First, a personal note: I’ve been binge-watching BoJack Horseman. That show’s incredible. But, I digress.
NZ PM: ‘Stop Subsidies For Drilling’. Quote that makes sense to me: “We cannot take money from emitters paying for their carbon emissions and then give them money back in subsidies.” The emitters are getting about $500 billion annually in governmental subsidies. Gee, wouldn’t it be great if those subsidies went to sustainable energy?
Driving Cars Over Rioters No Longer A Crime In Oklahoma. Well, the bill says ‘unintentionally’ running over rioters. Good luck parsing the difference in court. Some weird shit out there.
Yep, Capitol Police Were Instructed To Target Anti-Trump Protestors On January 6. A tape exists, but is being kept from the public. It’s time to ‘sunset’ the Capitol Police and start over. Hopelessly dysfunctional. Speaking of January 6, look who the Republican Attorneys General Association just hired. The good news? RAGA is in disarray.
The Perils Of Online Dating. Would-be romantic suitor turned in for participating in Jan. 6 insurrection. Not a match.
US Marshals Engaged In Surveillance-By-Drone Of DC Black Lives Matter Protests. Betcha they were mothballed for January 6. Doesn’t appear the Marshal Service had the legal right to do this:
“How did it become part of the mission of U.S. Marshals Service to engage in aerial surveillance during a protest movement?” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU. “It’s hard to know with all the secrecy, but it looks like once again, powerful high-tech tools sold to the public for use against the worst criminals are now being deployed against peaceful protesters and activists.”
Read this article. You’ll learn something.
Captain Obvious: Police Reforms Don’t Work When Police Ignore Them. This takes place all the time in my youngest daughter’s city of Portland. When it comes to out-of-control big city police departments, Portland is right there with the NYPD. There is some good news, though:
Still, Walker says there’s been a “sea change in public attitudes” around police reform. “An awful lot of states passed laws mandating de-escalation and de-escalation training,” Walker says of the immediate backlash to Floyd’s murder. “I think that’s going to become embedded in routine police practices. A lot of them passed a law requiring independent investigations of officer-involved fatal shootings—that’s not going to change. There’s a lot of permanency in that.”
Independent investigations of officer-involved fatal shootings–can’t we at least get that?
Interlude: Rethug Senator Josh Hawley was the only no vote against ‘an anti-hate crimes bill aimed at addressing a surge in attacks on Asian Americans amid the Covid-19 pandemic’. Wow. Every other racist in that Cucus voted yes. Hawley has the ‘Total Haters’ all locked up for 2024.
How Trump, Graham And Usual Rethugs Set Biden Up For Failure On Border. A must-read:
The conversations around the trip were some of the earliest indications that Republicans anticipated the spike in migrants crossing the border — due to seasonal patterns and regional crises — and planned to use it as a political cudgel to try to retake Congress in the midterm elections. The topic turned out to be much more of a vulnerability for Biden than even they expected.
A record increase in the number of unaccompanied children coming to the border, the slow pace to process and house them, and the White House’s muddled message around it all is complicating Biden’s attempt to focus on fighting the coronavirus and reviving the economy. And while many of the political problems he is facing are of his own making, some of it was set in motion — through policy choices and political calculations — by his opponents before he even stepped foot in the Oval Office.
Can We All Agree That Gender-Reveal Parties Is The Dumbest Idea Ever? It’s gender-reveal time. Why not set off an earthquake?
Oh, No! Higher Taxes Could Hurt The Bitcoin Market! Bitcoins are something that I’m too old to even care about. Or understand.
Delaware NAACP Calls For DOJ Investigation Into Lymond Moses Shooting. Guaranteed that nobody in power in Delaware will do anything about it. So, why not? AG Garland has already started an investigation into the Minneapolis Police.
Mountaire Will Remain Unionized. Good. Overcame National ‘Right To Work’ skulduggery. Here’s the (partial) story:
Oscar Cruz Sosa submitted a petition seeking to stop United Food and Commercial Workers Local 27 from representing about 1,000 Selbyville employees early last year. Sosa, who has not been available for interviews, received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
UFCW Local 27 called the case a “right-wing effort to strip union rights away from Mountaire Farms employees” and said that over the past year, “Mountaire Farms pressured workers to decertify their union membership, holding captive audience meetings with anti-union messages during the height of the pandemic.”
National Right to Work called the ruling “appalling” and said the labor board “steamrolled” the rights of workers.
If the UFCW is happy, and the National Right To Work is unhappy, I’m happy. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.
What do you want to talk about?