All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[AnakinFlair]

Entire BPD Emergency Response Team resigns in support of suspended officers

They're only resigning from the special squad. But yeah... if that many openy support that sort of thing, then they probably aren't needed on the front lines of this anytime soon.

Sucks that the police force is losing that many people as I'm sure they're needed. But I'm sure the NYPD don't need any more incidents like that taking place, so it's probably for the best.

Don't worry. I'm sure the Police Union will get them all their jobs back, with back pay.

People are talking about defunding the police. No, they need to break Police Unions. They are the ones that protect dirty cops, they are the ones that get these cops their jobs back.

The worst thing is how none of them even tried to help him once they saw he was on the ground and bleeding. (one seemed to radio it in, but that's the bare minimum human response)

Actually, it's worse. One cop starts to go down to help the man, and the cop behind him pulls him up and pushes him away. Disgusting.

[PaulBullion]

There isn't much confirmation on twitter, either.

It's more wishful thinking.

This moment does seem to reflect a weird homophobic attitude that someone who isn't conventionally masculine has to be gay, and then also into weirder stuff.

Trust me, not a single gay man WANTS Lady G to be gay.

We also do not want to see any pics of his privates, but I am afraid those will show up soon.

[PaulBullion]

Fox always reliable on the importance of a pivotal racial moment in history.

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1269050348653731840

This might encourage Trump supporters to murder black people for the economy. WTF

[PaulBullion]

And of course, the WaPo found out that the surprisingly good Jobs Report that Trump said made this a good day for George Floyd (huh?) and caused a stock market rally - was doctored. Unemployment actually went up, not down.

A “misclassification error” made by Trump’s Administration means the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” or 16.3% for May.

The misclassification refers to millions of unemployed people not being counted as unemployed.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Washington mayor christens ‘Black Lives Matter Plaza’ outside White House

trump must be fuming.

video here

[aja_christopher]

I feel like the fixation with this sort of thing betrays a rather fascistic world view on the part of people who keep banging on about it, as if killing people in other communities is somehow more okay because the natural and normal state of humans is to exist in a perpetual race war.

It's a false line of thinking regardless as many of the protesters purposefully went to march in upscale neighborhoods like Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Michigan Avenue and SoHo while many of the looters hit luxury stores in places like Rodeo Drive, San Leandro, and Manhattan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/u...nequality.html
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...ipped-south-la
https://laist.com/2020/05/31/melina-...orge-floyd.php

Likewise with regards to the tens of thousands of white protesters who marched in their own "white" neighborhoods around the world -- from Alabama, to Arizona, to Conneticut, to Germany, to Denmark, to Australia, to Ireland and more -- who are often conveniently ignored when this matter is discussed.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/01/world...ntl/index.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George...#International

One of the primary reasons I dislike getting involved in these conversations is that you quickly realize that many people just say things without bothering to examine all of the facts and a lot of their "logic" is based on stereotypes and personal bias rather than objective research.

Which means wasting anywhere from three to fifteen pages explaining something they could confirm in ten seconds on Google.

But often won't because it doesn't fit their own personal agenda -- such as promoting stereotypical views of "looters" while ignoring everything else.

Your assessment is correct -- many are so stuck in their ways of thinking that they choose to see only what they want to see.

------
"But dehumanizing the victim makes things simpler
It's like breathing with a respirator
It eases the conscience of even the most conscious
And calculating violator
Words can reduce a person to an object
Something more easy to hate
An inanimate entity, completely disposable

No problem to obliterate" -- Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy

[aja_christopher]

Get your priorities straight -- address the root causes of the problems and you'll end the protests that result.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

And of course, the WaPo found out that the surprisingly good Jobs Report that Trump said made this a good day for George Floyd (huh?) and caused a stock market rally - was doctored. Unemployment actually went up, not down.



The misclassification refers to millions of unemployed people not being counted as unemployed.

Just turned on my TV to watch the local news and what’s the first thing I see? A Trump campaign commercial touting those bogus numbers.

[worstblogever]

And of course, the WaPo found out that the surprisingly good Jobs Report that Trump said made this a good day for George Floyd (huh?) and caused a stock market rally - was doctored. Unemployment actually went up, not down.

The misclassification refers to millions of unemployed people not being counted as unemployed.

Wait, Trump misrepresented the data to lie to the public?

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the current U.S. House Representative for Indiana’s’ 8th Congressional District, Larry Bucshon, who since getting elected to Congress in 2010, has participated in the widespread campaign of Republican obstructionism, and making a name for himself as an exemplary climate change denialist. See, in September of 2014, he actually made the claim that climate change science is fraudulent because scientists are only producing studies that say it exists, and it is man-made, because if they didn’t, they would be out of a career. Never mind that scientists produce DATA to back up what they’re saying all the time, though. Bucshon is opposed to same-sex marriage to the extent that he has went on record to whine about how he felt the Justice Department wasn’t enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act and is so Pro-Life that he sponsored the “Life Begins at Conception Act”, which would have effectively not only criminalized abortion, but most forms of birth control. Bucshon also voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown, and at the vote to re-open the government, voted to keep it closed.

Bucshon, though, still gets to enjoy a +15 Republican lean that Indiana’s 8th Congressional District has, and was re-elected with 64% of the vote in 2018. He has returned to the capitol, and now in the minority party, remains a hyper-partisan twit.

• January 22nd, 2019: Bucshon cannot be arsed to bother to vote against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
• January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Bucshon voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
• February 28th, 2019: Larry Bucshon votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
• March 14th, 2019: Rep. Bucshon votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
• April 4th, 2019: Larry Bucshon is one of 158 Republicans who choose to vote against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
• June 4th, 2019: Bucshon votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
• July 16th, 2019: Larry Bucshon votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
• October 17th, 2019: Rep. Bucshon is one of 60 Republicans who vote against HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
• October 23rd, 2019: Bucshon is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
• December 18th, 2019: Rep. Bucshon ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.

Bucshon’s actually got an MD, but we’re going to be honest, the man seems to have forgotten the Hippocratic Oath. Instead, he has apparently recited the loyalty pledge to Donald Trump, because he ignored all medical experts and all logic that he should have picked up in med school this past year, proving so when he called for the country to “reopen” in April of 2020. Regardless of if that opening would cost, y’know, tens of thousands of lives.

Larry Bucshon announced he wants to run for a sixth term in office in 2020, and we have to wonder when the people of Indiana’s 8th realize that the guy has already been in office for a decade and has accomplished nothing in that time for their benefit. No major legislation passed, nothing of note except some dumbass empty quotes. (HINT: They can do better.)

[Mister Mets]

per Senator Mike Lee on Twitter

Lee is the Republican Senator from Utah



NOPE

its called the 3RD AMENDMENT

The 3rd amendment would apply to hotels refusing to house the national guard, not the mayor.

And of course, the WaPo found out that the surprisingly good Jobs Report that Trump said made this a good day for George Floyd (huh?) and caused a stock market rally - was doctored. Unemployment actually went up, not down.

That's not what the information says.

It isn't doctored. An economist for the Obama administration said so in the article.

“You can 100% discount the possibility that Trump got to the BLS. Not 98% discount, not 99.9% discount, but 100% discount,” tweeted Jason Furman, the former top economist for former president Barack Obama. “BLS has 2,400 career staff of enormous integrity and one political appointee with no scope to change this number.”

Economists say the BLS was trying to be as transparent as possible about how hard it is to collect real-time data during a pandemic.

The main discrepancy seems to be people reporting incorrect information.

One of the first questions that gets asked is did the person do any work “for pay or profit?” There are then 45 pages of follow up questions that come after that. One of those questions asks if someone was “temporarily absent” from the job and why that absence occurred. One of the responses is “other.”

The BLS instructed surveyors to try to figure out if someone was absent because of the pandemic and, if so, to classify them as on “temporary layoff,” meaning they would count in the unemployment data. But some people continued to insist they were just “absent” from work during the pandemic, and the BLS has a policy of not changing people’s answers once they are recorded. It’s how the BLS protects again bias or data manipulation.

The problem has been going on for a while, so it doesn't indicate an increase in unemployment from the month before.

This problem started in March when there was a big jump in people claiming they were temporarily “absent” from work for “other reasons.” The BLS noticed this and flagged it right away. In March, the BLS said the unemployment rate likely should have been 5.4 percent, instead of the official 4.4 percent rate. In April, the BLS said the real unemployment rate was likely about 19.7 percent, not 14.7 percent.

The misclassification refers to millions of unemployed people not being counted as unemployed.

This may highlight why it's so hard to get effective predictions. The numbers were always messy during an unprecedented situation.

[Mister Mets]

Especially when you are too poor to travel to those more well off neighborhoods.

Fun fact - back when 'Irish need not apply' signs were the norm, the highest ranking Irish priest in NYC protected the churches by threatening to burn the city to the ground. He got word that the police were going to have a planned absence ahead of a vigilante mob, so he went to City Hall and told the mayor what would happen in no uncertain terms. That if even one church was burned down, he would provide torches to every Irish parishioner in the city, then personally lead them to every place that provides revenue, and every upscale neighborhood in the city, and ensure that the Irish would have company in their misery.

The police miraculously went back on patrol.

Thanks to this post, I've learned much about Dagger John, and his response to the mayor that if a single Catholic Church is burned in New York City, it will become a second Moscow (in reference to when Napoleon torched Moscow.) I don't actually see anything about cops having a planned absence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/n...gger-john.html

As weird as it sounds part of me sort of wonders why rioters don't take the time to commute and riot in nicer neighborhoods more often. Not that I condone rioting in any way, shape or form but in nicer areas you can probably assume everyone you loot is properly insured.

Anyone informed enough to think that way is probably more likely to consider more effective ways to get their message across, as well as the potential downsides of making the police a lot more popular with the rich people who don't decide to move away.

Granted, there were two lawyers accused of throwing molotov cocktails at police, so there are going to be some well-informed people who protest in extreme ways.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/loca...bings/2449370/

Bringing looters to a rich neighborhood also requires time and coordination.

The entire "Well, this is the bad prosecutor..." angle is just a tub full of water waiting for some dummy to plug his/her blow dryer in and take a dip.

We are all living in country where you do not actually have to let a prosecutor get elected to any other office. Accept them for the necessary evil that they are, and move on. Even if you insist on smacking your head against a wall, prosecutors should never be holding an office higher than the "State..." level(even if that means Lori Lightfoot winds up out of the running...)

That's going to be a tough sell. There is a new movement for progressive DAs, and they're probably going to seek higher office on their records.

Prosecutors also have wide name-recognition, and have been strong contenders in races where a party is typically an underdog (Doug Jones and Chris Christie won statewide elections after being US Attorneys.)

[ed2962]

I feel like the fixation with this sort of thing betrays a rather fascistic world view on the part of people who keep banging on about it, as if killing people in other communities is somehow more okay because the natural and normal state of humans is to exist in a perpetual race war.

I wasn't saying that it's ok to kill people outside of one's community, but not ok to kill within it. That's not the point I was making at all.

[XPac]

I feel like the fixation with this sort of thing betrays a rather fascistic world view on the part of people who keep banging on about it, as if killing people in other communities is somehow more okay because the natural and normal state of humans is to exist in a perpetual race war.

That's probably more on what I said than what ed2962 said.

I did stupidy wonder why more rioting doesn't take place more often in wealthier areas where the victims potentially have more insurance to cover it (though it clearly happens in both). But I did not in any way mean to imply that it's more okay to riot in richer areas than poorer ones. It's not okay all around, and if my admittedly dumb question came across implying otherwise my bad.

[aja_christopher]

"Protests About Police Brutality are Met with Wave of Police Brutality Across US"


Use teargas, batons, pepper spray, fists, feet and vehicles against protesters sparks lawsuits and international condemnation

"The nationwide anti-police brutality protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in the US have been marked by widespread incidents of police violence, including punching, kicking, gassing, pepper-spraying and driving vehicles at often peaceful protesters in states across the country.

The actions have left thousands of protesters in jail and injured many others, leaving some with life-threatening injuries.

From Minnesota to New York, Texas, California, Washington DC and many places beyond, from small towns to big cities, police officers have demonstrated just how problematic law enforcement is in the US, drawing condemnation from international groups as well as domestic civil rights organizations.

The International Crisis Group, which monitors unrest around the world, said the police had used “excessive force”. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, said: “All police officers who resort to excessive use of force should be charged and convicted for the crimes committed.”

Numerous incidents of police violence have been exposed in disturbing videos and press accounts in recent days, with little sign that police are adjusting their tactics...

In some states, police officers have been disciplined following violence. The two officers who pushed the man in Buffalo have been suspended – which prompted all 57 members of the Buffalo police department’s emergency response team to resign in protest on Friday – as has the Fort Lauderdale officer who pushed the kneeling woman to the ground. Six police officers in Atlanta, Georgia, have been charged with aggravated assault after tasing a man and dragging a woman out of a car during an arrest in Atlanta.

In most cases, however, no action has been brought against officers or police departments. Seeking to change this, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the Minneapolis police, accusing them of attacking journalists during protests, and is taking similar action in LA.

On Friday, Black Lives Matter, the ACLU and other civil rights groups brought a separate lawsuit against Trump and the attorney general, Bill Barr, over the police response to the protest in Washington DC.



“Across the country, law enforcement armed with military weaponry are responding with violence to people who are protesting police brutality,” said the ACLU’s Ben Wizner. “The first amendment right to protest is under attack, and we will not let this go unanswered.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...s-george-floyd