Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[bambu.]

You make a great case for drowning crapitalism in its bathtub. How many people does crapitalism need to eat a month to stay healthy? Are there enough retired bank clerks in the world to even take the edge off its hunger?

Up until the last couple of weeks I have been building up my arsenal and deepening my bunker, but seeing the goings on around Black Lives Matter Plaza and it’s adjacent pig pen, I’m starting to think of the addition as a wine cellar and I’ve started offloading my excess munitions to worthy charities like the AntiFrack League, Society for Coalless Future, The River Guardians, The Transgendered Defense Fund, The LatinX Empowerment Guild, Lambda Legal, The NAACP, ACORN, Planned Parenthood, The ACLU, INCAM, and The Hierarchical Organization of American Anarchists.

I’m just hoping I can still write all that off when the next tax season rolls around.

The way China is screwing Australia at present, I'll soon be living in a commune anyway.
Oh the folly of getting into bed with China.

Under your communist system, what you'd be writing off would be life as you know it.
The President would be telling you how things are, totally..."no correspondence will be entered into".
You, wouldn't be dominating anything, let alone the streets.

I had more in mind a global zero birth rate.
No births, lots of deaths...soon there would be enough resources for all.

[REDSTATEWARD]

I'm always amused how the GOPers profess love for the Constitution yet disdain for the Federal Gov't it set up.  Dems never call them on that.  If you're against the federal gov't, you're against the Constitution and you're against your country, the United States of America.  That's it.

Congratulations. In one simple paragraph you succeeded in admitting you know nothing about our federal government nor the people who consent to be governed by it.

[Echo4]

I'm always amused how the GOPers profess love for the Constitution yet disdain for the Federal Gov't it set up.  Dems never call them on that.  If you're against the federal gov't, you're against the Constitution and you're against your country, the United States of America.  That's it.

Congratulations. In one simple paragraph you succeeded in admitting you know nothing about our federal government nor the people who consent to be governed by it.

"LOL!"

[Echo4]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/business/greg-glassman-crossfit/index.html

Crossfit's CEO would have done better to simply say, "Yeah, that was a racist thing to say. As John Elway said, I have a lot to learn and a lot to unlearn. I'm sorry," instead of trying to shoehorn what he said into a non-racist mistake.

[Hamilton Samuels]

And similarly, we've been considering his resistance to being replaced when he loses for years.

Again, to remind you (and bankshot1) the context of the discussion is Republican resistance.  Yeah, of course we have known about Trump's authoritarian tendencies for years.  But there was a time when those concerns could be dismissed as the fever dreams of the Left.  We knew what kind of person Trump was, but someone in denial could look away.

There is no possible way to do that now. 

45% job approval.

Plenty of ways to deny it and even a few ways to approve of it.

What do you call the guy who gets 45% in a two person race?

Loser.

The Electoral College is giggling now.

Here is something to quell such enthusiasm: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/could-legislatures-hijack-the-2020-presidential-election.html

Hope this doesn't happen, but as Justice Stevens pointed out in 2000: "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."

Any kind of taking away of the electors and/or manipulation of their votes in the 2020 POTUS election by whatever means will lead us into much more than just rioting and looting. There will be a Civil War 2.0.

[Hamilton Samuels]

25th or impeachment options are just not going to happen unless Mousse O'Leany starts decapitating Girl Scouts and knocking their heads around the WH lawn with a croquet mallet.   I like joining in contemplation of the scenario, but it feels like contemplating benevolent aliens landing and taking away all our nukes:  fun but pure fantasy.   And if anyone tried,  Rethugs would make endless political hay about "purely political stunts while we need to be working together to deal with the current crisis...."  IOW,  gaslighting and hypocrisy to the max.

My point was simple enough, I thought.  If you really think Trump is ignoring the Constitution and is a threat to Democracy then you need to say more than “I’m going to vote for Biden.”

What part of the Constitution is Trump
“ ignoring”?

That inconvenient part of the First Amendment. You know, where people get to assemble and protest. Let's start there. Do you have a lot of time, because this could take a while?

[bambu.]

Trump had lashed out at his rival on Twitter this weekend as he said Biden and democrats “controlled by the Radical Left” would aim to defund the police during the civil unrest that has gripped the country.

“Sleepy Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats want to ‘DEFUND THE POLICE.’ I want great and well paid LAW ENFORCEMENT. I want LAW & ORDER!” he raged on Saturday night.

On Sunday, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he would be cutting the NYPD’s budget while officials in Minneapolis confirmed that they intended to disband the police force there.

#####

Election campaigns should be 'fun'.

_____
xxxxx


George Floyd’s accused killer is set to make his first court appearance overnight after US cities have declared they will begin taking the extraordinary step to “dismantle” and “de-fund” their police forces to appease Black Lives Matter protesters.

[Hamilton Samuels]

The Last Time the U.S. Army Cleared Demonstrators From Pennsylvania Avenue

I knew the general idea about the Bonus Army and the troops stomping on them and that being Hoover's death knell.  But didn't realize/remember it was Douglas MacArthur doing the head-cracking.  Or that he exceeded his orders and smashed both camps in DC. 

What was intended as a retirement bonus (payable in 1945) to Great War vets, voted in during boom times (1924), the vets wanted to claim right away after a few years of The Depression made it hard to survive.  Hoover decided to label them as troublemakers and commies, even though they were vets just looking to survive.  But Hoovervilles just down the road from his WH residence rankled HH.

Not only was the "military genius" MacArthur there, but so was Patton commanding a bunch of tanks.

Macarthur was a terrible human being, as Thurgood Marshall confirmed:When the U.S. military deployed troops to Korea in 1950, the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment was among them. President Truman had issued an executive order to integrate the military two years earlier, but many senior commanders simply ignored the command. Although the 24th's history dated back to the Civil War, the segregated regiment was under-resourced, under-trained and often sent into the most dismal situations.

A newspaper reporter from Baltimore's Afro-American first informed Thurgood Marshall that more than 50 black soldiers had been arrested in Korea, a number out of proportion to the average arrests of white soldiers. In 1951, the NAACP sent Marshall into the war-zone to investigate; he eventually cleared most of the soldiers' charges.

Listen
Marshall: There were records of trials, so-called trials, in the middle of the night where the men were sentenced to life imprisonment in hearings that lasted less than ten minutes. They were the old well-known drumhead court-martials, done in the heat of passion and in the heat of war.

There were fifty or sixty involved. One death penalty case. I remember in particular: the record showed that this man was charged with being absent in the presence of the enemy. Instead of being charged with AWOL, (Absent Without Leave) he was charged with cowardice in the presence of the enemy. And fortunately for him, he produced two witnesses: a major in the Medical Corps and a lieutenant in the Nurse Corps, both of whom testified that he was in a base hospital the very day that he was supposed to be AWOL. And despite their testimony, he was convicted and given life imprisonment.

Just prior to that, I was given an audience with General MacArthur, and I found it very interesting. I questioned him about the continuation of segregation in the Army and he said he was working on it. And I asked him how many years he'd been working on it, and he didn't really remember how many.

I reminded him that at the very time we were talking, the Air Force was completely integrated, and the Navy was quite integrated, and the only group not integrated was the Army. He said that he didn't find the Negroes qualified, and when he found them qualified, they would be integrated.

Interviewer: Do you have any further impressions of General MacArthur? Do you feel he was definitely biased or just opinionated?

Marshall: He was as biased as any person I've run across.

Interviewer: In other words, he felt basically that blacks were inferior?

Marshall: Inferior. No question about it. No question about it. I told him about all these instances. I said, "Well look, General - you've got all those guards out there with all this spit and polish and there's not one Negro in the whole group."

He said, "There's none qualified."

I said, "Well, what's qualification?"

He said, "In field battle, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."

I said, "Well, I just talked to a Negro yesterday, a sergeant, who has killed more people with a rifle than anybody in history. And he's not qualified?"

And he said, "No."

I said, "Well, now, General, remember yesterday you had the big band playing at the ceremony over there?"

He said, "Yes, wasn't it wonderful?"

I said, "Yeah. The Headquarters Band, it's beautiful." I said, "Now General, just between you and me, goddamn it, don't you tell me that there's no Negro who can play a horn!"

That's when he said for me to go.

There's gotta be prejudice. That's all it is.

Best proof of it was--General [Matthew] Ridgeway took over after him, and desegregated in about three weeks. Desegregated the whole thing. And the only opposition he found was among the Negroes [laughter]. They didn't want to be integrated. No, that man was something.

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/marshall/korea.html

[bambu.]

Protest music?

Blowin' in the Wind
Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, 'n' how many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, 'n' how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take 'til he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

[Hamilton Samuels]

Regarding musicians:

https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/2/article?id=Viewpoint-Hope

[Yankguy1]

Regarding musicians:

https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/2/article?id=Viewpoint-Hope

Let's hope Neil, one of my favorites, means it.

[Echo4]

https://scottrasmussen.com/president-trumps-job-approval-falls-to-41/

[bodiddley]

I'm always amused how the GOPers profess love for the Constitution yet disdain for the Federal Gov't it set up.  Dems never call them on that.  If you're against the federal gov't, you're against the Constitution and you're against your country, the United States of America.  That's it.

Congratulations. In one simple paragraph you succeeded in admitting you know nothing about our federal government nor the people who consent to be governed by it.

Congratulations, you got nothing.
Your entire argument is that you disagree.
Try again when you have one iota of substance.
Or don't.  You're useless and endless.

Plenty of GOPers go around saying the gov't is part of the problem, there was a decades-long quest to drown it in the bathtub.

Another awfulness is Trump saying the media is the enemy of the people.
Which is antithetical to democracy and the USofA.
Borderline treasonous.

[bodiddley]

A bit of the history of policing (and discrimination) in Minnesota

Mohamed Noor, a black Somali-American, is the only officer known to face murder charges in an on-duty killing, and his victim was white. Justine Ruszczyk Damond was shot in 2017 as she approached his car to report a possible rape behind her home. Noor was sentenced to 12½ years in prison, and the woman’s family received a record $20 million settlement.

Incidents that have drawn national attention since then include the shooting of Philando Castile, 32, during a 2016 traffic stop in nearby Falcon Heights as his girlfriend live-streamed the aftermath on Facebook. The Latino officer was acquitted..

And the death of Jamar Clark, 25, shot in 2015, when police responded to a report of an assault on a woman at a birthday party.

Castile’s family settled for $3 million. Clark’s family accepted $200,000.

“There it is, right there, in those numbers,” said Kevin Reese, founder of the Minneapolis activist group Until We Are All Free. “It is a prime example of how, here, white life is valued more than black lives.”

Though Minnesota is viewed as progressive, it ranks among the country’s worst when it comes to racial disparity. That extends to prisons -- black people represent about 7 percent of the state’s population, but make up 36% of those behind bars.

Laws enacted 30 years ago have led to over sentencing. In Minnesota, it’s possible to get life in prison just for being at the scene of a murder.

[kiidcarter8]

Trump orders withdrawal of federal troops from my city.


Bowser not only stood up to the bully, she dunked on him and put his ass on a poster.

nice


(actually they teamed up well)