It’s another hectic day here in the CatBox. I had to lay down 90 minutes to alleviate back pain. Tomorrow, please expect no more than a Personal Update, as it’s a WWWendy day and we have lots of chores to do. JD, will you cover Bill Maher? TGIF!
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 3:44 (average 5:52). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Trump* Virus Update:
Cases: 1,925,267
Deaths: 110,218
Recovered: 712,436
Short Takes:
From ProPublica: Police culture can be insular and tough to penetrate. But I’ve been surprised by how often it’s possible, though time consuming, to expose important issues by requesting and examining records and data from police departments and other government agencies and engaging citizens and key leaders. So here are five techniques concerned citizens, journalists and policymakers can use to examine police conduct in their communities.
1. Understand the policies and laws that govern police conduct.
If you’re alarmed by what you saw in Minneapolis, or other recent incidents of apparent police misconduct, the first step is to find out if the agency in question has a written policy on the use of force. Does the policy dictate when officers should or shouldn’t use force? What tactics are they allowed to use? Is there any rule against choking a suspect?
It’s important to know if the officers involved were following the policies and procedures that are supposed to guide their behavior. Police actions that strike an onlooker as inappropriate may actually be within a department’s rules. It’s possible the rules themselves are inconsistent with best practices elsewhere.
Ask the department for its policies on the practices that concern you, like restraining suspects or the use of pepper spray or Tasers. You may also need to request rules set by a county or state authority. Ask for written copies. You may be required to file a formal public records request, which I will describe below. And if there is no existing written policy, that might be something worth questioning itself.
If you’re having trouble understanding a policy, try running it by an attorney, academic, elected official or a journalist in your community.
How I did it: I did a deep dive into policies about drug testing after a police captain was killed in a car crash in 2016, and I exposed that he was drunk and on drugs at the time. I spoke to his chief and learned their department didn’t have a policy for random drug testing. I wondered why that was the case and looked to the state attorney general’s office, which sets many police rules. The rules allowed departments to choose whether they wanted to do random testing, and my reporting identified more than 100 that did not. After our story, the state attorney general mandated random drug testing for cops across the state.
I included one of five ways YOU can help hold police accountable for criminal Republican behavior. Please click through for the other four. It’s worth the read, and you need to know it. RESIST!!
From Alternet: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Friday warned that it’s wrong to compare President Donald Trump to President Richard Nixon, on the grounds that Trump is far worse and more dangerous.
Krugman acknowledges that there are some similarities between Trump and Nixon, such as their willingness to use racial grievance to gain power and their cavalier attitude toward obeying the law.
But Krugman thinks that the biggest difference between Trump and Nixon is that the Republican Party of 2020 is not the same as the Republican Party that pushed Nixon out in 1974…
…“The point is that today’s Republican Party wouldn’t object to a Trumpian power grab, even if it amounted to a military coup,” he writes. “On the contrary, the party would cheer it on.”
The Republican Reich, aka the Fifth Reich, has elections with predetermined results. They exist for show only. If a military coup is needed to bring it about, Republicans are fine with that. RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast from the past): The Beatles – Come Together
Ah… the memories! RESIST!!
Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!
12 Responses to “Open Thread–6/5/2020”
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Cartoon: Absolutely the truth!!
TVU: Same as yesterday..
PP: Excellent information, w/read later on..thx!
AN: Yes, the R party of today, will bow down and kiss his arse. They’re all so fake and transparent. The ‘do nothing party! ugh!
YT: Love it!! What a great song!!!
Sorry to read that you are still in pain. I hope that your medicine helps you and alleviates your back/pain. Take good, good care, get your rest, and Thanks, Tom.
*This just in: Yamiche Alcindor, WH PBS correspondent, Q – “Black unemployment went up by 0.1%, Asian American employment went up by 0.5%. How is that a victory?” dt – “You are something else.” ~Paula Reed of CBS noted that dt dismissed a Q on racism from an African American reporter. ~
2. “Everyone knows, and many people are saying dt is creating ‘Festung Weisse Haus’, with the guards and the fences, steel walls, and hiding in the bunker. All to acclimate himself to a prison housing setting. He complained that there wasn’t a 400 pound rapist in his cell, for the real experience, so they put up a mirror.” ~ Mart Z. ~
3. “All mothers were summoned when George Floyd called out for his mama.” ~Rachel C. ~
4. “Trump began his term promising to build a wall to protect America from the world. He ends up building a wall to protect himself from Americans.” ~ anon ~
5. “The lesson I want you to learn is – it doesn’t matter what you look like. You can be tall or short, fat or thin, ugly or handsome, or you could be black, yellow, or white, it doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is the size of your heart and the strength of you character.” ~ Herman Munster’s words of wisdom in 1965. ~
#3 – OMG!
#3. My heart cried with this one.
“Trump began his term promising to build a wall to protect America from the world. He ends up building a wall to protect himself from Americans.” ~ anon ~
That is some astute observation.
Surely sorry to hear about the pain. Of course I’ll cover Bill. Best to WWWendy.
Well, now, this is noteworthy.
Meidas Touch – This is the one that is 17 hours newer than the one I put up yesterday.
This is an important subject, but it will make you chuckle, because Beau demonstrates the absurdity of conventional “wisdom”.
Cartoon – Would that that were their only pledge (I mean, pledge that they keep.)
Map – Sigh.
ProPublica – continues to live up to its name. Only POGO and ITPI do as good a job of being a watchdog, and Pro Publica reports on it the best – always readable and easy to follow. Thanks for this.
Krugman – He is so right. Many of us saw it coming (caveat here – though I saw something was coming, I didn’t know what form it would take when it came.) At what point should we have done things differently as a party or as individuals? Was there anything we could have done that would have prevented this? I remember in the 80’s and early 90’s actively resisting neoliberal candidates (I don’t remember calling them that, though we may have) in favor of progressive ones, and having my voice deowned out. And then I remember the exigencies of making a living making it difficult to participate actively (along with the physocal issues of getting older.) It now appears to me that it was in Reagan’s campaign and administration that we first started to see, not just Republican dirty tricks, but Republicans who didn’t and wouldn’t participate in them still accepting them silently. I remember Pat Schroeder (not, sadly, my Congresswoman, but from my state) calling Reagan “the Teflon President.” We all knew exactly what she was talking about. Why did not more in Congress insis on more and deeper investigations? Water under the bridge now, I guess, but if historians would dig deeper into, and chronicle, how it happened, possibly future generations would at least have a playbook.
Past – Indeed.
Beau: Of course the journalists, reporters and cameramen were, and are, a threat to law enforcement. They were about to show how brutal some law enforcement (was ordered to) handle protesters, showing no mercy and not even a thought of mercy. That is a (personal) threat to those law enforcers who think this is a normal way to act; it might show them up in videos later on when those videos are used to call them to account as has happened in some cases already, e.g. the non-violent old protester knocked over, ending up in hospital.
And don’t forget Trump called these particular media ‘enemies of the American people’.
Update:
‘Toon: That is who they are.
TVU: Here comes 200,000! I believe the re-openings will provide still more tragic news re: the virus, and will help put some last nails in Trump’s political coffin.
PP: Structural (Yes, we’ve been hearing that word a lot lately) change to the culture of bigotry, and power will need to be made before we get a real change in police standards around the country.
Alternet: Newt, with his “Contract ON America,” and his style of blatant lying, a POS that Faux News still pulls out of the mire when It suits them, helped get the Rethuglicans to where they are now. McConnell and Boehner helped to harden their perspective, their culture of circling the wagons against anything that might have made sense, if it came from the other side of the aisle. And, these GOPIGGIES are not our parents’ GOP; nor that of our own history.
BFTP: Even then, before mess were called memes,the nascent conspiracy theorists were running around with “Paul is dead!” Now, it’s so sadly ironic. LOVE the Beatles!
Meidas Touch: Go, Baby Go! When did I ever think I would want to hear St. Reagan’s voice, again?
Beau: I do not see a problem with where he is coming from, but: Some of the police see a reporter, I am sure, who will tell a truth with which they disagree, or find “inconvenient,” as just that: a threat. I recall the days of the protests against the war in Vietnam, when cops in NYC would cover their badge id info, when going into”battle” with peaceful protestors.
Cartoon: 100% truth.
TVU: Yes they’ve been opening more businesses here too. We had over 200 more cases today. We are now up to 8180 cases and 294 deaths. Scary. Too bad the POS ignores what’s going on.
PP: Good info.
Alternet: Krugman sure points out the R’s traits perfectly. I’m sick of seeing the way tRump’s cronies do kiss his as*. We’ve watched it during the impeachment hearings. Hearing all of the evidence against him, they still stood behind him. We certainly need them to be hopefully all voted out of office real soon.
BFTP: Great tune. Pray that our country does “Come Together” soon.
Sorry that you’re still having so much back pain. I know you’re using the pain medication, but have you ever considered using a Tenz unit? Or using a heat pad to lay on to help the pain?
Sure hope you get to feeling better.
Take care. Thanks TomCat
I hope you can find a good schedule of sitting in your chair and resting on the bed before the pain becomes too bad, TomCat.
Cartoon: They don’t really have to swear on something that comes naturally to them.
Update: Any bets on when America has 2 million cases?
PP: Good article with excellent, useful tips which should be looked into across the country this very moment, but the only way to structurally change anything within police departments and other government agencies is to vote ALL Republicans out of office starting with Trump and his cronies in November.
Alternet: Krugman is spot on and the only thing for it is to vote ALL Republicans out of office starting with Trump and his cronies in November.
BFTP: “One thing I can tell you, you’ve gotta be free! Come together right now.” Can’t go wrong with Beatle oldies like this.
CA changed their state law on use of force following Stephon Clark…and Sacramento PD implemented at least most of the recommended policies and practices that Minneapolis PD had on their books since their consent decree days now shown to be insufficient. I have become convinced that the model of policing used is itself the problem as it criminalized poverty, while draining community resources from addressing poverty, all to give those with power and privilege (money, whiteness) an illusion of safety…absolute power corrupts absolutely…
CA’s experience of Nixon and Reagan has left me jaded about the media: when a very conservative relative told my parents he didn’t vote for Nixon because of the moral and ethical failure that had Nixon disappear from public service (and his Checkers speech warning of his intent to return and be vindicated)–why were reporters, editors and others ignoring it during his campaign for president? Similarly, by the time Reagan ran, his welfare queen myth had already been debunked in CA and the data was showing his welfare fraud program cost taxpayers more than it saved and despite Parade magazine having run a spread on his leading a college protest in college in Kansas when he ran for governor, his denying students the same right when he was governor and his attacks on education got so little attention as he ran for president (mostly in CA press not repeated in national press).
Thanks all. Need to rest.
The People’s House should not be something the people are excluded from protesting at……Bunker Boy needs to go……vote, vote, vote, vote….November and January cannot come soon enough