Senator Coons was on one of the Sunday Yack shows — ABC This Week — this morning:
Note how this goes — this is meant to be a piece on bipartisanship between Rubio and Coons. Rubio doesn’t mind slamming the President for not being involved with the Supercommittee and Coons is working on polite even-handedness.
Yawn.
We’ve all seen (I hope) the video of the UC Davis Police pepper-spraying the OWS protesters who were sitting, arms-locked and — most importantly — peacefully, when the police decided that mistreating students was the most important thing they could do that day. (This video is 8+ minutes long and is an amazing document of the public reaction to this incident as well of the police retreating in full embarassment.)
There has been alot of commentary about this and calls for accountability — especially from the police LT. doing the pepper-spraying and from UC Davis Chancellor Katehi. The Chancellor gave a press conference (with students outside waiting to speak to her) and then would not leave the room, apparently trying to give the impression that she was being held there by the kids. The students – led by one of them who had been hurt by the pepper spray — created a wide path for her to walk from the building and sat down. When Katehi finally emerged from the building, this is what she was greeted with:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8775ZmNGFY8[/youtube]
An honest-to-goodness public shaming. Amazing. Powerful. Peaceful. This is the kind of thing that ought to genuinely plague people with a conscience.
Some of the commentary on this worth reading:
CBS News provides a long story that gives law enforcement alot of space to show how quickly and thoroughly they can defend any use of force. Some of this was really stomach-turning, especially when their expert points out the innocuous gestures that he thinks that police used to determine that more force was needed against the sitting students. As someone said recently, if you build a police state, they will use it against you.
James Fallows over at The Atlantic provides some great observations on the power of these images of police if riot gear (riot gear?) spraying these young people evokes some of the moral outrage of images of young black people being manhandled by police for being in places white people restricted them from. Make sure you go over and read that in its entirety. He links to some of his colleagues at The Atlantic who have been thinking about what this incident might mean in the country rethinking the permission it gives to police for violent and brutal responses to its citizens. Especially those who aren’t being violent and brutal in the first place.
The pepper-spraying policemen have been placed on leave.
So how is this being covered in the broadcast media? So far there hasn’t been much on the radio. Tell us what you think about this.
I’ll admit that it has been a slow start for “Democrats for Kovach.” In part because the spelling of Kovachs’ name was an unfathomable mystery for so many, and in part because people don’t fully understand the goals of the “Democrats for Kovach” movement. Let me clear that confusion up with the first draft of the “Democrats for Kovach” manifesto. This is an open source manifesto, so please take part in honing the “Democrats for Kovach” manifesto in the Comments section.
Democrats for Kovach Manifesto
1) “Democrats for Kovach” do not want to elect Tim Kovach or any other Republican to public office. Kovach is a wingnut cyrpto-teabag sympathizer and worst of all, a Republican. Recent history is replete with horror stories of the downstream catastrophes that attend electing Republicans. Republican “trickle down” economics which depend on cutting taxes on our wealthiest citizens and corporations in the hope that the money will be used to “create jobs” has created the dire economic situation that we are in today. Calls to continue Republican economics through “austerity” are nothing more than advocating for a middle class in continuous decline and MORE economic failure.
2) “Democrats for Kovach” do not want to elect Democrats to office who promote a destructive Republican agenda under the ruse of being “bipartisan” (I’m looking at you John Carney). Delaware is a blue state and deserves to be represented in Congress by a Democrat who can be counted on to uphold basic Democratic Party principles by being vocally in favor of a social safety net, and a strong economy built on progressive taxation. It is our firm belief that any incumbent Demcorat running as an unapologetic Democrat can easily win re-election in Delaware given built in registration advantages and the continuing popularity of Democratic policies among Delaware voters.
3) Knowing that TIM KOVACH has no chance in hell of beating John Carney, “Democrats for Kovach” will use the upcoming election for the House of representatives, to continually remind the candidates that Delaware is a Democratic state which deserves democratic representation in Congress.
That’s the basics. Nobody is primarying Carney, so unless he changes his tune, the only reasonable course of action is to thrown away a protest vote on the pitiful candidacy of Tom Kovach.
