I made the mistake of reading a Reddit thread on the NC case. Jesus Christ there are some douchebags out there!
The Philando Castile case pisses me off so fucking badly. If I made a stupid mistake and killed somebody I'd do time. If a supposedly highly trained professional fucks up and somebody dies it's NBD. This case is so much clearer than the Trayvon Martin one. Still, no justice.
And when you're the rat you can't ask them to stop once they've started.
On the plus side, women in New Hampshire can murder anybody with impunity if they're willing to take the trouble to get pregnant.
But, yes, the Philando Castile case is really bothering me. Not only is it horrible even compared to other recent shootings, it's in a more or less functioning state so you can't just write it off as "those people" like when a southerner does it.
Also World War three is brewing in the Middle East. Check out the insane list of demands the Saudis and their cronies have issued.
The shit linked in 5 calls for serious and skilled diplomacy by the US. We need mature, responsible, intelligent, thoughtful, persistent, and calm leadership. Thank god we have that in the White House or this could get nasty.
1, 4: Juries are the fucking worst and a huge roll of the dice every time. See also, the Cosby rape and Walter Scott shooting trials. Those two could have gone right if nationwide we'd go to an Oregon style standard of being able to convict with a non unanimous jury but ACLU types tend to lead the charge against that kind of thing. Maybe time to rethink that.
Juries have their problems (Cosby's was people from my county), but I still think we need to have somebody independent to prosecute police officers. The regular prosecutors have to work with the police too closely.
I watched the video of his girlfriend and daughter in the police car after the shooting. If anything can be worse than the shooting video itself, that might be it.
The ACLU is why it's so hard to convict police officers of murder? The best, nay the only, way to make it easier to convict police officers of crimes is to make it easier to convict everyone?
WTFs:
1) Charleena Lyles is on my mind, too. It doesn't have to be clear like Castile for there to be a three-dimensional array of what-the-fucks, and we all know how it's going to turn out.
2) I was looking someone up on FB yesterday and mistakenly clicked someone with same name. This woman's latest post was essentially, "Before you complain about how police treat you, you should try not breaking the law." Note to self: Remember, FB is brimming with landmines that leave me spluttering angry.
3) Cosby's "hey-hey-hey." Gross.
Well, I sure can't imagine any systemic consequences coming from letting non-unanimous juries convict in more cases.
Also gross: Bill Cosby will be touring the nation advising men on how to avoid sexual assault charges.
The best, nay the only, way to make it easier to convict police officers of crimes is to make it easier to convict everyone?
Stripped of its irony, this is probably true. How do you reinvent the American police forces, given their long history? Australia may hold some clues.
9 is completely true. Her daughter is similar in age and temperament to Selah. It hurts.
But welcome, echoes!
The Cincinnati jury for Samuel DuBose's killer seems to be deadlocked just like the first one. The judge is going to put a lot of pressure on them and maybe will allow the option of a lesser charge. Pride is tomorrow here and it feels completely overshadowed by this to me.
What amazes me is that the NC law is barbaric even if you rephrase it in a way that a right-winger could understand: if you invite someone to your house, they piss you off, you tell them to leave, and they stay, then they're trespassing. Women don't even have that right over presence in their own vaginas. Property rights are more sacrosanct than a right to bodily integrity. Same as it ever was, I know.
10, 12: Are you people having delusions that hung juries are saving the innocent or something? Maybe there's the occasional unicorn in there but in the real world they're a lottery ticket for people who need to be locked up.
There are innocent people in jail, and there are guilty shitheads who are proclaimed innocent. Is it generally true that juries err in the second direction, and plea bargains err in the first direction?
4 - In Ohio, John Crawford picked up an air-gun at a Wal-Mart that he was buying for a birthday party, walked around while having an argument with his ex on his cell phone, and got shot with no warning by a cop responding to a false active shooter report; the grand jury declined to indict and I believe the cop who pulled the trigger was returned to duty. Right here in Cleveland, Tamir Rice was playing in a park with a toy gun and got shot with no warning, and the DA rigged the grand jury to make sure there was no indictment. It's not just the South.
13: "Don't give women Qualuudes and then fuck them." [Fifty-nine minutes of smooth jazz] "Thank you for coming to this presentation today."
21: I have achieved greater emotional distance from Ohio than I have from the Midwest in general.
20: Yes to the first, not so much on the second. Innocents going to jail is a miniscule problem compared to other issues with the legal system and the country in general. Most people could evacuate all the innocents out of their local prison with a Honda Civic. You're in TX and might need the minivan.
I personally would much rather err on the side of letting the guilty free than unjustly imprisoning the innocent.
But what I'm really here for is to comment about the WaPo Russian election hacking story. My comment: Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
I know. I want to smack Obama's stupid fucking face.
Several years ago a woman was shot in Scottsdale Az while attempting to pass a bogus prescription for opioids. The officer claimed she was trying to run over him but he shot her through the side window. There was a child in the car also. In spite of his obvious lie and totally unnecessary and reckless behavior he was acquitted.
This will never change as long as Americans have an unreasoning fear of crime and a fetish-level of admiration of the police.
24: Assuming your implication is that the real crime is what's illegal, sure, I guess.
a fetish-level of admiration of the police
And a simultaneous fear of government tyranny. What a country!
I honestly do a double-take at the "Blue Lives Matter" insignia flags/bumper stickers because I can never remember what fetish that is at first before I realize oh, the socially acceptable one.
After the mistrial was announced, I spent 90 minutes in the pouring rain outside the courthouse until it was time to go pickup the girls, whose black teachers were sad and unsurprised.
We need to cut down incarceration. My policy would be to set a quota then release people til the quota is met. Someone goes in, someone goes out. You would be releasing a lot of murderers and rapists so it wouldn't be very popular though.
I am sharing a train with a prepper who is sharing his theories with a nice lady in the row opposite. So gross.
OT: There's an Inspector Barnaby show with Orlando Bloom as the corpse. There was a brief mention of Tolkien in miscellaneous dialogue.
More than 15,000 Americans were losing their jobs each day in June 2009, as the US struggled to climb out of a painful recession following its worst financial crisis in decades. But Jay Sekulow, who is now an attorney to Donald Trump, had a private jet to finance. His law firm was expecting a $3m payday. And six-figure contracts for members of his family needed to be taken care of. Documents obtained by the Guardian show Sekulow that month approved plans to push poor and jobless people to donate money to his Christian nonprofit, which since 2000 has steered more than $60m to Sekulow, his family and their businesses...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/27/trump-lawyer-jay-sekulow-donations
Poor people would have just blown the money on drugs or groceries.
This CNN thing with the quick resignation of three journalists after a what looks to be an incorrect story is sort of interesting in that from the outside the errors do not *look* that egregious. But it does seem that some internal CNN editorial processes were short-circuited which is often what really gets you. Notably one of those leaving is Eric Lichtbau who was the author on the notorious NYTimes pre-election "Russia only seeking to disrupt election not help Trump" story. I assume he will move on to Politico now...
But it also did not even go on the air; just the website.