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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

[bodiddley]

As far as the USA we are at a time when we are going to push past "black communities" and "white communities" to one community, sir. 
Contemplate that.

Would be nice.
But with the levels of segregation, wealth inequality, racism prevalent, I find it hard to believe. 

Hell, today's struggle is mostly just to have the police kill and abuse fewer black folk.  Really as long as the communities remain separate and unequal there is little chance of any uniting.

[bambu.]

The four cops are in jail and likely will never get out, ever.

#####

That doesn't seem fair and balanced.

Fair is self-explanatory.
Balanced...the scales of justice must weight all the evidence equally. No slipping extra weights on one side.

"I move for a change of venue...to Big Whiskey, Wyoming."

[josh]

http://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5dzgnk/trumps-deranged-antifa-tweet-and-oann-are-the-result-of-failed-media-policy

I think the author is too kind.

It's not an absence of attention to that consolidation, but an embracing of it by the conservative members of Congress and the administration, leading to things like the Sinclair network that can dictate what the stations must air.

You know, that "equally biased" thing.

[josh]

https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/06/08/joseph-bologna-philly-cop-charged/?fbclid=IwAR3G-BgjDqNXqrmZGpwOje_g625YcVscxW0a9X9VUGF_NWWqptVIgYrviV0

Better get behind the Philly cop accused of assault!

Just a few bad apples.

[josh]

A conservative columnist, ex-military, writes of his own experience and understanding of systemic racism, starting with an explanation of the term.

https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/american-racism-weve-got-so-very?fbclid=IwAR2DoNhD0wQvvPHG9kHlkX-SVEO85aOCjoHQRWNJjpC9R1zIQhQ6kJOsZcE

I've talked about Personal Incident Acquired Empathy and this is a prime example of it. Had he not adopted the girl he did, he would never have known, never have learned.

American Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far to Go
And the journey must continue step-by-step.

We each like to think we’re not unduly influenced by our immediate environment and culture. That’s a phenomenon that affects other people, we believe. I’m the kind of person who has carefully considered both sides and has arrived at my positions through the force of reason and logic. Sure, I’ve got biases, but that only matters at the edges. The core of my beliefs are rooted in reason, conviction, and faith.

Maybe that describes you, but I now realize it didn’t describe me. I freely confess that to some extent where I stood on American racial issues was dictated by where I sat my entire life. I always deplored racism—those values were instilled in me from birth—but I was also someone who recoiled at words like “systemic racism.” I looked at the strides we’d made since slavery and Jim Crow and said, “Look how far we’ve come.” I was less apt to say, “and look how much farther we have to go.”

Then, where I sit changed, dramatically. I just didn’t know it at the time. I went from being the father of two white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids to the father of three kids—one of them a beautiful little girl from Ethiopia. When Naomi arrived, our experiences changed. Strange incidents started to happen.

There was the white woman who demanded that Naomi—the only black girl in our neighborhood pool—point out her parents, in spite of the fact that she was clearly wearing the colored bracelet showing she was permitted to swim.

There was the time a police officer approached her at a department store and questioned her about who she was with and what she was shopping for. That never happened to my oldest daughter.

I wish he could transfer this learned awareness to other issues, but I would be shocked if he suddenly realized he is wrong about welfare, for example, too.

But I will take this. And I will share it - it is far from nothing, even if it is not everything.

[bodiddley]

A sidenote:

Why when the media quotes something from twitter do they almost always quote it twice?

Example:

Glassman apologized for the tweet on Sunday night.

"I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism," he wrote. "I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday. My heart is deeply saddened by the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake."

.@CrossFitCEO: "I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism. I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday.

My heart is deeply saddened by the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake.

— CrossFit (@CrossFit) June 8, 2020

I thought early on when twitter was new and starting to make news that it was just an awkward method of quoting twitter.  But it's persisted.

There's no reason for the repetition.  Quote twitter in the story, like normal, and provide a link if you wish.  Or make it clear its a twitter quote and take it out of the article text.  But to do both is strange and wasteful.  I'd rather more info in the article and not have to skip the repetition.

Very strange double twitter quotes have become the accepted norm.

[bodiddley]

I distinctly remember that one of the young cops in the Floyd killing was said by some here to have been on the force just 4 days.  I forget what the exact claim was for the other officer, but it was that he was also a complete neophyte.

I figured that was total bs when I saw a video and those two young officers are a team with their own police vehicle responding to calls.  They were the first to arrive and handcuffed Floyd.

Alex Kueng joined the MPD in the summer of 2019. Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) hired him on December 18, 2017, but he was assigned his duty in August 2019.

So he'd been an officer for 9 months.

Thomas Lane was accepted to the police academy in January 2019, hired by the Minneapolis Police Department as a police cadet on February 19, 2019 and started as a police officer in December 2019.

So roughly half a year as a policeman.

As far as I can tell MPD has a three month probation period.  Which both would have completed and been full officers.

It does seem a bit odd that two officers with just 6 and 9 months experience would be paired.  While the pair of Chauvin and Tou had 19 & 10 respectively.

[bodiddley]

Another issue I have a lot of trouble with is that the whole American racial classification system is racist.  It's still based on the one-drop of black blood rule from slavery days.  I look at ex-Officer Alexander Keung and he looks white to me.  Perhaps mixed.  Not what I would consider a black man.   Actually he just looks American to me...

He has what appears to be an Asian name, though I also see it claimed as Swiss, though it seems that he was adopted along with 3 brothers and sisters.  Now maybe Keung self-identifies as black.  Though reportedly he grew up in a black area, so that would probably be prudent to fit in.

It really shouldn't matter if Keung was black, white, Asian or some combination.  But of course in America we categorize by race and lots of cultural baggage goes with that designation.

[facilitatorn]

A sidenote:

Why when the media quotes something from twitter do they almost always quote it twice?

Example:

Glassman apologized for the tweet on Sunday night.

"I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism," he wrote. "I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday. My heart is deeply saddened by the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake."

.@CrossFitCEO: "I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism. I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday.

My heart is deeply saddened by the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake.

— CrossFit (@CrossFit) June 8, 2020

I thought early on when twitter was new and starting to make news that it was just an awkward method of quoting twitter.  But it's persisted.

There's no reason for the repetition.  Quote twitter in the story, like normal, and provide a link if you wish.  Or make it clear its a twitter quote and take it out of the article text.  But to do both is strange and wasteful.  I'd rather more info in the article and not have to skip the repetition.

Very strange double twitter quotes have become the accepted norm.

From my experience, the second instance, the repetition, is the tweet itself imbedded. The first is the quote of the tweet as referenced in the article. Saves you the trouble of having to defend yourself against lying about what someone has tweeted. Seems to be a journalistic convention now for handling references to tweets.

As to your subsequent posts, I recognize them as five examples of some of the strands of bullshit that make up the thin blue line.

[bodiddley]

Why do they need to both quote the tweet and then embed the tweet?
One or the other would work fine.
Why double quote something twice in an article?
It's silly and I assume nobody reads or needs to read the same tweet twice.

So you think the media embeds the tweet itself to prove it was tweeted, so the tweet is not deleted or altered later (can you modify a tweet?)

dnyuz does what I'd consider correctly quoting a tweet.
They set the tweet up with a general description followed by the embedded tweet with a link to that on twitter.

[bodiddley]

So in a NJ town the local anti-police brutality march was returning and encountered 4 white guys who mocked them and George Floyd.  One has already been fired form FedEx.  Another is, no surprise, a prison guard and former boys detention home guard, who has been suspended -- it being much harder to fire gov't (and preumably union) workers.

We'll see if the two others were employed.  No word on the 5th kid who wasn't identified (ha, kiidding).

In addition to mocking Mr. Floyd’s death, she said, the men on the side of the road had yelled, “If George Floyd would have complied he wouldn’t be dead”; “Go cash your checks”; “Start running”; and “Black Lives Matter to no one” as the group passed.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/white-counterprotesters-in-franklinville-nj-mock-george-floyds-killing/ar-BB15gsSz

Classy.

[bambu.]

Re: Trump Administration
« Reply #37476 on: Today at 09:10:31 PM »
ReplyQuote
Black communities have to change themselves...no one can change things for them;
White people/other people can help, but real change must come from within.
I've been at this a while...long before BLM

You've been at what for a while, exactly?

I mean, it seems quite apparent what you've been "at", but let's hear it in your own words. What have you been at?

As far as the USA we are at a time when we are going to push past "black communities" and "white communities" to one community, sir. 

Contemplate that.

Trying to improve the lot of Black people in Australia.

Also trying to make Australia one community...as the Seekers' song "I am Australian" states.

'I am Australian' is a song that symbolises Australia and its people. Its lyrics describe a nation whose people, history, culture and landscape are deeply connected. It is a patriotic song that is sung to celebrate both Australia's diversity and its unity. 'I am Australian' is often sung.

It was a nice ideal, but its "diversity" and their hyphenated races ……………-Australian  don't seem to have embraced it, choosing instead to wave the flags of their countries, and embrace their cultures.

Best of luck with your one community America ideal


I Am Australian
The Seekers

I come from the dream-time
From the dusty red-soil plains
I am the ancient heart
The keeper of the flame
I stood upon the rocky shores
I watched the tall ships come
For forty thousand years I've been
The first Australian

I came upon the prison ship
Bowed down by iron chains
I bought the land, endured the lash
And waited for the rains
I'm a settler, I'm a farmer's wife
On a dry and barren run
A convict, then a free man
I became Australian

I'm the daughter of a digger
Who sought the mother lode
The girl became a woman
On the long and dusty road
I'm a child of the Depression
I saw the good times come
I'm a bushie, I'm a battler
I am Australian

We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We'll share a dream and sing with one voice
"I am, you are, we are Australian"

I'm a teller of stories
I'm a singer of songs
I am Albert Namatjira
And I paint the ghostly gums
I'm Clancy on his horse
I'm Ned Kelly on the run
I'm the one who waltzed Matilda   ['Matilda' is a swag, as the unemployed/casual workers/drifters walked along the bedroll would sway, like a waltz.]
I am Australian.

I'm the hot wind from the desert
I'm the black soil of the plains
I'm the mountains and the valleys
I'm the drought and flooding rains
I am the rock, I am the sky
The rivers when they run
The spirit of this great land
I am Australian

We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We'll share a dream and sing with one voice
"I am, you are, we are Australian"

We are one, but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come
We'll share a dream and sing with one voice
"I am, you are, we are Australian"

"I am, you are, we are Australian"

***


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v22SPtCFck8&list=RDv22SPtCFck8&start_radio=1

The Seekers - I Am Australian, Georgy Girl, Waltzing Matilda, (Live, 1994, + Aus National Anthem!)

#####

The comments are interesting, some Americans.

[josh]

Why do they need to both quote the tweet and then embed the tweet?
One or the other would work fine.

So it stays even if the tweet gets deleted, Bo.

[josh]

Re: Trump Administration
« Reply #37476 on: Today at 09:10:31 PM »
ReplyQuote
Black communities have to change themselves...no one can change things for them;
White people/other people can help, but real change must come from within.
I've been at this a while...long before BLM

You've been at what for a while, exactly?

I mean, it seems quite apparent what you've been "at", but let's hear it in your own words. What have you been at?

As far as the USA we are at a time when we are going to push past "black communities" and "white communities" to one community, sir. 

Contemplate that.

Trying to improve the lot of Black people in Australia.

Also trying to make Australia one community...as the Seekers' song "I am Australian" states.

I am sure that was mighty white of you.

I imagine you stopped because you did not feel your efforts were appreciated.

[kidcarter8]

I distinctly remember that one of the young cops in the Floyd killing was said by some here to have been on the force just 4 days.  I forget what the exact claim was for the other officer, but it was that he was also a complete neophyte.

I figured that was total bs when I saw a video and those two young officers are a team with their own police vehicle responding to calls.  They were the first to arrive and handcuffed Floyd.

Alex Kueng joined the MPD in the summer of 2019. Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) hired him on December 18, 2017, but he was assigned his duty in August 2019.

So he'd been an officer for 9 months.

Thomas Lane was accepted to the police academy in January 2019, hired by the Minneapolis Police Department as a police cadet on February 19, 2019 and started as a police officer in December 2019.

So roughly half a year as a policeman.

As far as I can tell MPD has a three month probation period.  Which both would have completed and been full officers.

It does seem a bit odd that two officers with just 6 and 9 months experience would be paired.  While the pair of Chauvin and Tou had 19 & 10 respectively.

Yeah.  I guess Lane's lawyer is lying.