Why have the police in Baltimore pulled back? Baltimore’s police commissioner, according to the Sun, “has said police are struggling to stop violence in West Baltimore, where officers have been routinely surrounded by dozens of people, video cameras and hostility while performing basic police work.”
If the message is supposed to be that they don’t want the police there, it has been received.I've said it before and I'll say it again: Conservatives always want municipal union workers to be more responsive to the needs of the people unless the union is the cops and the people are black. (Actually I think we can drop the "the union is the cops" part.) Lowry also re-swoons over 2007 Presidential frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani and the District 9 style of community policing.
The libertarian moment is well and truly over, and Republicans will run in 2016 on a straight authoritarian ticket. As usual.
police are struggling to stop violence in West BaltimoreYeah, we've noticed that violence seems to be a reflexive reaction from them.
ReplyDeleteofficers have been routinely surrounded by dozens of people, video cameras and hostility while performing basic police work.If they're interfering in legitimate police work, those crowds of people ringing the cops three deep need to be arrested ... then killed while in custody. That'll put an end to all the inexplicable "hostility," and we can return to the halcyon days when police were celebrated in West Baltimore.
Once the cops pose with a few of those people for humorous holiday cards, the tensions should ease.
ReplyDeletehttp://gawker.com/chicago-cop-fired-for-posing-with-black-suspect-dressed-1707173176
Alas, brave manly conservatives! Always in fear, always oppressed, always in danger! And always especially oppressed, endangered, and terrified by those scary Black people and their librul enablers.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/0zXajYDnprQ
If the message is supposed to be that they don’t want the police there, it has been received.
ReplyDeleteShorter Rich Lowry: "We hope the police leave so me and my boys can go n****r huntin'"
Keep in mind that the NR still believes in white supremacism. They just express it indirectly, unlike in the good old Buckley days.
ReplyDeletehas said police are struggling to stop violence in West Baltimore, where officers have been routinely surrounded by dozens of people, video cameras and hostility while performing basic police work.”
ReplyDeleteThis is just the black community finally getting on board to resist the sinister Jade Helm takeover, like all good Americans should. If fat white rednecks were doing this Lowery would be cheering them on.
Mr. Lowry feels that all of this attention to the doings of law enforcement is too public, and yearns for the days of secret police.
ReplyDeleteLowry, like the entire stable of right-wing pundits, is simply incapable of telling the honest truth.
ReplyDeleteRudy Giuliani, saved more black lives than any of his critics ever will. He did it by getting the police to establish and maintain basic order in New York’s neighborhoods and defending the cops when the likes of Al Sharpton maligned them. Now that Mayor Bill de Blasio has pulled back, shootings are trending up in New York City.
The total number of murders in NYC during all of 2014 -- de Blasio's first year in office -- is half of what it was in Giuliani's last year as Mayor. It was also the lowest number of murders in NYC since 1963.
While year to date (5/27) the number of shootings has increased 7% from 353 in 2014 to 378 in 2015), overall, however, major crime has dropped 11%. But either way, there is no shocking trend caused by the policing policies of de Blasio & Bratton. .
(Stats Courtesy of the NYPD CompStat Unit)
Lowry writes for Politico now? Jesus, what a shit hole that site is.
ReplyDeleteYou know what? Fuck it. Rich "starbursts" Lowry clearly doesn't understand this thing called democracy we've been doing with a greater or lesser degree of success for almost 240 years. He's goddamn old enough to know that an encounter with the police shouldn't include a risk of summary assault and or execution. He's goddamn educated enough to know that societies where any person's encounter with the authorities can result in summary assault or death are called "tyrannies" and that our country was founded in explicit opposition to them. We've even had 150 years of vigorous debate about who gets to not be at risk of summary assault detention or execution. We've answered the question. It's everyone. Everyone gets to not be at risk of summary assault, detention or execution.
ReplyDeleteThere are very very specific times when the police get to assault detain or kill a person. It's explicitly not when that person doesn't make eye contact when they bicycle past a police officer. It's not when a person is jaywalking. It's not when a person is pulled over for a routine traffic stop. It's not when a person has a history of selling loose cigarettes.
But the police in Baltimore, in Ferguson, in far too fucking many towns and cities all over the country seemed to have settled on "exterminate the brutes" as a legitimate means of "fighting crime" or more to the point "fighting black people's every effort to enjoy the rights, the safety and the prosperity that is their due as American citizens". And the police are going to have to learn, that this is unacceptable. But it's going to take time and it's going to be ugly, and infuriatingly enough the police have created laws, union rules, and crony networks that will slow the process down, allow cops to keep killing people, and to evade justice for the crimes they commit in uniform.
And people like Rich Lowry, who are either ignorant of or approve of the level of violence being directed against African Americans every day in this country are just going to have to get the fuck over it. Because this is the 21st century, and while for the moment, people still have to suffer, they don't have to do it in silence and isolation. And until the USA decides to commit to justice for everyone or to oppression for everyone, he's going to be hearing a lot more about it.
Yeah, but how do we know for sure how many murders there might have been without Giuliani? Huh? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
ReplyDeleteWhat if "the message" is supposed to be that the people don't want themselves or their friends and relatives roughed up, brutalized, or killed for trivial reasons, and hope that they'd be better off surrounding the cops with documentation than with guns? Has that been received? Would it better if delivered via Candygram? Would Skytyping help?
ReplyDeleteBut now that 35 people have been murdered in the month of May, the highest in a month since 1999, the response has been muted.
ReplyDeleteA few Baltimore organizations are staging anti-violence protests, but they won’t command major media attention. There have been headlines and TV reports about the killing spree, but nothing like the ubiquitous calls for yet another national “conversation” after Freddy Gray’s death.
Let’s be honest: Some black lives really don’t matter. If you are a young black man shot in the head by another young black man, almost certainly no one will know your name. Al Sharpton won’t come rushing to your family’s side with cameras in tow. MSNBC won’t discuss the significance of your death. No one will protest, or even riot, for you. You are a statistic, not a cause. Just another dead black kid in some city somewhere, politically useless to progressives and the media, therefore all but invisible.
It's almost as if Lowry wants us to forget that police killings involve people we employ rather than random murderers. "Why doesn't the media give as much attention to random murderers as it does to murderers on the public payroll who are supposed to protect people, not kill them?" he asks.
Shorter Rich Lowry: Duh.
Oh God, that Lowry piece is called "#SomeBlackLivesDontMatter." A sample:
ReplyDeleteLet’s be honest: Some black lives really don’t matter. If you are a young black man shot in the head by another young black man, almost certainly no one will know your name. Al Sharpton won’t come rushing to your family’s side...
...Blah blah, what about black-on-black violence, blah blah, we need more jails, blah blah, release the kraken cops. After forty years, this record is damn near flat.
They also believe that government is tyranny and needs to be slashed to bits, except for those parts of the government that are empowered to kill - those we leave alone.
ReplyDeleteAs always: Black people asking for basic rights (i.e., to be treated as citizens and not suspects) is just too much. And as long as Black-on-Black crime exists, it just proves that they're all savages anyway.
ReplyDeleteNow, a bunch of nice drug-dealing, gun-running, White-slavery trading biker gangs shooting it out with each other and the cops in a restaurant parking lot? Well, ain't that America!
Almost all the drop in crime is from getting lead out of the environment so we stopped poisoning kids and making them dumb and aggressive. Unless someone believes that Giuliani made violent crime drop everywhere in the United States and in every other country that phased out leaded gasoline.
ReplyDelete#SomeBlackLivesDontMatter
ReplyDeleteI think the mask has not only slipped, but fallen off under the refrigerator with that week-old slice of pizza and the coupons for Church's Chicken.
fighting crime" or more to the point "fighting black people"
ReplyDeleteAll that needs to be said.
"Oh, the fine days of the Pinkertons, where you could just machine-gun down leftist troublemakers and kneeblankes all day long and no one said 'boo'..."
ReplyDeleteRudy Giuliani, saved more black lives than any of his critics ever will.
ReplyDelete"I saved a thousand slaves blacks. I could have saved a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves black."
---Harriet Tubman Rudolph William Louis 'X' Guiliani
BOB crime (black on black) just doesn't have the same zing as WOW crime (white on white), so it's naturally something very, very bad that should be eradicated by government violence.
ReplyDelete(Hey, it makes as much sense as anything Lowry will ever write about it.)
District 9 style of community policing
ReplyDeleteSo who's our Wikus?
Remember - white-on-white crime is only really worth bothering with, though, if wealthy folks are the ones being troubled.
ReplyDeleteReplyDelete
"...Al Sharpton..."
ReplyDeleteImmediate disqualification from being taken seriously. Immediate. Do not pass Go.
It's amazing, this horrific, violence-inducing blackity black black leviathan they've imagined with Al Sharpton. Al Sharpton in the year Two Thousand and Fifteen is a relatively milquetoast skinny old man in expensive suits who has a show no one watches who occasionally makes speeches where kids have been murdered by cops; these speeches always have "it was terrible what happened" and "we need justice" but "y'all do right and stay peaceful." Compare Sharpton to the bloated, pasty-faced wingnut redneck losers who bring AK-47s into Chipotle, and tell me who's the scary one.
As Starbursts Lowry actually *asked* a black person what they think about inner-city crime? And by "black person" I don't mean "Thomas Sowell."
Given that the drop started while Dinkins was mayor, plenty of folks already believe that Giuliani is a time traveler. So why not time and space?
ReplyDeleteAnother tell:
ReplyDeleteThis is especially true in dangerous, overwhelmingly black neighborhoods. They need disproportionate police attention...
...because black, which obviously makes those poor neighborhoods more dangerous than your typical poor neighborhood full of white people....
I'd personally love to see Rev. Al tote an AK-47 into a Chipotle and watch the week after week of resultant skreeing it would produce.
ReplyDeleteThe whole "Al Sharpton, lord of the blacks" thing dates to, what...early-mid 90's? It never ceases to amaze me just how long the wingnut brigade will cling to a talking point (while calling Democrats dinosaurs, naturally). I can't imagine what these goobers are going to do when Sharpton dies, since it's not like they're going to pay enough attention to African Americans to come up with a new black boogeyman. What they need to do is get some scans of Sharpton's face - then they can map it onto a CGI model and future generations can yell at their monitors until time stops.
ReplyDeleteApparently more than five seconds have passed since someone trotted out "15 reasons why black people should be grateful police kill them for no reason & get away with it." Sparklebursts is just keeping the magic alive.
ReplyDeleteI suspect his definition of "routine police work" is the sort of thing that triggers the dweadful display of people exercising their right to protest.
I also suspect the crowds of people filming police are figments of his imagination.
Because they don't have our civilizing influences of gun ownership, Toby Keith music and shitty beer! Don't you SEE?
ReplyDeleteYou know what? Fuck it. Rich "starbursts" Lowry clearly doesn't
ReplyDeleteunderstand this thing called democracy we've been doing with a greater
or lesser degree of success for almost 240 years.
His understanding stopped 239 years ago.
The libertarian moment is well and truly over
ReplyDeleteThere never really was a "libertarian moment," was there? American conservatives have been invoking "liberty" in the service of entrenched power and authority since the founding of the Republic.
I can't imagine what these goobers are going to do when Sharpton dies.
ReplyDeleteZombie Al Sharpton!!!
Zombie Al Sharpton is gonna starve pretty quick...unless some of those right-wingers have brains after all.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, now that I think about it, the amount of whining I remember hearing about Mayor Dinkins as compared to the whining about Obama.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost as if these people can't bear the idea of a blah holding valid elected office anywhere except their ooga-booga ethnic enclaves...
#TrollingAfricanAmericans4PageHits.
ReplyDeleteSeems like I just read an article--oh yes, I did, just this second--at TPM on how the Police are refusing to do actual police work and the homicides are, in fact, up and not being investigated. This is the black on black crime we are always hearing the conservatives blather on about. Apparently the black community is supposed to police itself now, because the police force is too chicken shit to investigate the crimes it was hired to investigate?
ReplyDeleteWingnuts that are on the contextual cutting edge (Jonah, the Breitbart trolls, various threatening weirdos on Twitter) are still trying to suss out Ta-nehisi Coates and Jamelle Bouie but it usually devolves into "Coates = Stupid" and "Bouie = Mean." Kind of weak sauce stuff if you're looking to replace Lord Sharpton, Emperor of Scary Dreams.
ReplyDeleteI was just at the MA ACLU dinner and they were celebrating the woman who won the case here in MA making it legal for people to film the police while they are policing. 40 year old white woman from Somerville, totally punked out, started filming a police officer who was interrogating some teenagers about something. She had the teens permission and was just "acting as a witness" as she put it in case something went down. The police started hasselling her and got her name and summonsed her for "obstructing police work" or something. So she called the ACLU and eventually won her case. People are absolutely filming the police as well they should.
ReplyDeleteCorrect. Zombie Al Sharpton, like Osiris, will always come back for his rematch with Zombie Reagan and hopefully Zombie Guiliani.
ReplyDeleteQuestion left holding its hand out for spare change - In which dictionary does attention mean unjustified assault and murder?
ReplyDeleteIt's almost as if these people can't bear the idea of a blah holding valid elected office anywhere except their ooga-booga ethnic enclaves...This manages to sum up almost the entirety of Giuliani's first mayoral campaign and the impossibly high standards applied exclusively to the Harold Washington administration.
ReplyDeleteI don't dispute that people are filming the police. Tutorials on how to film the police (and what to do when/if you're nabbed) are common at protest training meanings and I expect dozens more cases like this in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI do, however, call BS on this:
...officers have been routinely surrounded by dozens of people, video cameras and hostility while performing basic police work.
will Rudy be the next Dr. Who? He evidently has his own Tardis and could dress in drag and also play the Dr.'s love interest, since, like Kevin, he's in love with himself.
ReplyDeleteWhere's the skreeing for the need for blacks to join the NRA and arm themselves?
ReplyDeleteShush, you're letting out their secrets!
ReplyDeleteMan, is that true. Maybe LaPierre is on summer hiatus.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as someone said on Twitter, it's amazing how the rise in police violence and killings has coincided with the invention of the camera phone.
ReplyDelete"Routinely harassed?" Think how awful it must be for the police to live like that, every day, never knowing when a citizen with a camera might demand some accountability. Wotta nightmare.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the cover of the AMERICAN!!! RIFLEMAN!!, maybe he's preparing for "the 700 most dangerous days in America". No, I haven't looked to see what they are - maybe it's that The Skeery Kenyan Usurper no longer has to run for office and so he can institute the gun-grabbing dictatorship we've been waiting on since 1/2008.
ReplyDeleteNext thing you know, those poor policemen might get physically abused for no apparent reason!
ReplyDeleteTHE HORROR
BTW, speaking of, Mom and I are off to look at a potential house in a SKEERY BLACK AREA where somehow when we visited last weekend the people were nice to us and the little girl (all of 6, maybe) said how much she liked my dragon belt buckle and we got out intact. But you know Rich would just shake his head sadly for us and give us last rites. "The fools!"
ReplyDeleteOh, no, I didn't mean to be saying that at all. I agree with you that people are not surrounding the police and rioting and filming them. I was just so excited to have met someone who, along with the guy who filmed the police hasselling the teenaged girls, had taken up the challenge to be a public witness to police behavior.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, it's the fantasy that conservatives are needed: "Yeah, see how you fare when we leave! You'll be sorry then."
ReplyDeleteThey don't realize that this issue was decided at Appomattox a century and a half ago.
Heh, I saw something like that. Is anyone taking bets on which public figure will be the first to say brown people should stop using smart phones if they want to do something about police violence?
ReplyDeleteThey'll just slap some blackface on Ward Churchill.
ReplyDeleteHey now, Coleman Young had those high standards too
ReplyDeleteGotta be Jade Helm- even now, Obama is using HAARP to batter Texas with flooding rains.
ReplyDeleteWhat do people think they are? Public servants or something??
ReplyDelete[Applause]
ReplyDeleteThis. Harold Washington was actually much more of a technocrat and fiscal conservative than he's ever given credit for by more than a handful of people (started opening up city data, signed the first FOIA law, fired a crapton of people), and in a lot of ways paved the way for the downtown renaissance (for better and worse) that Daley enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteBut he'll always be the blah mayor, with all that entails.
I think the idea is the ungrateful black people will go to the police on their knees and beg them to come back. "We're sorry we questioned your right to kill a few of us when the mood strikes you!"
ReplyDeleteThere are certain Black people whose names have become conjuring words for White half-wits. When the half-wit wants to conjure "playing the race card," Al Sharpton is the current go-to name, with Jesse Jackson having formerly occupied that slot. When the half-wit wants to conjure "they're coming for our White womens!", O.J. Simpson is the go-to name. And when the half-wit wants to conjure "why can't they be more like us (even though we won't let them)," the go-to name used to be Bill Cosby. The half-wits are casting about for a replacement right now because they're not at all sure Dr. Carson won't alienate too many rational people.
ReplyDeleteAl Sharpton won’t come rushing to your family’s side with cameras in tow.
ReplyDeleteSo is he irrelevant, harmful, or necessary? Would you guys let me know when you decide?
Living in a small somewhat impoverished rural town, one of our prime entertainments is listening to the police scanner. I can tell you that better than 80% of the police calls here in southern Vermont are basically the cops being summoned to act as surrogate parents for young and old alike.
ReplyDeleteGot it. It's great that precedent is being established, although state/state is rather weak. (Better than nothing, though.) Do you know the names of the cases? Or I guess the last names of the defendants (or were they plaintiffs?) would work.
ReplyDelete"Thomas Sowell"
ReplyDelete(mumbles something about self-reliance, get's 'Is this guy actually serious with this in 2015?' look from Ta-Nehisi Coates)
Ooh, fingers crossed for potential house, and say hey to the nice little girl and her family, and reassure her that you did not adopt the hunter spiders, that you have cats and dogs only.
ReplyDeleteThe thought of conservatives leaving always gets me humming this little ditty....
ReplyDeleteNot having any standards means one is completely relieved of the stress of meeting them.
ReplyDeleteBack during Election '08, NRO was doing this video series with dusted-off, ancient wingnut "scholars," the type that have the intellectual equivalent of dictator titles affixed (Senior Fellow for the Policy Analysis Institution of Freedom Foundation Oh Whatever The DeVos Family Gave Us Money), and Sowell was one of those they brought out of mothballed storage. The entire 30-minute discussion was framed around Sowell's super-clever line that "McCain would be terrible but Obama would be a disaster." Just some tossed-off phrase that isn't actually clever at all, and the interviewer was treating it like we should put it in the museum along with Four Score and Seven Years Ago.
ReplyDeleteIt's like, guys, we get it. You have one black friend.
"It's like, guys, we get it. You have one black friend."
ReplyDeleteAnd he's a jerk, too.
Let’s be honest: Some black lives really don’t matter. If you are a
ReplyDeleteyoung black man shot in the head by another young black man, almost
certainly no one will know your name. Al Sharpton won’t come rushing to
your family’s side with cameras in tow. MSNBC won’t discuss the
significance of your death. No one will protest, or even riot, for you.
You are a statistic, not a cause. Just another dead black kid in some
city somewhere, politically useless to progressives and the media,
therefore all but invisible.
Let's step back and ask why a "dead black kid" is "politically useless" to "progressives."
What Rich is saying is that if progressives picked some dead young man with a rap sheet killed in black on black violence, he and his bow-tie buddies would say, "you know, there are all these statistics, but it never really hit home that we should care about young black men, even if they've made bad decisions that put them in harm's way?"
Sure, Rich, you try it. You go on Fox & Friends with the picture of a dead gangbanger and talk about the inherent value of every human life and how we're failing those lives that are most at risk. You write about specific means of reaching those kids before things go wrong. Really! I've got a fucking encyclopedia full of policy ideas—i.e. things we can collectively do as a society as if those lives matter.
You should probably know beforehand, though: they're expensive; they won't work quickly; most will probably return modest gains that will disappoint lots of people; some of them might not work at all; some of them might actually make things worse. Still interested? C'mon, you can take the heat.
Oh, and figure out how to pay for it without pissing off your corporate sugar daddies. Or even without losing your job at National Review.
Oh, those names. I get emails from an outfit called the Center For Vision and Values, which is unfortunately not a bunch of wingnut eye doctors.
ReplyDeleteThat's, wow, it's not even a catchy couplet. Reagan couldn't sell that, much less Thomas Sowell.
"If the message is supposed to be that they don’t want the police there, it has been received."
ReplyDeleteIf Lowry's message is supposed to be if you insist on first amendment
rights and non-corrupt, non-brutal cops you get no cops at all, well, it's still an incoherent mess.
Let's be honest: If you're a man between the ages of 18 and 45 and you slip in the bathtub and crack your skull, no one will care. The President won't make a speech about the sacrifice you made to keep America free. Hundreds of pundits won't spend thousands of hours wanking off about how America needs more Americans like you. No draft-dodging warhead with his hand in Lockheed Martin's pocket will stand up before Congress and say your death is why we should send thousands more men like you to your death. And your life will certainly not ever be the featured in a movie that whips squinty eyed bigots into a lather.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, we should cancel Memorial Day, Veterans Day and shut down the VA.
Now that opiates and heroin are wiping out vast swaths of rural white America, we get to treat it as a medical and mental-health crisis, so we've got that going for us.
ReplyDeleteHey, I have an idea for how the police can reduce crime in West Baltimore while actually increasing trust in the community: it's called the Soul Patrol. (Seriously, it's genuinely fascinating.)
ReplyDeleteWhite people reacted to the Soul Patrol about how you'd expect.
Nothing is really a problem until it happens to the offspring of Mr. and Mrs. Whitebread.
ReplyDeleteIt not chickenshit, it's petulant spite.
ReplyDeleteBernie Kerik for Secretary of Law Enforcement! No more stinkin Department of "Justice" and no more cell phones or cameras unless you get a permit from Bernie. Now let's all drown the dinky government in the bathtub. Huzzah!
ReplyDeleteTiger Beat on The Potomac will apparently let any cretin w/ Village Credibility type an op-ed for them.
ReplyDeleteOh, how I wish!
ReplyDeleteThe Giuliani story is a goddamn awful myth. While it's true that he implemented broken-windows policing etc, and crime declined, it declined at a similar rate in other cities which had no such practices in effect.
ReplyDeleteNow being a stooped libruhl, this gives me pause. I mean, maybe there were specific factors that made broken-windows effective in NYC, but I sure as heck don't claim certainty around the answers.
Whereas the brethren on the other side absolutely know that Rudi was a fucking hero and he did it... I just don't understand the mindset that can't be moved from this dogmatism.
Zombie Ted Kennedy can show Al the zombie ropes, errr, tropes.
ReplyDeleteI've got to get one of those. Any suggestions?
ReplyDeleteMy fingers crossed too. (Great gobs of goo, trapped in a car w/ one's mother? I wouldn't have lasted 10 mins.!)
ReplyDeleteAnd not to worry about SKEERY non-Anglos. When I gave up urban camping I moved into a mostly Hispanic area w/ Koreans & Bangladeshis too. The only people who've given me any trouble about anything are other crazy old honkies, but I may have to slap a hipster or two pretty soon.
How the hell did we miss out on the Stasi estate sale when we could have gotten so much good stuff for cheap? Remember when we got past-sell-by-date Nazis to build all our WMDs for us? Man, those were the days.
ReplyDeleteLiberty only applies to conservative white males, hence the liberty of white business owners to refuse service to blacks and white rednecks to walk around with AR-15s and not pay grazing fees but blacks can't even open carry toy guns or loose cigarettes.
ReplyDeleteHands up, don't shoot video.
ReplyDeleteWhoa. You may not need one, just a devil-box.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.broadcastify.com/listen/
ReplyDeleteThe guy who filmed the Rodney King beating just happened to have bought a new video camera and was testing it out from his window across the street. What were the odds?
ReplyDeleteMoonlightin' cuz the mothership remains in financial straits? Maybe auditioning for a David Brooksian sinecure from Fred Hiatt?
ReplyDeleteI compare the police to the abusive spouse withholding money or food from a dependent victim, but that analogy falls apart when something like Sparkleberry - who is echoing Hannity - enters the discussion. Then it is like a neighbor walking up to the victim and saying "I hope you starve!"
ReplyDeleteBecause there's no depth so low that some creep can't sink below it.
And the 4th & the 8th. He's probably not happy about 13 & 15.
ReplyDeleteNo feed from my county. Bummer.
ReplyDelete"I can't imagine what these goobers are going to do when Sharpton dies"
ReplyDeleteThey'll either beat Sharpton the same way they still beat Chappaquiddick, or they will have a new hate-toy. Michelle Obama perhaps. Or they'll do both.
And I'm going with both.
Wingnuts on the cutting edge is phrase I never thought I'd see... but on the substance, they seem to regard Coates as the Reparations Guy, and Bouie as that Other Black Guy who isn't the Reparations Guy.
ReplyDeleteI still reckon, depending on what she does after she leaves the WH, that Michelle Obama might rival Sharpton at their hate-avatar. The amount of shit she gets for her evil advocacy of, basically, healthy living and eating, is... there are really no words, they do absolutely fucking loathe her however.
It's also the case that the crime drop in NYC began while Dinkins was mayor with commissioner Good Ray Kelly (to be distinguished from his senile reappearance as Bad Ray Kelly under Bloomberg) and the community policing styles of Kelly and Bratton, who Giuliani fired because he was getting positive publicity while Giuliani felt ignored and who de Blasio has rehired to replicate his earlier success. Giuliani's preferred police commissioner was of course the criminal Bernie Kerik.
ReplyDeleteCONTEXTUAL cutting edge. The Breitbart creepers at least know how to tweet-stalk people, which is some semblance of technological talent.
ReplyDeleteTough call on Michelle Obama. I think they hate her for equal parts Black and Woman. The Woman thing is important; while Al Sharpton wants your cities to burn, Moochelle is a big ol' biatch with a big butt and she's so gross with her clothes and so stuck up and stinky, etc.
Helmut, Helmut, he's opposed to democracy. That's what conservatism means. Only now that we have elections and all, they have to worry about votes, so they try not to say it in public
ReplyDeleteHoly shit.
ReplyDeleteBratton was into broken-windows as well, but no question he also saw the police as an extension of the community - anathema to Rudi, of course.
ReplyDeleteAgree on the crime trends btw, the evidence is very much that broken-windows/zero-tolerance etc was not a major factor in the drop... as I indicated though, the stooped libruhl in me is unwilling to rule it out completely.
Here's a link to the case. Now that I read it I'm not so sure how far reaching it is, even at the state level. However, it was cool! https://www.aclum.org/news_12.9.14 This couple were also honored https://www.aclum.org/news_2.24.15 and won their law suit against the BPD for falsley arresting them while they were protesting at a Black Lives Matter rally.
ReplyDelete"I hope you starve or are murdered by someone" is the "Welcome to the neighborhood...won't you be my friend" of the Conservative Mr. Rogers.
ReplyDeleteI think there's a moderate version of broken-windows that's not bad, and it's where Bratton's instincts are. Like the way Henry Stern putting animal statues in all the playgrounds would somehow keep the crack vials out. It really did.
ReplyDeleteMichelle had just better not put a foot wrong after she leaves the white house or the torrent of right wing hate that meets her will be...just like the torrent they've unleashed on her for the last eight years.
ReplyDeleteIt's also the type of woman she is. Confident, trend-setting, polished, outgoing... my wife who is far more savvy about these things than I am, barely a week goes by without her gushing about the image Michelle Obama is cutting.
ReplyDeleteShe's had a cultural impact to which these even these idiots in their bubble are not immune, and they have no idea how to react without resorting to a misogynistic and racist diatribe. The pent up frustration is enormous.
Rich Lowry misspelled Freddie Gray's name throughout the piece. Who knew him to an attempt an artistic gesture of such subtlety?
ReplyDeleteBlack names don't even matter to Rick [sic].
ReplyDeleteNot his fault, Rich Lowrie had starbursts in his eyes.
ReplyDelete~
Especially since Coates is self evidently NOT stupid, and I don't think Bouie cares if anyone at NRO or Breitbart thinks he's a meanie.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the problem that "They're coming for the White women!" doesn't work so well in a world with Idris Elba.
ReplyDeleteThey're more likely to hear, "Wait your turn!" than "Oh no!" (Which makes for some funny comment exchanges at the Daily Fail, although most of the die hard BNP types seem to have bowed out of Entertainment articles in defeat.)
It's amazing how easily some argue against the accountability of cops.
ReplyDeleteNewspeak.
ReplyDeleteA sure sign they don't really fear any of that "government overreach" they get their wages from mongering.
ReplyDeleteWell, back from the SKEERY MINORITY AREA and, I'm sure would be to Mr. Lowry's disappointment, we survived, but no house. (No issue with the neighbors; it was the cramped interior, the lack of appliances, and the squishy stairs that voted it down).
ReplyDeleteHave the Libertarian whackoffs ever considered the challenge it would be to drown said government in said bathtub, considering the amount of money they've given it to arm itself?
ReplyDeleteOh, pshaw, all we need is prayer in schools, an absolute ban on abortion, and to allow those (*cough cough white folks*) in authority to do whatever they want.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, she seemed like she'd like spiders.
ReplyDeleteNow's definitely the time to buy from Radio Shack.
ReplyDeleteYou'll be in shape in no time. Just be sure stay hydrated. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI tried unloading trucks when I started working for Wal-Mart; that was 20 years ago (OH GOD I'M OLD) and it didn't go well then...
ReplyDeleteWhat was that from t'other day about unpronounceable black names?
ReplyDeleteMethinks even making the fucking attempt is too much to expect anymore.
They really hate her, but of all the targets of their vitriol, she is the person they are most off-base about. People love Michelle. People who are ambivalent about Barack, or reflexively cynical about Sharpton - these people can and do love Michelle. I think the "idiots in their bubble" don't have a clue that much of America is pretty darn fond of her.
ReplyDelete"Everything must go! Including us. Seriously."
ReplyDeleteHelmut, I hope you don't mind, but I shared your comment on Facebook. More people need to see it.
ReplyDeleteI've lived in my little apartment for a very long long time, and a lot has changed. When I first moved in, my neighbors were mostly singles or couples, primarily Anglo folks - in fact, families with young children were restricted to some buildings a few blocks away from me.
ReplyDeleteEventually, of course, it became illegal to make those kinds of restrictions (this is not a retirement community, it's an assortment of apartment units of varying sizes and elegance - I'm in the older clean-but-shabby area), so families started moving in.
Now most of my neighbors are families with young kids, sometimes extended families. My next door neighbors are a Haitian family, but there are lots of Hispanic families. But I have to say, the current atmosphere is probably the calmest it's ever been. The children are noisy during the day, but everything quiets down at night. People are careless about garbage and recycling containers, but they've always been careless (there's just more people, so there's more garbage).
The big dramas were all in the past, before the multi-ethnic families moved in. Oh the stories - there was the police officer tenant who once hosted a police party that got so out of hand (peeing off the balcony, broken bottles in the driveways) that the local department had to conduct an investigation. And prim elderly white couple next door who were hoarders and when she died in the apartment, he was investigated for possible negligence or abuse.
Now it's just noisy, and crowded, but civilized. I still have to move. Can't afford the rent. Working on possible alternatives. Everything is gonna be okay.
Or President Obama...
ReplyDeleteHow can I miss you when you won't Go Galt?
ReplyDeleteI agree that people love Michelle, but the 27 percenters--man they really hate her.
ReplyDeleteDamn, hope your move goes infinitely better than a certain someone's I know. :)
ReplyDeleteAre you within a reasonable distance of wealthy folks? Try dog-walking. Find a dog park, bring some cards with your name and number, make sure your own dogs look healthy and well-behaved, and start letting folks know you will walk their dogs in exchange for $$$. Easier that loading trucks, but will help you get in shape. Plus dogs!
ReplyDeleteI do have an application in at a canine play center, where I would love to work...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dogewoggys.com/
You have it ALL WRONG.
ReplyDeleteI'm not having any luck. The story seems not to have been told. The best I can do is this account from a member of the Art Commission who was Not Amused. And my rosy memories (it was when my kids were little and we moved from an insalubrious part of Brooklyn to a green part of Manhattan just before the prices shot up) could be unrepresentative of the city's experience as a whole.
ReplyDeleteHere's a nice example in a not so upscale neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite thing about Bob is that it turns out the guy who plays him is some crew guy who darted onto the set during filming to fix some pillows and his reflection wound up getting captured.
ReplyDeleteI work in a fairly poor, majority-black neighborhood, and whenever I go into the post office there, the number of pictures of her the employees have taped up on the wall has increased.
ReplyDeleteThe white women are coming for Idris Elba.
ReplyDeleteNot fond of 5, 14, and 19, either, I'd imagine.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good idea -- it's a great way to get some cash quick, and it's flexible enough that if you get something else, you can work around it.
ReplyDeleteThe last book I read, "Ghettoside" by Jill Leovy, was based on that very thesis--that many big-city homicide cops, because they're overworked and/or just don't give a shit, go through the motions of investigating ghetto homicides. A lot of police resources are wasted on "preventive" measures that do little but alienate residents, but when murders actually happen, they get short shrift. This makes residents even more alienated, and tempts a few of them to take the law into their own hands, because they think that's the only way they'll get justice.
ReplyDeleteFunny how those "what about black-on-black crime" conservatives never seem to be bothered by this.
(In case you haven't guessed already, "Ghettoside" is a terrific book that I highly recommend.)
For the love of Mike Ehrmantraut, Lowry's rant on how liberals are indifferent to black-on-black violence (yadda yadda Al Sharpton yadda MSNBC) is so stale that if it were a donut, the donut shop manager would be using it as a paperweight.
ReplyDeleteI don't think they've figured out whether he's animal, vegetable, or mineral.
ReplyDeleteJosh Marshall has a good take on Rich Louver's spew.
ReplyDeleteOn second thought, they don't see crimes committed by the police as crimes at all.
ReplyDeleteThey see them as job perks.
Authoritarians don't see crimes committed by cops as crimes at all.
ReplyDeleteThey see them as job perks.
Or while fantasizing about him.
ReplyDeleteNot just women, judging by the Mail comments -- and apparently almost everyone is willing to switch teams for him...the suspicion among readers is that the haters are just jealous!
ReplyDeleteWhy, a cynic might suppose that Giuliani saw the crime rate declining under Dinkins and figured that if he grabbed credit for it while enabling rogue cops and generally acting like a dingleberry, he could raise his profile with the national party.
ReplyDeleteI remember that Even The Liberal New Republic came to the conclusion that the Crown Heights riots disqualified Dinkins from another term. Oh, but race had nothing to do with it.
ReplyDeleteHas Starbursts Lowry actually *asked* a black person what they think about inner-city crime?
ReplyDeleteYOMANK
Sure, but the body-shaming has both a racial and partisan motivation to it. Barbara Bush was a little on the heavy side as First Lady - to be fair she was sixtyish and had a bunch of children - but conservatives never picked on her about it. (Nor should they have, I hasten to add). The only FLs I can remember getting that kind of treatment are Hillary and Michelle. HRC was a regular looking fortysomething woman and Michelle Obama is kind of athletic. These people have a latent hostility to the female body, but when the woman is on the wrong side you can drop the "latent" part.
ReplyDeleteAnd he's a jerk, too.
ReplyDeleteWell sure, there has to be some basis for the friendship.
"It's almost as if Lowry wants us to forget that police killings involve people we employ..."
ReplyDeleteExactly the same argument as, "Why don't you liberals protest against bad things happening in other countries?"
I just had a "moment of clarity", I've been scrutinizing these right wing freaks for too damn long.
ReplyDelete**SOB**
Lowry also re-swoons over 2007 Presidential frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani and the District 9 style of community policing.
ReplyDeleteRudy was *not* the Sweetie Man. No, he wasn't...
"What is happening, there is a lot of levels of confusion in the police organization. There are people who have pain, there are people who are hurt, there are people who are frustrated, there are people who are angry," [Commissioner] Batts said. "There are people, and they've said this to me, 'If I get out of my car and make a stop for a reasonable suspicion that leads to probable cause but I make a mistake on it, will I be arrested?' They pull up to a scene and another officer has done something that they don't know, it may be illegal, will they be arrested for it? Those are things they are asking."
ReplyDeleteIf they're asking that, you need to fire their asses and raise the IQ requirement for new cadets...
I also suspect the crowds of people filming police are figments of his imagination.
ReplyDeleteI hope it's not, because bitching about being photographed while out in public, practicing their love on civilians--admittedly hard work!--makes them sound petty and childish, and the more of that shit we hear, the sooner they're gonna have to just STFU and do their jobs .
Two Baltimore Sun articles:
ReplyDelete"Our officers tell me that when officers pull up, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them at any time," Batts said.
and
Batts has said police are struggling to stop violence in West Baltimore. Officers have been routinely surrounded by dozens of people, video cameras and hostility while performing basic police work in the weeks since Gray's death.
Probably where that comes from.
Yeah. Wonder how he fared after that...
ReplyDelete"Is it a tank?"
ReplyDelete"Dude, yeah!"
Or some training. To get things right. Though I suppose that would cost money and wouldn't explode like the fancy new ED-209 police drones.
ReplyDeleteExcerpts from the lewd vocabulary of the future:
ReplyDelete"I'd let him ride me like he rides the golden-maned horse Gulltoppr!"
"In his case, I wouldn't mind being in a Luther burger."
"Today, we are cancelling me wearing pants."
“I am very much surprised at Daniel Sweeney’s sudden interest in the lives and rights of black people,” Robinson said.
ReplyDeleteThat right there was pretty to see. Love these totally polite, aboveboard call-outs.
If the message is supposed to be that they don’t want the police there, it has been received.
ReplyDeleteIf the message is, however, that they want the police to do their fucking jobs and not murder quite so many people, it has been thrown out the window in the whiniest of all whiny tantrums.
You forgot tax cuts!
ReplyDeleteALL OF THEM. Katie.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing the black-on-black crime Concern Trolls never, ever, want to discuss is the fact that a lot of this crime is plain old domestic violence, just like everywhere else.
ReplyDeleteBecause the real attraction of focusing on neighbors who happen to be black killing one another is the frisson of satisfaction one gets when contemplating the death of a young buck.
You knew it was going to be like this when, merely two weeks after his inauguration, Obama made a speech in Florida telling kids to stay in school--and the GOP completely freaked out. (The freak-out was deep enough that Rick Santorum made it a part of his 2012 presidential run, declaring that getting a college degree is "elitist.")
ReplyDeleteAnd so it has been with everything Michelle has said and done. "Eat healthy and get more exercise" is something that first ladies have advocated since Pat Nixon. But coming from Michelle Obama, it's somehow transformed into a horrible thing to tell children. I wonder what the difference is . . .
Right. Yes: if the other police officer does something illegal and you fail to stop it, aid in it, cover it up you should be arrested for it. "I didn't know" may cover events that happened before you got there but not much else.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet it also hasn'tstopped them from fat shaming, attacking people for poor eating habits, blaming the poor for their poor health care situation, and everything else.
ReplyDeleteJust a logical extension of "If the President does it, it's not illegal."*
ReplyDelete*NOTE: Since Nixon first uttered this, it has been updated as follows: If a Republican president does it, it is not illegal. If a Democrat president does it, it is probably illegal. If a Black Democrat president does it, it is most definitely illegal--including the act of being president while being Black and a Democrat.
The day store security starts following uniformed cops around when they walk in the door is the day when the cops might have a glimmer of understanding.
ReplyDeleteI'm not hearing a lot of calls for black Baltimoreans to take any "Second Amendment solutions," at a time when a case might actually be made for the kind of armed resistance to government tyranny that the militia-types are always whining about. I guess it's okay to take up arms against the Taxman, but not so much when it's the cops actually physically oppressing people.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to hear her do a one-woman show titled "Fear of a Strong Black Woman" where she just talks about the heaps of abuse that she and her family have gotten for eight years. Well, it's not like I'd actually enjoy hearing about it, but I'd enjoy watching wingnuts twist themselves into knots trying to pretend that Laura Bush got much of the same.
ReplyDeleteShorter Lowry: Less Daniels, more Valchek.
ReplyDeleteI have this image in my mind of a generic police officer wrapping his Glock, taser, body armor, and a peanut butter sandwich in a bandana, tying it to a pole, slinging it over his shoulder and muttering "I'll bet Mom and Dad will be SORRY when I'm gone!" as he stomps out the kitchen door.
ReplyDeleteOr a robust civil service component of clerks and other non-sworn personnel who have the time and resources to actually conduct background checks on new hires, monitor staffing levels, have a plan for detecting and mitigating effects of high stress assignments on officers, enter information into databases (the old stuff that's just been sitting there as well as the new stuff), organize and track evidentiary materials, make sure that departments can communicate effectively - within the department, and with neighboring jurisdictions (and I mean that literally: the phones and servers and walk-talky things have to really work), and hell, maybe handle some of the paperwork that drives cops nuts, or actually read civilian complaints or transcribe phone messages. You know, what all of those non-flashy civil service drones do, the ones that Norquist wanted to drown in the bathtub, and apparently has.
ReplyDeleteRich Darth Lowery:
ReplyDelete"Your powers are weak, old man."
Al Obi-Wan: Sharpton:
"You can't win, Rich. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
I've never understood how Radio Shack was a business; especially when they were dropping big bucks on bike racing. Its one of those companies that makes me think "money laundering front".
ReplyDelete