Prominent travel vlogger/YouTuber Bald & Bankrupt contracted CV-19 while in Serbia and nearly died.
He's finally posted a video about his experience ... harrowing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clscC120ZQM
A physically robust white celebrity (in one corner of the internet) who thought he had immunity
This disease has now become wide spread enough the denialism is fading.
Be interesting to see what the attendance at Trumps Saturday rally will be like.

Lake PirU

"Hogwash" is a lot like "malarkey", which is a word Biden likes to use. In both cases, the user is thinking "bullshit", but doesn't, because of the audience. I like Hogwash better. It rolls off the tongue in a similar way as bullshit. It has two solid syllables, and can't be confused with much else. Yet it is softer, sweeter, a bit fanciful, as if to say that you are aware that you are in an argument with a fool, and want to keep your cool. "Hogwash, hogwash I say!" is just silly enough to get people to smile, while just forceful enough to say that the other person is full of shit. It is perfect for this situation. Nicely done, governor.

Defund the motherfuckers already.

@5 Apparently a veto-proof majority of the city council just voted to defund the police budget by 50%. It's a start.

"A woman also under arrest kept saying she did not speak English and requested a Navajo translator. “I think you speak English just fine,” mocked one officer."

Tell me again how reforms like "sensitivity training will fix this?

"One of the officers responded: “If you can speak, you can breathe.”

Tell me again who "de-escalation training" will fix this callous attitude that is exactly the words Chavin used on George Floyd as he was murdering him?

Defund the violent police along with the worthless prosecutor's that have spent their entire careers providing legal cover and excuses for disgusting, inhumane police behavior.

Must be nice to think you'll never have to call 911.

RE: Seattle Seahawks refunding season ticket holders

The real money is in luxury boxes. What are their 2020 policies on those? Regular ticket holders...yes, even season ticket holders... are chump change. If owners had their way, stadiums would be nothing but luxury boxes. Professional sports are a business enterprise. They have not been about fan entertainment for decades. Sports is an industry. A big money industry at that. And YOU are not a part of it. Nope, not even with your "season tickets." So sorry.

@9 because the only options are a fully weaponized police response or nothing at all. Do you intentionally try to miss the point of everything? Being willfully obtuse doesnt make you as clever as you think it does.

9: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/upshot/unrest-police-time-violent-crime.html

"How Do the Police Actually Spend Their Time?
Percentage of Calls for Violent Crime
Serious violent crimes have made up around 1 percent of all calls for service in these police departments so far this year."

Why not reduce police interactions with the public to dealing with that 1% and hand off others crimes to better qualified, less violent services?

I think 50% of the current police budget leaves more than enough money for the police to focus on the 1% of calls they should be focused on. maybe then they will get out of the "enforcing harmless lifestyle crimes" business they typically waste their budgets on.

@13: Fifty percent. Sounds so compelling, that's why it's so popular among the prolotariat. But logic dictates that 50% reduction actually means "less money for fewer police to focus on" rather than "more than enough money for the police to focus on".

But we'll have to wait for actual balance sheet documentation of actual proposals. All that we see so far from our beloved Seattle City Council is lofty budget committee planning. Lots of flip charts, break out sessions, offsites, and delicious catering. We wish them well.

14: I was responding to your silly claim "Must be nice to think you'll never have to call 911." rather than address my point that only 1% of calls are for violent crime you instead build me a straw man.

I suspect many see a 50% police budget cut not as an end point, but a beginning. The Seattle police budget has skyrocketed over 35% in the past 5 years without a commensurate 35% increase in violent, or property crime during that period to justify that enormous increase.

Logic does not dictate your convoluted statement at all. If we go back 50 years to 1970 when crime was at it's current levels (prior to big war on drug criminalization) America had far fewer police, far fewer prisons and more civil rights. The police did not need court activist decisions like qualified immunity and asset forfeiture or battle tanks, grenade launchers and bayonets to deal with overwhelmingly peaceful protestors exercising their first amendment rights. That current police are either unable, or unwilling to distinguish between journalists, peaceful protestors and a small handful of looters where the police could be useful shows just how far astray police culture has gone.

We need to cut the police budget until the police realize they answer to the public and not the other way around. Only the police themselves, through their behavior, can determine what that funding level will be.

@6 xina: Reducing funding for the SPD by 50% is definitely a start. What we need to fully defund is the NRA and GOP. No police force needs AR-15 assault rifles, tear gas, and rubber bullets or any other military assault weapons, especially on innocent civilians.
Police forces across the U.S. need to seriously return to their initial mission: to protect and serve the people----ALL people---of the U.S.

@16: Actually, I honestly believe that the road to hell has been paved by RepubliKKKans, their lawyers, lobbyists, and fixers. Their criminally insane Idiot-in-Chief is hellbent on killing us all--even its blindsided MAGA fools.

@15: Before slashing and burning, you should concur that citizen taxpayers deserve proof of concept presentations and test programs.

@13 - while ( 100% agree that there is way too much enforcement against victimless crimes, there is a lot of space between "harmless lifestyle crimes" and "serious lifestyle crimes." I, for one, would like Mr. Tweaker to at least have to consider the possibility that he'll get arrested when he's deciding whether or not to break into my car. That seems to me to be a pretty legitimate exercise of the state's police power.

Even if you don't think that the kind of filthy rich capitalist bastards who are bourgeoisie enough to own things like car stereos have any right to have the laws protecting property enforced, you should consider that if people know for a fact the cops won't ever respond, there is likely to be a large increase in self-help, as in people using whatever means they have available to protect said property. There is some value in delegating that response to lawful authorities rather than every citizen with a gun.

@3 Neither hogwash nor malarkey hold a candle to balderdash.

If you're going to stan for antiquated slang, more power to you but come on man commit to it already. Don't sermonize us with your tepid opinionations if you can't even muster a codswallop or flapdoodle of your own, for heaven's sake.

@21 That argument would carry a lot more weight if today's real-world cops were concentrating on your "serious lifestyle" criminals (I assume you mean repeat violent offenders?) instead of routinely murdering nonviolent petty crooks and also entirely innocent, defenseless black people, all over the damn country.

Or are you suggesting Breonna Taylor would be alive today if only she hadn't stolen a car stereo?

@20 There were no proof of concept presentations before Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were legally married. There were no test programs before Brown v. Board of Education.

Once again, you presume that you and your caste are the anointed arbiters of which political acts shall be considered legitimate.

@20, what do you think CHOP was?

They use the money to terrorize us. Only one thing to do... take the money away. Nothing else will ever make a difference.

@27: Yeah, a deadly experiment.

"@20: Before slashing and burning, you should concur that citizen taxpayers deserve proof of concept presentations and test programs."

The police have proven that in their current form they do not work. Before we spend a dime more they need to justify how they will spend more time helping society and less time harming it.

@21: Harmless crime means no victim. Think things like the war on drugs, war on prostitution, war on the poor, war on the mentally ill and trans people where the police invests enormous resources making these situations worse.
I do not consider property crime victimless since the owner is obviously a victim, but if you think police are a deterrent the data simply does not support that.
Does Police Presence Create Deterrence?1
portal.idc.ac.il/en/schools/economics/homepage/documents/police_beats_may21_201

We spend $400 million + on the SPD and $100 million + on the KCSO. Have you ever had your car, or home robbed and called the police? I have and they simply don't care. Property crime is rampant in Seattle and the criminals no the police have little interest in doing the work it would take to stop them. In fact, they are rewarded for not stopping them. Whenever their budget comes up they can rely on the prevalence of crimes they don't solve to get more funding. That's not just true of property crime, but rape and murder too where the clearance rates (below 20% and 50% respectively) are extremely low. That is because the primary purpose of police is not to solve crime. That is not why they were formed in the 1800's and despite "protect and serve" propaganda has never been part of their mission. Once you start talking to actual victims of crime and see how little the police care this becomes overwhelmingly apparent.
It's been referred to before, but I suggest the 2018 "The End of Policing" by Alex Vitale for a better view on just the police do and do not do.

25: Why do you use the fact that black people kill other black people to justify racist policing tactics that kill innocent back people? The two are both serious and entirely unrelated. Why if I were a cynic I might think you were providing and excuse for the police to murder innocent black people with impunity, as they currently do now.

26:Please tell us how many nonviolent petty crooks and entirely innocent, defenseless black people have been murdered by police so far this year.

Great question, but you are not going to like the answer, because it's a lot. Of course the police wildly under report the number of innocent civilians they kill in a given year. In fact they undercount by more than half:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/

but here are some numbers they do release.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/brutal-force-al-gharbi

"Since 2015, cops fatally shot at least 352 people who were unarmed (that is, not even possessing a toy, blunt object, or other instrument). In total, 5,408 civilians were killed by police gunfire over the last five years; one out of every fifteen was unarmed. And it is important to note that these data only count police shootings. Hundreds more civilians are killed by cops every year with tasers, pepper spray, rubber bullets, chokeholds, positional asphyxia, blunt force trauma, or getting struck by police cruisers and other causes; a large share of these civilians are also unarmed. Many have not committed a crime.

Blue Lies Matter

According to an investigation by USA Today, at least 85,000 cops have been investigated for misconduct over the last decade—including 22,924 investigations into excessive force; 3,145 allegations of rape, molestation of a child, or other sexual misconduct; 2,307 purported instances of domestic violence; and 2,645 cases of police obstructing an investigation, committing perjury, falsifying reports, and/or tampering with witnesses or evidence. These numbers, daunting as they seem, may just be the tip of the iceberg."

What struck me about the Rayshard Brooks fiasco was that the police spent nearly an hour with Brooks before they shot him in the back. How busy can the police really be if they'll spend 50-ish minutes on a "guy fell asleep in his car" call?

If we defund the police 50%, they'll have to pep it up and only screw around for 25 minutes before they get to their slaying. Everybody appreciates efficiency, right?

@23 - I think you and I agree on cases like Breonna Taylor. There's no way that should have happened, not least because there should be little or no use of "no-knock" warrants and the kind of force used there was beyond unreasonable unless someone is actually being held hostage or the like.

I'm in no way arguing that the level of force being used by the cops in the cases we have been hearing about (and no doubt many we haven't hard about) is not way beyond what is needed. It is leading to a lot of people, largely young black men, being harmed or killed. That is a failure of training and of attitude and is unacceptable.

My point is that arguing that police should only respond to "serious, violent crimes" leaves a lot of thing that are real problems uncovered. My point about self-help stands. Do you really want the major factor deterring property crime to be homeowners etc sitting around with their twitchy fingers on their guns? That is the predictable consequence of the police abandoning any responsibility for most crimes.

I also agree that truly victimless crimes should not be prosecuted. Probably some debate about what those are is in order.

@31 - actually, the last time my house was broken into the police did come & investigate What they tol me was that they were generally unable to catch the person responsible every time this happened, but that in their experience there would be a string of such crimes in a given area and that eventually, the person responsible ended up going to jail and the problem they were causing stopped.

If there were no mechanism or responsibility to toss said burglar in jail because the police stopped responding to this kind of crime, that effect would not happen and the responsible parties would be free to keep at it. So, yes, I do think a police response to property crimes has at least some effect.

@38 what, nothing about how Rayshard Brooks was a greasy pervert?

@40 -- Once again people make assumptions without even bothering to do the slightest amount of research. I searched for "cities that defunded the police" and came up with this article: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/what-would-it-mean-defund-police-these-cities-offer-ideas-n1229266. While the particulars vary, it is a sensible approach that is used with great success in various parts of the world (https://theweek.com/articles/918143/what-america-learn-from-nordic-police). It means a shift away from heavy-handed policing, and towards a much generous welfare state.

A more radical approach was taken by Camden. They essentially wiped out their entire police force, then rebuilt it. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-jersey-trnd/index.html. I would not recommend that for Seattle, although based on what happened with this reporter, it sounds fairly reasonable. Completely starting over is a simply way of getting rid of all of the bad cops, and the existing culture that allows such misconduct.

https://www.theroot.com/why-we-never-talk-about-black-on-black-crime-an-answer-1819092337

@32 "Nobody is in favor of bad police behavior. The problem is you’re far over-inflating the level of police misconduct in this country, and its subsequent effect on black people."

This is the old bromide we have heard for 5 decades, that bad policing is a matter of "a few bad apples." You do understand that the full saying is that a few bad apples will ruin the whole barrel don't you?

The treatment of the journalist in this article along with the widely publicized police abuse since George Floyd was killed has highlighted a long existing problem with the very foundation of the way policing in America that has resisted all attempts at 5 decades of even modest reforms. Again, you give me anecdotes on how everything is going great with a few rare exceptions, but the data is not on your side.

The problem with unaccountable and systemic police violence and criminality is not rare and certainly not anecdotal, but confirmed by all the data we have. Data we struggle to collect I made add because the police have resisted every attempt at collecting misconduct data and have heavily undercounted the instances they do provide.

https://thebaffler.com/latest/brutal-force-al-gharbi

"Police brutality/murder is also a far smaller problem for the black community than say, black-on-black murder. And I mean far smaller. Orders of magnitude. So it makes sense to address problems in a proportional manner."

Black on black violence is an issue, but much of the violence we see in black communities is increased, not decreased by current policing. Police have one tool, violence, and it's their preferred tool in every instance. Unless you believe violence is the answer to every problem that strategy will not work. Policing and incarceration has gone a long way in destroying and tearing apart the remaining healthy families in minority communities much as Jim Crow and slavery did before it. You should read "The New Jim Crow." Using the police to destroy minority communities is not a bug, but a feature. It's a primary reason the Slave Patrols current policing was born from were formed and one of many reasons police should be defunded and reformed from the ground up. You build the community and police for that serves it. We currently have a police force with minority neighborhoods that serve it.

"If you’re so busy protesting on the freeway against “racist” police, you just distract from a much more important and larger discussion of black accountability in their own communities, which are riddled with problems with gun violence, crime, fatherless homes, etc."

Setting aside for a moment that this is a complete cop-out on addressing he problem with systemic police violence, much of the problems you cited (gun violence, crime, fatherless homes, etc) are a direct and natural result of the drug war, mass incarceration and the over police that required over the past 5 decades.

34: "One of the reasons that the murder rate has dropped by huge numbers since the mid 90's is because of changes to policing. You can see in places like Baltimore, where the murder rate increased by about 50% when the police stopped officer initiated police stops. I certainly understand that nobody likes to be the target of this kind of policing, but it does reduce the murder rate which saves mostly young, black men. Cutting back on proactive policing, which will necessarily happen if the budget is reduced by 50%, will increase Seattle's murder rate."

Hmm, no links to data to support any of these claims. I know that stuff is police folklore used to justify their overly violent tactics, but there is literally no credible data to back any of those claims up and plenty of data to show none of those claims are true. Let me share just some of the data where less policing and less incarceration led to aa drop in violent and all other types of crime.

"DECLINING NUMBERS OF COPS NATIONWIDE WORRY BIG CITY OFFICIALS, BUT EXPERTS SAY THERE IS LITTLE EVIDENCE THAT MORE COPS EQUALS LESS CRIME."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/13/marshall-project-more-cops-dont-mean-less-crime-experts-say/2818056002/

"In New York, major crime complaints fell when cops took a break from ‘proactive policing"
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proactive-policing-crime-20170925-story.html

State closes prison facility as crime rates fall
https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/04/12/state-closes-prison-facility-as-crime-rates-fall/

"However, Seattle currently has fewer cops than almost all large cities, which we can all see when we try to call in when our car gets broken into. "

Vermont has the least police in the nation and also one of the lowest crime rates in the country

Do you have any data to support the assertion Seattle does not have enough police? We seem to have plenty of police available to run and endless string of wasteful asian massage stings and multiple year long police undercover hand job operations at tax payer expense:

Seattle Police "Rescue" 26 Sex Workers. But Did They Want to Be Rescued?
https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/03/11/39551922/seattle-police-rescue-26-sex-workers-but-did-they-want-to-be-rescued

I also see an awful lot of police simply sitting around town in groups of 4 in Starbucks laughing and joking. The idea that the police have failed to address property crime in Seattle due to a shortage of police at a time when the budget has grown by 36% over the past 5 years seems absurd. The truth is we have gotten nothing for that money except more over policing violence. It's not a lack of funding, but a lack of will. Like any government group, the have no interest in solving actual crime and lose their constant justification for ever increasing budgets.

I'm no liberal, but I've always found conservatives who can identify broad-spread waste and abuse in every government agency like child protective services and housing for the homeless magically expect government run policing be different laughable. Suddenly you give that government worker a gun, broad based extra-constitutional powers, the ability to lie under oath this absolute impunity, the right to steal the stuff of other law abiding citizens through Asset forfeiture and a full team of prosecutors, judges and police unions ready to excuse their worst crimes and excesses and suddenly we're to believe government run policing is the only well run machine in government and can't make do with any budget cuts.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So you should have had intentions? Or the saying is fucking stupid?

@9:

I've only ever had to call 911 once in my life when I was in the middle of a Cranial Vascular Anomaly (AKA having a literal stroke). Strangely, not a single police officer responded, which makes sense since they don't do emergency medical response. So, 911 will still provide a valuable public service, even if it's no longer useful for calling cops to respond to shit they generally don't do anything about anyway.

@16:

Hell doesn't exist. It's the religious equivalent of a "the scary monster under the bed" meant to get those unrepentant sinners to toe the line, nothing more.

@25:

85% of white people are killed by other white people. Why do people like year never see a need to address the growing scourge of out-of-control white-on-white violence?

@53:

83 - 85% (depending on the year) of murders committed against white people are perpetrated by other white people - please show us the math that demonstrates this equals one-sixth the black-on-black murder rate.