DL Open Thread Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023
Replacing soft-MAGA Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House with hard-MAGA Mike Johnson is somehow Bad News for Progressives among those who see everything as bad news for progressives, but I don’t think it’s that cut and dried. This guy is a true Christofascist freak – Amanda Marcotte writes about his Satanic panic over a Danny DeVito/Aubrey Plaza cartoon – and I think the more non-evangelicals are exposed to these people, the greater the reaction against them will be. About 30% of Americans are now “nones” – that’s what they answer on forms that ask for religious affiliation. It’s a much larger group than those who claim atheism, and I don’t think they’ll be amused.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in a case about civil forfeiture of property to the police. This, you might recall, is the set of laws (they differ slightly from state to state) that allows police to seize anything suspected of being used in commission of a crime. Even a person who’s never charged has to sue to get their property back. The law was passed back in the day when “Miami Vice” led the gullible to believe that everyone involved in the drug trade drove a Lamborghini and a cigarette boat and used that money to hire lawyers so good no prosecutor could convict. In practice, of course, the police don’t seize Lambos and racing boats – they seize whatever beater some luckless motorist was driving when he was pulled over and searched over the “smell of marijuana.” Will SCOTUS put a stop to this? Please. It’s more likely they find a way to divert some of the property to Clarence Thomas.
The government of Israel continues to kill innocent people in Gaza to make up for the catastrophic intelligence failures that led to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. That massacre seems to be having roughly the same effect on Israel that 9/11 had on the U.S., with the added complication of hostages. Will Netanyahu try the same trick W and Cheney used, claiming to be your protectors when they’re the ones who fumbled the ball in the first place?
After all that bad stuff, here’s something to put you in a trick-or-treat mood: A New York Times features on a professional pumpkin-carver.
The floor’s yours.
Delaware has one of the most regressive civil forfeiture laws in the country, with the lucre that is seized going into a slush fund for cops (SLEAF). Oh, SLEAF? In Delaware tradition, exempt from FOIA.
AG Jennings has put a halt to spending from that fund, but what’s needed is legislation. Of all people, Colin Bonini sponsored such legislation, which went nowhere, perhaps because Colin Bonini sponsored it.
But there’s no excuse for a more progressive General Assembly failing to reintroduce such legislation.
Civil forfeiture is nothing more than ‘cops stealing stuff’.
Short hop from highway patrol to highwayman.
Civil forfeiture reform has been reintroduced (HB 115, Kim Williams). However, Pete Schwartzkopf assigned it to the House Public Safety Committee which Frank Cooke chairs. So unfortunately, probably not happening.
Thanks! You have illustrated, right there, why the remainder of the Kop Kabal must be either defeated or relegated to back-bench status.
IDF Now Ordering Palestinians To Evacuate Hospital, per MSNBC.
Otherwise, you know, ‘collateral damage’.
NBC’s Richard Engel reports that there is no such thing as a safe zone in Gaza, despite Netanyahu’s statement to the contrary.
Been watching coverage for awhile today. Not a single official Israeli comment doesn’t include the phrase ‘beheaded babies’. I understand. But that doesn’t absolve Israel from killing far more Palestinians who are also innocent victims than were killed in the Hamas massacre.
It is not anti-semitism to criticize Israel’s disproportionate response to the Hamas attack. One Israeli official said today, ‘ceasefire is death’. Tell that to the innocent victims you’re killing.
Yes, I’m pissed off now.
“IDF Now Ordering Palestinians To Evacuate Hospital, per MSNBC. – el som’
“Evacuate Hospital” sounds better than ‘go away’.
The Hamas fighters burrowed under the hospital could always just come out with their hands up.
And nobody would believe that all of them had come out, so that wouldn’t work.
Among other reasons. But mainly because Hamas (the guys with the guns) is preventing their human shields (the guys with no guns) from leaving.
I believe the only human shields they’re worried about are the hostages, but I’m not following this closely, or much at all. Too sickening.
Ok puck we get it. Netanyahu is your hero and indiscriminately killing innocent children is the price to be paid for the situations they’re forced to live in. You sicken me Rep. John Kowalko
Hamas thanks you for your support.
You are more than just an idiot. You are a race-baiting hater who conspires to relieve society of its humanity. You’re are an example of what can happen when societies and cultures lose any sense of conscience and assume an inhuman callousness that devalues life. Hope you sleep well wrapped in your blanket of hate.
Representative John Kowalko
“Disproportionate” is an invention of the American hard left, which clings to the fantasy that asymmetrical warfare should be managed by some scorecard with tit-for-tat body counts. But Israel is following a professional military approach, which holds that the object of war is to remove your enemy’s ability to continue the fight.
The death toll of 1400 Israelis killed in the initial Oct. 7 attack altered any moral calculus that might have been applied to a response.
Meanwhile the conflict cries out for statesmen on both sides.
The idea of a proportionate response is Old Testament. “An eye for an eye” was not a blanket endorsement of revenge. It was a formula, a calculus if you will, for proportionate response – one eye, no more, for an eye.
I’m pretty sure the American hard left wasn’t around when that was written.
Did anyone think the Israelis would do anything to preserve gazan civilian life? Not if history is any indicator. Hamas attacks, Israel kills indiscriminately and hides behind the Holocaust when people question their actions. Nevermind the inhumane conditions Netanyahu is forcing on Gaza in the first place, AND the West Bank…
Regarding civil asset forfeiture, doesn’t the current law make highway patrol judge and jury? Time to relieve police of this extra weight of responsibility.
Pretty much., Citizens who had their stuff taken have to petition the courts to get it back–even if no charges are subsequently filed.
Kowalko ponders somebody he disagrees with:
https://youtube.com/shorts/svrm-50wijw?si=DR6FLCKjJcZ730AV
I meant to send only 2 seconds of that clip (from near the end), not the whole thing. I guess the full clip could be called “Kowalko ponders a portrait of Puck.” Anyway, Seinfeld clips are always fun.
Well let’s set the record straight here. I’m not pondering somebody and it’s not about disagreeing with someone. It’s about my total disdain and heartfelt disgust with those, like “puke”, who so blithely dismiss the slaughter of innocent people and children under that “false-flag” argument that they are justifiable collateral damage. Netanyahu and his soulless ilk would willingly starve millions of people and allow the innocent, sick and injured children and victims of his war crimes perish without any thoughts of guilt. “Puke’s” defense of this politically motivated madness and the calculated propaganda attempting to justify it would be better served if Benny the bomber would allow humanitarian aide to the Palestinian people. Instead the IDF’s decision to bomb a refugee camp filled with innocent people while proudly proclaiming they killed a Hamas leader is an example of war-crimes and terrorism being inflicted by a cold-blooded murderer.
Representative John Kowalko
LOL Kowalko…. a bunch of stale slogans from the stack of yellowed Workers World in your basement. Probably the only thing you can remember anymore.
C’mon now. Time to stop hurling personal insults back and forth.
RE Vanella’s take on the I/P issue is at Delaware Call.
https://delawarecall.com/2023/10/31/its-not-complicated-ceasefire-now/