It’s been two years since George Floyd died. No, that’s not right, it’s been two years since George Floyd was killed. No, still not right… it’s been two years since George Floyd was murdered.
I can’t believe it’s been two years. Two years and the fucking Republicans won’t allow a bill to be passed that will rein in the police.
Police brutality. Children slaughtered in schools. Gun violence.
It’s all related, and it’s a sickness.
The sickness has a name: the United States Senate. The commitment to the filibuster and the equal representation of each state without regard to population is killing the country. The first is easily gotten rid of if we can elect 50 Dem senators who will do the right thing. The second is constitutional, so we may be stuck with that.
We have just a bare majority in the House, but the House still managed to pass a bunch of excellent legislation. It’s the Senate that’s far and away the biggest problem the country faces.
Anyone who tries to claim that Collins & Murkowski are ‘moderates’ can GTFO. Endless firearms mayhem is the stated and promoted policy position of the *entire* GOP.
All of them, Katie.
They won’t do a Got Damn thing about elementary-age children being mowed down en masse. Repeatedly.
Susan can clutch her pearls all she wants, she’s a hard-hearted killer. As are her 49 seatmates in that chamber. They know that there are things that could be done. They’ve refused, consistently.
Sandy Hook didn’t change a single mind in the GOP. And it’s all gotten worse since. Fuck ’em.
Gun culture in America is built on three sick beliefs:
1). That others are dangerous;
2). Warped hero fantasies;
3). That our government is somehow not us, together.
Weaving through this is the stench of white male supremacy.
Oh, and all those thoughts and prayers are actually quite effective. They’re just directed to the monster god, Moloch.
Thom Tillis was almost as sickeningly wrong as Cruz the gun-nut’ Ooze with this Hot Take for CNN:
.
“… GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina warned Democrats against having a “reflexive reaction,” saying he is confident in the coming days it will be learned that there were “signs” the 18-year-old shooter was “at risk.”
“It’s horrible. And you know what we need to avoid is the reflexive reaction we have to say this could all be solved by not having guns in anyone’s hands. We can always talk about reasonable measures, but we also have to talk about better situational awareness,” Tillis told CNN. …”
.
Got that, all you 8 year old targets, er, kids? “Situational Awareness”. That’ll save yer bacon every time.
@ JWR:
What about Tillis’s “reflexive” response to defend guns over human lives? Asshole.
Yeah, what good did all Tillis’ magical “signs!” do for the massacred in Buffalo?
“We can always talk about reasonable measures, but we also have to talk about better situational awareness”
So we place every moody 18 year-old in the country under federal surveillance? Roger that, senator. Oh, and by the way, kindly go fuck yourself!
There are people with evil, radical ideas, mental health issues, psychopathy, etc. in every country. We are virtually the only country in the world that lets these people have unfettered access to military-grade firearms. It’s like having C-4 being completely legal, and then shrugging everytime some nutball takes down an airliner.
No to mention, if there are no background checks, what practical value are all the flashing Tillis-approved “signs”? Words sure come out faster when there’s no pretense of coherency.
“@MacFarlaneNews
NEW: Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) says gun control measures would likely not be taken up until after Senate Memorial Day recess”
Absolute political malpractice. Even if all the Dems do is place a draft bill on a committee calendar and whipped some cosponsors, they can say they’ve STARTED TO ADDRESS THE MURDER OF CHILDREN.
But instead, in the face of massive revulsion and huge Dem base energy, Durbin says “We gotta weekend of hotdogs, apple pie (and fundraisers) ahead, let’s circle back to this around June 4th or so.”
Fucking tin-eared stupidity. No tactical sense whatsoever.
@RaflW
To be honest, I have grown tired of the practice of responding to situations by getting bogged down and distracted by minutae about how Democratic leaders should message things differently.
I get that most people feel differently, but I see it as part of the problem. YMMV.
@Baud – Admitting DC (and Puerto Rico) as state(s) would help balance the Senate gerrymander a bit. If you fix #1, you can do this too.
@JWR
“Situational awareness”?!
I have encountered many toxic people who I don’t trust with guns (fuck, I don’t trust them with gardening implements). WHAT DO THESE ASSHOLES WANT ME TO DO ABOUT IT?! Is there a number I can call?! Am I anonymous? Does that person get sent to mandatory counseling? Who takes their guns away? For how long? Where are they stored? Do they get them back? Do they go to jail in the meantime?
FYI, being a rageaholic isn’t a mental illness listed in the DSM.
I tried posting this last night as a reply to @Martin, but the site ate it all up, every time. But now that I see that Durbin and his fellow Dems are slinking back into their “safe place”, well, I just don’t know. But here’s what I wrote, in a fit of anger:
“This is an issue, (as if voting or other rights weren’t), that the entirety of the D party has got to put maximal pressure on Manchin. And no, I don’t know what that would look like or whether it’s already been tried. But the weasel words I’ve heard from elected Dems so far, to include Biden and Chris Murphy, have already lost the day. I don’t give a hoot about how well they express their emotions unless they’re also naming names. Ie., Joe Manchin, and his good friends, the GOP, probably to include Sinema.”
Look, Manchin sucks, but he isn’t our big problem. Mitch McConnell is worse and yet everyone here keeps complaining about Sinema and Manchin. I get that they suck, but they aren’t the real enemy. We just had higher expectations for them.
Our problem is our fellow Americans who keep voting for Mitch McConnell, and Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, and super-concerned Susie Collins, and Marco Rubio, and Mike Lee, and on and on and on. The problem is terrible Americans. They see this and they keep voting for this.
Police killed George Floyd two years ago. Has anything changed? We dodged a bullet by ridding ourselves of a bloated cretin who was an advocate of police brutality.
The first time I was harassed by cops was 50 years ago and I still remember it as if it happened yesterday. Police in this country for the most part operate like the German Gestapo. Cops and Republicans are authoritarians.
Some of you really just need to turn the tv off, log off the internet, and do some breathing exercises for a few days.
Some of you talk about wanting to destroy Republicans beyond just politics over guns… but they are the ones that have the majority of guns because Democrats have disarmed themselves to a large degree.
How exactly do you think that is going to go?
Also, let’s be honest, it’s Democrats and Republicans keeping police reform from happening. Democrats could have rolled the Republicans by passing Tim Scott’s bill. It wouldn’t have gotten us even 75% of what we want, but it would have gotten the ball rolling in the right direction. But Democrats didn’t do that cause it was all or nothing. It’s better to juice donors to let an issue fester than make incremental progress. Also, we didn’t want to give Tim Scott a bill to have his name attached as creator of to run on against Democrats in possible 2024 or 2028 because they fear Tim Scott could eat enough into their base of African Americans to win.
Another quick easy fix rolls past. Funny how it’s all so easy.
I note that the NRA is banning guns from TFG’s big speech this Friday. Man, fuck the NRA.
The DOJ fixed all this yesterday. The police will supervise, intervene when needed and control the police! Problem solved.
“Also, let’s be honest, it’s Democrats and Republicans keeping police reform from happening. Democrats could have rolled the Republicans by passing Tim Scott’s bill. It wouldn’t have gotten us even 75% of what we want, but it would have gotten the ball rolling in the right direction. But Democrats didn’t do that cause it was all or nothing. It’s better to
juice donors to let an issue fester than make incremental progress. Also, we didn’t want to give Tim Scott a bill to have his name attached as creator of to run on against Democrats in possible 2024 or 2028
because they fear Tim Scott could eat enough into their base of African Americans to win.”
Nonsense. Corey Booker wanted to tie massive additional federal funding for police to police actually complying with the new law. An ordinary and necessary accountability measure.
Tim Scott then took that completely reasonable request and went on tv to claim that Booker wanted to “defund the police” – pure politics.
Booker was right and Scott was wrong.
Booker negotiated in good faith. Scott was the one who sank the deal because Scott could not resist using the “defund the police” cudgel to beat Democrats.
@sdhays
“Admitting DC (and Puerto Rico) as state(s) would help balance the Senate gerrymander a bit. If you fix #1, you can do this too.”
I don’t know how much attention anyone here pays to PR’s internal politics, but it is extremely likely that, should they ask to be admitted and if they were, we’d get two GOP senators out of that deal.
Will May 25, 2022 at 11:25 AM
“Poiice reform” shouldn’t include massive additional federal funding of police with no accountability and no mechanism to tie that funding to police compliance with federal laws.
The federal government needs a stick and tying federal funding to compliance is the only stick they have. Tim Scott wanted all carrots and no sticks – it’s bad government and Booker was right to reject it.
OT, I guess, but Navalny’s whole speech is well worth listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tIXegVoZx4
“The South Carolina Republican said there were ‘eight or nine issues’ said.
Booker directly disputed Scott and acknowledged that tying federal over which he disagreed with Democrats, most of which included withholding federal grants and other funding as a penalty for not complying with regulations.
‘When you tell local law enforcement agencies that you are ineligible for money, that’s defunding the police, there’s no way to spin that,’ Scott funds to regulation compliance is a common provision.”
This was ADDITIONAL funding that would have come with compliance with the new law.
Scott wanted to give them strings-free federal money with no enforcement mechanism.
When the federal government funds public schools they put requirements on schools to get the money. The schools all comply because they want the money. For some reason we aren’t permitted to do this with police- we have to hand them huge bags of cash whether they compy or not.
They should be treated like any other public service or entity. They’re not special. If a public school assistant principal has to comply with federal law to get federal funding then so does a police chief.
If the NRA is so tone-deaf that they go ahead with their gun fest in Houston on Friday, maybe half a million protesters will show up and pelt the GOP pols with garbage.
@Kay
Thanks, by the logic of people that say GOP refusing to compromise on guns means they have the blood of kids on them… I guess you have the blood of young black men on yours?
Again, let’s not make any progress because we didn’t get everything we want. Oh the horror of more funding for police!!!! More young black men must die and be thrown on the pyre cause we can’t have the police having more money with few strings attached!
Will May 25, 2022 at 12:09 PM
It is ordinary and necessary to tie federal funding to compliance with federal laws.
Police are funded PLENTY. They are the ONLY public entity that insist they should have no accountability of any kind to go along with that funding.
So your plan is they get massive additional funding whether or not they comply with something like a “no chokeholds” provision? We should just throw as much money as we can at them and hope they comply with the law?
We spend more on police and corrections than another country in the world. How much should we give them? 50% more? 150% more?
No other public service or entity makes these demands. Only police. They have a 30% clearance rate for murders in some jurisdictions. Is the problem really that they don’t get enough strings- free federal money?
We can’t ask them to stop using chokeholds unless we throw huge bags of cash at them to spend as they see fit?
Millions and millions in additional federal funding for police, Booker wants to release it only if police hold up their end, and Scott does a tour of cable tv to accuse Booker of “defunding the police”. It was completely dishonest.
I think a really good message that any politician and/or media person (ha, like that will ever happen) should highlight is the absolute hypocrisy of the NRA. Let’s flip the “elite” tag and ask the reason the NRA wants more guns everywhere except their functions. Why is the safety of the people who attend their functions more important than our school students. Since they back concealed carry, permitless carry, more guns being carried by more people after every shooting, then how come they don’t want all the “good guys” who attend an NRA function carrying? I think if this were a consistent message, it might be possible to get that message out and the Republicans who answer with more good guys with guns might get more heat. I’m tired of “positive” messaging from the Democrats — the media is never going to listen to Dems until Dems start pointing out Republican hypocrisy and media hypocrisy. When Chuck Todd asks a both sides, go on the offense. Don’t answer a question that is framed by the Republicans, but call him out on the framing. It is time for Dems to start “working the refs” as well.
Will May 25, 2022 at 12:09 PM
And POLICE organizations defended Booker. The sticking point was sheriffs. Our most out of control police agencies, county sheriffs, who are essentially running little fiefdoms, whined that they shouldn’t have to comply with a new federal law in order to get new federal funding.
We should take their word on it. Give them the funding, but don’t insist they actually change anything. Because how dare we.
Yup. I’m 100% with Kay on this one. Additional coddling of the police should in no way be a part of the solution.
@ JWR
Your comments from last night were in SPAM. I just let them out.
How ironic that we’ve got an advocate of give the police moooorrrrreeee on a George Floyd thread.
@scav
I’m not an advocate of giving the police more. I’m an advocate of getting shit done and making people’s lives better. If that means a trade off of giving the police more money, I’ll do it in a heartbeat.
I guess I just actually care about moving the ball forward and making people’s lives better than letting them stay as deep in the shitter as possible cause of some hypothetical utopia bill someone writes about in the comment section of a blog doesn’t get done.
scav May 25, 2022 at 12:28 PM
Please. Hundreds of millions in ADDITIONAL federal funding. We’re allowed to insist on some accountability for it and anyone who takes that reasonable request and tunrs it into “Corey Booker wants to defund the police” which is what Scott did, is a hack.
They didn’t even have the damn money yet and Scott was insisting Booker was taking it away! It’s nonsense.
Giving sheriff’s departments a veto over federal legislation is insane. Who told these people they are extra special public servants who get endless, unlimited funding with no accountability?
Are we allowed to mention their piss-poor clearance rates for violent crimes, or is that “defunding the police” too? Can we politely request they stop somewhere short of police brutality and committing crimes themselves or is that out of bounds too?
They’re public servants. They work for the public. We’re allowed to insist they comply with laws.
@WaterGirl May 25, 2022 at 12:32 PM
Thank you! The site was behaving very badly for me last night/very early this morning.
“some hypothetical utopia bill someone writes about in the comment section of a blog doesn’t get done.”
Booker’s demands were very clear. He wanted compliance to come along with the money. No hypothetical, no “utopia”. Just ordinary requirements to receive federal funding like any other state or local public entity has to do.
“Utopia” is handing them hundreds of millions in federal funding on a pinky swear they’ll improve. That’s “utopia”. Scott can’t offend county sheriffs because God forbid someone should tell them what to do.
A lot of privilege baked into the idea of trading the lives of young black men over insistence of strings attached to funding.
@will,
I guess I don’t see the point of getting the ball rolling without paying attention to the direction the ball is headed. And you certainly are an enabler of giving the police more so long as you get your ineffable “rolling” motion.
Edit. Oh dear, now getting the police to work within budget limitations like the fucking rest of us and holding them accountable to boot is a bagatelle string!
@Will Somehow it seems like giving more money to cops but with zero accountability will result in more young black men dying at the hands of cops, not less. But you do you.
@Kay:
Speaking of Sheriff’s, here in Los Angeles County, we’re probably going to reelect one of the worst in Alex Villanueva. There’s this smarmy campaign ad, (ETA see story linked below), from Villanueva targeting Hispanic churchgoers, there’s the fact that he was finally forced to testify, under oath, about the two biggest “gangs” within his department, the Banditos in East L.A., and the Executioners in South Central, and the illegal and videotaped neck restraint, (the same as that used on George Floyd), that he apparently covered up for almost a year, and yet everyone seems to think he’s cruising to reelection, because CRIMEWAVE!
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/new-villanueva-campaign-ad-taken-down-archdiocese-los-angeles-objects-filming-church/
I think it’s amazing how you think that every cop and department is corrupt, so thus more funds makes the problems worse. So much worse that we are fine trading lives of young black men over it.
News flash, most cops are good people.
But hey, some of you keep telling yourselves whatever it is that helps some of you sleep in your ivory towers at night.
@Will wrote:
“News flash, most cops are good people.”
Question for you: how do you characterize the cops who look the other way and don’t report bad cops? In my world view, if good cops enable bad cops to do bad shit and suffer no consequences, then by definition they are not good cops.
Where do you stand on that?
Ah! The invocation of black bodies! Privilege! Ivory Towers! Not all Cops! Rhetorical flourishes have slain me!
(yeah. not necessarily convinced yet either, but there we are.
Funny how the guns aren’t the problem / cops aren’t the problem arguments run in same ruts.)
@WaterGirl
I don’t know, maybe the good cops know if they all quit over the closing of ranks over bad cops then the force will be nothing but bad cops.
I don’t think you understand the kind of pressure the bad cops can put on good cops. Bad people use all the tools they can to ruin good people. I almost lost my white collar job because I confronted a bad actor in the workplace. They used every tool they could to drag me through the mud, try and convince people I was worse. Fabricated all sorts of stuff about me being a racist. It took the company prying into my private life such as my wife being Indian and my circle of friends being very diverse before they decided they weren’t going to fire me.
Bad cops hold this kind of tool over good cops everywhere. You just think it’s easy for them to speak up and point the finger when you have zero clue the fire they are going to have to walk through.
Will May 25, 2022 at 12:57 PM
A lot of privilege baked into the idea of trading the lives of young black men over insistence of strings attached to funding.
OMG! Strings attached to funding! So police will have to comply with the same set of rules every single other recipient of federal funding complies with?
Will, ask yourself why the sheriff’s organizations lobbied Scott to get no strings funding and killed the deal. Did they do that because they plan to comply voluntarily?
It was dumb, BTW. They would have gotten boatloads of federal funding but their “you’re not the boss of me” arrogance ruined it for everyone.
Again- this isn’t difficult. They work FOR THE PUBLIC. They are accountable to the public. If they want still more funding on top of the huge amounts they already get they are going to have to stop brutalizing people and breaking the law. It’s not a high standard. It’s a rock bottom minimum standard.
As angry as SD was last night about the conversation with her brother, so too with this dude Will. Goodness, what a condescending pissant – him and his white collar job. Nobody understands but him. I live on the SS of fucking Chicago – everybody I know understands bad cops because many of us have encountered them just living our everyday life If a group of “good” cops can’t do anything about “one” bad cop, then why the fuck are they policemen? Adding, this same group of shrinking violet good cops have no problem telling folks in the community how we should tell everything we see, yet, they have the guns and power and won’t say jack shit.
WG, will we get a pie button over here??? 🙂
@stacib
Go fuck yourself. Have you done anything outside of keyboard warrioring there? I got choked out unconscious by a cop in Chicago SS for recording him harassing a couple of teenage black kids.
@stacib
hoping we will not be here long enough to add a pie filter!
@Will
Pretty sure that, living on the south side of Chicago, stacib has had plenty of interactions with cops who make assumptions based on the color of her skin. So I imagine stacib has plenty of skin in the game.
I have never pie’d anyone but, yeah that filter sure is looking good from here in South Minneapolis. Had to stay away from tonight’s vigil…Covid has finally arrived in our house. It was a good run.
I’ve has enough of whiny people defending “good” cops. Put up or shut up. Let them prove they are out there.
@WaterGirl
I’ve been following this blog since DougJ’s start, I love it, but this is exactly why I’ve mostly avoided the comment section. Way too many keyboard warriors that don’t get out there and do anything about it in the real world. They’ll call me a pissant, but how many times have they put their life or career on the line for the right thing? Stacib may have skin in the game, I don’t know them well enough, but I don’t back down from people that dismiss other people. I can’t properly move my left arm due my bad shoulder I got from taking a beating for stopping white racist thugs from killing a black taxi driver. My jaw does a loud pop anytime I have to eat something large like a hamburger from a beating I took defending a woman I didn’t know from a clearly violent man. I woke up in my piss barely able to breathe after confronting a bad cop. Makes me have zero respect for people that make big statements in the comment sections dismissing people that don’t think 100% like them. I may disagree with people, I may even be willing to be an asshole, but I never dismiss them. I don’t always agree 100% with your takes, WG, but I still read them cause I want to know what you think and I want to try and see things from your point.
@ Will wrote:
“Makes me have zero respect for people that make big statements in the comment sections dismissing people that don’t think 100% like them. I may disagree with people, I may even be willing to be an asshole, but I never dismiss them.”
I haven’t totally been following all the back-and-forth with you so I can’t really weigh in on any specifics, but I do agree that some folks can be dismissive of other people who hold different opinions.
One think I like about Balloon Juice are the discussions in issues where I read what commenter A says and I’m (figuratively) nodding my head, and then commenter B disagrees and I’m thinking, boy, that’s true, I hadn’t thought of it that way. And so forth. Not saying I’m wishy washy, but if I’m forming an opinion on something I am not terribly well versed on, that happens frequently enough.
I don’t pie anyone, but there are a small number of people on Bj that I skip right over either because they are so angry or so negative all the time.
But other than that I appreciate the dialogue. It sounds like you literally put yourself on the line physically for other people, which may be kind of rate.
I try not to dismiss people, too, so if you catch me doing that, feel free to call me on it. Bedtime for me, i am really tired tonight. Peace.
P.S. I think I may have asked you a direct question today about good cops vs. bad cops – i was just reminded by Laura Too’s comment. If you answered that, I missed it.
My take is that if you’re a cop and you’re not calling out abusive behavior of other cops, then you’re enabling them and I don’t consider you to be a good cop.
@ LauraToo
I am trying to make this place more comfy, but I sure do miss many many things about the Balloon Juice site. But I take comfort in having the community here, so that keeps me going while we wait for the real Balloon Juice site to come back.
@WaterGirl I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful, I am so appreciative of having community back. It just rubbed me the wrong way after 2 years of police bullshit (how many good young black men have had to die because of them) that I lashed out. My apologies.