The Murder of Elijah McClain

The more you read about the details of Elijah McClain's murder, the more unsettling it really is, both in the crime itself, and the larger picture entailed by it. I had no idea that ketamine was being used so routinely to incapacitate civilians detained by law enforcement.

Here's a couple things I do know, just to pick a couple of random, if notorious examples:

1. Back in 2012, when demented shitbag James Holmes shot up a movie theater, slaughtering a dozen people and injuring five dozen more, the Aurora police were able to bring him in without putting him a sleeper hold, or grinding a knee into his neck, or shooting him a half-dozen times in the back, or making him crawl on the fucking ground, crying and mewling like an animal, before dispatching him anyway, just because.
2. When demented racist shitbag Dylann Roof and his bowl haircut slaughtered a bunch of elderly people in a church, the cops took him to fucking Burger King before booking him.

It sure is funny how these people, who have military-grade weapons and armor and training, and are given broad powers of discretion in urgent situations (most importantly, determining whether a situation in even "urgent" in the first place), somehow manage to defuse situations where there's already a pile of bodies. Yet they're pretty good at going full-throttle tough-guy when there's a scared 140-pound kid walking home with a sack of groceries.

Really keeping the mean streets of Aurora safe for humanity, you guys. Be proud of yourselves. Take a photo at your trophy site.

Keep in mind that McClain was actually killed nearly a year ago. The only reason you're finally hearing about it is because of the more recent murders and assaults that have received more notoriety and scrutiny.

So cut to a few days ago, when z group of citizens decided to exercise their supposed right to peacefully assemble and air their grievances, when lo and behold, here come the cops to escalate the situation and gas some people. This has become commonplace, except when the protesters happen to be doughy white neckbeards toting assault rifles and traitor-slaver flags.

One frequent trope invoked by defenders of bad behavior is the "sheepdog" scenario, that the sheepdogs (cops) are there to protect the sheep (god-fearin' law-abidin' citizens) from wolves (criminals), and that the basic premise of protesting killer cops is really the wolf trying to convince the sheep that the sheepdog is not necessary.

Setting aside the obnoxious, paternalistic tone (not to mention exploitative -- sheep are raised and protected as commodities of commercial value, after all) of the analogy, maybe we should focus a bit on the actual mechanics of it. It's not just a dumb analogy, once you think about the specifics and apply them by their own logic. It's a mission statement.

Because here's the thing -- if you're a sheep rancher, and you have many sheep and a few dogs, and one of the dogs keeps attacking sheep, well, you're not going to keep using that particular dog, are you? The dog either comes back to stay at the house, or he goes to a nice farm upstate. You don't keep him out there attacking the flock, and you don't just hand him off to another sheep rancher to attack his flock.

Decades of true-crime and crime-drama narratives -- aka "copaganda" -- have inured many civilians to the systemic abuses that perpetuate, conditioning us to think of these incidents as unfortunate occasions, the unintended consequences of necessary excesses. I get that, I really do. I love well-done crime shows and books, and frequently leave Law & Order marathons going on in the background when I'm working on stuff. It's easy to see how long-term exposure to those narratives conditions viewers to assume that every perp is a potential Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson.

But there's really no excuse for what happened to Elijah McClain, or George Floyd, or Breonna Taylor, or Daniel Shaver, or many many others. The problem is that nothing gets done about the people who commit those crimes, or the systems in which such people proliferate.

Frankly, I'm not terribly bothered by the idea of an actual bad guy getting roughed up a bit, whether from resisting arrest, or getting tuned up in the interrogation room. (Within reason, of course. I am not suggesting that cops should routinely beat the shit out of every dipshit with a gang tat on his neck.) But that's not what's going on here. Over and over we're seeing indisputable video evidence of harmless, unarmed, defenseless, frequently intimidated people getting smacked and stomped and gassed and beaten. There's a clear pattern here.

It's worth considering -- the real protest at the vigil for Elijah McClain was not civilians protesting for the right of a civilian to carry his fuckin' groceries home and not get killed for it. The real protest there was the cops, who are demonstrating for the continued privileges of gassing and beating inconvenient citizens, for the discretion to decide who they get to treat like some IED-planting insurgent in Fallujah, and for the right to avoid any and all modes of accountability when their excesses cost people their lives. They wanted to stir up some shit, just to remind the livestock who's got the whip hand, who's in the herd and who's doing the herding.

A lot of people would probably just settle for identifying the thugs and dirtbags, weeding them out, and making sure they never get paid to carry a weapon or use force on another human being again. But even that is unacceptable to them. That's what the police are protesting. That's why they're escalating peaceful gatherings into riots, shoving elderly cancer patients into sidewalks, macing teenage girls and kicking them in the face when they're already down.

If they were doing those things to MS-13 gangstas caught in the act, you'd probably hear about it, and you might not even have much of a problem with it in general. Strange that it doesn't seem to happen nearly as often.

It may take some time, but eventually Elijah McClain's family is probably going to get some sort of settlement, probably in the six or seven figures. Guess who gets to pay for that? You know what the NYPD's annual budget is just for paying settlements on police brutality and civil rights violations?

There are a lot of livestock ranchers around here, and I know some of them. Dogs don't live out in the pasture with the herd full-time, you know. Dogs are actually only used when it's time to move the herd, to another field or to a trailer to head for the auction yard. That's when "herd" becomes a verb.

You know what most of the sheep and goat ranchers (around here, anyway) leave out in the pasture with the flocks to keep away predators (which, as it happens, are usually loose dogs)? Llamas or emus, sometimes noisier birds such as geese or peacocks. But you would never leave a dog -- or worse yet, multiple dogs -- out in a pasture with sheep. Have you ever seen what large, aggressive dogs do when they congregate in a pack?

To Serve and Protect

Part #675,976 of "Gee, I Wonder Why Black People Don't Trust Cops," the latest entry in an endless series. Look, there's no question about what the problem is here, and the thing is that both sides of the equation know it.

Cops understand it just as well as civilians do:  while there are jerkoffs and authoritarians and outright racists in every profession, law enforcement is the only profession where such people are given a deadly weapon and the right to use it, and then are institutionally coddled when they indulge in illegal and immoral behavior. Just like politicians, cops routinely get away with behavior that would get you fired from stocking shelves at the Wal-Mart.

The thing to keep in mind is that the leadership levels of the law enforcement profession consider all that a feature, not a bug. It's the domestic equivalent of bombing a wedding or shooting a civilian in a combat zone, and shrugging your shoulders and saying well, whaddaya gonna do? as if there is simply nothing that can ever be done about such incidents, so why even bother trying.

And until you find ways to weed out and discourage that mindset, it will never, ever change.

Devil's Triangle

It's probably wishful thinking to assume that most -- or even many -- 'murkins have any real knowledge of the three branches of gubmint, and/or the principle of checks and balances. Maybe a plurality recall some of the broad strokes:  executive, legislative, judicial; these branches are designed to serve as checks on one another; now let us all pray and remember the sacred day that Jebus brought the Holy Constitution down from Mount Bullshit to bestow upon the Founding Fathers, who while infallible were in the end mere mortals.

With the tedious, rote theater of investing Rapebro McGambledrunk with a lifetime sinecure, in reward for his lifetime service as a company butt-boy, it should be clear by now that all three of those sacred branches have pretty much rotted off the proverbial tree. The executive branch is the playpen of a dipshit madman and anyone willing to suck up to him. The legislative branch is comprised of craven idiots who give the executive whatever it wants, provided the tax cuts and knuckle-dragger judges keep coming through. And now the judicial branch, long dying on the vine, is done.

Maine's good Senator, Angus King, sums up the objection to Kavanaugh thoroughly. Forget getting caught up in the endless he-said-she-said of Dr. Ford's accusation -- Kavanaugh's judicial record is problematic, as is his bullshit explanation of his massive credit card debt. And we all saw his temperament. This turd doesn't even deserve the job he already has. But they're going to promote him all the same. And there's not a goddamned thing you can do about it. Vote, sure, and protest and boycott and all that. Don't take any shit from these fucking mutants. But be realistic about the prospects, and manage expectations.

This has been going on for some time, since the Saint Reagan years at least. But Bush v. Gore in 2000 and Citizens United in 2010 served as the one-two punch to ultimately undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and the rest of the political system. Kavanaugh's ascent, with all his spite and vengeance and his career of naked political opportunism, may very well be the end of SCOTUS as a legitimate institution.

So now there are no checks or balances on anything -- these branches now serve either to logroll each others' ideas in the service of the vile billionaires who put all of them in office, or to sit inert while the majority burns. This is untenable; by 2040 it is estimated that seventy percent of the US population will live in just fifteen states -- which of course means that the remaining thirty percent will have a 70-seat supermajority representing them.

On the one hand, we seem to have turned into a nation of drama queens, spurring each other on with ever more furious bouts of performative outrage over this or that hot-button issue of the day. On the other hand, it really doesn't seem like an exaggeration to say that this election is essentially a make-or-break for the United States to continue on as a more or less functional entity, and that even if the Democrats take back the House and the Senate, which is highly unlikely, it will still take a rout in 2020 to start moving things back toward an even keel.

It should be clear by now that things will never get better until the Republicon Party is completely crushed, burned to the ground, the ashes scattered and the earth salted. All of them, including and perhaps especially the supposed "moderates" (Flake, Collins, Sasse, etc.), have cynically placed party over country and principle, every goddamned time. There should be no place for such people in a decent society, but we stopped being a decent society some time ago.

Balance is important in life, and so it should be in politics that you should have functioning, principled liberal and conservative parties in order to balance out certain tendencies in each. Obviously, we no longer have anything like that, there is no functional conservative party in this country anymore, just a virulently reactionary party and a technocratic centrist party trying vainly to keep in the game. But all the scumbag billionaires who own and operate the political system in this country bankroll just one party, the nutbag insane one.

The usual peanut gallery types are going to insist that the Democrats overplayed their hand on Dr. Ford's accusation and testimony. But that was the hand that was dealt -- all the other concerns about Kavanaugh, jurisprudential and financial, were brushed aside like pesky mosquitoes. This really was the only play to slow the process down at all. So what if it mobilized the basetards? Don't worry, there would have been some bullshit issue cranked out about this time to get them worked up regardless. If it wasn't this, it'd be football players again, some stupid shit. You never have to look far or try hard to find something to rile up morons.

And the thing is, Handmaid's Tale rhetoric aside, the Supreme Court is about to be catastrophic for a lot of things -- voting rights, worker's rights, privacy rights, the rights of individuals against corporations or the state. Hell, they'll push the Gamble decision on through, and then the emperor can pardon all his cronies. Won't that be fun? That's the most galling thing of all, out of all of this -- these whiny motherfuckers are never held fucking accountable for anything. Ever. Prove me wrong.

The Democrats need to start understanding the game as it is currently being played, and stop with the empty worship of "decorum" and "process" and "comity" and the like. These people are not your friends or colleagues anymore. They are your enemies. Trust me, you are certainly their enemies, and they are treating you accordingly. They will bury you with your dignity.

If the Democrats aren't doing every little thing to be obstructive, finding every obscure codicil and procedural maneuver available to slow this bullshit train down, then they fail, and the noble experiment in self-governance is done. You can tack on all the ponderous, empty, self-serving flatulence from the putrid likes of Jeff Fucking Flake, they add zero value except to Flake's future career as a scumbag lobbyist. It's fight or die, fuck or walk, shit or get the fuck off the pot and go home for good.

There are days when I hatch a speculative novel in my brain, about the current "cold civil war" going hot, or at least warming up. There is that aforementioned performative outrage, your dipshit Facebook friend who communicates largely in misspelled memes that really should all just read DURRRR FUCK OBUMMER DURRR N HITLERY 2 LOCK HER UP!!!. That shit is annoying but harmless; your FB friend is never going to actually prise his fat ass out of his couch and do anything. Hell, he may even forget to vote, so besotted with the innate greatness of Hair Fuhrer, he'll just assume a 100-0 landslide.

But the people getting arrested at the protests, the people harassing senators in the Capitol building, that shit is real, and those people are frustrated, and it wouldn't take much to see one or a few of them deciding that it's better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees, especially when they've just been flat-out lied to and shit on, their trauma mocked and ridiculed. That's not an endorsement, just an observation that it wouldn't be all that surprising sometimes.

And this is definitely one of those times. People are on edge, not just feeling but knowing, having their faces rubbed in it, that their government doesn't give two shits about them, that the national motto isn't In God We Trust, it's Fuck You, What Are You Gonna Do About It? That it's really just a bunch of elderly white men, and their female enablers, and the obscenely wealthy scumbags who rent them.

Unless you're in the donor/owner class, writing checks for these animals, you don't matter. Your sexual assault story doesn't matter, your family's hardship doesn't matter, your shitty job doesn't matter, the polluted water table that gave your kid terminal cancer doesn't fucking matter to them. At all.

Seriously. Flake's the perfect fucking example of that -- certainly his entire miserable career, but this past week has been an absolutely perfect snapshot of what he is, versus what he thinks he stands for. A week ago today, he nearly broke his arm patting himself on the back for his high-minded insistence that the FBI "investigate" the allegations Dr. Ford made in her testimony. Instantly, the scope and timeframe of the "investigation" was so tightly circumscribed that you wonder why they bothered with it at all, since it fooled absolutely no one, and therefore didn't even provide rhetorical "well, we checked it out" bullshit cover. It was nothing, worse than nothing.

And during that week, the Yale Law School, the American Bar Association, and several other organizations made their opposition to Kavanaugh known. Hell, the FBI didn't even interview Kavanaugh and Ford, the two main interlocutors, not to mention the many other people who came forward and wanted to talk to the FBI as well. The fix was in, and all could see. And Flake ended up exactly where we all knew he'd end up before he pulled his sanctimonious Lucy-with-the-football shit. Fuck him, and fuck Susan Collins and especially fuck Joe Manchin. These people are all vile, every bit as vile as the unrepentant knuckle-draggers like McConnell and Cornyn. I hope that when their respective times come, they all go out flat broke and universally despised.

So we have to vote, and we have to decide whether we want to take what's left of the country back, or let the rubes and the Jebus nazis have it all make the rest of us eat shit for the rest of our lives. It's going to take work, far beyond just the endless churn of the electoral-industrial complex. That's really what it comes down to. I can't even imagine what goes on in the head of someone who's "undecided" or who doesn't care enough to vote. If the shit comes down, I sincerely hope it gets snapped off in their asses worst of all.

Balls to the Wall, Slight Return: An Obvious Theory

There is another highly likely reason they don't want to cut bait on Kavanaugh, and it's basically the same reason he was nominated in the first place:  because he's compromised. They obviously knew it; they had that stupid letter ready the very second Christine Blasey Ford's accusation got out.

Look at all the major players Clownstick has had working with and for him over the years, starting with Roy Cohn back in the day. Think what you know about (for just one example) Rudy Giuliani and his utter lack of character, and now try to imagine (without making yourself sick) all the things you don't know about him.

I don't mean weird sex shit, either; Ghouliani is an arm-twister, born and bred. Five of his uncles were supposedly made guys. He was a popular mayor in NYC well before 9/11, because of the feeling that he got shit done, and could and would (and did) do pretty much anything to make sure things got done.

Ghouliani's just one sordid example. Michael Cohen fancies himself a Ray Donovan-style fixer, and you should have no doubt that if someone were to grab a shovel and dig in the right spots, they'd find worse things than what you know. Kushner is balls-deep in debt to the Saudis and Qataris and the Chinese. Scratch just about any name in Clownstick's inner circle and you will find grime under your fingernail. Obviously, that's no accident. This is the problem with prizing loyalty over ability.

These are the kinds of people Clownstick has always liked to surround himself with, because they're compromised, because no one with any ethics will touch them and so they're grateful, they owe him and will be intensely loyal because there's nowhere else for them to go.

You think anyone wanted Huckabilly Sanders or Kellyanne Conway for anything before they hitched their wagons to that loser, much less now? Come on. Baghdad Barb would be hustling the mail-order swag for her dirtbag old man, and Conway was lamely shilling for Ted Cruz, talking days of shit about Clownstick, before she saw which way the wind was blowing.

So Kavanaugh makes perfect sense in that regard -- if he squeaks through, he'll owe Clownstick more than ever; if not, the next contestant will have to find ways to distance himself from the emperor's fat shadow. Awk-ward!

Balls to the Wall

Brett Kavanaugh attempted-rape accuser Christine Belsey Ford has asked for an FBI investigation into her claims before she testifies. Unfortunately, but all too predictably, this will not go her way -- the bureau will not investigate unless directed to do so, which obviously won't happen, and if Dr. Belsey Ford doesn't show up next Monday, Chuck Grasshole and the rest of the He-Man-Woman-Haters Club will just say, "Hey, we offered."

There is so much bad faith baked into this whole process it's sickening, just layers upon layers of naked cynicism. Should Ford have come forth at some earlier stage in Kavanaugh's ascent up the judicial ladder? Absolutely. Do we perhaps understand why women might be reluctant to come forward with these sorts of accusations? If we don't, we should by now.

For all the hacks doubting her account, one thing should still be clear:  liars don't typically ask the FBI to investigate their claims. Maybe it turns out to be bullshit, but no one knows yet, it deserves to be checked out thoroughly, and ferchrissake, you'd get dumped from an interview with Target or Walmart for this sort of thing.

Which makes sense, since the asshole-in-chief wouldn't last a day at a real job, at a company owned by anyone else. He wouldn't last a month even at the managerial or executive level of one of those companies, much less as floor staff. Those folks actually have to show up and work hard and behave themselves.

Perhaps most frustrating is that it's come to this point in the first place. Kavanaugh should have been disqualified or at postponed already regardless:  he has very likely perjured himself in this and past confirmation hearings; he seems unable to give clear answers regarding his opinions on important privacy rulings such as Roe and Griswold; he has yet to explain how someone with his means spends a quarter-million dollars on baseball tickets, and then pays down the credit card debt with a suspicious quickness.

Then there's the matter of only ten percent of his documentation being released for senatorial review. It is somewhat difficult to fulfill an "advise and consent" role for this lifetime appointment when you're only being given a fragment of the record to review, and over 100k pages are being deliberately withheld from review, on orders of a lawyer who represents Kavanaugh, Don McGahn, and George W. Bush's administration. Small world.

Obviously, this is no longer about Kavanaugh specifically, or even filling a SCOTUS seat generally. (And let's not forget Anthony Kennedy's role in all this. May he rot in hell.) This is about power, and the naked exercise thereof. This is about Republicans scrambling to fill the seat before the midterms, because they know or at least believe strongly that they're going to take a hit in about six weeks. This is about Not Backing Down.

Face it, they obviously have a list of knuckle-draggers if this one doesn't work out. There is no reason not to cut bait on Kavanaugh and move on to the next one, no reason to die on that particular hill. Except they clearly feel that this is their last best chance, that shit's coming down soon, and they now don't have enough time to try to ram through another mossback.

The Democrats do not have to pitch their tent on this single issue, as awful as it is. As noted, there are several salient issues regarding Kavanaugh, any of which should be at least enough to hit the "pause" button and get more information. Hell, there would still be time to confirm him before election day, if it came to that.

Even if this had been a last-minute stalling tactic, so what? The Goopers are trying to push this guy through without a proper review for purely political reasons. Their hypocrisy re Merrick Garland is wide open, and defying you to call them on it. The other valid questions about Kavanaugh have been summarily brushed aside, questions that they would have spent weeks grilling an Obummer-appointed candidate on. And we all know it. Why is only one side allowed to play cutthroat rules? This is the game you wanted, assholes. Well, you got it.

But their real strike date for this is the end of next week. Because some of these shitbirds -- lookin' at you, "Ted" Cruz -- need to get back home and campaign in October, to try and keep their seats.

The fact that they've managed to keep Clownstick from twit-bashing Ford, and that the senators invited her to testify, clearly indicate that they're worried at least a bit. There's just the slightest stutter-step in their rush to ram Kavanaugh into his seat (giggity). This is a weakness that must be exploited as much as possible.

There has been some talk of future Dem court-packing, and that doesn't sound too thrilling either. Given how ludicrously compromised this process has become, it might be better to approach it from another angle, and set limits, albeit long ones -- say twenty to twenty-five years. This removes the "lifetime appointment" gambit that has become a cynical football, and it also reduces the chance of a judge going senile on the bench, having their clerks do all the work. No one should be working past the age of eighty or eighty-five, including Supreme Court judges and members of Congress. And no one needs to hold the same powerful position for more than a generation.

The trick is where to start, to cast some semi-random future date, say 2025 or 2030, after which appointments would be for the aforementioned 20-25 year term. But it's something to consider, and might even alleviate what has become a hopelessly cynical and debauched process.

Orange Is the New Asshole

Maybe it's just me, but I won't be at all surprised when it turns out that "Sheriff" Clarke has a snuff porn collection, or a basement full of buttfucked hitchhikers, or he runs a human trafficking ring. There's just something off about the guy, and it's not just the eighty-seven pieces of flair he festoons himself with, in order to virtue signal to the snowflake magats out there. He's not afraid to make the tough decisions, like letting prisoners die of thirst! You sensitive librul pussies will just never understand!

No, it's the sheer glee with which Clarke approaches his institutionally-backed sadism. Someone shakes his head at him reproachfully on an airplane, Clarke is happy to abuse his power and have the guy taken in and pushed around on landing. Dan Black should probably consider himself lucky Clarke didn't have him body-cavity-searched and put on a terror watch/no-fly list. That's really how petty a human being Clarke is. If he has any sons, I can guarantee you that they hate him, and are just waiting patiently for him to be sucked into a jet engine.

Like the fake billionaire Clarke rhetorically fellates every chance he gets, Clarke is a bully at heart, a thug, a creepy asshole, a scumbag who projects all of his sins and hypocrisies onto people who don't have access to the same levels of brute power. He's exactly the kind of person who should never have been allowed to be in law enforcement in the first place, but too often are welcomed into the system with open arms, to do damage until they finally bust up the wrong person.

They're supposed to have psych batteries these days to keep pigfuckers like Clarke away from dangerous toys, but as we see periodically, the dipshits and assholes manage to sneak in from time to time. It's all about what we're able to do about them, and holding them accountable for their actions.

Perhaps most tragically, if you read the letter that was sent to Clarke, it is entirely untrue that "no evidence" was found to support Dan Black's claim. So either Clarke can't read, or like his role model, he is entirely comfortable with LYING.

And despite Clarke's plaintive whining about the eeeevil librul media "bullying" him with their fake news and such, of course it is Clarke himself who has exhibited a longstanding pattern of bullying and extreme sensitivity. Again, all Black did was confirm that Clarke was who Black thought he was, shake his head quietly, say "no" when Clarke asked him if he had a problem, and then moved on. It was Clarke who chose to escalate a simple five-second encounter, because like all bullies, he's a pussy who can't stand it that many people think he's a fucking asshole.

Yet instead of changing his behavior just a touch, Clarke chose to affirm that perception (again, exactly like his idol). Life is all about choices, and Clarke's choice was to abuse his office to push a taxpayer around, just to show he could. Any time someone with that sort of personality disorder is given a position of responsibility, it is practically a guarantee that sooner or later, someone will get hurt.

Are we starting to see a pattern here, a trend? Like I keep saying, assholes keep misbehaving because everyone else decides it's just not worth it to confront them. That might get you out of a particular situation unscathed, but I promise you, for individuals with this flavor of low-level sociopathy, it only encourages them to continue such behavior. After all, why wouldn't they? There is literally no reason not to.

Let's make a collective resolution for the coming year to not let assholes get away with their bullshit anymore. It's what got us into this mess in the first place. Shut them down, all of them, by whatever means are available.

Flaw and Ordure

A frequent gag on The Simpsons consists of showing what's going on in Homer's brain in a given moment. Generally it's what you would expect - monkeys picking bugs off each others' asses, Homer eating a sandwich, that sort of thing.

It's not unreasonable to assume much the same thing going on between Emperor Snowflake's dried-apricot ears. In disgraced Arizona "sheriff" Joe Arpaio, Snowflake has made a point of pardoning what he clearly sees as a kindred spirit, a fellow birther-conspiracy dirtbag. No surprise there; Snowflake pretty much telegraphed his intentions at his half-attended stemwinder in Phoenix last Tuesday.

The moral cretinism underpinning this move, coming as it did while everyone was focused on Hurricane Harvey getting ready to slam into Galveston, cannot be overstated. Since Arpaio may be one of the few people in American public life who is even more of a vicious asshole than Snowflake, it makes a warped sort of sense.

But strategically, it makes no sense at all. Yes, like everything else he's done, it's a big middle finger to libtards, sure to whip up the proverbial base. But that base is starting to wear out a bit, and is only going to continue to do so as this moron continues stomping his way through everything. Even these drooling meatbags have to start seeing that he's a one-trick pony, and it's really not much of a trick, especially when some of us are making a point of laughing at him -- and them -- rather than recoiling in horror.

Additionally, it draws a wedge between Snowflake and his own party, who are rapidly getting tired of dealing with his erratic, impulsive incompetence. If Fatboy wants to throw his cameltoe behind Chemtrail Kelli Ward in the GOP primary against Jeff Flake, let him. It will be an excellent test of exactly where his level of support really is. But the bottom line is, there is almost no way that pardoning Arpaio just to be a dick turns out to be anything but counterproductive for his own agenda. It's like he did it just because people advised him not to. Fuck you, you can't tell me what to do!

Let's not put too fine a point on it -- Arpaio is not just a racist, he's a sadist. He delights in inflicting pain and torture on his inmates, many of whom, let's recall, are still awaiting trial, and are hence technically not guilty of anything yet. He frequently referred to his tent-city sweat box as a "concentration camp," took perverse pride in cheap punitive stunts such as banning newspapers, eliminating salt and pepper.

Hundreds of people have died in his concentration camp, from heat exhaustion, beatings from guards (surveillance cameras caught an inmate tied to a restraining chair and beaten to death by fourteen guards, because the prison screw's spirit animal is the cowardly but vicious hyena), hanging. Hundreds of sex assault cases, including dozens of children, went uninvestigated because Arpaio waned his deputies focused on harassing beaners. He's cruel just for the sheer joy of inflicting cruelty on those he deems deserving.

He's a bastard through and through; the reason Arpaio's mother died giving birth to him is that she wanted to get away from what she knew from the start would be a shameful legacy. When he does finally kick off, he should be dragged into the desert and left for the vultures.

The good news hidden in this is that the acceptance of a pardon is by definition an admission of guilt for purposes of civil suits. That means that this 85-year-old shitbird may very well spend the rest of his rotten life having damages incurred against his personal assets. Maricopa County has paid out somewhere in the neighborhood of $50 million over the years from his abuses and excesses, which provides a number of precedents for future civil suits on Arpaio personally. I hope they nail his greasy ass to the wall. It's a goddamned shame he won't do any time in his own jail. Let him sit in a 135-degree tent in pink underwear. It won't happen, but watching him die broke and harassed would be some consolation.

The more troublesome aspect of this, of course, is that the pardon is not just a middle finger to libtards, it's a middle finger to the rule of law. It's a clear, deliberate expression of the emperor's contempt for any law or rule or norm that runs counter to what this doddering psychopath wants at a given moment. These are classic moves out of the dictator's playbook -- threatening the media, encouraging fascists by equating them with their opponents (really, people who hate nazis are as bad as nazis?), doing absolutely nothing to reach out to the majority of the population who did not vote for him, consolidating and rallying his base support.

The reason he got this far is because no one in any position of power or responsibility took his insurgency seriously enough to smack it down before it could gather momentum. That has changed; people from the Capitol to the street are slowly but surely starting to mobilize. There are people who want their country back. We'll see if there are enough of them. In the meantime, maybe we all need to mass-mail as many congress-critters as possible that they need to step up and resist this asshole as well.

Young Man Blues

As we enter the hottest summer ever -- because we are now in an age where every year is hotter than the last -- let's take a look at three recent stories involving young men.

So the special elections keep becoming near-misses, the latest one being the $50 million or so spent trying to spring techno-milquetoast Jon Ossoff into the GA-6 seat vacated by corrupt lizard Tom Price, who was appointed to funnel the health-care system more fully into the pockets of the insurance-pharma-HMO axis of evil.

I caught Ossoff the night before the election on one of the interchangeable MSNBC shows, probably Lawrence O'Donnell, but it doesn't really matter. Ossoff came off as pleasant, intelligent, well-versed in policy specifics, but rather bland -- in other words, completely wrong for an electorate that is now basically nothing more than a collection of hamsters in a giant Skinner box, pressing the metal plate for their outrage pellets before getting back on the wheel that passes for their lives.

Excessive "Thrilla in Manila" media hype didn't help; not only did the enormous presence of "outside" money apparently rankle some of the locals' fine sensibilities, but the endless chimp-with-dartboard hot-takes just exhausted everyone.

One of the stupider tropes of the election was that it was a "referendum on [Clownstick]." Well, yes and no, mostly no. Technically, every election is a referendum on pretty much everything. In this case, it could be a referendum on the media, the pollsters, the voters themselves. GA-6 should be proud of the irony that, in order to show their proud disdain for "outsider money" and their desire for "change," they chose a careerist hack who was born in DC, while eschewing someone who was born in the heavily gerrymandered district, and lives within walking district of it while his fiancé finishes up her degree at Emory. So much for their lying excuses.

The polls generally leaned to Ossoff by 2-5% until the last few days when they evened out. Ossoff lost by four percent. It might be time to consider the possibility that:

• Pollsters are not very good at their jobs.
• Respondents are fucking with pollsters.
• Enough people are uninformed, flaky morons who can't make up their wittle minds on the starkest choices until the last second, effectively rendering the polling process into a lucrative circle-jerk.
• We heard over and over again how much money had been spent on this race. So what was it spent on? With that in mind, do media companies and political consultants and polling professionals have perhaps a vested interest in stoking a horse race, even when there might not really be one? Think their rates are a little higher when the polls show Ossoff up by three or neck-and-neck, than down by four or five in a reliably red district?

Polling aside, it became apparent that Ossoff would probably lose when Handel produced a homestretch-weekend video linking Ossoff to the dumb and destructive activities of D-list personality Kathy Griffin and shooter James Hodgkinson. The video itself was not the problem; the shocked, pearl-clutching reaction was the problem. Democrats still do not understand the nature of the game they play. They persist in this "when they go low, we go high" idiocy, which just means more spork-to-a-gunfight mismatches.

Ossoff could have responded -- indeed, should have had in the can, ready to use -- showing Handel's scandalous behavior as a vote-suppressing bastard as Secretary of State in Georgia, as a Planned Parenthood attacking loon when she headed the pink-washing Susan Komen Foundation. The fact that he didn't -- the idea that at this point, anyone thinks they can get in the ring and still stay above the fray -- validated the hushed suspicions that maybe the kid was just a little too wet behind the ears.

Now, is hand-wringing and panic justified, going 0-5 in these special elections? Some say yes, others say no. Choose your hot take, 'murka! Again, the truth is both yes and no, again mostly no. These elections all occurred to replace critters who had been selected to join the boot-licking Clownstick cabinet, and as such, were chosen from very safe districts. In all of them, the Democratic candidate got within reach, closing 20+% gaps in some cases, barely half a year since November. So frustration is rational, but giving up in despair would be stupid. Even for a complete, unrepentant, gaping asshole like Emperor Snowflake, it's a lot to expect the cult to turn on him in just five months. Let him fuck them out their health care and job prospects first.

However, disgruntled Democrats are right to say that a change in leadership is needed. I totally agree with Charles Pierce that kicking Nancy Pelosi to the curb in the heat of the moment would be enormously counterproductive. I don't agree with Pelosi on everything, but she's smart, effective, raises money, kicks ass when needed, gets shit done. But she's 77 years old. Dianne Feinstein turns 84 tomorrow, and is up for re-election next year, and appears to be set to run.

This is both amazing and stupid. It's as if the party has never heard of succession planning, or developing a bench. They should be tapping one of the Castro brothers to go after alien-in-an-itchy-human-suit Rafael Edward Cruz's Senate seat next year. They should be pushing up-and-comers like Seth Moulton in front of every camera possible. In an endless news cycle with nearly infinite content modes, it should not be that difficult to get your younger talent out there to spread the message.

And what is that message, exactly? I said this a full year ago, and I'll say it again -- forget the "inclusive" SJW jabber, and focus on economic justice. In the end, it wasn't latent racism that caused all those rust-belt counties that voted for the blah guy twice to flip to Clownstick. It was the perception -- right or wrong, this is the alternate reality we all inhabit now -- that "Democrats" and "liberals" cared more about transgender bathroom rights than they cared about the washed-up, boarded-up, opioid-addicted wastelands infesting the hinterlands.

I think there may have been some justification to that perception. In his farewell press conference, Obama reflected on how a black guy with a foreign-sounding name could win in a place like Iowa, and he attributed it to going to all 99 counties, going to the pig-fucking competitions and eating deep-fried candy bars -- and most importantly, talking and listening to the people directly. You didn't really see that with most of the candidates.

Get some true economic populists with balls who will actually stand up to this bully, not with a scripted litany of fifty-cent words, but with the same "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" cadences he uses on everyone else. Work on some nicknames for him and make them stick. Have I ever mentioned before that most of branding and marketing comes down to repetition?

Go find a few of the blue-collar contractors Clownstick fucked over as part of his "business" model, put together quick two-minute videos of smash-cut money-quote excerpts from them, push it to the MSNBC night crew with a "deadbeat Asshole" type of nickname, and make a real concerted push. Why are these people so inept at crafting simple, effective messages? Because they still seriously think that better ideas win by virtue of their betterness. How's that working out? Stop overthinking this shit and take the piss out of this moron and his moron cult already. It should not be this difficult to brand a lifelong con-artist as such. Better messages, messengers, and channels help.

The GA-6 outcome may be the final straw in causing something of a rift in the Democratic Party. Sorry, but I think it would be a good thing for them. They need to re-focus on who they are just as much as who they are not, and they need to develop new blood much more effectively. It doesn't need to happen overnight; done correctly and patiently, they can easily reclaim enough seats in the midterms to hobble this inept scumbag crook and his thieving, grasping family, and then depose him in 2020. But they need to start now.

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The sad tale of Otto Warmbier, the Midwestern kid with the on-the-nose surname, came to an abrupt close when North Korea essentially pulled the classic frightened-frat-boy maneuver -- putting the alcohol-poisoned pledge in a shopping cart and leaving him at the front door of the emergency room.

Plenty of people have weighed in with their "what did you expect" bumptions, and indeed, it would be difficult to come up with more inadvisable activities than traveling to North Korea. Maybe reporting on a Mexican drug cartel, or climbing Mount Everest in your jean shorts, those would be slightly worse ideas. But the kid was twenty-one years old, and I don't know about you, but when I was twenty-one, "dumb and impulsive" pretty much covered it. Between drugs, booze, motorcycles, and women, there are days where I wonder how I made it to thirty. Part of getting old is being lucky to survive a wild youth long enough to settle down.

It's also easy to lob armchair-quarterback critiques of the Obama administration's inaction in getting Warmbier returned, especially after being sentenced to fifteen years in a labor camp, in a trial that looked like a parody. But most negotiations with NK take place behind the scenes, out of necessity. And everything in dealing with this cult-like regime expends political capital, which is scarcer than Clownstick brain cells when it comes to getting leverage on the Norks. You can't shoot your wad on one person -- for one thing, even if it works, it makes every other person from your country that travels there an enhanced target.

Every traditional diplomatic element is stood on its head when it comes to working with the Kim crime family. There is no "rational actor" strategic thinking that will help, because Kim's only rationale is self-preservation, and he clearly doesn't care at all what happens to his people. And they have nukes and rough terrain and massive underground bunkers. Kim and his inner circle would be perfectly happy to hide for months -- after nuking Seoul and Tokyo -- while we eliminate the defenders and civilians. They really do not give a shit, and that's enormously tough to strategize.

No administration of any party can be reasonably expected to go too far to "rescue" someone when it may not be possible logistically in the first place. And who knows why they chose to send Warmbier home when they did? Probably either the Chinese leaned on them, or they just got tired of trying to keep a kid in a coma alive.

Whatever the case, what should we do about it? People are pissed about what NK did to Otto Warmbier, and they damn well should be. But again, what do you propose to do about it? Start a war? Increase sanctions and starve them out? Again, these things have no leverage, and only hurt people who had nothing to do with any of this. Anyone who says it's simple is nuts.

The old cliché about youth being wasted on the young has some merit to it, but the corollary to that is that the wisdom that is supposed to be conferred with age frequently gets wasted as well. Part of being "wise" is being able to recall what we were like when we were younger, and allowing the "unwise" to have the time and experience we were granted to learn the ropes.

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Philando Castile is the latest example of (much to whitey's ongoing chagrin and confusion) Why Black People Are Pissed. The release of the dash cam footage is harrowing and disgusting. Jeronimo Yanez got away with murder, shooting Castile like a fish in a barrel, narrowly missing Castile's four-year-old daughter.

To hear Yanez screaming unintelligibly even after turning Castile into Swiss cheese is to hear the entire problem -- Yanez should never have been a cop or allowed to carry a gun in the first place. Here's a pro-tip for all you wannabe, gonnabe, and actual cops -- if this is how you act when someone is fully cooperating with you, you are in the wrong fucking line of work. Turn in your badge and go be a plumber or something, before you get someone killed. Sorry it's a dangerous job, but I refuse to concede my basic rights as a citizen to make it easier to push the peons around, and I don't expect anyone else to give up their rights.

The problem here is training, how much and what type. In many states, you need more hours of training to become a hairdresser than to become a cop. In Yanez' case, maybe taking two seconds to think about calling a police training Bulletproof Warrior would clarify the situation. That is not what you call anything that is designed to facilitate community relations, let's say. To say that it presumes a stance and a relationship with the people you're supposed to protect and serve as unnecessarily antagonistic is to put it very mildly.

And now a little girl gets to grow up having watched her father get murdered by a cop for no goddamned reason, while that inept-at-best police officer walked away scot free. They didn't even have the balls to fire his incompetent ass; Yanez was simply asked to voluntarily resign, which means he won't get anything on his jacket. He can land somewhere else. I hear Texas is pretty good about keeping Those People in their place. But this is someone who should never have a role in law enforcement again, ever. The video proves he was unqualified in the first place.

While the focus has been on young black men being killed unnecessarily by cops, that doesn't really get to the heart of the matter. Yes, there is a racist (or racial profiling) component to it, but what this is really about is perspective, training, and accountability. If you are taking some kid and giving him about 800 hours of training, outfitting him with military gear, drumming it into his head that he's in some sort of American Fallujah where lethal combat awaits him around every corner, you can't be too shocked when he goes off on some hapless civilian trying to produce his wallet like a good peon.

The accountability is the main thing, and it has to be something that all of us, not just aggrieved blacks, need to stand up and be counted for. Philando Castile had a permit to carry his gun and we have audio and video footage that he was completely cooperative and docile during the stop, so where's the NRA on this, where are all the 2nd Amendment rights obsessives? Are black people allowed to carry guns, does the 2nd Amendment apply to them as well? These are not rhetorical questions; many of us are old enough to recall when Saint Reagan, as governor of California, instituted gun control measures precisely because of that very situation, because he and his old-cracker base were terrified that the Black Panthers were coming to exact retribution from them.

Turning fifty last month was a reminder of the obvious fact that we all view the world differently as we age, not just politically, but when you're young, the world seems full of possibilities, and its dangers seem eminently conquerable. You are too young and full of yourself to understand how deeply entrenched the system and its vile minions are against you. You might travel to countries where there are no laws or facts, or you might forget at the worst moment that some cops really are out to get you. Stay frosty, kids.

Big Love

It's always a good day when one of these FLDS pervs gets busted. This one is particularly funny -- Lyle Jeffs had been on the run from the feds for a year, and was found living in his truck outside of Yankton, South Dakota. I mean, if you're gonna go down, go down swingin', chief.

Though he's getting popped for welfare fraud, Lyle Jeffs is part of a multi-generational, multi-family, multi-community cult that rapes girls, drives out boys, ruins towns, steals money from taxpayers, produces scads of inbred children and destructive intra-family relationships, and serves as a shameful vestige of a religion that, whatever its faults, has at least made some real effort to modernize itself a great deal in a relatively short period of time.

It would be nice to think that this shuts down these goofballs, once and for all, but like mushrooms and cockroaches, they pop up everywhere and are tremendously difficult to completely eradicate.

It's Beginning to Smell a Lot Like Fitzmas

As most people knew ahead of time, by now you've seen that there wasn't a whole lot to the Comey hearing today, other than the continued pattern of certain senators making fools out of themselves, selling out their country for a buffoon. But that may not be the catalyzing incident necessary to finish off these freaks. (Then again, Seth Abramson seems to believe that the gun isn't just smoking, but is white hot.)

That doesn't mean nothing will come of what transpired today -- in fact, if Bob Mueller is on this as much as he is reliably rumored to be, it could eventually be the beginning of the end of this fucktarded regime and its unconscionable figurehead. Comey definitely gave Mueller a lot to work with, but it will be a patient build, plank by plank. It will not sit well with the ADHD cable news assholes and their audiences, but it's the way it needs to happen for it to sink in to the thus-far unflappable base.

This is at heart a clash of two defining traits:  Comey's insufferable rectitude and Clownstick's Nixonian belief that by definition, the executive cannot do anything illegal.  Either Comey or Clownstick is lying, and that's all there is to it.

Even after all's said and done, it's still entirely possible that nothing significant happens. The Republican majority in both houses will drag their collective feet until the bitter end. They are too tied up with this asshole now. They will not turn on him until he's bad for business, until his antics and stupidity threaten their electoral future.

That may happen as soon as June 20th, if Jon Ossoff manages to defeat lifelong Gooper hack Karen Handel in Georgia's Sixth Congressional District, former nest of blowjob fan Newt Gingrich and most recently of inside trader Tom Price. If the Democratic Party have any brains left in their organization -- a highly debatable proposition at best -- they will dump as much money and name endorsements into that effort as they can muster.

They should be organizing a benefit concert and begging Barry O to emcee it. They should be shaking down Lloyd Blankfein and Mike Bloomberg for cash money. This is a chance not only to gain momentum to turn the electoral tide, but to strike genuine fear into the hearts of assholes.

In the meantime, Clownstick's poll ratings continue to swirl the drain, and he is incapable of doing anything to reverse that trend. The best he can hope for already happened -- make an international trip, minimize the fuck-ups, and hope for approval ratings to level off. It temporarily stopped the bleeding, but the holiday recess is over and the alligators are back on his fat ass.

That and it's being forecast to be a relatively heavy hurricane season, and neither FEMA nor NOAA have directors. I hope I'm wrong, but I predicted months ago, that it would be a black-swan event -- particularly a natural disaster -- that would provide one of the final straws to this sad joke of an administration.

Or maybe he steps on his dick in an area where we have thousands of troops deployed and have a yuge arms deal in the works. It should be tattooed on the foreheads of everyone who supported Clownstick from the outset, and everyone who came around once it became politically convenient:  This guy fucks up everything he touches. It might as well be the fourth law of thermodynamics, as sure as an axiom of universal physical law as one can imagine.

To Protect and Serve

You may recall a recent post regarding a horrible decision regarding the Lake County, Florida Sheriff's Office shooting of a civilian, Andrew Scott, which was handed down by the 11th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Scott was shot because the LCSO fucked up, and they have a bizarre policy of not identifying themselves as law enforcement when they bang on civilians' front doors in the middle of the night.

Well, the LCSO just doubled down on its commitment to serving the community:



One assumes that they are about to set fire to a hostage in a cage. This is what you get when you let thugs with badges do whatever the fuck they want, and people are fine with sacrificing their liberty for some false reassurance of safety. Nothing good can come of this.

Shot in the Dark

Let's just say it's not unreasonable to be just cynical enough to sincerely believe that at least part of this verdict and sentence is based on a white cop shooting a black child in Loozy-anna. As with most police shootings, though, race is more of a distraction than a useful observable component of an avoidable situation.

Officer Stafford and his partner fired a total of eighteen shots into the SUV in question; Stafford fired fourteen of those himself. The mitigating factor is that all of those shots, captured on video, were fired after the SUV had given up trying to flee, and the driver (father of the child) held both hands out the window, indicating surrender.

Based on the evidence and testimony, it sounds like the correct decision was made, but again, it's not difficult to believe that it wouldn't have even gotten this far if the cops had been white, and especially if the victim(s) had been black.

Forget all that for the moment. Compare and contrast the above case with this recent decision regarding another police shooting. If this doesn't infuriate and concern you, you aren't paying attention:

Andrew Scott and his girlfriend were playing video games in their Florida apartment late at night when they heard a loud banging at the front door. Scott, who was understandably disturbed, retrieved the handgun that he lawfully owned, then opened the door with the gun pointed safely down. Outside, he saw a shadowy figure holding a pistol. He began to retreat inside and close the door when the figure fired six shots without warning, three of which hit Scott, killing him. Scott hadn’t fired a single bullet or even lifted his firearm.

The figure outside was Deputy Richard Sylvester. He failed to identify himself as a law enforcement officer at any point. He had no warrant and no reason to suspect that Scott or his girlfriend had committed a crime. He did not attempt to engage with Scott at all after he opened the door; he simply shot him dead. And on Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit held that Scott’s parents and girlfriend cannot sue Sylvester because the officer’s conduct was not “clearly” illegal.

This is more than simply "bad" or "sad" or "wrong." This decision is monstrous, and extraordinarily dangerous. The practical ramifications of this ruling make it almost literally impossible for a person to defend themselves in their own home.

A few more details about the case in question, since the Slate article focuses on the legal consequences:

• It wasn't just "late at night," it was 1:30 AM.
• Scott was completely innocent; the Lake County police had fucked up and gone to the wrong apartment, pursuing a suspect who had fled on a motorcycle.
• At no point did Richard Sylvester identify himself as law enforcement; in fact, it was the policy of the Lake County Sheriff's Department to not identify themselves, which seems bizarre, stupid, reckless, unnecessarily dangerous for cops and civilians alike. But, y'know, Florida.

So, to recap:  Andrew Scott is sitting at home, minding his own business, when someone starts banging on his door at one-thirty in the morning, without identifying themselves. Scott legally keeps a gun for self-defense, and reasonably assumes that something is wrong. He opens the door -- his door, to his domicile -- and sees some asshole lurking in the shadows, still not identifying himself as A FUCKING COP. Scott goes to close the door, still only holding his gun at his side, not having lifted it or pointed it at anyone, and is blown away in a hail of bullets.

Richard Sylvester and the Lake County Sheriff's Department, through poor policy and sheer incompetence, murdered Andrew Scott, pure and simple. The citizens of Lake County are less safe by having these uniformed mutants on the street. Sylvester should not be in the law enforcement profession, based on lack of qualification, and if he had any sense of honor, he would end himself for what he did to an innocent man in his own fucking house. I hope it haunts him to his final breath, never giving him a moment of peace.

That and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee, but it won't bring any justice for the murder of Andrew Scott, or the ongoing evisceration of our most basic rights to be safe in our homes -- not only from criminals, but from idiot fuck-up cops who think they have more rights than the people they're supposed to be protecting and serving. Maybe they do have more rights; if that's the case, then simply say so out loud, and we can all have that collective discussion.

But at the very least, maybe someone from the "justice" system or the sheriff's department should explain to the kids in the cheap seats what exactly Andrew Scott should have done, when a stranger beats the shit out his door in the middle of the night and refuses to identify themselves. Seriously, what the hell are you supposed to do in such circumstances? Scott literally would have been better off by shooting Sylvester right away, and trying his luck by claiming that he saw a gun and Sylvester didn't identify himself. He'd still probably have been murdered, though.

Maybe Scott should have kept a video camera handy to record the proceedings, but even then he probably would have faced prison time and had to defend himself over that. They have rigged the system in their favor, everywhere you turn. The rule is maximum accountability for the peons, no accountability at all if you carry a badge. Or not; it's surprising some criminal or gang hasn't made some sort of enterprise out of shaking down unsuspecting mooks under feigned authority.

Again, this guy was at home, minding his own business, when these inept cops showed up and gunned him down for no goddamned reason at all. It's bad enough that they did it in the first place; it should be completely unacceptable that they get away with it.

This is precisely how police states come into existence, when citizens stop questioning the insane, awful events occurring right in front of their noses, under the color of authority. They try to tell themselves that the person who got shot had it coming for whatever reason, even as they quietly keep the truth to themselves, thankful only that it wasn't their turn.

Yet.

Our Liberal Media

So glad the intrepid press monkeys didn't get caught up in this Real Housewives of Wrestlemania showboating bullshit. The Republicons flat-out stole this SCOTUS selection, and are going to use it on a 49-year-old junior Scalia, ensuring his presence for the next three decades or so. But hey, let's focus on how professional the presentation was.

And the Dummycrats will most likely put on a half-assed song and dance before narrowly letting Gorsuch sail through without a filibuster, in the vain hope of "keeping their powder dry" or some such. They think if they give a little now, they'll have more to gain at some mythical point down the road. They do not understand that even without Clownstick, they are negotiating with people who have the scruples of a serial child killer. Republicans said "fuck you" to everything and anything Obama did for six years, and paid no political price for it at all. The Democrats are more concerned with being collegial and professional and coloring in the lines. We'll see what that gets them.

In the meantime, really looking forward to the next exciting episode of 'murka's Next Fuckface. Should be a fun season!

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten

Only in the south could a cop get caught on video shooting an unarmed, fleeing suspect -- on a traffic stop, mind you -- in the back, plant a weapon on the corpse, and still be given the benefit of the doubt. It's not like anyone coulda predicted that or anything.

Also, too, it is now okay to execute someone in the middle of the street in a fit of road rage, as long as the killer is white and the victim is black. Any questions?

Mommie Dearest

Even dirtbag serial killers have mothers that love them, one supposes, but the mother of sex-dungeon freak Todd Kohlhepp takes it to another level. Maybe she has to tell the rest of the world that her son is no monster, just so she can live with knowing that he is, and that she raised him. If we can't just have done with this piece of shit and shove him into a wood chipper, maybe we can just put him under permanent house arrest at her house, see how that works out.

Policy

A motorist who happened to be white and deaf was killed last week in North Carolina, by a cop during what should have been a traffic stop.

Unfortunately, this is what it's going to take to make America look a little more closely at the policies that govern the rules of engagement for law enforcement personnel. Does that sound a bit militaristic? Good, because our local law enforcement departments have become de facto paramilitary organizations, like what you used to read about in banana republics, back when media entities had foreign offices.

Race is more often than not a factor in these incidents, but if we really want to get to the bottom of why harmless, unarmed people are being routinely killed by cops for no good reason, we have to address the training policy of using deadly force as a first resort, when it used to be a last resort.

Something to Consider

I know we're all against the death penalty now, some of us out of principle, and some (like myself) because in practice it is an enormously flawed and corrupt process, but the fact is that Dylann Stormfront Roof is 22 years old, and the rest of his life, even if he lives to be eighty, will be just like this, unless he finds someone to "ride" with for protection:

Dylann Roof was attacked after he was let out of his cell to take a shower at around 7:45 a.m. Thursday, Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon said at a news conference.

As Roof left his cell, inmate Dwayne Stafford “ran down the stairs and was able to get to Roof, who was at or near the shower area,” the sheriff said.

Stafford, who is black, punched Roof “a number of times and assaulted him quickly,” Cannon said.

Don't worry, the guards can be trusted to keep young master Roof in (to use the colloquial) PC:

Officials are investigating how Stafford managed to get through a steel cell door with a narrow vertical window and down the stairs to reach Roof.

The two detention officers assigned to the unit are being interviewed and officials are also looking into the possibility the electronic door mechanism malfunctioned.

The area of the jail is for federal and high-security prisoners. It has two tiers of cells and the shower Roof was using was in the center on the ground floor. Cell doors can only be opened by officers sitting at a control console.

Yeah, that is indeed a mystery. Sure hope they get to the bottom of that. So to speak. Start with the equipment malfunction. Lose any videotape of the event that might exist. One thing we definitely know for sure is that prison guards are absolutely incorruptible.

Don't get me wrong, I have zero sympathy for Roof and whatever demented cause that drove him to his fateful moment, although Roof clearly came from let's say suboptimal circumstances. But the fact of the matter is that life without parole also presents a complex set of dangers and challenges: people who are literally disincentivized from attacking other inmates, guards, etc.

Supposedly the death penalty will be sought against Roof, and maybe it'll happen, or maybe it will just enable them to keep him in a more supervised environment for the next half-century. Either way, chances are Roof will spend the rest of his life not contemplating his sins, but deciding whether to become prey or predator. That's all the carceral state is anymore.

Violent Tendencies

Yes, the sooner these silly negroes understand that everyone really is treated equally, and that their "concerns" are simply the manufactured anxieties of the faggot librul media, the better of we'll all be.

Another Day In Paradise

Here we go again, this time in Baton Rouge. Three cops dead, three more injured. The conventional clickbait hot-take would be to ask ponderously, are we headed toward a civil war?, with the combatants and sides rather poorly defined.

The smart take might be to seriously consider the possibility that we are already in one, not formally declared, but underway nonetheless. One could loosely describe this ongoing series of skirmishes as between law enforcement and blacks, but that would be unfair to both of those overly generic group designations.

Yet it's impossible to ignore any longer the specter of lying and obfuscation on the part of a few (by no means all or most, he hastily disclaimed) law enforcement officers. When cops routinely treat "certain communities" like third-class citizens, when they act like an occupying force trying to pacify Fallujah, the people who live in those communities day after miserable day and put up with this dehumanizing bullshit eventually snap.

And the Home of Depraved, Part Three: Season's Bleedings

Here's a feel-good holiday fable involving a gun being used at a Waco Wal-Mart. Talk about coals to Newcastle.

A woman who fired a pistol as a suspect fled in a purse-snatching incident Friday outside a Wal-Mart store in Bellmead appeared at the police station late Friday afternoon to identify herself.

No charges have been filed against her, Bellmead police said Saturday.

Police plan to sit down with the woman for a more in-depth interview in the upcoming week, Bellmead police Detective Kory Martin said.

He said it appears, at least initially, that the woman fired into the air, not at the man.

Even for Texas, this is fucking nuts. Is this what we've fallen to, gunning down petty thieves in the street? Worse yet, she's just goddamned lucky she didn't hit one of the pursuers, an innocent bystander, a kid sitting in a car across the street, etc. This is a busy area in a downtown commercial district. Anything could have happened.

This is a textbook case of "the only thing stopping a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" thinking -- except, of course, this bad guy had no weapon at all, and while he's obviously a failed turd of a human being if he's purse-snatching little old ladies a couple days before Thanksgiving, again we do not have the death penalty for such crimes. [Ed. -- Yet.]

So what you have is some dingbat trying to be the hero of whatever revenge-porn narrative is on a loop in her head, a fever-dream mishmash of Making A Difference and Stopping A Criminal. The worst part of it is that she probably has no clue that life turns on a dime, an inch here or there, a second earlier or later, and that it is just the purest of luck that she didn't hurt or kill someone with erh incredible incompetence and negligence. This is not Starsky & Hutch, you stupid twat, this is real life, and people get killed when untrained, unqualified morons go around thinking they're Yosemite Sam or some shit.

That, not to mention most of the comments in the article, is bad enough. There's an interesting cherry on this particular cake:

The man accused of attempting to steal a purse from a shopping cart, Andre Dawson, 27, remained in jail with a $10,000 bond late Saturday under a misdemeanor charge of theft of property and a felony charge of credit or debit card abuse. Martin said if the purse contained a credit or debit card, it would have triggered the credit card charge.

Now that's just a perfect example of how the law has been perverted to become more absurdly cruel, to the point where people are up for charges on crimes they very clearly did not commit. Dawson didn't get away with the purse, so not only did he not have a chance to use the debit and credit cards, he never even found out such things were in the purse.

Again, it's hard to feel sorry for someone who picks on octogenarians, but such measures are clearly in place for no other reason than to give a hardliner judge an additional mechanism to completely shit-hammer a perp he just doesn't like. And if Dawson had physically harmed somebody, anybody -- the old lady, a bystander, a child, a stray cat -- it would make more sense. But he's a fucking dumbass who got caught in the commission of a particularly stupid crime, though not especially lurid in the overall scheme of things.

In the end, it won't matter -- this is Texas, after all, so Dawson will get tagged with a felony charge for a crime he had no chance to commit, while the shoot-'em-up dunce who will never know how close she might have come to killing someone over a fucking purse won't get charged with anything at all. This should be unacceptable, but hell, she'll probably still pack heat to the damned Wal-Mart, even though by all accounts she does not have a license to carry a concealed handgun.

It's no small indicator of what this nation has sunk to, when a nation of people whose great-grandparents came here fleeing various forms of violence and persecution, are much more concerned about Syrian orphans fleeing a government that drops barrel bombs on their houses, than the day-to-day dangers lurking in plain sight. I would be much more concerned about the fat fuck trying to make some bizarre "point" by taking his AR-15 to Target to buy Oreos, or the Helpy Helperton suburban dipshit indiscriminately shooting up a crowded parking lot over a relatively minor property crime, than some "durka durka Mohammed jihad" shenanigans. But try telling that to the yahoos in the comments section, who inexplicably feel safer knowing that there are armed idiots in the supermarkets just itching for an excuse.