anyone who thinks The Idiot was or is capable to lead needs to be shamed forever
anyone who thinks The Idiot was or is capable to lead needs to be shamed forever
Original join date: 11/23/2004
Eclectic Connoisseur of all things written, drawn, or imaginatively created.
after a 7 hour hearing, the murderers in the Ahmaud Arbery case are going to trial
All of his lawyers should be charged with contempt for wasting the courts time
That is untrue, as former forward observer of the of the 75th Ranger Regiment HHC US Army we trained in non-lethal tactics and are well aware of how to engage in unarmed civilian unrest. Infantry is absolutely thought how to behave and react in such situations more so than the police and the national guard.
Surely not everybody was kung fu fighting
"Always listen to the crazy scientist with a weird van or armful of blueprints and diagrams." -- Vibranium
It's not that simple though, in countries where crime is low and police brutality is not a major issue, there is this implicit societal trust that people will respect laws and that, in return, the police will not weaponize the law as a tool of oppression, and those outliers that don't can be dealt with strictly without raising too much public alarm. In America, the police have been the strong arm of racial injustice for so long that many people, with no small justification, believe that trying to follow laws and be an upstanding citizen is a hopeless dead end, because they will just be singled out and brutalized anyway, and so if that's the case they may as well just take their chances and do whatever it takes to get by. This attitude will not disappear just because we hit a reset button on the police, if you just go "hey guys, we know the cops have been abusing people for centuries but this new organization that looks suspiciously like the old thing is totally different and is here to help you," nobody is going to believe you.
This is what people mean when they say that racism is woven into the fabric of American society, it's not just like you can single out one source for the problem and just remove that. There's no version of America that looks like the one we remember growing up in, where everyone was happy and free and prosperous and discrimination didn't exist, because many of the systems and institutions that enabled some of us to live well were only made possible because large segments of society were denied access to the same kinds of opportunities and resources. The police don't brutalize black people for no reason, they did it to protect the property of wealthy white people, take away the brutality and much of the economic security and stability that comes with this absolute devotion to safeguarding private property will also evaporate. Is this a trade off that people are going to be able to accept?
I guess we’ll just wait and see what happens then
The Cover Contest Weekly Winners ThreadSo much winning!!
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - Sinclair Lewis
“It’s your party and you can cry if you want to.” - Captain Europe
I googled this, and found out Obama knows them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-on-the-couch/
Cousin Pookie is back, y'all. Remember him? Last we checked, he was on somebody's couch. And Pookie was not thinking about voting because that's not what Pookie does. Pookie basically does Pookie.
Well, President Obama, desperate to get out the black vote, has revived the folk hero that is Cousin Pookie once again. Here's Obama at a rally on the South Side of Chicago for Gov. Pat Quinn on Sunday night:
"You've got to grab your friends, you’ve got to grab your co-workers, you know, don’t just get the folks who you know are gonna vote, you’ve got to find Cousin Pookie. He’s sitting on the couch right now watching football, hasn't voted in the last five elections, you’ve got to grab him, and tell him to go vote.”
Obama said virtually the same thing at a rally Sunday for Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who is running for governor.
Yes, we are grateful that Obama name-dropped Cousin Pookie, because it means that we can recall all things Obama and Cousin Pookie. They make such a good pair that the urban dictionary cites Obama's reference to Pookie under the definition of "Pookie n nem": "The proverbial ominous 'hood' characters and or family member that every person with a connection to the ghetto knows."
Prior to Obama's invocation of Cousin Pookie, the most famous version of this stock character was Chris Rock's crack-addicted version in the classic movie "New Jack City" (1991).
Now, we can't be sure how long Obama has known about Cousin Pookie, but the voter mobilization version of Cousin Pookie goes back to 2008. Obama typically brought him up in front of black crowds, and when he did, it always brought laughter and recognition. It was a kind of code switching, easy proof that in fact, Obama was down with the people. (Sometimes Ray Ray would be in the mix, and less frequently, Uncle Jethro, Pookie's Southern white corollary). "I need you to grab Cousin Pookie to vote; I need you to grab Ray Ray to vote," Obama said in South Carolina at a rally during the 2008 primary battle. "If Cousin Pookie would vote, if Uncle Jethro would get off the couch and stop watching 'SportsCenter' and go register some folks and go to the polls, we might have a different kind of politics," he said in March 2007 in Selma, Ala.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets