The Evening Blues - 6-15-20



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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Big Maceo Merriweather

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues piano player Big Maceo Merriweather. Enjoy!

Big Maceo Merriweather - Chicago Breakdown

"Individuals do not create rebellions; conditions do."

-- H. Rap Brown


News and Opinion

I Reckon We Can Win This Thing

Everything keeps accelerating.

That seems to be the trend here currently. Things don’t appear to necessarily be getting better or worse at this point in time, they’re just accelerating.

It’s all moving faster and faster. Major news events are getting closer and closer together, people are becoming more and more aware of more and more important dynamics they were previously asleep to, political movements are suddenly picking up steam in a way many analysts never expected to see in their lifetime, and America’s previous revolutionary figurehead Bernie Sanders has been left in the dust wagging his finger at protesters not to push for the total dismantling of the police state.


For whatever reason, the inertia seems to be falling away from our species, for both our healthy impulses and our unhealthy ones. Recent events like these protests and the Covid-19 outbreak have seen more and more consciousness drawn to the need for robust social safety nets and the corrupt nature of the police state which holds the US-centralized empire together, but we’re also seeing mountains of new police assaults and new police killings, pre-planned authoritarian measures being pushed for, a sudden increase in internet censorship and narrative management, and .

It’s getting harder and harder to understand what’s happening. My news feed is full of people arguing about whether the American left has lost its mind and whether groupthink in journalism is out of control, my social media notifications are a whole hodgepodge of contradictory and generally illogical theories about a shadowy cabal being behind these protests and what they’re trying to achieve, and people are either being honest about the fact that they don’t know where this is all going or they’re dishonestly pretending that they do. We seem to be getting closer and closer to a point of narrative white noise, where conventional means of understanding the world just aren’t holding up anymore.

I don’t know where we’re headed, and I don’t pretend to know. Here’s what I do know:

~ Things are changing, and these changes appear to be happening at an accelerating rate.

~ Changes away from old patterns tend to make people feel psychologically uncomfortable. Everyone should definitely be prioritizing their psychological well being at this point in history, because I’m pretty sure it’s only going to get more unusual and confusing from here on out.

~ The most distinctive feature of the last four years has been expanding consciousness. Expanding consciousness of media corruption, of DNC corruption, of government corruption, of the excessive amount of power wielded by the US presidency and the absurd esteem people used to have for that position, of the abuse of immigrants, of police militarization, of unhealed racial wounds, etc. This is encouraging, because you can’t fix something you haven’t made conscious. ...

~ If we are unpatterning, and if our unpatterning is occurring at an accelerating rate, then it is reasonable to believe that at a certain point it can occur so rapidly and to such an extent that the old power structures simply won’t be able to keep up with it. These would be the same power structures which have been psychologically brutalizing our species with a constant barrage of propaganda to keep us consenting to a system which robs ordinary people of their basic needs while waging endless wars and giving more and more wealth and power to nationless oligarchs. We may be headed toward a point where they simply cannot do that anymore.

~ This might just be what it looks like when a species which quickly evolved the capacity for abstract thought begins making the necessary adaptations to survive in a world that can no longer accommodate its self-destructive tendencies. Not because we thought it would be a good idea in our clumsy thinky brains, but because nature itself is steering us there.

All in all, I reckon we can win this thing. Not the anti-policing protests necessarily; I don’t quite know what will happen with those in the long run. I mean the whole thing. Winning it all. Actually getting out from underneath the bastards and beginning to function as a healthy organism on this planet.

It certainly appears that something inside us has ignited which wants to disrupt our trajectory toward armageddon. Doesn’t mean we’ll succeed, but I absolutely do believe we have the potential to move into a healthy relationship with our minds, with each other, and with our ecosystem.

Krystal Ball: Fox News CAUGHT faking CHAZ photos as protest propaganda collapses

After Barr Ordered FBI to “Identify Criminal Organizers,” Activists Were Intimidated at Home and at Work

“I’ve never had any run-ins with the cops before. I’ve never been to jail and have no criminal record, so when the FBI showed up to my workplace, it scared the piss out of me,” says Katy, a 22-year-old who works for a custodial services company in Cookeville, a small college town in middle Tennessee. “I really thought I was going to lose my job. The whole experience was terrifying.”

Moved by the video of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Katy — who requested she only be identified by her first name — and a friend had created a Facebook event for a Black Lives Matter rally in Cookeville’s public square on Saturday, June 6. She soon connected with several other Cookeville locals who wanted to help with planning the event, and enthusiasm grew as word of the rally spread. “I’ve never organized a rally before, I was just winging it,” Katy said. “I didn’t expect a lot of people to show up, but overnight 600 people had RSVP’d on Facebook.”

Counter-protesters organized their own Facebook group, Protect Cookeville Against Looters, which quickly swelled to over 1,000 members. Some of the members of this group determined that Katy was the main organizer of the upcoming rally and began posting her personal information and making violent threats. ... Katy eventually backed out of the rally — and a group of local high school students took over planning — but she had already gotten the attention of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, or JTTF, a federally coordinated network of local law enforcement officers who work under the direction of the FBI to gather intelligence about terrorist threats.

On June 4, agents turned up unannounced at Katy’s work, pulling her off the job and into a large truck in the gravel parking lot to question her about her connections to the upcoming rally and to antifa — the loose anti-fascist movement recently labeled as a terrorist organization by President Donald Trump. Katy had never heard of them. As The Intercept has previously reported, FBI agents have been questioning arrested protesters about their political beliefs, apparently at the behest of U.S. Attorney General William Barr. ... Barr also directed the JTTF to “identify criminal organizers and instigators,” even though antifa has no organizational structure and the FBI’s own internal assessments don’t support the claim that antifa is somehow weaponizing protests. ...

“What the JTTF is doing is shocking, but we saw this happen before during the McCarthy era, when the FBI and other various agencies investigated activists with the purpose of discouraging or chilling free speech,” said Will York, an attorney who specializes in free speech cases and is a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild’s Nashville chapter. “If the movement for police reform and racial justice has legs in Cookeville, Tennessee, then it clearly has touched a deep nerve in this country. Federal and local police agencies trying to counter that momentum are likely to use these tactics to make activists think twice about organizing such an event again, especially in rural communities.”

Democrats Blame Russia For Racism & Riots

'One of the gentlest people I know:' 75-year-old shoved by police a peace activist, not a provocateur

In the moments before he was pushed to the sidewalk by a Buffalo police officer and then left for dead, 75-year-old Martin Gugino walked towards the line of advancing police. But why?

“I know exactly what he was doing. I’ve seen him do it a hundred other times,” says his close friend, fellow activist and public defense attorney Matt Daloisio, in a telephone conversation. “What I think he was doing was trying to offer them something to read on his phone: about the law, about the right of people to assemble. Or asking why they were preventing people from exercising that right.”

Gugino remains in hospital due to the serious head injury he received at the hands of Buffalo police. Daloisio says that although he has left the ICU, he sustained a brain injury, and “it’s not clear what long-term effects that will have”.

Gugino’s presence at the protest and his attempt to engage the police was in keeping with the Catholic Worker Movement, which Gugino and Daloisio are aligned with. The movement takes its position not from a political tract, but from what they see as the most radical passage in the New Testament. “Different people figure out ways to live out the Beatitudes,” Daloisio says, referring to the precepts outlined in the Sermon on the Mount.

The passage is familiar to anyone who has even a casual acquaintance with Christian teaching: Jesus inverts worldly values to elevate the poor, the sick and the meek. In Sunday school, it might have the force of a platitude, but Catholic Workers take it with the utmost gravity. Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the movement, described it as their “manifesto”. Even though the movement – which Daloisio calls “anarchist” – has no binding structure or formal membership, those aligned with it engage in actions to advance peace and justice as they see it, from voluntary poverty in the service of the poor, to protest, to sometimes controversial forms of direct action.

Erasing 30 Years of Progress, Covid-19 Pandemic Could Lead to More Than One Billion People Living in Poverty: Study

The number of people living in poverty around the globe could eventually top one billion as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to researchers at Kings College London and Australian National University.

Those findings were reported in a study released Friday warning that the pandemic is already reducing the total income of the poorest people in the world by about $500 million per day, provoking fears from experts that the planet will face what The Economist called "The Great Reversal" in which progress on ending poverty is set back by 20 to 30 years.

"Far too little attention is being given to the worsening crisis in developing countries where coronavirus is spreading rapidly and governments grapple with the devastating economic consequences of prolonged shutdowns and the collapse of world trade," wrote the report's authors. "Three-quarters of new cases detected every day are in developing countries."

With the crisis now spreading rapidly in countries including Libya, Pakistan, and Iraq, 80 million to 400 million newly poor people could be living under the global poverty line—earning $1.90 per day or less—by the time the pandemic is over, according to the study, which was published by the U.N. University World Institute for Development Economics Research.

In the worst-case scenario presented by the study, 1.1 billion people will live in extreme poverty as a result of the crisis.

The report bolstered findings released by the World Bank earlier this week, which estimated that at least 71 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty this year due to the pandemic.

Brazil's Covid-19 catastrophe deepens

The precise magnitude of Brazil’s Covid-19 tragedy remains unclear – but the story told by official statistics grows more wretched by the day. On Friday, Brazil overtook Britain as the country with the world’s second-highest death toll: 41,901 deaths since the first fatality was confirmed in São Paulo on 17 March.

A University of Washington projection indicated another 100,000 Brazilians could die before August, possibly placing Brazil ahead of the US as the country with the most deaths. As the catastrophe deepens there is growing anger at the conduct of president Jair Bolsonaro, whose jumbled and dysfunctional handling of a pandemic he has called a “fantasy” has made Boris Johnson’s widely panned response look sober and efficient.

“This is the worst public health crisis we’ve faced – and it has come at a time when we have the worst government in the world,” said Daniel Dourado, a public health expert and lawyer from the University of São Paulo who believes thousands of lives could have been saved by a swifter and less erratic response. “The country is adrift.” =

Fauci says US might not see 'second wave' of Covid-19 cases

Leading US public health expert and White House coronavirus taskforce member Dr Anthony Fauci has said the US may not see a “second wave” of cases of Covid-19. According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, the US has recorded more than 2m cases of Covid-19 and nearly 115,000 deaths.

Many experts fear attempts to reopen shuttered state economies and mass protests over police brutality and structural racism could contribute to a second surge in cases. But Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who has been sidelined by the White House since April, after breaking with Donald Trump’s position on reopening the economy, told CNN on Friday increases in cases in several states were not necessarily indicative of a “second spike” of infections.

“When you start to see increases in hospitalisation, that’s a surefire situation that you’ve got to pay close attention to,” Fauci said. “It is not inevitable that you will have a so-called ‘second wave’ in the fall, or even a massive increase if you approach it in the proper way,” he added, advising people to maintain social distancing and to continue to wear masks in public.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), close to 80% of Americans self-isolated in the last month and 74% wore face coverings in public either always or often. Residents of New York and Los Angeles did so about 90% of the time.

n the past week, 19 states including Texas, South Carolina, Utah, Arizona, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Oregon, California, Nevada and Florida have reported seven-day rolling average highs for new Covid-19 infections.

Facebook Pitched New Tool Allowing Employers to Suppress Words Like “Unionize” in Workplace Chat Product

During an internal presentation at Facebook on Wednesday, the company debuted features for Facebook Workplace, an intranet-style chat and office collaboration product similar to Slack. On Facebook Workplace, employees see a stream of content similar to a news feed, with automatically generated trending topics based on what people are posting about. One of the new tools debuted by Facebook allows administrators to remove and block certain trending topics among employees.

The presentation discussed the “benefits” of “content control.” And it offered one example of a topic employers might find it useful to blacklist: the word “unionize.”

Facebook Workplace is currently used by major employers such as Walmart, which is notorious for its active efforts to suppress labor organizing. The application is also used by the Singapore government, Discovery Communications, Starbucks, and Campbell Soup Corporation.

The suggestion that Facebook is actively building tools designed to suppress labor organizing quickly caused a stir at the Menlo Park, California-based company. Facebook employees sparked a flurry of posts denouncing the feature, with several commenting in disbelief that the company would overtly pitch “unionize” as a topic to be blacklisted.

Pentagon Starts Bailing Out Companies That have Lost Business Due to Coronavirus

The Pentagon has begun to bail out U.S. companies that have seen large parts of their business dry up amid the coronavirus pandemic, in a bid to make sure they can still build weapons.

On Wednesday, officials announced that five mid-tier defense companies had received a total of $135 million to “help sustain defense-critical workforce capabilities in body armor, aircraft manufacturing, and shipbuilding,” according to a Defense Department statement.“These actions will help to retain critical workforce capabilities throughout the disruption caused by COVID-19 and to restore some jobs lost because of the pandemic,” Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, a Defense Department spokesman, said in the statement.

Meanwhile, a senior Pentagon official told lawmakers that DoD plans to ask Congress for money to reimburse many of its contractors for COVID-related expenditures; for example, wages paid to keep employees on the payroll despite idled production lines and vacated offices; purchases of personal protective gear, and alterations to factory and other work spaces for social distancing.

These moves will buttress earlier Pentagon efforts to shore up its COVID-rattled contractors, including paying firms more money up front and awarding multibillion-dollar contracts earlier than planned.

Sanders Proposes Slashing Pentagon Budget by 10% to Reinvest Funds in Communities 'Devastated by Poverty and Incarceration'

Sen. Bernie Sanders is planning to introduce an amendment in the coming days to slash the Pentagon budget by 10% and redirect that money toward healthcare, housing, and education funding for U.S. communities ravaged by poverty and mass incarceration.

"Instead of spending $740 billion on the Dept. of Defense, let's rebuild communities at home devastated by poverty and incarceration," the Vermont senator tweeted Friday. "I'll be filing an amendment to cut the DoD by 10% and reinvest that money in cities and towns that we've neglected and abandoned for far too long."

The Sanders amendment, which is still being crafted, will seek to impose a $74 billion cut on the $740.5 billion military budget proposed by the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2021. The sprawling annual defense policy bill passed the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday with an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 25-2.

The NDAA is expected to reach the Senate floor the week of June 22.

The Killing of Rayshard Brooks: Atlanta Police Shoot Dead Unarmed Man Who Fell Asleep in His Own Car

Yeah, this time they are going to get it right and their reforms will work:

Rayshard Brooks: Democrats call for police reform after latest killing

Leading Democrats said on Sunday the killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta underlined the need for significant change in US law enforcement, as the country headed into a fourth week of unrest over police brutality and systemic racism.

Brooks, 27, was shot on Friday night after officers responded to a call about him falling asleep in his car while in the drive-thru line at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant. Video showed Brooks and officers in lengthy conversation before an altercation erupted. Officer Garrett Rolfe shot Brooks while he tried to flee.

The killing came after weeks of protests fueled by the killing in Minneapolis of George Floyd, on whose neck a police officer kneeled for nearly nine minutes. On Saturday night, demonstrators marched in Atlanta and the restaurant in question was burned.

The House majority whip, James Clyburn, said he was incensed. “You wonder, sometimes, when you’re dealing with an issue like this out here for two or three weeks, and then you see a police officer still being insensitive to the life of a young African American man,” the South Carolina Democrat told CNN’s State of the Union. “This did not call for lethal force. And I don’t know what’s in the culture that would make this guy do that. It has got to be the culture. It’s got to be the system.”

Stacey Abrams, a former minority leader of the Georgia House and candidate for governor now a contender to be Joe Biden’s vice-presidential pick, told ABC’s This Week more money should be allocated to social services, along with comprehensive police reform.

Police Anti-Bias Trainer Shot in Groin by San Jose Cops at Protest: “It’s Clear This Isn’t Working”

More details at link:

These Cities Replaced Cops With Social Workers, Medics, and People Without Guns

Don’t call it “defunding.” But cities across the U.S. have been finding new ways to respond to social problems that don’t solely rely on sending in armed cops. These programs haven’t received a lot of attention, and some are quite small, but cities have been working on local, alternative approaches to issues cops seem least-equipped to deal with, including mental health crises, homelessness, traffic issues, drugs, and sex work. Some have tried turning the response over to trained specialists who aren’t carrying guns. Others have the specialists riding along with the cops.

A city-by-city review by VICE News turned up several examples. New Orleans has outsourced its response to minor traffic accidents to a private company. Eugene, Oregon, sends a small team consisting of a medic and a crisis worker to one-fifth of all 911 calls. Florida's Miami-Dade County puts a tax on restaurants and uses the proceeds to help move the homeless into shelters and on to permanent housing.

These real-world examples point to how cities might ultimately turn the vague “Defund the police” chant into a reality where true public safety is separated from the across-the-board social services the police are ill-equipped to handle. They’re also still just a drop in the bucket. In most places, armed cops remain the catch-all response team handling everything from loud music to a busted tail light, with results that too often spin out of control into violence or homicide.

George Floyd’s Murder May Finally End the Army’s Fealty to Defeated Confederate Traitors

In recent years, as protests raged against Confederate statues and monuments in cities and towns across the South, Army bases named for Confederates were largely ignored. But the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has led to nationwide protests against police violence targeting African Americans and sparked a broader debate about systemic racism. For the first time, the Army’s continued use of Confederate names on so many of its bases is coming under intense scrutiny.

When members of Congress and others sought to change the names of the 10 major installations named for Confederates, the Army consistently refused. But amid outrage over Floyd’s murder, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy are supposedly “open to a bipartisan discussion of the topic,” the New York Times reported last week.

Of course, Donald Trump immediately got involved to defend the rights of Confederate generals, and said he wouldn’t allow the bases to be renamed. ...

Yet Trump is ignoring the fact that the bases are all named for traitors to the United States — as well as losers and incompetents. The men whose names those bases memorialize were also passionate advocates of a slavocracy who acknowledged that they were fighting to preserve slavery. ...

While the Army has its own process for naming installations and could change them without authorization from the president or Congress, it seems highly unlikely that the Army will do so on its own, at least as long as Trump is president. But a Senate committee took an initial step last week, voting to require that the Pentagon remove Confederate names from all bases that bear them. Surprisingly, the measure was supported by some Republican senators, a small sign that the nationwide protests over George Floyd’s murder may be opening a sliver of daylight on racial issues between congressional Republicans and Trump.



the horse race



Shahid Buttar on Running Against Nancy Pelosi, Kente Cloth, and Police Reform | Useful Idiots

New York Times Endorses Jamaal Bowman as a 'Promising New Face' Voters Can Send to Congress

A day before in-person voting began for state primary elections, the New York Times on Friday endorsed Jamaal Bowman, the progressive challenger to 16-term Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel, who represents New York's 16th Congressional District.

The editorial board's decision followed other major endorsements Bowman has picked up in recent weeks, including from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who represents the nearby 14th Congressional District.

If Bowman wins this primary, his victory could be compared to that of Ocasio-Cortez in 2018, when she ousted another longtime Democratic congressman. Along with Bowman, the Times endorsed Ocasio-Cortez and other New York candidates.

Although not all of the Times endorsements were for political newcomers or candidates who haven't yet held a seat in the U.S. House or Senate, the endorsement piece is titled, "New York Voters Can Send Some Promising New Faces to Congress."

"At a time when millions of voices are calling out for peaceful change, New Yorkers can make an immediate difference with this year's primary elections," the board wrote. "The nation badly needs new faces, new energy, new talent, and new ideas."



the evening greens


Climate worst-case scenarios may not go far enough, cloud data shows

Worst-case global heating scenarios may need to be revised upwards in light of a better understanding of the role of clouds, scientists have said. Recent modelling data suggests the climate is considerably more sensitive to carbon emissions than previously believed, and experts said the projections had the potential to be “incredibly alarming”, though they stressed further research would be needed to validate the new numbers.

Modelling results from more than 20 institutions are being compiled for the sixth assessment by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is due to be released next year.

Compared with the last assessment in 2014, 25% of them show a sharp upward shift from 3C to 5C in climate sensitivity – the amount of warming projected from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide from the preindustrial level of 280 parts per million. This has shocked many veteran observers, because assumptions about climate sensitivity have been relatively unchanged since the 1980s.

“That is a very deep concern,” Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said. “Climate sensitivity is the holy grail of climate science. It is the prime indicator of climate risk. For 40 years, it has been around 3C. Now, we are suddenly starting to see big climate models on the best supercomputers showing things could be worse than we thought.” He said climate sensitivity above 5C would reduce the scope for human action to reduce the worst impacts of global heating. “We would have no more space for a soft landing of 1.5C [above preindustrial levels]. The best we could aim for is 2C,” he said.

Worst-case projections in excess of 5C have been generated by several of the world’s leading climate research bodies, including the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre and the EU’s Community Earth System Model.

Federal Court Urged to Hold 'Rogue' Trump EPA in Contempt for Blatant Defiance of Ban on Toxic Weed Killer

A coalition of farming and conservation groups is calling on a federal appeals court to hold EPA chief Andrew Wheeler in contempt for defying an order to immediately suspend use of dicamba, a poisonous weed-killer that is notorious for its tendency to drift and destroy nearby crops.

"Trump's EPA is so rogue it thinks it can blow off a federal court ruling that stops the damaging dicamba spraying in an administrative order," George Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety, lead counsel in the case, said in a statement late Thursday night. "EPA needs a lesson in separation of powers and we're asking the court to give it to them."

On Monday, the EPA issued guidance greenlighting the use of dicamba through July 31 despite a June 3 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the agency's approval of XtendiMax, Engenia, and FeXapan—dicamba-based herbicides sold by chemical giants Bayer (formerly Monsanto), BASF, and Corteva, respectively.

In its 56-page ruling (pdf), the Ninth Circuit said the EPA "entirely failed to recognize the enormous social cost to farming communities where use of dicamba herbicides had turned farmer against farmer, and neighbor against neighbor."

"The EPA and Monsanto urge us, if we conclude that substantial evidence does not support the 2018 conditional registrations, to remand without vacatur, leaving the conditional registrations in effect," the court said. "We decline to do so."

Green groups celebrated the ruling as a victory for both farmer safety and the environment. On Thursday, the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed an emergency motion (pdf) urging the Ninth Circuit to enforce its June 3 order and hold the EPA and Wheeler in contempt for refusing to abide by it.

According to the two groups, last week's court ruling to ban the continued use of dicamba "could not have been any clearer" and argued the EPA must be held to account for disobeying the order.

"It's mind-boggling to see the EPA blatantly ignore a court ruling, especially one that provides such important protections for farmers and the environment," Stephanie Parent, a senior attorney with CBD, said in a statement. "We're asking this court to restore the rule of law at the Trump EPA."


Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Police Budgets, Austerity, and Tax Cuts for the Rich Are Colliding in Democratic States and Cities

“This Has to Stop”: Court Rejects Qualified Immunity for Officers Who Shot Wayne Jones 22 Times

‘Spying on Assange’ With Max Blumenthal, Stefania Maurizi and Fidel Narváez

Julian Assange indictment fails to mention WikiLeaks video that exposed US 'war crimes' in Iraq

Israel and the US Step Up Efforts To Intimidate the Hague War Crimes Court

Narrative Control Operations Escalate As America Burns

By tearing down our statues, Albanians stopped learning from the past

NYT Erases US Occupation’s Role in Prolonging Taliban Insurgency

COVID-19: Low-Wage Essential Workers Get Less Protection & Less Information

Organizers in Minneapolis Weigh Role of Community Defense Groups in a Police-Free Future

I Saw My Friends Beaten by Police. This Is What Happens When Cities Prioritize Property Over Black Lives.

Wall Street Banks Tank One Day After Fed Chair Says They’re “a Source of Strength”

Nouriel Roubini: "The Stock Market Is Deluding Itself"

How to Prepare a Cheap Burner Phone for Protesting

Democracy Now: “He Wanted to Hurt Me”: New York Protester Hospitalized After NY Officer Shoved Her to the Ground

Daniel Marans: Why Keith Ellison DOES NOT support defunding the police


A Little Night Music

Big Maceo Merriweather - Big Road Blues

Big Maceo Merriweather - Why Should I Hang Around

Big Maceo Merriweather - Ramblin' Mind Blues

Big Maceo - Big City Blues

Big Maceo Merriweather - Have You Heard About It

Big Maceo Merriweather - Poor Kelly Blues

Big Maceo - Things Have Changed

Big Maceo - Texas Stomp

Big Maceo - Winter Time Blues

Big Maceo Merriweather - Worried Life Blues


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18 users have voted.

Comments

Unabashed Liberal's picture

Medicare spending during the COVID crisis. As Neuman points out, not really surprising, since so many non-emergency medical surgeries and procedures have been curtailed.

Curious to find out what the Medicare premium increases will be this Fall.

Hey, do you know much about Facebook? We're actually seriously considering joining, because we'd like to get involved in the Justice For Sister Cathy and Joyce Malecki movement. (We're on our second re-watch of the series--turned out to be 7 parts/episodes.) Anyhoo, as 'security' conscious as we are, not sure what to do. Since I've never attempted to register, I have no idea what info they require. Do you, or anyone else, here, have any idea how intrusive it would be?

Hope you had a nice and restful weekend.

Everyone have a nice evening; stay safe and well.

Bye Pleasantry

Mollie

"The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation."
~~Matt Taibbi, The American Press Is Destroying Itself, June 12, 2020

"I know, I know. All passion; no street smarts."
~~Captain West, 1992 Rob Reiner/Aaron Sorkin Movie, A Few Good Men

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die, I want to go where they went.”
~~Will Rogers, Actor & Social Commentator (1856-1950)

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8 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

joe shikspack's picture

@Unabashed Liberal

it's not surprising that medicare outlays are reduced given that many medical institutions (at least in my area) are putting off routine appointments or trying to do skype visits.

depending upon how you use facebook, it can be very intrusive. facebook wants a lot of information about you in order to link you up with friends and acquaintances. it's also intrusive in that it reads your browser history and cookies and anything else it can get into in order to serve you ads.

if you have to use it, make up a name and birthdate and try to answer questions about things like which high school you attended with things like "the school of hard knocks."

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5 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

@joe shikspack  
the provision in the user agreement where they wanted me to grant them permission to gather info about me from third parties including offline (which, though not spelled out, clearly would cover buying and matching up data from data brokers, banks, store loyalty programs, credit card and credit reporting companies, and who knows what other shady outfits operating in legal gray areas).

It’s like a version of the Stasi where you maintain your own file and report your own interests, activities, contacts, and ties to other people voluntarily.

I avoid Facebook and its subsidiaries like WhatsApp and Instagram like the plague. Of course, others may see it differently — I keep hearing people say that if you have a business / are a free-lancer, you practically have to be on there. So YMMV.

At the time, when Facebook’s expansion was just starting up, that “feature” — tracking you offline, as well as, and on top of, following your every movement on the web — already distinguished them from Amazon and Google. Nowadays I assume Amazon and Google do the same and avoid them too.

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11 users have voted.

@lotlizard associated with getting those free accounts. The required information was far more than I was ever willing to put on-line.

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6 users have voted.
Unabashed Liberal's picture

@joe shikspack

info.

Well, hopefully we can find another way to contact the principals in the "Justice" campaign. Probably, it's in the documentary itself, if I listen closely enough (aside from their Facebook page). Then, there's local press, since the cold case has been written about from time to time.

To date, Twitter is the only 'social media' that Mr M and I do--guess it should stay that way.

Mollie

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3 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

Suggested Slogans for the Biden Campaign. Very funny in that 'oh god' vein.

Not an inappropriate suggestion in the lot. A teaser:

Joe hasn't voted for the Iraq War in over fifteen years.

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14 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@Marie

4CC37AE2-8193-43AA-8C1F-136E1C7009D6.jpeg

And so many other things that will once again only help the upper class. F you Biden. And Obama, Pelosi, Schumer and I’m throwing Bernie in there too. Can anyone name one bill that Bernie blocked or filibustered in his long tenure? Not doing it on the first CARES bill is unforgivable for me. Not while he is on Twitter every damn day telling us what congress needs to do. No shit Sherlock.

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13 users have voted.

@snoopydawg I liked all of them.

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5 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@Marie

pretty good, thanks for the link!

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5 users have voted.
Anja Geitz's picture

@Marie

Have to say, I’m kinda surprised at the jabs they’re throwing at their own candidate. I mean unofficially speaking of course.

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8 users have voted.

There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

mimi's picture

at least if you want to stay sane. (nah, I love the nature and landscapes too, a lot)

My father had a friend, in the late forties and early fifties. He said, that he was kind of a great guy, because he loved all that Jazz and Blues from the United States. He was a great lawyer. And taught me 25 years later to just walk away from nutty people like the German Verfassungsschutz (those guys who are supposed to defend the German constitution), who tried to get me in trouble. But helas, they couldn't resist my charm, ahem..(I had still some charm back in the days)

And if I only would come back to the States to read the EB at humane hours, when my brain is not totally blank, I had so much more for fun. When do you storm the bastille?

Oh, and Donald the Duck tries to seduce me with a new healthcare plan? Got two emails about it, which I deleted immediately.

Good Night from here. Have a good evening all and stay safe. It's a bad, bad world out there...

Really, it is BAD.

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9 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@mimi

yep, if i was ever able to leave here for a saner country, it would be the music that i take with me. we do have some awesome music.

timing the storming of the bastille is probably a little more difficult than timing the stock market. there are signs and portents and people think out loud sometimes, but it's darned hard to get an accurate fix on the tipping point from any significant remove of time.

have a great evening!

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7 users have voted.
Azazello's picture

Here's a couple good videos.
First, Chris Hedges with Glen Ford.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVv__4EIS4M width:500 height:300]
Then also from RT, a CrossTalk discussion about the "Wokist Cult".
This goes along with Taibbi's recent essay The American Press Is Destroying Itself and reminded me of the Sokal Squared hoax back in 2018. It also reminded me of a website I used to frequent where a refusal to support Hillary Clinton came from a "place of privilege".
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lytq1S410eI width:500 height:300]

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11 users have voted.

We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

thanks for the videos! i hadn't seen the hedges/ford interview yet. i'm looking forward to listening to it later.

have a good one!

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5 users have voted.
Pricknick's picture

a bit bashfull about saying "I told you so." about bern-me sanders.
He makes a shitty sheep dog.

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12 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

joe shikspack's picture

@Pricknick

heh, i wasn't deeply invested in his run. he represented a compromise that i was willing to make at the polls, but i was already deeply disappointed with him, particularly on foreign policy.

so, i am neither surprised to see him fail, nor surprised that he is reverting to a spineless twerp.

i feel badly for people who did put a lot of stock in his run this time (or last for that matter) however, its clear that real change will be made in the streets, not at the polls.

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10 users have voted.
Pricknick's picture

@joe shikspack
the word Twerp.
Fitting isn't it?

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8 users have voted.

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

joe shikspack's picture

@Pricknick

it's one of my favorite descriptors to use in polite company when someone annoys me.

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3 users have voted.
mimi's picture

@joe shikspack
it is not that polite, but often fitting, Du Dussel ... of course that is not directed at you but ...at all those "Dussels" out there.

I think I am one day late in reading here. But have my fun doing so. Busy, busy these days in my cage.

Have a good one.

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1 user has voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@mimi

busy, eh?

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2 users have voted.
mimi's picture

@joe shikspack
all alone and had company.I am running and running and get all the mockery that you can get from the master trainer of teaching hamsters how to run without hanging yourself. I always fall...

Hi there, over the ocean, how are you? I have forgotten how the weather was in your part of the woods, but remember the heat was of a killing kind.

Hope you get enough rain out there and don't get roasted. I enjoy a lot of birds here and if I weren't so busy running to nowhere I would film them one day and ask distopian (I think he was the bird expert on C99p) and ask him if he would recognize the birds by their songs. They are incredible singers. We even have a cuckoo near by. Smile

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1 user has voted.

@joe shikspack like many say Bernie was the compromise. That said, the only thing I’m surprised about now is that he seems to be willing to burn (Bern?) up any good will he had left on behalf of his “good friend” Joe. He always seemed to relish his maverick Independent status, or at least independent appearance, but these days he is team player Bernie. Makes me wonder if Hills had been a little bit nicer, if she could have gotten some of that too.

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7 users have voted.

Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

joe shikspack's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

heh. given what a vile person hills is, i think that she came out of her theft of the election with about as much as you could hope for from an opponent that she robbed and abused. any normal person would not have been as generous under the circumstances as sanders was.

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3 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

The callousness of every person involved in Floyd’s death is beyond comprehension. Thao just stood there and ran interference for Chauvin who kept kneeling on Floyd’s neck even after he was told that there was no pulse. "He has no pulse!" But even worse is when the medic felt for his pulse he didn’t seem to be in any rush to provide emergency treatment. Nor did he tell Chauvin to move his damn knee. Look at how long it took for them to return with the gurney. Why the hell didn’t he tell Chauvin there was no pulse?Then they just rolled Floyd on to the stretcher and calmly rolled it out. Every aspect of this event must be investigated by an outside group that has no ties to the police. This includes the medical personnel who was involved at the scene.

Graphic video



View this post on Instagram


Warning: This is beyond disturbing, even harder to watch than the first video. “Get off of his neck! He’s not moving!” “You’re going to let him kill that man in front of you?” Tou Thao stood guard as Derek Chauvin MURDERED George Floyd ... while witnesses of the execution tried to stand up for JUSTICE, tried to save George’s life! The protest of those bystanders, who refused to just stand by and let it happen, has reverberated around the world — fueling our protest against injustice and police brutality!! 8 minutes 46 seconds. The four ex-officers MUST be convicted of MURDER for this hideous atrocity! They MUST all be held accountable!! #icantbreathe #georgefloyd #justiceforgeorgefloyd

A post shared by Ben Crump (@attorneycrump) on

A graphic video clip released by Floyd family attorney Benjamin Crump on Sunday shows the killing of Floyd from a new angle, and casts police officer Tou Thao in a damning light.

“This is beyond disturbing, even harder to watch than the first video,” Crump captioned the five-minute clip. “Tou Thao stood guard as Derek Chauvin MURDERED George Floyd ... while witnesses of the execution tried to stand up for JUSTICE, tried to save George’s life!”

The video opens with Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck.“He’s not f**king moving, bro,” bystanders scream at Thao. “You gonna let him kill that man in front of you?” one man asks. “He’s black, they don’t care,” another witness sighs. Floyd is eventually rolled onto a stretcher and taken away by an ambulance, as Thao attempts to push the crowd onto the sidewalk.

Unlike the initial video of the incident, which shocked the nation and provoked nearly three weeks of protests and violent riots, the latest clip focuses on Thao, who remains stone-faced as the bystanders beg for help.

Hopefully this will help clear your mind if you need it.

I love animals big and small...

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12 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

there is no angle from which the actions of the killer cop thugs is going to look good. hanging is too good for them.

elephants have some interesting behaviors. trying on the photographer's hat does seem a very human sort of playful behavior.

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9 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

@joe shikspack  
and rise up to protest the same way when the “Collateral Murder” video was leaked.

https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/

It seems that in “woke” world, Black people are real but Iraq people, etc., aren’t? So Michelle Obama can embrace George W. Bush and Hillary can cackle over a video showing Gaddafi being murdered. Everybody in uniform except cops gets a pass now! Mission accomplished!

#IraqLivesMatter

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12 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@lotlizard

If we are upset about blacks being killed then how can we not be upset about the innocent civilians across the pond?

As for the I word you are right about that. The super pac that’s funding Engel is an Israeli one. I thought I forgot something.

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8 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@lotlizard

i guess it is just a sad fact of our american life that we have far less of a constituency for the decent and humane treatment of humans outside of our borders than we do for our friends, neighbors and fellow citizens.

one would hope that once we learn to treat each other decently, the circle can be expanded.

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5 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

@lotlizard

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6 users have voted.

@snoopydawg wrapped his trunk around my neck, put my hat back on, for a kiss.
Can imagine 10 ways I could have died, but I got my hat back, and kissed a baby elephant.

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9 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Unabashed Liberal's picture

. . . is expected to be covered under Part A, which pays for inpatient care, because the drug was administered on an inpatient basis in clinical trials.

In this brief, we discuss how drugs provided in inpatient hospital settings are covered and reimbursed for beneficiaries in traditional Medicare under current law.

TM/OM beneficiaries with extensive supplemental coverage--such as, Medigap or some employer-sponsored retiree plans, may not have much, if any, OOP expense. Don't know what the cost of this new drug will be, but, 'guessing' it sure as heck won't be cheap. (Under many Medigap policies the entire 20% copay will be picked up--so, $0.00 out-of-pocket costs).

All the more reason (IMO) must not allow Uncle Joe to attempt to convert TM/OM to a 'managed care' system, like Medicare Advantage. Or, to a public option program.

Several of the PO proposals have the identical 'maximum' deductible amount that's allowed under MA plans, or $6700.

That deductible is per annum, per beneficiary.

Need to improve, and expand to cover Everyone, the current or original Medicare program.

Have a good one!

Mollie

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4 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

snoopydawg's picture

@Unabashed Liberal

I don’t know what the initials mean. You might have explained them before but if so I’ve forgot.

Unknw

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4 users have voted.
Unabashed Liberal's picture

@snoopydawg

what I'm abbreviating in parenthesis--just a bit lazy, today. Smile

OOP - out-of-pocket

TM - Traditional Medicare - program LBJ signed into law in 1965

OM - Original Medicare - ditto - another term for the program LBJ signed into law. IOW, TM and OM are interchangeable.

PO (proposals) - Public Option

MA - privatized 'managed care' version of TM/OM program, stands for Medicare Advantage

Mollie

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5 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

joe shikspack's picture

@Unabashed Liberal

if it turns out that remdesevir actually works, i would imagine that they will set the price pretty high, but not in the shkreli range. pharma companies have no shame, but they do understand public relations.

i would imagine that there's a big fight coming to preserve social security and medicare. perhaps it will be time to call up the grey panthers.

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7 users have voted.
Unabashed Liberal's picture

@joe shikspack

like we've never seen before, after all the recent/future spending.

Hey, I'm game! Smile

Mollie

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3 users have voted.

Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

snoopydawg's picture

The tweet I read on this made it sound very hypocritical so I’ll try to find it again.

I haven’t read this yet but it’s getting high praise on the Twit.

https://scheerpost.com/2020/06/15/chris-hedges-gaslighted-by-the-ruling-...

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7 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

it went up after i checked scheerpost for tonight's eb. it'll be in tomorrow's eb.

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5 users have voted.
lotlizard's picture

@snoopydawg  
Not even the most powerful witches and wizards in American politics can maintain any will to resist, when the “I-word” — Israel — is invoked.

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5 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

contempt is very interesting, but I'm afraid that it won't fly. At least one government agency openly and notoriously ignores Circuit Court rulings that go against it, filing a formal statement of "non-acquiescence", in the hopes of bringing the same issue before a different circuit and getting a contrary decision, allowing for a quick and easy petition for Cert. to the Supremes based on the conflict between the circuits.

What might fly, however, and be even more interesting is to hold anybody who uses dicamba in contempt and not allow them to claim that they get some sort of immunity because of the EPA's ruling.

be well and have a good one

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5 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

i am wondering if the court could not summon the head of the agency (in this case andrew wheeler) to make an appearance and answer a show cause order to demonstrate that he is not in contempt of court.

seems like if his presentation of cause fails, it would be a simple matter for the bailiff/sergeant-at-arms to clap him in handcuffs and chains and remove him to custody.

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4 users have voted.
enhydra lutris's picture

@joe shikspack
court's decision within it's circuit while seeking a conflicting decision in another circuit, and order some EPA ruling to that effect and still keep dicamba alive for most of the country.

be well and have a good one.

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3 users have voted.

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

thanks for the blues, wish I could dispense with the news but I can't.

Rob Urie has a brutal (but excellent) article in Counterpunch today. In it he says..."Democrats...spent four decades arming, militarizing and supporting police to combat 'crime' "...and that it was the liberal Democrats that..."built the largest gulag system in world history."

Actually, every sentence in this article sort of beats you over the head--body armor might be necessary if you're going to read it. A bicycle helmet... anything.

I'm going back to the blues, it makes me feel so much cheerier.

Edited to include the link. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/06/15/police-killings-are-a-political-...

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10 users have voted.
joe shikspack's picture

@randtntx

thanks for the link! i always enjoy rob urie's articles.

i thought this was the key insight:

The current focus on police violence is roughly analogous to explaining foreign entanglements like wars through the actions of foot soldiers and technicians rather than through the strategic and tactical goals of state leaders.

heh, now i'm ready to go back to some music, too. Smile

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5 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

after the Supremes voted for LGBTs rights and for sanctuary cities they then declined to take up a case on drilling or was it for allowing a gas pipeline in a national park? Ginsberg voted for it. I think common dreams has the article.

This is troubling.

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8 users have voted.

@snoopydawg 55 minutes away.
Oh no.

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3 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

this seems pretty ominous.

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2 users have voted.
snoopydawg's picture

They also passed on reviewing immunity for cops. Nice. Guess they want us to keep protesting.

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6 users have voted.

Jeebus, lots to read, lots to listen to, and I just may have run out of steam to give it a go tonight.
FWIW, come tomorrow evening, I will no longer be single.
TLOML moves in forever. To say that is a different life is a gross understatement.
I asked him to Come Softly to Me, Stay, and he answered, Land Ho!
BTW, the denial of a grant of immunity for cops is a BIG DEAL.
I deal with courts, seldom depend on them to do the right thing, but that court decision may have very positive consequences.
I have had many conferences with the insurance attorneys who represent cops. They rely on that immunity.
Well, oopsies.
A new day for cops.
And a new day for me.
I might get all mellowed out.
Naw...f' that. Rage at work, home is different.

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6 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

joe shikspack's picture

@on the cusp

congratulations! i'm so glad that things are working out for you.

i am hoping that the denial of immunity will mean that cops have to get insurance and their insurance will be rated based upon their behavior/complaints. it may be one way to get the nastiest cops off of the street.

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6 users have voted.

@joe shikspack will stop blanket coverage, start the tweaking.Pre-existing conditions sort of thing.
This 20 year old white lady came to town, was staying with my secretary. The goal was for her to get a job as deputy. She did. We were so proud.
She went through a psychological exam given to her by an obstetrician. He asked her if she was ok. She said yes. He signed off on it. 3 minutes.
Within 3 months, she slammed some handcuffed black woman against the jail wall. The sheriff told her to resign or get fired. She resigned. She is a cop somewhere else in Texas.
I don't think I have been this happy in my life, joe.
It is ALL GOOD, and I wish this love for everybody.

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5 users have voted.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981