The Many Faces of US Politics...

[J70]

On my previous point on the heads of police unions, the Buffalo union boss reckons the old geezer who was blatantly obviously pushed over by a cop and cut open his head on the pavement actually "slipped".

Apparently the entire ESU unit has resigned (not from the force, but the unit) in protest at the suspension of two of their colleagues.

The Emergency Response Team members have not quit the police department, but have stepped down from the tactical unit, according to The Buffalo News sources. According to Buffalo Police Benevolent Association President John Evans, the two suspended officers were merely following directives and that the 75-year-old man slipped. "Our position is these officers were simply following orders from Deputy Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia to clear the square," said Evans. "It doesn't specify clear the square of men, 50 and under or 15 to 40. They were simply doing their job. I don't know how much contact was made. He did slip in my estimation. He fell backwards." As of late Friday afternoon, the top message on the Buffalo's police union webpage read: "These guys did nothing but do what they were ordered to do. This is disgusting !!!"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/05/57-buffalo-police-resign-from-riot-unit-in-protest-of-officers-suspension/#79b729a4473e

Like I said, you appear to have to be a particularly nasty piece of work, at least publicly, to be a police union boss. Do they think the obnoxious aggression is effective?

[sid waddell]

1987.

Not much has changed. Except that these views are operating straight out of the White House now.

https://twitter.com/DanielNewman/status/1268977713068605445

[Jell 0 Biafra]

Finally, Republican claims of US voting fraud established...

Chauvin illegally voting in Florida.

https://twitter.com/TooMuchMe/status/1268986246338134016?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1268986246338134016&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ultimateknicks.com%2Fforum%2Ftopic.asp%3Ft%3D60000%26page%3Dlu%23newunreadpost

[whitey]

Molotov cocktail throwing attorneys back in jail

Prosecutors had appealed the ruling to a higher court


Can someone post the link to NY Times coverage-thanks


https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/06/05/lawyers-accused-of-throwing-molotov-cocktail-in-brooklyn-protests-return-to-jail-as-2nd-circuit-grants-stay/

[Jell 0 Biafra]

You're right, a national newspaper has only dedicated two full articles about a story that wouldn't even be newsworthy if the two individuals weren't lawyers. Two full articles, on separate days , while a global pandemic, and a domestic crisis rage. What absolute bias to not devote every single day to a minor sub plot.

[Eamonnca1]

There really are 2 protests going on one is about George Floyd and police violence and the other is about trump , the question is do people let the protesters who are bandwagonBig iGeorge Floyd push them into voting for Biden or do they double down with trump . 6 monthxx Sc is a long time in politics.

We've had exactly five years of his circus freakshow dominating US politics, 3 1/2 of them with him in power.

Anyone who doesn't get it what he is and what he will bring at this point is a complete moron.

That's a lot of morons - how do you reverse their thinking - lobotomy?

A lot of them are reveling in his scorched earth presidency. As long it makes the libtards cry!

One would hope though that a sufficient amount of those turned off by Hillary and willing to give him a tentative vote last time out will be having buyers remorse. If their conscience found Hillary objectionable, I can't even imagine how they sleep at night having voted for him.

Christ even Senator Murkowski of Alaska, a Republican and staunch conservative, said publicly that she is not sure if she can vote for him this year.

We've had enough of these cowardly "this is very troubling" or "this is deeply concerning" weasel words from Republicans like Murkowski, Collins, Flake, Sasse, Ryan etc.

What is needed is real political action.

Amash, maybe McCain before him and to a much lesser extent Romney, are the only Republicans who can have anything even resembling a clear conscience in that regard.

Really, what is needed is resignation from the Republican party and repudiation of it. Only Amash has done that.

The rest of the party has been Vichy-like in its collaborationism - but then again, one could very reasonably say they weren't un-Vichy like before that anyway.

They're scared out of their wits because if they don't prostrate themselves in front of the Dear Leader, they will be primaried by someone who will.

That, and the fact that quite a few of them are true believers in the bullshit Trump is selling anyway.

Anne Applebaum has a very good article here on the different motives for collaboration with an authoritarian regime.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

You'd probably want a couple of hours as it's long.

Here's what she says about the fear motive:

I am afraid to speak out.

Fear, of course, is the most important reason any inhabitant of an authoritarian or totalitarian society does not protest or resign, even when the leader commits crimes, violates his official ideology, or forces people to do things that they know to be wrong. In extreme dictatorships like Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia, people fear for their lives. In softer dictatorships, like East Germany after 1950 and Putin's Russia today, people fear losing their jobs or their apartments. Fear works as a motivation even when violence is a memory rather than a reality. When I was a student in Leningrad in the 1980s, some people still stepped back in horror when I asked for directions on the street, in my accented Russian: No one was going to be arrested for speaking to a foreigner in 1984, but 30 years earlier they might have been, and the cultural memory remained.

Republican leaders don't seem to know that similar waves of fear have helped transform other democracies into dictatorships.
In the United States of America, it is hard to imagine how fear could be a motivation for anybody. There are no mass murders of the regime's political enemies, and there never have been. Political opposition is legal; free press and free speech are guaranteed in the Constitution. And yet even in one of the world's oldest and most stable democracies, fear is a motive. The same former administration official who observed the importance of apocalyptic Christianity in Trump's Washington also told me, with grim disgust, that "they are all scared."

They are scared not of prison, the official said, but of being attacked by Trump on Twitter. They are scared he will make up a nickname for them. They are scared that they will be mocked, or embarrassed, like Mitt Romney has been. They are scared of losing their social circles, of being disinvited to parties. They are scared that their friends and supporters, and especially their donors, will desert them. John Bolton has his own super PAC and a lot of plans for how he wants to use it; no wonder he resisted testifying against Trump. Former Speaker Paul Ryan is among the dozens of House Republicans who have left Congress since the beginning of this administration, in one of the most striking personnel turnovers in congressional history. They left because they hated what Trump was doing to their party—and the country. Yet even after they left, they did not speak out.

They are scared, and yet they don't seem to know that this fear has precedents, or that it could have consequences. They don't know that similar waves of fear have helped transform other democracies into dictatorships. They don't seem to realize that the American Senate really could become the Russian Duma, or the Hungarian Parliament, a group of exalted men and women who sit in an elegant building, with no influence and no power. Indeed, we are already much closer to that reality than many could ever have imagined.

I found this category particularly persuasive:

My side might be flawed, but the political opposition is much worse.

When Marshal Philippe Pétain, the leader of collaborationist France, took over the Vichy government, he did so in the name of the restoration of a France that he believed had been lost. Pétain had been a fierce critic of the French Republic, and once he was in control, he replaced its famous creed—Liberté, égalité, fraternité, or "Liberty, equality, fraternity"—with a different slogan: Travail, famille, patrie, or "Work, family, fatherland." Instead of the "false idea of the natural equality of man," he proposed bringing back "social hierarchy"—order, tradition, and religion. Instead of accepting modernity, Pétain sought to turn back the clock.

By Pétain's reckoning, collaboration with the Germans was not merely an embarrassing necessity. It was crucial, because it gave patriots the ability to fight the real enemy: the French parliamentarians, socialists, anarchists, Jews, and other assorted leftists and democrats who, he believed, were undermining the nation, robbing it of its vitality, destroying its essence. "Rather Hitler than Blum," the saying went—Blum having been France's socialist (and Jewish) prime minister in the late 1930s. One Vichy minister, Pierre Laval, famously declared that he hoped Germany would conquer all of Europe. Otherwise, he asserted, "Bolshevism would tomorrow establish itself everywhere."

To Americans, this kind of justification should sound very familiar; we have been hearing versions of it since 2016. The existential nature of the threat from "the left" has been spelled out many times. "Our liberal-left present reality and future direction is incompatible with human nature," wrote Michael Anton, in "The Flight 93 Election." The Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham has warned that "massive demographic changes" threaten us too: "In some parts of the country it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn't exist anymore." This is the Vichy logic: The nation is dead or dying—so anything you can do to restore it is justified. Whatever criticisms might be made of Trump, whatever harm he has done to democracy and the rule of law, whatever corrupt deals he might make while in the White House—all of these shrink in comparison to the horrific alternative: the liberalism, socialism, moral decadence, demographic change, and cultural degradation that would have been the inevitable result of Hillary Clinton's presidency.

The Republican senators who are willing to express their disgust with Trump off the record but voted in February for him to remain in office all indulge a variation of this sentiment. (Trump enables them to get the judges they want, and those judges will help create the America they want.) So do the evangelical pastors who ought to be disgusted by Trump's personal behavior but argue, instead, that the current situation has scriptural precedents. Like King David in the Bible, the president is a sinner, a flawed vessel, but he nevertheless offers a path to salvation for a fallen nation.

The three most important members of Trump's Cabinet—Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William Barr—are all profoundly shaped by Vichyite apocalyptic thinking. All three are clever enough to understand what Trumpism really means, that it has nothing to do with God or faith, that it is self-serving, greedy, and unpatriotic. Nevertheless, a former member of the administration (one of the few who did decide to resign) told me that both Pence and Pompeo "have convinced themselves that they are in a biblical moment." All of the things they care about—outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, and (though this is never said out loud) maintaining a white majority in America—are under threat. Time is growing short. They believe that "we are approaching the Rapture, and this is a moment of deep religious significance." Barr, in a speech at Notre Dame, has also described his belief that "militant secularists" are destroying America, that "irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith." Whatever evil Trump does, whatever he damages or destroys, at least he enables Barr, Pence, and Pompeo to save America from a far worse fate. If you are convinced we are living in the End Times, then anything the president does can be forgiven.

Thanks for sharing, very interesting. I just read it using the Spritzlet speed-reading browser plugin. I highly recommend it, it's very useful for long pieces like that.

[J70]

You're right, a national newspaper has only dedicated two full articles about a story that wouldn't even be newsworthy if the two individuals weren't lawyers. Two full articles, on separate days , while a global pandemic, and a domestic crisis rage. What absolute bias to not devote every single day to a minor sub plot.

I assumed he was trolling.

[J70]

So hours after trying to use George Floyd's name for his own purposes, saying it was a "great day" for Floyd, Trump then retweets a video from Glenn Beck's show where a black conservative goes to town on Floyd's reputation and completely misses the point about how and why he, Floyd, became a global symbol.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/06/trump-retweets-video-of-candace-owens-attacking-george-floyd/

[screenexile]

Molotov cocktail throwing attorneys back in jail

Prosecutors had appealed the ruling to a higher court


Can someone post the link to NY Times coverage-thanks


https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/06/05/lawyers-accused-of-throwing-molotov-cocktail-in-brooklyn-protests-return-to-jail-as-2nd-circuit-grants-stay/

No worries!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/nyregion/molotov-cocktail-lawyers-nyc.html?searchResultPosition=1

[sid waddell]

A statue of slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down by protestors in Bristol today.

You love to see it.

[whitey]

Molotov cocktail throwing attorneys back in jail

Prosecutors had appealed the ruling to a higher court


Can someone post the link to NY Times coverage-thanks


https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/06/05/lawyers-accused-of-throwing-molotov-cocktail-in-brooklyn-protests-return-to-jail-as-2nd-circuit-grants-stay/

No worries!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/nyregion/molotov-cocktail-lawyers-nyc.html?searchResultPosition=1

Does it report that their bail got revoked by a higher court, given the seriousness of the charges?


Also, I see that she was born in Pakistan. If she didn't get her citizenship, they'll push  for her To be deported

[whitey]

Great news for Democrats

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.providencejournal.com/news/20200605/100k-ri-mail-ballot-applications-sent-by-state-were-returned-to-sender%3ftemplate=ampart

As the vote count in Rhode Island's June 2 presidential primary continues, the secretary of state's office confirmed Friday that approximately 100,000 of the mail ballot applications the state sent, unsolicited, to 779,463 registered voters were returned as undeliverable.

[dec]

Molotov cocktail throwing attorneys back in jail

Prosecutors had appealed the ruling to a higher court


Can someone post the link to NY Times coverage-thanks


https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/06/05/lawyers-accused-of-throwing-molotov-cocktail-in-brooklyn-protests-return-to-jail-as-2nd-circuit-grants-stay/

No worries!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/nyregion/molotov-cocktail-lawyers-nyc.html?searchResultPosition=1

Does it report that their bail got revoked by a higher court, given the seriousness of the charges?


Also, I see that she was born in Pakistan. If she didn't get her citizenship, they'll push  for her To be deported

Did you read the article? Or is that too much like hard work?

[whitey]

Molotov cocktail throwing attorneys back in jail

Prosecutors had appealed the ruling to a higher court


Can someone post the link to NY Times coverage-thanks


https://www.law.com/newyorklawjournal/2020/06/05/lawyers-accused-of-throwing-molotov-cocktail-in-brooklyn-protests-return-to-jail-as-2nd-circuit-grants-stay/

No worries!

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/nyregion/molotov-cocktail-lawyers-nyc.html?searchResultPosition=1

Does it report that their bail got revoked by a higher court, given the seriousness of the charges?


Also, I see that she was born in Pakistan. If she didn't get her citizenship, they'll push  for her To be deported

Did you read the article? Or is that too much like hard work?

It's behind a paywall. Please just pluck that paragraph out and paste it up for me if you don't mind

[Jell 0 Biafra]

This just gets funnier.  You're complaining about articles not being in the Times, then complaining about specific paragraphs not being in the articles that, it turns out, are in the Times, all the while not actually having access to the part of the Times site behind paywalls.