Comments

2

Kavanaugh is Squee's puppet.

5

In other News, this, from the NYT: "These Kids Are Done Waiting for Change

In less than a week, six Nashville teenagers created a march that drew 10,000 peaceful protesters and gave hope to a whole city.

NASHVILLE — In real life, Nya Collins, Jade Fuller, Kennedy Green, Emma Rose Smith, Mikayla Smith and Zee Thomas had never met as a group when they came together on Twitter to organize a youth march against police violence. It was unseasonably hot, even for Middle Tennessee, with rain predicted, and earlier protests here had ended in violence, with the Metro Nashville Courthouse and City Hall in flames. Collectively, these are not the most promising conditions for gathering a big crowd, much less a calm one. But the teenagers were determined to press on, even if hardly anyone showed up.

On June 4, five days later, the founding members of Teens for Equality — as the young women, ages 14 to 16, call their organization — were leading a march of protesters some 10,000 strong, according to police estimates. 'I was astonished,'” Kennedy Green, 14, told me in a phone interview last week. 'I did not know there were that many people in Nashville who actually see a problem with the system. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, there are so many people here who actually care.'

These young people are passionate about their causes and unwavering in their commitment to change. The world they have inherited is deeply troubled and desperately flawed, and they see with clear eyes both the errors of earlier generations and the hope of their own.

Their power lies in the undeniable moral authority of youth: They did not cause the mess they have inherited, but they are rolling up their sleeves to clean it up.

Above all, they are brave, enduring withering attacks by craven adults who hold no scruple against threatening children.

You may argue that these activists are simply too young to understand the risks they are taking, but I think they know exactly what they are doing. What they are too young for is cynicism. What they are too young for is defeat."

--Margaret Renkl
June 15, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/opinion/nashville-teens-protests.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

6

That Supreme Court ruling is HUGE. I assumed it was a lost cause, almost certain we would lose with the court generally shifting to the right. I was incredibly surprised that we won, and by a 6-3 vote. Roberts and Gorsuch both sided with the liberal wing of the court. Gorsuch even authored the ruling. This is kind of a seismic shift in how the Supreme Court views LGBT rights in the wake of the marriage case in 2015.

7

Since we’ve mostly forgotten what good news is, the Supreme Court banning anti-LGBTQ job discrimination is completely mind-blowing! And Go-suck, the Tr666p judge, wrote the opinion!1!

This is gonna be an absolute earthquake in the Confederacy, my country of origin.

11

@3, those salary figures are outrageous. People shouldn't be going into law enforcement to strike it rich. And obviously, this is a situation where there is no correlation between compensation and performance.

My recollection is that during the Ed Murray years, as the revenues expanded with the Amazon boom, the spending just mindlessly expanded with it. I wouldn't be surprised if that has continued in the Durkan administration. Of course, none of this happens without the City Council's consent. Not an indication that we have disciplined, far-sighted Jerry Brown-style leadership in our City Hall.

In contrast, I recall that the best mayor in America, San Francisco's London Breed, announced recently that any 911 calls that don't involve actual crimes would no longer be routed to the police. In one fell swoop, she managed to nip most of (not all of) these policing problems in the bud.

16

Quite surprising the Po-po haven't just
Confiscated all cameras, which is
(obviously) where The Problem lies.

20

More unnecessary Death at the hands
of the (former) Slave Patrols:
From Democracy Now:

Protests intensified in Atlanta after a white police officer shot dead an unarmed 27-year-old African American man named Rayshard Brooks in the parking lot of a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant on Friday. The encounter was caught on surveillance camera and by a witness.

Police approached Brooks after he had fallen asleep in his car. The police questioned Brooks, patted him down and gave him a breathalyzer test.

During a scuffle, he grabbed one of the officers’ stun guns and attempted to run away.

Another officer then shot Brooks in the back two times. The officer, Garrett Rolfe, can then be heard on a bodycam video saying, “I got him.” The Fulton County medical examiner has ruled Brooks’s death a homicide. Less than 24 hours after the shooting, Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields resigned. The officer involved in the shooting was fired.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said, “[Brooks] did not seem to present any kind of threat to anyone, and so the fact that it would escalate to his death just seems unreasonable.”

Protests continued in Atlanta throughout the weekend.

On Saturday night, the Wendy’s fast-food restaurant was burned down.

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/6/15/headlines/calls_mount_to_investigate_as_2_black_men_found_hanging_from_trees_in_california_10_days_apart

22

if 'Gloria' can
destroy Slog
it's another
"win" for
trumpf.

24

@8/12:

Speaking of deviated preverts - have either of you looked in a mirror recently?

25

Abolish the dedicated police unions and roll the cops into AFSCME. Police deserve representation just like any other worker but that doesn't mean we need to retain the current mode of unionizaton or the specific role unions play in the enforcement of workplace discipline.

The existing police unions don't organize with or participate in the broader union movement. They are just rotten pocket-sized fiefs and protection rackets.

37

"A new plant has appeared at the top of Teletubby hill inside CHOP/CHAZ. Judging from the leaves, it appears to be oak?"

I support the sentiment but teletubby hill is a thin layer of soil atop geo-foam atop a concrete reservoir. (There's no wilderness in the city, my dudes.) Stop planting stuff in Cal Anderson. We have a parks department for parks and p-patches for the hippie-dippies.

I'm going to guess that the person that planted that doomed tree is a doomed transplant themselves...

38

@13 -- Countries with really strong teacher unions have really good schools. The biggest difference between their educational system and ours is that they fund all schools well. We fund schools regionally, which means wealthy districts have good schools, and poor districts struggle. (Somehow Mercer Island does really well despite the powerful unions). Anyway, unions generally improve the quality of the staff, although there are exceptions, and many police unions take a "circle the wagons" approach. Improving the police force will likely take place by improving and working with the union, not trying to break it.

Back to education, here is an interesting article about the Finland school system, which is generally considered the best in the world:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/. I'll quote one relevant part:

“Equality is the most important word in Finnish education. All political parties on the right and left agree on this,” said Olli Luukkainen, president of Finland’s powerful teachers union.

39

@34 & @35 - He wasn't simply sleeping; he had passed out due to intoxication at the wheel in the drive-thru. So, he was preventing the restaurant from using their drive-thru, and since he was in the drive-thru, he clearly intended to drive away once he came to. Anytime, someone may need to be taken into custody for a crime, in this case DWI/DUI, send the police. People resist arrest far more often than the public realizes, and only cops are trained for that...and only cops can enter the jail with a prisoner to take before the magistrate.

That said, I can't imagine myself or most any officer I worked with on any sort of regular basis shooting this guy. Taser claims a range of 16 feet, but that's where the darts fall feebly to the ground. Real-life range to penetrate clothing is about 6 feet...at best. They won't penetrate a vest, period. And they only have 1 shot.

If this officer had been alone, and the suspect took his taser and did not run away, shooting may...may...be justified. You can't let yourself be tased, because the assailant can then easily take your firearm to use on you...or someone else.

But the officer wasn't alone. And the suspect was running away. He has 1 shot of a Taser with an effective range of 4-6 feet, a fact of which he is unaware. Tail him at a distance until he ineffectively fires it, and then move in and take him down. Even if he tases you, your partner (and probably another officer or 3 by that point) is there to make sure he cannot take your gun in the 30 or so seconds it takes you to recover.

So, while DWI/DUI is a crime that requires custodial arrest, it was not necessary to shoot this guy, and most officers would not have, at least most of the ones I was ever around.

40

@35 -- I realize you aren't very smart, and probably have not considered how things are run outside this country. But before you write another stupid statement, you might consider doing just a little bit of research. You see, not everything is done the way things are done in America. Here are some articles about policing outside the U. S.:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/police-protests-countries-reforms/2020/06/13/596eab16-abf2-11ea-a43b-be9f6494a87d_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/18/5-countries-where-police-officers-do-not-carry-firearms-and-it-works-well/
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/america-police-violence-germany-georgia-britain/612820/

So, to answer your question while quoting from the second article, this is how someone will deal with a violent drunk:

Joachim Kersten, a senior research professor of criminology at the German Police University, told me that police training in Germany covers everything from how to respond to cases of domestic violence to how to disarm someone with a lethal weapon. In the latter case, he said, “the emphasis is not on using weapons or shooting.” Rather, trainees are encouraged to de-escalate, resorting to lethal force only when absolutely necessary.

[By the way, that first article was written by the Washington Post, but it appeared in this morning's Seattle Times. Reading the local morning paper used to be common in the U. S., and is a good way to reduce the enormous levels of ignorance you show on a regular basis. ]


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