The addition of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court means that there is now a solid "by any means necessary" majority that will defy all law and precedent to hand the presidency to Donald Trump. As far as I can tell, the only way to prevent that from happening is for Joe Biden to win in a landslide such that the Supreme Court would have too many states in which to disenfranchise voters.

The sad truth is that, as a democracy, we are far closer to Russia and Belarus than we are to Germany and Canada.

Cue the trolls to tell me I'm hysterical or to try to throw up some strawman that distracts from my core point. The reality is that Republicans and supporters know in their heart of hearts that we now have a Supreme Court that will put raw power ahead of the law, and it's something they accept as the natural and rightful state of things--while at the same time gaslighting the rest of us that the court is still just calling balls and strikes.

" Beach chairs the SPD African American Community Advisory Council –- one of 10 councils founded to push for better police relations in communities.

“You’re not going to do this in my neighborhood and how dare you disrespect George Floyd and his family. We don’t protest like this and stop using Black Lives Matter to tear up the city,” said Beach.

Rev. Harriett Walden, the co-founder of Mothers for Police Accountability said rioters have hijacked the movement.

“It’s hijacked. Clearly,” said Rev. Walden. “It has nothing to do with 8 minutes and 46 seconds anymore. It’s somebody else’s agenda.”

Only ones still celebrating this trash are apparently stranger writers and the white-kids-dressed-in-black from the 'burbs who hijacked the moment to break things because mommy/daddy issues.

Barrett's probably going to die from coronavirus before the year is out because God is not happy about her installation and her arrogance.

@3, you do realize ACB has already gotten the virus and recovered? And God didn't intervene to prevent RBG's death.

To put this in a way that Christians who actually take the teachings of Christ seriously would appreciate, God helps those who help themselves.

The SPOG initiative is so laden with unintended consequences that they're going to 100% regret passing it if it goes through. Just imagine being required to arrest anyone with fireworks in public on the 4th of July. Or arrest anyone out after midnight on New Year's Eve. Or anyone out after midnight the next time the Seahawks win the Super Bowl. They are so cruising for a disaster.

"The sad truth is that, as a democracy, we are far closer to Russia and Belarus than we are to Germany and Canada."

The US isn't a democracy. At best it's a plutocracy. At worst it's a kleptocracy.

But a democracy? Hasn't been for a loooooong time. If it ever was.

"The President and Barrett didn't wear masks 'perhaps owing to the fact that both have already had the virus.'"

But, the mask isn't (necessarily) worn to protect Them -- it's to Protect Everyone Else. Oops! they prolly just didn't Realize that...

@1 -- Great Comment!
also: "we now have a Supreme Court that will put raw power ahead of the law... "

even better (for the Fascists): they can Make Legal all the shite that's not Right nor (remotely) Ethical.

also: re 'Packing the Courts'?

Nah -- can't let them Damn Dems do that kinda Crap.

@7 -- "Nearly all states require ballots to be RECEIVED no later than election day, even 100% vote by mail states like Oregon."

So, what with Republican Dirty Tricks (De-funding the USPS) (at a Minimum) we gotta mail-'em-in, what, a month before we get the fuckers?

Voter Suppression is KEY
when most peeps HATE your
proto-fascist pro-Corporate Policy.

@ 4,

Where did the position that one can only get the novel coronavirus virus once come from?
Seems like more of this country’s magical thinking. I’ve been trying to figure that out, since it seems more like the flu or the common cold in that it mutates or there are multiple strains running amok, some more lethal than others.

Anyone know the latest? I’m too lazy to google it.

Barrett has STILL never judged a case. Appeals court judges do not judge cases, they review what lower courts did for error. The Supreme Court aside, there are lots of reasons to want appellate judges to have had some trial experience. How else can they judge the conduct of proceedings in the trial courts?

Impeach them all, expand the courts to 21, reconfirm the rest on a 10 year cycle, and build Guillotines, cause we're going to need those soon.

@11 - there have been a handful of cases where someone appears to have gotten the virus twice (I am only aware of one where it was verified that the two infections were actually different). Seems to be a very rare event.

There are not as many strains of Covid19 out there as there are influenza and new ones are not expected to arise as quickly. Covid mutates much more slowly than the flu, partly because influenza has more than one RNA chromosome which makes it easy for two different viruses to exchange part of their genomes (resulting in a new strain with big differences from either original one). Coronaviruses have a single RNA molecule so cannot create new strains by reassorting RNA molecules. It has to mutate one small change at a time through errors in replicating its RNA chromosome. Covid also seems to make fewer errors in replicating its genome than some RNA viruses do.

Why is a virus, especially covid-19, such an abstract concept to Republicans? You'd think the moment they feel a fever or a nagging cough coming on reality would set in.

Holy moly. That Team Blue website was built using Wix!

When I first looked at it I thought "well, it's not THAT bad if it was built by an amateur". But then looking at the HTML and yeah, it's a Wix sight.

Amazing that they were able to get that bad of a site using a drag and drop tool.

@22: No - he was never advancing on the officers with the knife. It could have been defused. To say that the officers acted professionally is to not believe your eyes.

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/video-appears-to-show-fatal-police-shooting-of-black-man-holding-knife-in-philadelphia-94742085794

"We should be governed by how the anti-democratic (acting contrary to democratically enacted laws, or initiatives) mob evaluates the event after the fact." -- FAX3

ah, yes:
Republican Rule:
Damn Good Thing
they OWN the Courts,* eh?

*and have (legally, Mofos!)
Bought OFF OUR Legislators.

not to worry, folks:
the party of Personal
Responsiblity's IN fucking Charge.

@23 If one is going to make life and death decisions based on speculative fiction, then why not invent a fiction with a happy ending?

Its the same story every time - dipshit cops stand around helplessly until someone furnishes them with a plausible excuse to shoot, and then they shoot. We need police who will round down, instead of up, when it comes to deadly violence.

@32 eyeroll

You have a vivid imagination, I'll grant you that.

You are insane, @31

@32: I'm a big defender of cops, but I grow weary of these excruciating extrapolations that an exposed blade 10 feet away is nanoseconds away from severing a cop's aorta.

@22 - That's a tough one, but I almost certainly would have continued to back away further while continuing to issue commands until he stopped, or his actions became more indisputably a danger to me or someone else there. They may well have had to shoot him seconds or even minutes later, but he should have been given those seconds or minutes.

His body language tells me deescalation techniques weren't on the table yet; he's too amped. At that point, you gotta be mean and convince him you will kill him if he doesn't stop. Almost all people will stop what they're doing if they truly believe that continuing to do it will get them killed. (Use the word "kill" rather than "shoot," as it connotes a greater seriousness, even though you really only intend to stop him) He's gotta believe you.

While you would like him to throw the knife down, it's not really necessary at that point. The primary goal is to just get him to stop advancing, so you can try deescalation. If he stops, you can talk. With a knife, you want to trade space for time...as long as you have space.

Stop his storming around first, then deescalate...if possible

All the bystanders interfering actually made that situation worse and more likely to result in a shooting, not less. They introduce extreme emotion and chaos, and you want to reduce both. They also interfere with effective deescalation...if they had been able to get that going. Ideally, one officer needs to get them to back away while the other works on the knife-guy. But that chaos erupted quick, and they were reacting in the moment, so it's hard to fault them too much for that..

That 21-foot rule that we were all taught has been officially found to be horseshit. It's an arbitrary number dreamed up by some random defensive tactics instructor back in the 70's. It also refers to the time it takes to recognize a sudden threat out of the blue, draw your gun from secured holster and fire accurately.

You can be much closer if you're alert to what is happening already, and your gun is up in the ready position, finger on or next to the trigger. Then it's just a few feet. Also, while officers sometimes do have only a split-second to react, they also sometimes have much longer...as they did here.

On a personal note, I had people come at me with knives several times, a few more aggressively than even this case, and none were shot. In two cases of a bizarre coincidence, I had a guy charge my partner and I with a large 8" carving knife in each hand. The incidents happened about 10 years apart from one another.

In the first, we were flagged down about a man chasing people with a knife in each hand. As I got out of the passenger door, the knife-man comes charging around the corner of a building screaming right at me. In the second, another officer and I went to a welfare check, where the person charged out his front door at us with a knife in each hand. All 4 knives in the two incidents were 8" carving knives. Weird coincidence.

In each case we backed the fuck up, shouted commands and dire threats and got the subjects to give up or retreat. In the 2nd case, a SWAT team got the guy out of his house after he poured gas on himself and the furniture.

Had a guy charge another partner and I with an actual fucking spear! He wasn't shot, either. Had a few other cases similar to this one without shooting. Of course, part of that is luck, luck that the suspects gave up, fled, tripped and fell (the spear-guy) or retreated without pushing us further. The first double-knife guy and the spear-guy were within a hair of getting shot, tho; again, luck.

Each time involved us trading space for time. Sometimes cops run out of space, though, or the person takes away their space with a determined charge, either at them or someone else close at hand.

It didn't appear to me this guy did that in the split-second before he was shot.

Bystanders can provide valued info, but you need to get them to back off. Cops ignore claims of person being a good guy or whatever. Countless families and friends insist what a good person someone is after that person murdered others. So, don't worry about that; cops tune that out while listening for info that can actually help them resolve situation without shooting.

@24 - He was indeed advancing toward them when he was shot, but it was at a walking pace in a wide open street with no apparent traffic. They had space to continue their retreat.

@25 - They still had space left to gain themselves more time to get to a point where they could attempt deescalation. This was not a split-second type of situation.

Cops have a mandate and an obligation to take people into custody alive, if possible, and they are required to exhaust all reasonable alternatives prior to using deadly force...if there is time for other alternatives.

Listen, being a cop means you have to put yourself in greater danger than average schmoes on occasion. If one cannot do that, there is always truck-driving school.

And do you have a clue what it's like to be a cop? Because I do.

Onto another issue. Some have asked why less-lethal weapons weren't employed. A Taser would have been useless here, but one officer could have tried one while the other kept him at gunpoint. I get why they didn't, tho. Fired Taser darts rarely work more than a few feet away; the taser is better when used as a stun gun and driven directly into someone...but that's obviously not an option here.

Mace could make him start swinging wildly with the knife at whoever was near him...but I would have favored risking that and trying it anyway. That means closing to within 10 feet or so, tho.

The best weapon here would be a beanbag round or a baton round, but most officers do not carry those, unfortunately. I doubt these cops did, either.

We begged our department for beanbag rounds, but they were too afraid officers would use the wrong shotgun in the heat of the moment. The answer is get volunteers to carry only the beanbag shotgun (painted hot pink) and no regular shotgun.

Unless they kept shooting while he was down or once he was disarmed, the number of shots fired is mostly irrelevant. Cops are trained to shoot center-mass (easiest to hit and most likely to stop combo) until the threat is down or disarmed. Handguns are notoriously inaccurate, and you don't know if you even hit the guy at all until he's down...or drops his weapon.

Oh, and it's not entirely accurate that no cop wants to shoot anyone. There are cops that cannot wait to shoot someone, and every other cops knows who they are. They're not too common but common enough to be disturbing. Were these two cops among them? Simple law of averages would say no...but it is possible.

As to justification, this one is a tough case to call. It's not clear-cut either way. I lean toward justified, but I would want to see the other recordings frame by frame and read all the witness statements.

They had more space to trade in the face of guy with a knife walking toward them, and I think they should have used it. OTOH, it was a chaotic scene, there is a fear he'll cut someone near him other than the cops themselves, they gave plenty of commands and did trade some space for some time.

The fact that police-community relations are so toxic right now contributes to the anger over this shooting. If cops would ditch their "warrior" ethos, stop treating people like the enemy in Baghdad and show they're ridding themselves of their problem children, the community would likely be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on close calls like this one.

I've seen that in the past with my department. So, doing those things would actually make their jobs easier in terms of support...but they still don't want to do them in too many cases.

Sorry about the TLDR...

@42 - I laughed out loud at your post about the 21-foot rule. That's been discredited. Your fevered speculation about slit throats and aortas is what made me laugh out loud, tho.

@51 - Thank you for setting me straight about the distinction between deadly force law and departmental policy. I had no idea until your explanation, so bless you! I was also baffled about this whole “reasonable person/officer standard until your helpful explanation.

I mean, I did have to review police shooting and use of force investigations during my time as a patrol sergeant and lieutenant watch commander with Dallas PD, but I never understood that stuff until now.

I was positing based on my hypothetical finding as a hypothetical police chief. And despite your guidance, I’m still very comfortable with my guarded assessment.

@52 morty, LOL.