’t say anything about flash bang explosions and tear gas. Correct me if I’m wrong?
“He did not pray,” said Mariann E. Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington. “He did not mention George Floyd, he did not mention the agony of people who have been subjected to this kind of horrific expression of racism and white supremacy for hundreds of years.”
An American Uprising: Who, really, is the agitator here? – David Remnick at The New Yorker
He quotes AOC: “If you’re calling for an end to unrest, but not calling out police brutality, not calling for health care as a human right, not calling for an end to housing discrimination, all you’re asking for is the continuation of quiet oppression.”
In late 2001, after 9/11, I got in the habit of having my clock radio set to an all-news station to wake me up in the morning.
If the first words I heard were “Michael Jackson,” I knew there was no big news that morning. I could just shut off the radio. I didn’t have to rush to the Internet to find out what blew up. I could just get on with my wake-up routine.
There have been far too few Michael Jackson days this year..
While cowering in a bunker and doing nothing, President Tweetie demands other people get tough. www.cnn.com/2020/06/0…
@dave Winer compares Trump to Captain Queeg — Old Yellow Stain.
Hell yeah. Trump in the bunker with the White House lights off, muttering about the antifa – his stolen strawberries.
It’s like the scene at the end of The Stand, where Glen Bateman is in a prison cell, laughing about how foolish he feels to have been be afraid of Randal Flagg, who turned out to be just pathetic.