Mr. Dipstick Says ‘We Will Bury You’

Another day, another racist jerkface proudly claiming ownership of, well, everything.

A man was arrested after screaming racist commentary at passersby in Seattle this weekend.

According to MyNorthwest.com, University of Washington photographer and advisor Keoke Silvano was headed home when he exited the Beacon Hill station and heard the white man yelling at an African-American man.

“My people are going to bury you,” the racist man said. “We built these streets! White men built these streets!” He also frequently shouted the N-word.

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Guns Have Nothing To Do With Art-All-Night Shootings

Another week, another mass shooting, this time in New Jersey at a festival called Art All Night.

I can already here the mating calls of the 2nd Amendment Republicans:

Too many doors!

Why do they let people were baggy clothes on a summer night?

This is what happens when liberals get together at festivals that value lefty things, like art!

We’ll propose a ban on doors, baggy clothes, and art to save the people just as soon as we find a way to stop all this criticism that keeps happening to us despite the fact we’re only exercising our 1st Amendment rights!

Call your representatives and senators and insist that they vote for the ban on doors, baggy clothes & art! Don’t let them take away your guns! Freedom first!

Fuck.

Would you believe that the CNN story on this this morning included the line:

Authorities have heard that as many as 1,000 people were in the area at the time of the shooting, Onofri said. The festival entrances had no metal detectors, he said.

Yes. Yes of course you would.

As for the people, there’s still one victim in “extremely critical” condition – probably still in surgery. Twenty people were injured. It appears that “one killed” is in reference to a suspect that was killed, probably by police. Unusually for situations like this, there was actually another suspect as well, that one taken into custody alive.

I hope the final death toll doesn’t get any higher.

Privileged Explained: I’m Tiny Because You’re White

So, I recently was introduced to Reductress, a really good (though not quite great) website that reads a lot like what you’d get if Bitch & BUST formed a joint venture to take over The Onion. Like Bitch and BUST, it’s often focussed a bit too much on popular culture than I’d prefer, but its satires of Cosmo-style sex tips are completely brilliant. When it steps away from those, it has more potential to embed meaningful, educational commentary in its satire, but it also falls down a bit more often.

One piece that didn’t fall down, was this one about class privilege. But that assumes you know what privilege is. It’s another piece that really nails a basic explanation of the concept of privilege in the midst of a beautiful bit of satire-as-education. That piece is titled I’m Not Tiny Because I’m Asian, I’m Tiny Because You’re White.

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A Paleontologist Gets ‘Off The Hook’ Excited

Paul Selden, a paleontologist with enthusiasm for ancient arthropods, went crazy discussing spider/acarine interactions that helped him interpret a new find in which a spider-silk wrapped tick was found in Burmese amber:

“Just last year, I was on a field trip in Estonia and took a photo of a Steatoda spider wrapping up a red spider mite,” said Selden. “That was serendipitous.”

Ooh, baby: talk academic to me.

 

ICE Hit & Run vs Members of the Tohono O’odham Nation

There’s a relatively slow-motion hit-and-run occurring on Tohono O’odham Nation land that’s been recorded and now viewed several hundred thousand times. It’s bad enough, though the victim Paulo Remes is reported to be recovering reasonably well by Tuscon.com. The SUV that hit Remes was an Immigration & Customs Enforcement vehicle that drove down the road approaching Remes’ house, turned around, then came back toward Remes who had just walked across the road and was still on the edge of it when struck. This has all the makings of a felony:

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Bill Maher Gets One Right

RawStory is saying that Maher did a segment on police brutality tonight (Friday). In it he said:

“We need to stop saying most cops are good like we know that to be true,” Maher said. “I hope that’s true, but I need some evidence—unlike cops.”

I think that the most troubling thing about this is how few of these incidents come to light through police body cams. With so many interactions recorded on body cam, how is it that the majority of brutality incidents reach the public eye through the video taken by some witness pulling out a cell phone?

I don’t think that the majority of cops have committed unnecessary and illegal violence. I think the majority have certainly committed unnecessary violence, though, and I think that the ratio of bystander videos to body cam videos in these situations shows that law enforcement as an institution is engaged in a massive coverup. What does it mean to be a “good cop” when so many of these incidents are covered up by cops? Can you still be a “good cop” while ignoring the problems too big to change by yourself? How would that square with arresting a murderer when you know you don’t have the skills to prosecute them?

The definition of “good cop” is going to vary from person to person, but from testilying to state certification boards to allowing corrupt cops to resign to avoid investigation & punishment so they can hop over to a job in the next jurisdiction, I think there’s more than enough evidence that a huge percentage of cops are corruptly ignoring the problems in their own departments even if they are decent and trying to do good when they go out on the streets. Some of those cops *might* be good if we didn’t ask them to work in corrupt agencies. But how many? It’s impossible to tell.

So, yeah: maybe most cops are good, but at this point they’re going to need to step up with some evidence.

 

 

Don’t Be This Wrong: Salon Spreads Serious Misinformation

In an article criticizing trump as a Sadist, Salon writer Chauncey DeVega writes a supposedly-factual introduction to what is later a very opinionated piece in such a way as to screw up a very, very important basic fact:

The United States Constitution grants President Donald Trump many powers. They include being the Chief Executive, Chief Legislator and Commander-in-Chief of the military. Not to be content with such powers, Donald Trump has also taken on other roles as well. Donald Trump is the Sadist-in-Chief of the United States of America. Cruelty and meanness are his modus operandi.

Did you catch it? DeVega would have you believe that Trump is constitutionally empowered to be the United States’ “Chief Legislator”.

No. That’s just wrong. It’s so very, very wrong it’s hard to communicate. If you’re from the US or went to grade school here (or even if you just know how to read between the lines of subtle slogans like “No More Kings”), you know that placing primary legislative powers in the hands of the chief executive is exactly what the constitutional framers did not want.

The President cannot set the congressional schedule or call a committee to order. The President cannot introduce a bill before congress or propose language revisions for an existing bill. The President cannot vote in either the House or the Senate. The President cannot amend or authoritatively interpret legislation. The president cannot employ a veto to reject parts of a bill while retaining the effectiveness of other parts: the president must accept all of a legislative act or none of it.

The President is not a legislator and Congress is not a parliament.

We are sufficiently Freuded already without giving Trump even more power. Don’t for a moment concede that the constitution gives Trump any kind of legislative power.

Don’t Start Reading The Story In The Middle

Or things get … weird:

At the touch of his lips it swelled and lengthened. His expert skills left me gasping. I couldn’t tear my eyes away as he ensorcelled me with pinches and tugs, and especially the rapid rotation of his wrist. And then, two minutes later, it was over. There was nothing left but the mess on his face, in his hair, clinging electrically to his clothes. I cried knowing I had exploded the best balloon giraffe I would ever see and threw the sewing needle away in shame.

 

Credit Due

Pat Parker is a particularly awesome poet, although it’s true that we all tend to value most highly those things we can’t do ourselves, and whatever talent I have with language, it certainly doesn’t include a gift for brevity. So maybe I overvalue Parker because she’s able to make a point much more succinctly than I?

Hmm. Let’s see:

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Loving Day

Well, I missed it by two days, but let’s do this anyway: Fifty-one years ago on Tuesday, a mere 99 years, 11 months and 3 days after we passed a constitutional amendment requiring states to stop with the racial discrimination already, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that yes, Virginia, there are limits to constitutional violations and stop Freuding persecuting the Lovings already, okay?

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