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

[Gray Lensman]

Someone can make the rational argument that vaccination is a good thing, but it shouldn't be mandated. That said, it is hypocritical for Fox to not practice what they preach when it comes to their own policies.

It's not subtle. It's playing to some people's expectations.

It's close to the boogaloos who broke stuff during Black Lives Matter protests, with the important distinction that the Lincoln project people came forward pretty quickly to explain their stunt (although there was already plenty of skepticism about why purported supporters of the Republican candidate were acting in a way that would help the Democrat.

The Lincoln Project sounds like they intend to work against the Republican party until Trumpism is dead and buried. And maybe suck up some PAC donations in the meantime.

[worstblogever]

Someone can make the rational argument that vaccination is a good thing, but it shouldn't be mandated.

For those of us who aren't getting their news from a right-wing echo chamber, we realize that vaccines have been mandated for many, including public school children, for many, many decades.

And they've worked. And ***holes looking for loopholes because of anti-vaxx idiocy are the reason why many communicable diseases weren't wiped out like they were due to mandates that eliminated polio and smallpox. We were close on measles, and then... this ideology, and morons who repeat it online because of "muh freedom", have left the door open so folks could needlessly die because they were afraid to get a shot.

If you keep spreading that message and those attitudes, you're getting more people killed from preventable disease, and helping your party further resemble a death cult, Mets.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” featured a profile of former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, a voraciously anti-immigrant Republican who not only signed SB1070 into law, but had done FOX interviews where she said illegal immigration was a form of "terrorist attack", insisted repeatedly that illegal immigrants were decapitating Arizonans and headless bodies were being found in the desert (even while her law enforcement agencies were debunking her), but perhaps it became clear she might have a racist streak a mile wide when she wanted courses on Native American and Hispanic culture banned because they "breed treason" When accused by some critics of having policies not unlike the Nazis (-1 points for them breaking Godwin's Law), Brewer defended herself by saying her dad died fighting against the Nazis in World War II. Fact checkers, though, found out her father died of lung cancer in 1955, which left her scrambling even more. Details on the case are sketchy, because days before she took office, a judge did a solid and sealed them. Brewer left office in January, and left the Grand Canyon State far worse than she inherited it from Janet Napolitano, and her career in politics may have come to a close, save for sticking around as a consultant (although I don't see what insight she could give anyone about public speaking or avoiding controversy, at this point). Brewer has served as a campaign proxy for Donald Trump here in the 2016 elections, where last week, she managed to stir up a hornets' nest by laughing off the idea that Trump might lose Arizona by saying, "Latinos don't vote."

In 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published profiles of Joe Carr, a former member of the Tennessee state legislature who challenged Senator Lamar Alexander for his U.S. Senate seat in 2014. Back n 2012, though, Carr weighed in on the controversy over Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" remarks telling a reporter that not only did he feel Akin shouldn't drop out of the race, he felt that Akin's assessment of women having a way to shut down pregnancies conceived in rape was true. Carr actually tried claiming Lamar Alexander was "supporting amnesty" on illegal immigration, and his campaign webpage feaured bizarre ideas to do things like restore the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and his thoughts on foreign policy included a Thomas Jefferson quote that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Which is rather dumb interpretation when you consider it was written to discuss the Shays rebellion that took place prior to the Constitutional Convention, and really shouldn't be used as a justification to go send our armed forces off to die like a blood sacrfice. Anyway, Carr ended up losing to Alexander, but it was closer than you'd think, with him getting 41% of the vote. Its real success, though, was how he exploited his campaign to funnel money to his daughters, who were paid $6500 a month working on his campaign. He ended up out of the Tennessee state legislature in January of 2015, and followed that with a losing bid to run for chairman of the Tennessee GOP.

In 2016, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” featured a profile of Jim Spurlino, a candidate for U.S. House from Ohio's 8th Congressional District, who claimed, without any evidence, that he received an anonymous letter threatening to blackmail him should he run for office, and then stalking his children on social media. While that in and of itself is a little bit chaotic for a candidate to tell the media in an interview, Spurlino actually chose to make it the center point of his whole campaign for Congress, and ran ads where he talked about shady back-door deals like this. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that Spurlino was discovered to be a deadbeat dad who was nearly $24,000 behind on child support payments, as the local media discovered. And while Spurlino was also a political outsider, he had some pretty radical views on issues, especially abortion where he falsely accused Planned Parenthood of ”selling baby parts” and was “pro-life from conception”. Suffice to say, he did not fare well in the GOP Primary to replace Speaker Boehner, finishing fourth with 6.9% of the vote in a field of no less than fifteen Republicans.

It was in both 2017, and in 2018, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Wendy Rogers, who not only failed to get herself elected to the Arizona State Senate during the 2010 Tea Party Wave then failed in the past four elections to get herself elected to Congress, first losing in 2012 in the GOP Primary for Arizona’s 9th Congressional District, then in 2014 in the general election to Kyrsten Sinema for that district, before carpet-bagging her way down to try to get elected further north in Arizona’s 1st District and lose in the primary to the child-abusing anti-gay, anti-immigrant sheriff who dates gay illegal immigrants, Paul Babeu in 2016, before losing to Democratic Congressman Tom O’Halleran in 2018 after petitioning voters to “send Trump some back up”, while calling Democrats “radical, crazy, and unhinged” in campaign ads. Now, why is it that Wendy Rogers has repeatedly failed to win office? Well, she touts her experience as an Air Force veteran, which is always good. On the other hand, she runs fear-mongering ads that should come with trigger warnings like when she included a few seconds of footage of ISIS beheading James Foley in her 2014 campaign video. Even the traditionally conservative Arizona Republic condemned that choice, especially because Foley lived in Phoenix, where his loved ones could get triggered whenever their local television programming went to commercials during election season. After Rogers’ campaign manager actually argued why this bit of Islamophobic propaganda wasn’t so bad…they changed the ad so instead it showed head lice, because once Kyrsten Sinema pointed out there were polls out that said Congress was less popular than head lice (and was correct). Her insane campaign tactics have continued, but this time may have proved fruitful, as she won the GOP Primary in 2018 for this seat by running attack ads against fellow Republican, and State Senator Steve Smith, claiming the modeling agency he works for “specializes in under age girls” and is “linked to sex trafficking” (law enforcement actually spoke in Smith’s defense on this). Anyway, this was hardly the only flag we saw on Wendy Rogers, because looking at her issue stances, on immigration, she supported building a physical wall along the U.S. Mexico border (which explains why she campaigned with Trump in Arizona), opposed migrant resettlement including from Syria (of course she does, she’s scared of those Muslims doing all the terrorisms!), and even pushing for English to be made the official language of the United States, which has kind of repeatedly been established as unconstitutional (and the first historic time was in her home state, to boot). Her national security policy is her belief that the American government was doing nothing to help Christians being attacked by ISIS, but America was committing “suicide” by allowed Muslim refugees in “without screening”, in spite of the quite rigorous screening process in place. In May of 2018, she compared the fact that abortion is legal in the United States to… oh… you know… the Holocaust. It’s these sorts of details that have made Rogers a five-time loser.

On this date in 2019, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Randy Baumgardner, a stunt double for villains in old-timey Western flicks, and a former Colorado state legislator from 2009 through 2019, who spent his first four years in office in the state House, before moving on to the Colorado State Senate in 2013. Baumgardner was a hard-right hardliner, to be sure, who touted States’ rights to rage against the Obama administration whenever possible, once sponsored legislation to try and reclassify “person” in murder cases to include fetuses as an end-around against Roe v. Wade, and also traveled to Arizona in the hopes of bringing an anti-immigrant racial profiling bill like SB 1070 to Colorado. But, the main reason we were meaning to profile Randy Baumgardner was the multiple credible accusations of sexual harassment levied against him (What? An anti-choice fanatic with issues towards women? THE HELL YOU SAY.) that forced his resignation. Taking a look at his photo, and then hearing that he slapped a woman on the ass without her consent seems to track, and we can visualize him going, “YEE-HAW!” before threatening anyone who has a problem with it like Yosemite Sam in a Looney Tunes picture. His career is thankfully over.

[worstblogever]

On this date one year ago, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” first profiled the sitting U.S. House Representative from Virginia’s 6th District, Ben Cline, who now serving in his second term in Congress, after having been in the Virginia House of Delegates for five terms over almost a decade. Only days after being sworn in as a Congressman, it became clear that Cline was a bit extreme when he went on a conservative talk radio show to promote the false anti-immigrant narrative that “Democrats want open borders” and insisting they only care about immigration to “replenish their voting base” before pitching the positively ludicrous idea that Donald Trump should have held the 2019 State of the Union Address from the U.S./Mexico border before conceding maybe that was logistically impossible and they should do it at a stadium in Arizona or Texas.

How much of a partisan lemming is this stooge? Well, he’s willing to charge into a classified hearing behind accidental Butt-Head cosplayer/alleged sex trafficker Matt Gaetz. And when you follow that dumbass… you maybe should have your head checked. Especially because… BEN CLINE WAS ON THE COMMITTEE AND COULD HAVE BEEN IN THE ROOM WHENEVER HE WANTED. But no, he’d rather pretend he’s shut out, and that impeaching Trump for withholding Congressional-approved aid to Ukraine in exchange for political favors in the form of announcing an investigation into Joe Biden was a “sham”.

His entire legislative career, he’s been an extremist. From his Personhood stance on a woman’s right to choose, his refusal to consider any gun control measure, and his support for Trump’s stupid idea for a useless wall along the U.S./Mexico border, he’s in love with every failed conservative policy there is. Heck, as a state legislator in Virginia, he supported Voter ID, expanding the potential methods of execution by capitol punishment (because the state couldn’t get lethal injection drugs), and co-sponsored legislation to make it the state’s position that life begins at conception.

So it's not a surprise that in Washington, this is what Ben Cline has done (not much, and what he has, it ain’t good):

• December 18th, 2019: Cline ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
• May 15th, 2020: Cline votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• December 10th, 2020: Cline signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
• January 7th, 2021: Ben Cline votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
• January 13th, 2021: Rep. Cline votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
• February 4th, 2021: Ben Cline votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted remarks and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
• February 25th, 2021: Cline votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
• March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Cline votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
• March 3rd, 2021: Ben Cline votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
• March 10th, 2021: Cline votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
• March 17th, 2021: Rep. Cline votes 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).
• May 19th, 2021: Rep. Cline votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
• May 20th, 2021: Cline is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.

Virginia’s 6th Congressional District has a +13 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, making it a the second-most conservative out of the state’s 11 Congressional Districts.That helped him get re-elected with 64% of the vote, where he can do the important things like fight to make sure Trump supporters who joined the Border Patrol en masse don’t have to get mandatory vaccinations required of government employees by the Biden administration that will help prevent them from getting themselves or anyone else sick with Covid-19. Which, of course, is a thing the Trump administration was more than willing to spread among detained migrants, like the white nationalist ***holes they are, and then deport them to other countries without first assuring they didn’t already have a deadly disease.

But nice of Ben Cline to prioritize absolutely the wrong things while CBP has these practices in place.

[shooshoomanjoe]

For those of us who aren't getting their news from a right-wing echo chamber, we realize that vaccines have been mandated for many, including public school children, for many, many decades.

Same with soldiers. When you enlist, they give you shot after shot after shot (it looks like an assembly line). But since the republicans have politicized the COVID shot, now there is a large percentage of these soldiers refusing to take the COVID vaccine.

[Kirby101]

It's like people don't understand the concept of eradicating a disease.

[worstblogever]

It's like people don't understand the concept of eradicating a disease.

Their "freedom" to kill people for generations to come.

[achilles]

Their "freedom" to kill people for generations to come.

Maybe not...fingers crossed.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02978-6

If you're wondering what the next step is....well, this is it. I hope they find these people and figure it out. But for the time being, vaccines are still the best way to not get dead from it.

[worstblogever]

Maybe not...fingers crossed.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02978-6

If you're wondering what the next step is....well, this is it. I hope they find these people and figure it out. But for the time being, vaccines are still the best way to not get dead from it.

For a lot of times, vaccines have been the best way to not get dead.

Same way we've known and been able to prove the Earth isn't flat since 200 BC, but there's a contingent of people willfully ignorant enough to ignore evidence.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day posted profiles of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a man who we have to work up all of our energy to not just post, “F*** you, Mitch” in our update once a year, because he’s an utter dips*** who completely has broken the legislative branch of our government. And loathing this putrid husk pretending to be a human is hardly a partisan thing, as he was even booed when he took the stage to give a speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention by members of his own party. He is, for us, one of the most infuriating politicians in modern history, for his hyper-partisan tactics, and his apparent desire to bring all government action to a grinding halt in the name of simply obstructing the other side from being able to govern, as well. McConnell is a six term senator (Jesus, really?) who has risen from unlikely beginnings as an ordinary turtle to being covered in radioactive ooze and forgoing a "teenage mutant ninja" stage to instead become a fixture in Washington, D.C.

McConnell boldly stated his primary goal as Senate Minority Leader was to "make Barack Obama a one term president", so based on his own expectations, he's a complete failure. Under his leadership in the Senate from 2010-2016, McConnell led Republicans to double the usage of invoking cloture to filibuster laws, triple the number of filibustered nominees of any previous presidency, and has seen the GOP push back against confirming judges so that only 43% of judges nominated by President Obama for the bench were confirmed within 14 months of their nomination. Sen. McConnell’s filibustering ways were so out of control that he literally filibustered bills THAT HE HIMSELF WROTE. Mitch McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland Supreme Court Justice for ELEVEN F***ING MONTHS after the death of Antonin Scalia.

So what happened when the 2016 elections got stolen by help from the Russians hacking American social media feeds, and widespread voter suppression of traditionally Democratic voters by Republicans in swing states? Well, guess what, Mitch McConnell got all lathered up and almost immediately changed the rules for the filibuster so that Democrats couldn’t prevent the Trump administration from stacking the courts full of conservatives even if they had a rampant history of racial bias, promoting conspiracy theories, or making sexist or homophobic statements that clearly showed they had no business serving as a judge, let alone a FEDERAL judge. And it was all so they could get people like Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, who, for the record, is so much of a conservative f*** face that even John Roberts is getting sick of his s*** already,and even worse, a drunken fratboy accused of multiple sexual assaults with a habit of multiple perjury by the name of Brett Kavanaugh. Hell, upon learning of the accusations, McConnell moved the Senate to try and confirm Kavanaugh FASTER rather than have the FBI investigate the attack. And McConnell sees zero hypocrisy for that. Hell, only two years after insisting it would be wrong to confirm a Supreme Court Justice in the last year of a presidential term, inventing that “rule” on the spot, now this miserable, bloated tortoise has conveniently forgotten that it’s a rule, and is ready to confirm any Justices if needed in 2020.

So perhaps then, it’s at least satisfying to know that Mitch McConnell, who has orchestrated Kentucky politics to sustain his own four decade long political career and ensure no serious challengers can rise out of the state to cut his career short, is currently watching an incompetent he helped get elected to the White House and handed the reins of power to when he had never held any office turn on him for every perceived failure, and instead serve him a heaping helping of ridicule and humiliation casserole. People have noticed that when Sen. McConnell is forced into joint press conferences with Trump, he looks like he’s being held hostage and would rather be anywhere else.

But maybe that’s because he only has the courage to say he’s “upset” even when Trump can’t bring himself to criticize Neo-Nazis after they murdered an innocent woman in Charlottesville, Virginia. McConnell’s next Senate term is up in 2020, and we’re wondering that if McConnell is Dr. Frankenstein whole political maneuvering helped create a monster like Trump that he’ll get some kind of poetic justice for his part in that creation. Sometimes, it already has worked out for Democrats, as evidenced when the president was forced into a debt ceiling deal by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Hell, Mitch McConnell is such an ***hole that Sen. John McCain flew in from Arizona from his deathbed to deliver a huge “f*** you” to the old tortoise back in July of 2017 with a dramatic thumbs down vote on a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. This would be a repeal attempt that McConnell knew he would only be able to pull off with a simple 50 vote majority (Mike Pence being his tie-breaker) to destroy the ACA after promising to do so for SEVEN YEARS. And NOPE, John McCain hateds McConnell more than he loves conservative dogma, and that’s saying something.

This man is enough of a loathsome twit that he can push for the biggest tax break for the wealthy in a century, and then feign concern about the federal deficit it created, but blame that shortfall on Medicaid and Social Security. (Just a quick reminder, older voters elected Mitch McConnell, and he’s going to f*** them over if he gets his way).

So after McConnell has been Majority leader now for about three years of abject failure, people continue to call for him to step down from his position on both sides of the aisle. Commentators also have spread the meme that McConnell’s tombstone will read, “He Broke America”, and he and his wife Elaine Chao are getting shouted out of restaurants when they try to dine out in public back in Louisville, he’s so loathed. They’ve been chased out of establishments repeatedly, and that may have something to do with the fact that the would-be power couple have focused on aligning side deals between Kentucky businessmen, and Russian oligarchs.

[worstblogever]

Somehow, the motherf***er always has the gall to act surprised when people snub him.


McConnell actually has come to revel in being an obstructionist prick, to the extent that he enjoys killing whatever legislation that House Democrats send his way now that they have control of the lower chamber, giving himself the moniker “The Grim Reaper”. Yeah. This man has no qualms about killing legislation, or the actual lives that could be saved by passing it. McConnell outrageously even refused to allow witnesses in the impeachment Trial of Donald Trump, effectively making it a “trial” and a mockery of justice.

And then… this complete motherf***er… only about an hour and a half after Supreme Court Justice and ultra-badass Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away… after the stink he made in February of 2016 when Antonin Scalia suddenly passed on about how it’s wrong to hold hearings on a Supreme Court Justice in an election year… when early voting had already begun in parts of the country in this election… this f***ing ghoul announced he would be ready to get a new justice seated to replace her. Again, literally an hour and a half after she died, and when medically, her body was literally not cold yet. Let alone before people had time to mourn her passing, or regard her legacy. And guess what? If something happened to any Supreme Court Justice in late 2023 or early 2024? McConnell will go back to the f***ing mystery rule he broke about presidents not getting Supreme Court nominees in an election year and try to hold up the process again, because he is, quite plainly, a hypocritical bag of s***. We cannot mince words here.

F*** Mitch McConnell with the chair he seated Amy Coney Barrett in. I know his body keeps turning purple and black of late because whatever bargain he made with Mephistopheles is coming due, and if there were any indication he’s devoid of any human empathy, it would probably be evidenced about how he f***ing chuckled when hearing over 200,000 had died of Covid-19 (now around 700,000) when the topic of Covid-19 stimulus came up during his debate with Amy McGrath. Speaking of, after the Coney Barrett hearings, McConnell shoved his whole arm into a barrel of salt, then jammed it into the wound he’s created in this country by moving to adjourn the Senate STILL WITHOUT ALLOWING A VOTE ON A STIMULUS BILL THE HOUSE PASSED IN MAY, and it had to wait until February of 2021 when he was in the minority to get through.

He’s still willing to hold the debt ceiling hostage, even though it would cripple the national, if not the global economy as a partisan stunt, and when he finally gets out-hustled on the votes by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, any sound leaving Schumer’s lips is enough for McConnell to stamp his feet and pretend that he was somehow wronged and NEXT TIME, GADGET, he’ll do irreparable harm to the country rather than let a Democrat “win”. Not for nothing, McConnell also threw in the anti-Semitic line that Schumer “poisoned the well” in debt ceiling negotiations, because of course he’d use a centuries-old bigoted trope like that. What would you expect from a guy who gets tweaked when he thinks about the New York Times’ 1619 Project?

He’s used the filibuster time and again, and was willing to do so in 2021 to block a non-partisan investigation into the Jan. 6th attack, because how dare Democrats expect attempts by seven Republican members of Congress to turn a mob loose on the Capitol to murder Mike Pence and any Democratic Congress members they might find? Of course he’d block that, because it would reduce the odds he’d become Majority Leader after the 2022 elections to zero.

If this century has a “final boss”, it’s probably this ***hole. When Mitch McConnell passes away, someone could get rich selling tickets near his gravesite to people who will want to be first in line to urinate on his grave.

[Tami]

Why Many Police Traffic Stops Turn Deadly

“Open the door now, you are going to get shot!” an officer in Rock Falls, Ill., shouted at Nathaniel Edwards after a car chase.

“Hands out the window now or you will be shot!” yelled a patrolman in Bakersfield, Calif., as Marvin Urbina wrestled with inflated airbags after a pursuit ended in a crash.

“I am going to shoot you — what part of that don’t you understand?” threatened an officer in Little Rock, Ark., adding a profanity, as she tried to pry James Hartsfield from his car.

The police officers who issued those warnings had stopped the motorists for common offenses: swerving across double yellow lines, speeding recklessly, carrying an open beer bottle. None of the men were armed. Yet within moments of pulling them over, officers fatally shot all three.

The deaths are among a series of seemingly avoidable killings across the United States. Over the past five years, a New York Times investigation found, police officers have killed more than 400 drivers or passengers who were not wielding a gun or a knife, or under pursuit for a violent crime — a rate of more than one a week.

Most of the officers did so with impunity. Only five have been convicted of crimes in those killings, according to a review of the publicly reported cases. Yet local governments paid at least $125 million to resolve about 40 wrongful-death lawsuits and other claims. Many stops began with common traffic violations like broken taillights or running a red light; relative to the population, Black drivers were overrepresented among those killed.

The recurrence of such cases and the rarity of convictions both follow from an overstatement, ingrained in court precedents and police culture, of the danger that vehicle stops pose to officers. Claiming a sense of mortal peril — whether genuine in the moment or only asserted later — has often shielded officers from accountability for using deadly force.

“We get into what I would call anticipatory killings,” said Sim Gill, the district attorney for Salt Lake County, Utah. “We can’t give carte blanche to that.”

Dozens of encounters appeared to turn on what criminologists describe as officer-created jeopardy: Officers regularly — and unnecessarily — placed themselves in danger by standing in front of fleeing vehicles or reaching inside car windows, then fired their weapons in what they later said was self-defense. Frequently, officers also appeared to exaggerate the threat.

In many cases, local police officers, state troopers or sheriff’s deputies responded with outsize aggression to disrespect or disobedience — a driver talking back, revving an engine or refusing to get out of a car, what officers sometimes call “contempt of cop.”

Some families of the drivers said that their relatives were not blameless. “I don’t have my head buried in the sand,” said Deborah Lilly, whose 29-year-old son, Tyler Hays, had drugs in his car and tried to run away when he was pulled over for tinted windows last year by a sheriff’s deputy in Hamilton County, Tenn. “I am just saying he did not deserve to get shot in the back.” (Over the next three months, the deputy shot at two other unarmed drivers, wounding one.)

Almost all of the officers involved in these cases declined to comment or could not be reached. Advocates for the police argue that the dangers of stopping cars require readiness to use deadly force. “I have watched enough videos of an officer who is not on edge enough and his dashcam films his own death,” said Larry James, general counsel of the National Fraternal Order of Police. “What are you going to do? Are you going to be indicted, or are you going to be buried?”

Traffic stops are by far the most common police encounters with civilians, and officers have reason to be wary in their approach: They don’t know who is inside a car or whether there are weapons. Ten officers have been killed this year in such interactions, including a Chicago officer who was shot in August by a passenger during a traffic stop for an expired registration.

Of the roughly 280 officers killed on duty since late 2016, about 60 died — mostly by gunfire — at the hands of motorists who had been pulled over, a Times analysis showed. (About 170 other officers died in accidents on the job.) But the assertions about the heightened danger ignore the context: Vehicle stops far outnumber every other kind of police dealings with civilians.

In fact, because the police pull over so many cars and trucks — tens of millions each year — an officer’s chances of being killed at any vehicle stop are less than 1 in 3.6 million, excluding accidents, two studies have shown. At stops for common traffic infractions, the odds are as low as 1 in 6.5 million, according to a 2019 study by Jordan Blair Woods, a law professor at the University of Arkansas.

“The risk is statistically negligible, but nonetheless it is existentially amplified,” said Mr. Gill, the Salt Lake County district attorney and an outspoken proponent of increased police accountability.

[The Cool Thatguy]

It's like people don't understand the concept of eradicating a disease.

"Vaccines can save lives, both mine and others, but I should be making that choice!"

It's like the adult version of not eating your veggies.

Only with endangering public health

[Tami]

Red Flags

The head of intelligence at D.C.’s homeland security office was growing desperate. For days, Donell HarvinDonell Harvin As the head of intelligence at D.C.'s homeland security office, Harvin led a team that spotted warnings that extremists planned to descend on the Capitol and disrupt the electoral count. and his team had spotted increasing signs that supporters of President Donald Trump were planning violence when Congress met to formalize the electoral college vote, but federal law enforcement agencies did not seem to share his sense of urgency. On Saturday, Jan. 2, he picked up the phone and called his counterpart in San Francisco, waking Mike Sena before dawn.

Sena listened with alarm. The Northern California intelligence office he commanded had also been inundated with political threats flagged by social media companies, several involving plans to disrupt the joint session or hurt lawmakers on Jan. 6.

He organized an unusual call for all of the nation’s regional homeland security offices — known as fusion centers — to find out what others were seeing. Sena expected a couple dozen people to get on the line that Monday. But then the number of callers hit 100. Then 200. Then nearly 300. Officials from nearly all 80 regions, from New York to Guam, logged on.

In the 20 years since the country had created fusion centers in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sena couldn’t remember a moment like this. For the first time, from coast to coast, the centers were blinking red. The hour, date and location of concern was the same: 1 p.m., the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6.

Harvin asked his counterparts to share what they were seeing. Within minutes, an avalanche of new tips began streaming in. Self-styled militias and other extremist groups in the Northeast were circulating radio frequencies to use near the Capitol. In the Midwest, men with violent criminal histories were discussing plans to travel to Washington with weapons.

Forty-eight hours before the attack, Harvin began pressing every alarm button he could. He invited the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, military intelligence services and other agencies to see the information in real time as his team collected it. He took another extreme step: He asked the city’s health department to convene a call of D.C.-area hospitals and urged them to prepare for a mass casualty event. Empty your emergency rooms, he said, and stock up your blood banks.

Harvin was one of numerous people inside and outside of government who alerted authorities to the growing likelihood of deadly violence on Jan. 6, according to a Washington Post investigation, which found a cascade of previously undisclosed warnings preceded the attack on the Capitol. Alerts were raised by local officials, FBI informants, social media companies, former national security officials, researchers, lawmakers and tipsters, new documents and firsthand accounts show.

-----------

Bloodshed

President Donald Trump had just returned to the White House from his rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 when he retired to his private dining room just off the Oval Office, flipped on the massive flat-screen television and took in the show. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, thousands of his supporters were wearing his red caps, waving his blue flags and chanting his name.

Live television news coverage showed the horror accelerating minute by minute after 1:10 p.m., when Trump had called on his followers to march on the U.S. Capitol. The pro-Trump rioters toppled security barricades. They bludgeoned police. They scaled granite walls. And then they smashed windows and doors to breach the hallowed building that has stood for more than two centuries as the seat of American democracy.

The Capitol was under siege — and the president, glued to the television, did nothing. For 187 minutes, Trump resisted entreaties to intervene from advisers, allies and his elder daughter, as well as lawmakers under attack. Even as the violence at the Capitol intensified, even after Vice President Mike Pence, his family and hundreds of Congress members and their staffers hid to protect themselves, even after the first two people died and scores of others were assaulted, Trump declined for more than three hours to tell the renegades rioting in his name to stand down and go home.

During the 187 minutes that Trump stood by, harrowing scenes of violence played out in and around the Capitol. Twenty-five minutes into Trump’s silence, a news photographer was dragged down a flight of stairs and thrown over a wall. Fifty-two minutes in, a police officer was kicked in the chest and surrounded by a mob. Within the first hour, two rioters died as a result of cardiac events. Sixty-four minutes in, a rioter paraded a Confederate battle flag through the Capitol. Seventy-three minutes in, another police officer was sprayed in the face with chemicals. Seventy-eight minutes in, yet another police officer was assaulted with a flagpole. Eighty-three minutes in, rioters broke into and began looting the House speaker’s office. Ninety-three minutes in, another news photographer was surrounded, pushed down and robbed of a camera. Ninety-four minutes in, a rioter was shot and killed. One hundred two minutes in, rioters stormed the Senate chamber, stealing papers and posing for photographs around the dais. One hundred sixteen minutes in, a fourth police officer was crushed in a doorway and beaten with his own baton.

All in the first two hours.

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Contagion

On the day after, the right side of Capt. Carneysha MendozaCapt. Carneysha Mendoza A 19-year veteran of the Capitol Police, Mendoza led officers battling rioters in the Rotunda of the Capitol on Jan. 6.’s face burned painfully where pepper spray and other chemicals had seeped into her pores. She could still picture the enraged faces of those who had attacked her and her colleagues under the Capitol dome. Some had worn fatigues like the ones Mendoza donned as an Army soldier stationed at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

That day, the United States had weathered a faceless attack orchestrated covertly from beyond the country’s borders. This time, Mendoza had faced a very different enemy: fellow Americans, many of them wrapped in red, white and blue, inflamed by a sitting president.

Mendoza waited in her office at the headquarters of the U.S. Capitol Police for news she did not want to hear. Capitol Police bike patrol officer Brian D. Sicknick, who had collapsed hours after responding to the riot, lay in critical condition at George Washington University Hospital. The 42-year-old had suffered two strokes, destroying the tissue at the back of his brain.

Just after 9:30 p.m., the call came. Sicknick had gone into cardiac arrest. He was gone. Mendoza rounded up other officers and headed to the hospital.

As they arrived, Sandra Garza, Sicknick’s partner of 11 years, stood alone in a room with his body, saying goodbye. A blanket covered him up to his chest. Garza touched his hand. It was already cold. She moved her fingers up his arm, where it seemed warmer, and let her hand linger.1

Near midnight, when it was time to remove Sicknick’s body, Mendoza and her fellow officers lined a hallway leading to a rear loading dock. They saluted as he rolled past, toward a van that would take him to the medical examiner’s office. Mendoza ordered the convoy first to drive by the Capitol.

Two thousand miles away, in the western suburbs of Phoenix, Clint HickmanClint Hickman As chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 2020, the longtime Republican resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. woke up late on Jan. 7 in a house that was not his own.

After a grueling year as chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Republican had eagerly handed off his gavel at a long-planned ceremony on the morning of Jan. 6, only to arrive home to find two sheriff’s deputies waiting in an unmarked car in his driveway.

Their tone was urgent: You shouldn’t be home tonight, one said.

“It’s not that bad,” Hickman responded. As chairman, he had faced threats and a large protest outside his home after he and the board had certified Joe Biden’s win in the county in late November.

The deputy asked whether he had been listening to the news. There are massive protests in Washington, the deputy said. They’ve broken into the Capitol.

Hickman had to see for himself. Following his wife into the house, he looked at the scenes on the television and blanched. If President Donald Trump’s supporters were willing to attack the Capitol, who knows what they might do on a residential street in Phoenix. He and his wife rounded up their three children and relocated to a relative’s house, where he stayed up late, watching until Congress confirmed Biden’s victory.

Morning had come, and Maricopa County was quiet. Hickman was unsure if the threat had passed. He called his family farm. He wouldn’t be coming in to work today.

[Malvolio]

"Vaccines can save lives, both mine and others, but I should be making that choice!"

It's like the adult version of not eating your veggies.

Only with endangering public health

Thank you. I've been saying this for months. They really are like the kid who acknowledges that vegetables are good for him, but still stubbornly refuses to eat them, even if they're smothered in butter.