[y66]

 Winstonm, on 2020-June-04, 16:53, said:

Don't kid yourself that a troll got my goat. What got to me was the new information that the killer of Ahmaud Arbery said after the shooting. "Fuc%ing n#%%#$!" And they almost got away with it by claiming an attempted citizen's arrest when in fact it was a lynching.

Make no mistake. I genuinely wish ill will on racists

Please accept my apology for thinking your comments were directed at a racist wc troll. When it comes to haters, the McMichaels are definitely in a league of their own.

[cherdano]

Agree we should spend less energy in the trolls, but this one is so amazing I have to make sure I understood it right.

 Chas_P, on 2020-June-03, 18:11, said:

I have looked at as many videos as I can find and, from what I can see, a sizeable portion of the rabble rousers were white. So were they there seeking "justice"? Or were they there to raise hell and destroy stuff (like the Lincoln Memorial)?

Is he really saying he cannot imagine a white person joining a protest against racism?

[Chas_P]

 hrothgar, on 2020-June-04, 10:46, said:

Well, lets see

Here's some contemporaneous video showing when those good members of the National Park Police charged the crowd.
https://twitter.com/...662905383596032

Not sure when those bricks and bottles were flying, but it sure as hell wasn't at this time and place.

If you prefer a more comprehensive discussion about this issue, please see:

https://www.vox.com/...est-park-police

Clearly, with such radically conflicting stories, there's going to be some element of "He said / she said"
You need to decide who you choose to believe

Given the veracity of the Trumpistas, I think that the choice is pretty damn easy

Just for clarification, can you tell us if any of these Park Police officers were around during the last administration? Or are they all new hires? Thanks.

[PassedOut]

 cherdano, on 2020-June-04, 18:03, said:

Agree we should spend less energy in the trolls, but this one is so amazing I have to make sure I understood it right.
Is he really saying he cannot imagine a white person joining a protest against racism?

Seems so, on the face of it. I wish he'd clarify, if not true.

[Chas_P]

 cherdano, on 2020-June-04, 18:03, said:

Agree we should spend less energy in the trolls, but this one is so amazing I have to make sure I understood it right.
Is he really saying he cannot imagine a white person joining a protest against racism?

Not at all. There is to be one in my hometown this Saturday night and I plan to be there. What I'm saying is that thugs can come in any color. I'm just as infuriated by what happened in Minneapolis as is any other person (regardless of skin tone) with a heart. But I do have a problem understanding how torching a police car in Gainesville, GA or stealing high-dollar purses in Portland, Or can right that wrong. Dialogue? I'm all in. Violence? I'm locked and loaded.

[Winstonm]

 y66, on 2020-June-04, 17:33, said:

Please accept my apology for thinking your comments were directed at a racist wc troll. When it comes to haters, the McMichaels are definitely in a league of their own.

No problem If I may explain, for years prior to going to nursing school I had to work in places where I had to bite my tongue about all kinds of bigotry. Now that I am retired, I no longer have to tolerate that kind of ignorance so I don't - and won't.

WC racists are ignored; real world racists are not tolerated.

[johnu]

Build that wall.... build that wall... build that wall.

Who is going to pay for the wall???

Mexico America is going to pay for the wall.

With White House effectively a fortress, some see Trump’s strength — but others see weakness

Quote

The White House is now so heavily fortified that it resembles the monarchical palaces or authoritarian compounds of regimes in faraway lands — strikingly incongruous with the historic role of the executive mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, which since its cornerstone was laid in 1792 has been known as the people’s house and celebrated as an accessible symbol of American democracy.

For the record, I am all in favor of building the wall. I am not in favor of building any exits.

[hrothgar]

 Chas_P, on 2020-June-04, 19:12, said:

Not at all. There is to be one in my hometown this Saturday night and I plan to be there. What I'm saying is that thugs can come in any color. I'm just as infuriated by what happened in Minneapolis as is any other person (regardless of skin tone) with a heart. But I do have a problem understanding how torching a police car in Gainesville, GA or stealing high-dollar purses in Portland, Or can right that wrong. Dialogue? I'm all in. Violence? I'm locked and loaded.

Chas, I'm not sure how to read this post, but it sounds like you are

1. Planning on attending the protest
2. Planning to bring a gun

This is unbelievably stupid

If you really expect that you might need a gun, don't show up.
Regardless of what you are hoping to do or say, its not worth what might happen.

[hrothgar]

 Chas_P, on 2020-June-04, 19:12, said:

Not at all. There is to be one in my hometown this Saturday night and I plan to be there. What I'm saying is that thugs can come in any color. I'm just as infuriated by what happened in Minneapolis as is any other person (regardless of skin tone) with a heart. But I do have a problem understanding how torching a police car in Gainesville, GA or stealing high-dollar purses in Portland, Or can right that wrong. Dialogue? I'm all in. Violence? I'm locked and loaded.

Chas, I'm not sure how to read this post, but it sounds like you are

1. Planning on attending the protest
2. Planning to bring a gun

This is unbelievably stupid

If you really expect that you might need a gun, don't show up.
Regardless of what you are hoping to do or say, its not worth what might happen.

[y66]

David Leonhardt at NYT said:

It can often feel like nothing changes with police killings. Gruesome, high-profile cases keep coming — Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, now Manuel Ellis — and the annual number of killings nationwide remains at about 1,100.

In several big cities, however, things have changed. Police departments have adopted new policies, and, while problems remain, the number of shootings and deaths have fallen significantly.

It’s happened in Los Angeles, where fatal police shootings have declined in each of the last four years, down to 12 last year. It’s happened in San Francisco. And it’s happened in Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia and Phoenix, Samuel Sinyangwe, a data scientist and activist, writes for FiveThirtyEight. “Many of these reforms were initiated in response to protests and public outcry over high-profile deaths,” he adds.

The changes often revolve around training officers to de-escalate situations and reduce the amount of force they use. Tougher measures to get rid of violent officers also seem to help. Hiring more police officers sometimes helps as well, research shows. “Overstressed, overtired officers working too many shifts generate more complaints of excessive force,” Vox’s Matthew Yglesias notes.

The most sweeping proposals to emerge in recent days, like defunding the police, are unlikely to attract broad political support. Many Americans feel positively toward the police, as David Byler of The Washington Post points out — although there are large gaps by race.

Still, most Americans also say that the police have a racism problem, and most favor reforms, such as body cameras and outside investigations of misconduct. Drew Linzer of the polling firm Civiqs notes that support for the Black Lives Matter movement surged in recent days to almost 50 percent, “the highest it has ever been in over three years of polling.”

All of which points to some common political ground on police reform. “The problem is not that we lack a playbook for fixing the police,” a former police commissioner in Philadelphia and three other experts write for the Times Opinion section. “We have one".

The problem is that we have not successfully followed the one we have.” Barack Obama posted a Twitter thread last night making similar points.

Why hasn’t reform worked in Minneapolis? The police department “failed to set clear criteria on the use of force and de-escalation,” Jamiles Lartey and Simone Weichselbaum of The Marshall Project report. The department also failed to “weed out bad cops” and “continued to use choke holds.”

Source: https://nyti.ms/2MtZKIg

[Winstonm]

I believe I have found a new marker that explains Trump supporters: empathy level - inversely proportional to the amount of support. <empathy=>support

[kenberg]

I just can't understand why people lack empathy! How can a person lack empathy? I just don't get it. It's incomprehensible for a person to lack empathy.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2020-June-05, 12:18, said:

I just can't understand why people lack empathy! How can a person lack empathy? I just don't get it. It's incomprehensible for a person to lack empathy.

Sympathy for those who were reared to be a racist and have not been able to overcome that upbringing should not be confused with empathy for the victims of that racism. I feel sorry for racists - that doesn't mean I have to tolerate them, and I certainly don't have empathy for them.

[Winstonm]

When truth beats fiction. From Marcy Wheeler:

Quote

What if the FBI succeeded in thwarting a right wing terrorist attack but rather than bragging about that success, instead redoubled its efforts to target peaceful protestors as terrorists?

That's what happened this week.

On Tuesday, the FBI terrorism agents arrested three adherents of the "Boogaloo" movement, a group of extremists planning a civil war. All have military experience and one, Andrew Lynam, is currently in the Army Reserve. At a ReOpen Nevada protest held in April, at which they were all heavily armed, Lynam told a person who'd go on to become an FBI informant that, "their group was not for joking around and that it was for people who wanted to violently overthrow the United States government." One of them planned to use the cover of the George Floyd protests to conduct attacks and sow panic.

CHS stated that PARSHALL and LOOMIS's idea behind the explosion [targeting Lake Mead] was to hopefully create civil unrest and rioting throughout Las Vegas. They wanted to use the momentum of the George Floyd death in police custody in the City of Minneapolis to hopefully stir enough confusion and excitement, that others see the two explosions and police presence and begin to riot in the streets out of anger.

They were arrested on the way to a Black Lives Matter protest with the makings of Molotov cocktails and an AR-15 in their vehicles.

Normally when the FBI thwarts a terrorism attack in process, they hold a big press conference to brag about it. As of this morning, however, neither DOJ nor FBI have posted the arrest on their national news websites (the Nevada US Attorney's Office has)

[kenberg]

 Winstonm, on 2020-June-05, 12:39, said:

Sympathy for those who were reared to be a racist and have not been able to overcome that upbringing should not be confused with empathy for the victims of that racism. I feel sorry for racists - that doesn't mean I have to tolerate them, and I certainly don't have empathy for them.

Yes, I know. I couldn't resist an attempt at humor.

"There are people who do not love their fellow man and I hate people like that." --- Tom Lehrer

[johnu]

 kenberg, on 2020-June-05, 12:18, said:

I just can't understand why people lack empathy! How can a person lack empathy? I just don't get it. It's incomprehensible for a person to lack empathy.

Sociopaths and psychopaths either have no empathy or very limited empathy.

[Winstonm]

Yahoo has even caught on: It's not Antifa - it is White Nationalists:

Quote

Two men charged with conspiring to incite violence and civil unrest at protests over the killing of George Floyd previously sought to do the same thing at protests against coronavirus lockdowns, in both instances seeking to promote their extremist agenda, federal prosecutors say.

Federal agents arrested the men, Stephen Parshall and Andrew Lynam, along with a third man, William Loomis, before they allegedly planned to disrupt a Black Lives Matter protest in Las Vegas. They face federal charges of conspiracy and possession of unregistered firearms and multiple terrorism-related state charges. Prosecutors say the men had planned to use firebombs and explosives to create chaos and panic that would lead to riots. The men are being held in the Clark County jail on $1 million bond each.

According to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Nevada, all three, who are white and have U.S. military experience, “self-identified as part of the ‘boogaloo’ movement,” a disparate yet growing collection of extremists, including far-right militias, radical gun rights activists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis. As noted in the criminal complaint, “‘Boogaloo’ is a term used by extremists to signify a coming civil war and/or fall of civilization.”

The arrests and the details of the investigation leading up to it offer perhaps the most concrete evidence to date of the role extremists may be playing in some of the violence and destruction during otherwise peaceful protests over the past two weeks. And it sheds new light on how such groups or individuals have sought to exploit other events to advance their agenda of bringing down the U.S. government, leading, in some versions of the ideology, to the creation of a white “ethno-state.”

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2020-June-05, 13:00, said:

Yes, I know. I couldn't resist an attempt at humor.

"There are people who do not love their fellow man and I hate people like that." --- Tom Lehrer

Well, mathematics professors as a group a pretty well-known for their humor.

[johnu]

 johnu, on 2020-June-05, 14:14, said:

Sociopaths and psychopaths either have no empathy or very limited empathy.

Showing up on cue:

Trump Gloats That It’s ‘A Great Day’ For George Floyd During Press Conference

Quote

President Donald Trump said Friday that he hoped George Floyd was “looking down right now and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country,” just moments after calling for an amped-up police response to nationwide protests against racism and police brutality sparked by Floyd’s death. Trump made the comment during public remarks celebrating a surprisingly optimistic jobs report.

A great day for George Floyd??? So, an increasingly racist and facist police state growing in the country is great, as opposed to still being alive and well?

[Winstonm]

The confederates lost the last time they went to war. This time will be no different. Small minds, cold hearts, and evil intentions cannot trump the good will of the majority.

Black Lives Matter.