How Cops Justify Killing Those Stopped For Traffic Offenses: ‘The Car Was The Weapon’:
In a New York Times investigation of car stops that left more than 400 similarly unarmed people dead over the last five years, those words were routinely used to explain why police officers had fired at drivers.
In about 250 of the 400 seemingly avoidable deaths, The Times found that police officers had fired into vehicles that they later claimed posed such a threat. Relative to the population, Black motorists were overrepresented among those killed.
Like Mr. Mifflin, the other drivers had been pursued for nonviolent offenses, many of them minor. A seatbelt ticket in Phenix City that would have cost $41. A cracked taillight in Georgia, a broken headlight in Colorado, an expired registration tag in Texas. Most motorists were killed while attempting to flee.
I can only reach one conclusion: Many cops just like killing people, especially if they are Black. Read the whole story. Let me know if you reach a different conclusion.
Trump-Dominated Court Halts Biden Vaccine Mandate. Court shopping is so much easier for Rethugs now that Trump/McConnell have packed so many of them.
‘The Squad’ Played It Exactly Right. It’s Rethugs who are eating their own over supporting the infrastructure bill. A little edjimication is a good thing:
As it turns out, their refusal to vote for the “socialist” (BiF) Bill on principle has apparently driven the remainder of the GOP caucus over the edge with apoplexy. Because by withholding their votes in a display of unison, they helped in luring 13 GOP House Reps to vote for the Biden bill, rescuing the beleaguered Democratic President from floundering in the eyes of the American public.
In their rush to condemn the now-expanded “squad” for its apparent apostasy in failing to support the bipartisan bill, many Democrats apparently overlooked a subtle but unmistakable consequence, that the votes were obvious trade-offs which House Speaker Pelosi had pocketed in full knowledge that enough Republicans who actually supported its provisions could end up supporting the bill, risking fallout to themselves and their own party in the process.
The final vote also proved an embarrassment to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had confidently predicted last week that he expected very few Republicans to vote for it, and that it would most certainly “fail” as a result. Blake quotes the right-wing National Review, which excoriated those Republicans for their “betrayal,” and accused them of “rescu[ing] Biden’s failed agenda.” That publication also suggested that the Republican caucus consider ousting McCarthy for his failure to keep his colleagues in line.
Meanwhile, the “squad” can relax in the knowledge that each of its members voted exactly the way they always said they would. It’s not that they didn’t trust President Biden or Speaker Pelosi. It’s the simple fact that the understanding all along was that both infrastructure Bills — the so-called “bipartisan” Bill as well as the Build Back Better (BBB) bill — were always conceived as being executed in tandem, in order to prevent certain Democratic Senators from backing out of the reconciliation package. This suspicion was amply confirmed early on by two Senate Democrats, Joe “Maserati” Manchin and his corporate sidekick, Kyrsten Sinema, both of whom broke faith with the original agreement (Manchin in particular, insisting that the bipartisan bill be voted on first and separately). After months of moving the goalposts as regular intervals, neither of those two erstwhile Democrats have even committed themselves to the broader “human infrastructure” package, and there is legitimate speculation that both may still abandon it altogether.
‘The South Is Burning’ When It Comes To Voting Rights. Will no one pay attention? The courts are now controlled by Trump judges. And where is the national Democratic Party? Looks like we’re gonna get the government(s) we deserve.
Media Memes Aside, Dems Won A Lot On Tuesday:
As for this week’s election, it swept in a lot of progressive mayors of color. The most prominent was Michelle Wu, who won the Boston mayor’s seat as the first woman and first person of color. Elaine O’Neal will become Durham, North Carolina’s, first Black woman mayor, and Abdullah Hammoud will become Dearborn’s first Muslim and Arab American mayor. Aftab Pureval will become Cincinnati’s first Asian American mayor. Pittsburgh elected its first Black mayor, and so did Kansas City, Kansas. Cleveland’s new mayor is also Black. New York City elected its second Black Democratic mayor, and Shahana Hanif became the first Muslim woman elected to the city council (incidentally, New York City and Virginia have about the same population). In Seattle, a moderate defeated a progressive, which you could also phrase as a Black and Asian American man defeated a Latina. A lot of queer and trans people won elections, or in the case of Virginia’s Danica Roem, the first out trans person to win a seat in a state legislature, won reelection.
In Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, who in 2017 was the first of a wave of ultra-progressive district attorneys to take office across the country, swept to a second term with 69% of the vote. “I want to congratulate him. He beat my pants off,” said his Republican rival. In Cleveland, Austin, Denver and Albany, citizens voted in police-reform measures, and while a more radical measure in Minneapolis lost, it got a good share of votes. 2021 wasn’t a great election year for Democrats but it’s not hard to argue that it wasn’t a terrible one, and either way it just wasn’t a big one, with a handful of special elections for congressional seats, some state and local stuff, and only two gubernatorial elections.
Those media memes?:
It’s in the language. The New York Times editorial board thunders that “Democrats deny political reality at their own peril” and then insists that this election in which a moderate lost is a sign that the party needs to get more moderate.
According to the Washington Post, which seemed to believe that Virginia was a national referendum on the party: “Democrats scramble to deflect voter anger.” The verbiage that followed was stuffed with the emotive language of a pulp novel, though it was presented as news: “An off-year electoral wipeout highlighted the fragile state of the party’s electoral majorities in the House and Senate. But a new round of bitter recriminations threatened to dash Democratic hopes of quickly moving past the stinging defeats.” Fragile, bitter, stinging. Wipeout, dash, defeat. It is true that Terry McAuliffe lost, and also true that he was a corporate centrist who, reportedly, ran a lousy campaign; it’s also true that he is not the Democratic party, and the nation didn’t vote in Virginia’s election.
Delaware Park Has New Owners. Are the taxpayers still gonna throw money at it, and the inhumane sport that horse racing has become?
What do you want to talk about?