Delaware Liberal

DL Open Thread: Saturday, July 30, 2022

El Somnambulo

‘Watchdog’ Was Trump Lapdog.  Staff planned to retrieve ‘lost e-mails, he deep-sixed plan:

The Department of Homeland Security’s chief watchdog scrapped its investigative team’s effort to collect agency phones to try to recover deleted Secret Service texts this year, according to four people with knowledge of the decision and internal records reviewed by The Washington Post.

In early February, after learning that the Secret Service’s text messages had been erased as part of a migration to new devices, staff at Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari’s office planned to contact all DHS agencies offering to have data specialists help retrieve messages from their phones, according to two government whistleblowers who provided reports to Congress.

Cuffari wrote a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security committees this month saying the Secret Service’s text messages from the time of the attack had been “erased.” But he did not immediately disclose that his office first discovered that deletion in December and failed to alert lawmakers or examine the phones. Nor did he alert Congress that other text messages were missing, including those of the two top Trump appointees running the Department of Homeland Security during the final days of the administration.

Late Friday night, Cuffari’s spokesman issued a statement declining to comment on the new discovery.

Speaking of Trump, Trump Unretouched:

AP Photo/Seth Wenig
There is literally not a single spot on his face that is not diseased.  Can you imagine how long it takes for his coterie to make him look presentable?  BTW, is that toothpaste on his chin, or just drool?
More Police Funding Without Accountability?  Looks like the centrists have found a progressive patsy:

Earlier in the day on Thursday, CBC Chairwoman Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) had reassured members of the caucus that a vote on the legislation dramatically increasing federal funding for the COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) program would not take place for at least another few weeks, according to the two aides. That additional time was intended to address progressives’ insistence on attaching stronger police accountability clauses to the funding increases. Several CBC members subsequently returned home to their districts, thinking there would be no more major votes before the weekend.

Now House Democrats are hearing that Beatty reached an agreement on accountability provisions with centrist Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in conjunction with House Democratic leadership on Thursday evening, according to the two senior aides. Democratic leaders, facing pressure from Gottheimer in particular, are trying to secure a vote on the two police funding bills on Friday by tying a vote on the assault weapons ban to a vote on the former two bills.

Gee, wonder where LBR stands on this…

Theme Parks Were Always Designed To Exclude Black People:

But the history of a radical and diverse TV show clashes with the story of amusement parks in America. The 1875 Civil Rights Act included a line mandating equal access to public accommodations, but the supreme court wound up undermining the latitude to enforce that law.

This meant that at the 1904 World’s Fair, which was held in St Louis in conjunction with a disastrous summer Olympics, put Black and brown bodies on display. A group of African pygmies branded savages were showcased in a hollow that had a walkway over the top so white visitors could point down and laugh. A year later one of the men in the exhibition, Otis Benga, was relegated to a Bronx Zoo display cage.

Amusement parks as we know them today, says Victoria Wolcott, a University of Buffalo history professor whose 2012 book Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters takes in the dark arc of public leisure space in the US, “emerged at the nadir of race relations”, as the country was segueing out of reconstruction into segregation. The parks were often marketed with dog whistles like “clean” or “safe”, and they stationed sentinels at their gates to enforce the whites-only policy. If a Black family did happen on to the grounds in these early days, they could expect to be beaten bloody for their mistake.

At Coney Island, park operators made games out of brutality. The park, like many in the US in the early 20th century, had an attraction called the African Dodger, in which white ticket holders would attempt to hit baseballs at the heads of actual Black people – a number of whom suffered broken noses, teeth and other serious injuries.

I remember my parents driving us up to the Lenape Amusement Park when I was a kid.  A Black family in front of us was turned away.  When it came our turn, they told us it was a ‘private’ park, but for a small admission fee, we’d be welcome.  My parents took us right back to the car and drove us home, explaining what really had just happened.

Amid Suits And Countersuits, How Much Will Delaware Pocket From Musk/Twitter Battle?  I’m legit curious.  Which businesses and governments benefit?  I figure hotels and restaurants, but what else?

What do you want to talk about?

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