What were they trying to hide?

Would it be suspicious if, after you committed murder, you immediately deleted your email records and shredded all your files? Because that’s what the Minnesota police did after they killed George Floyd, just ripping apart anything that might allow investigators to figure out what they were doing.

Minnesota State Patrol officers conducted a mass purge of emails and text messages immediately after their response to riots last summer, leaving holes in the paper trail as the courts and other investigators attempt to reconstruct whether law enforcement used improper force in the chaos following George Floyd’s murder.

In a recent court hearing in a lawsuit alleging the State Patrol targeted journalists during the unrest, State Patrol Maj. Joseph Dwyer said he and a “vast majority of the agency” deleted the communiqués after the riots, according to a transcript published to the federal court docket Friday night.

This file destruction “makes it nearly impossible to track the State Patrol’s behavior, apparently by design,” said attorneys for Minnesota’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the state patrol and Minneapolis police on behalf of journalists who say they were assaulted by law enforcement while covering the protests and riots.

“The purge was neither accidental, automated, nor routine,” said ACLU attorneys, in a court motion that asks a judge to order the State Patrol to cease attacks on journalists who are covering protests. “The purge did not happen because of a file destruction or retention policy. No one reviewed the purged communications before they were deleted to determine whether the materials were relevant to this litigation.”

Quick, check their dictionaries — you’ll probably find they also deleted the word “accountability”.

They also deleted case files, throwing some drug prosecution cases in peril (which seems like a good thing).

The revelations come as Minneapolis police say they’re also investigating why officers in the Second Precinct — across the city from where the riots took place — shredded case files during the riots last summer. Attorneys say police destroyed key evidence to charges in a drug prosecution and have asked a Hennepin County Judge to throw out the case.

In the July 28 hearing, Dwyer said they were not acting on an order from on high to delete records, but it’s “standard practice” for the troopers to so.

“You just decided, shortly after the George Floyd protests, this would be a good time to clean out my inbox?” asked ACLU attorney Kevin Riach.

Dwyer answered in the affirmative.

Now I’m curious. If there was no coordination, and no instructions from on high, why did so many police officers suddenly get in the mood to do some serious house-cleaning, and how many policemen were involved? It’s not necessarily a conspiracy — I mean, I get in the mood to clean up my office when I’ve got a major deadline in my face and want to procrastinate — but something motivated these officers to up and throw out evidence. What was it, if not a command from a superior?

Could it be…guilt?

Socialism with slavery?

Gosh, I guess I can learn something from a troll. I was cleaning out the spam trap and noticed a message from a particularly persistent and mostly incoherent troll, and I made the mistake of reading it and learned about someone peculiar.

Why have you never said a word about George Fitzhugh, and his very effective argument that slavery is inherently socialistic?! If Capitalism is the cause of racism and inequality, why not rebut his work?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh

I’ve never said a word about Fitzhugh because this is the first I ever heard of him, simple as that. Fitzhugh was an antebellum crank, a fierce defender of slavery, not the kind of guy I tend to look to for information, but sure, I looked at his Wikipedia entry.

George Fitzhugh (November 4, 1806 – July 30, 1881) was an American social theorist who published racial and slavery-based sociological theories in the antebellum era. He argued that the negro “is but a grown up child” who needs the economic and social protections of slavery. Fitzhugh decried capitalism as practiced by the Northern United States and Great Britain as spawning “a war of the rich with the poor, and the poor with one another”, rendering free blacks “far outstripped or outwitted in the chase of free competition.” Slavery, he contended, ensured that blacks would be economically secure and morally civilized. Nonetheless, some historians consider Fitzhugh’s worldview to be fascist in its rejection of liberal values, defense of slavery, and perspectives toward race.

Fascinating. It’s a very strange perspective on socialism, or what Fitzhugh considered socialism, which was a very confused subject in his mind. He doesn’t argue that slavery is socialistic; quite the contrary, he argued that the North was afflicted with an “alarming” degree of socialism, while simultaneously claiming to be a socialist. So to figure this out, I skimmed his book, Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters, looking for some clarity. I didn’t find it. But boy, is that a trip.

What is his argument? First, one part I can agree with: he considers capitalism to be an oppressive system in which elites profit from the labor of workers. He deplores the Northern system which, he argues, puts white workers in a position worse than that of a black slave. This is practically a pamphlet for communism, except that he also deplores communism, and thinks the Northern capitalist economy is implicitly socialistic. I tried to sort that out, and couldn’t, but can at least confirm that he’s anti-capitalist. Which is anti-socialist. I’m lost.

Probably, you are a lawyer, or a merchant, or a doctor, who have made by your business fifty thousand dollars, and retired to live on your capital. But, mark! not to spend your capital. That would be vulgar, disreputable, criminal. That would be, to live by your own labor; for your capital is your amassed labor. That would be, to do as common working men do; for they take the pittance which their employees leave them, to live on. They live by labor; for they exchange the results of their own labor for the products of other people’s labor. It is, no doubt, an honest, vulgar way of living; but not at all a respectable way. The respectable way of living is, to make other people work for you, and to pay them nothing for so doing—and to have no concern about them after their work is done. Hence, white slave-holding is much more respectable than negro slavery—for the master works nearly as hard for the negro, as he for the master. But you, my virtuous, respectable reader, exact three thousand dollars per annum from white labor, (for your income is the product of white labor,) and make not one cent of return in any form. You retain your capital, and never labor, and yet live in luxury on the labor of others. Capital commands labor, as the master does the slave. Neither pays for labor; but the master permits the slave to retain a larger allowance from the proceeds of his own labor, and hence “free labor is cheaper than slave labor.” You, with the command over labor which your capital gives you, are a slave owner—a master, without the obligations of a master. They who work for you, who create your income, are slaves, without the rights of slaves. Slaves without a master! Whilst you were engaged in amassing your capital, in seeking to become independent, you were in the White Slave Trade. To become independent, is to be able to make other people support you, without being obliged to labor for them. Now, what man in society is not seeking to attain this situation? He who attains it, is a slave owner, in the worst sense. He who is in pursuit of it, is engaged in the slave trade. You, reader, belong to the one or other class. The men without property, in free society, are theoretically in a worse condition than slaves. Practically, their condition corresponds with this theory, as history and statistics every where demonstrate. The capitalists, in free society, live in ten times the luxury and show that Southern masters do, because the slaves to capital work harder and cost less, than negro slaves.

It would help if I knew what his definition of socialism was. I searched the book for a clue, and this as close as I could come: Socialism is the same as Abolitionism and 19th century Republicanism, which I guess means that Abe Lincoln was the American version of Chairman Mao. So sorry, Mr Troll, how can you claim that he argues that slavery equals socialism if he thinks that abolition equals slavery? Now I’m even more confused.

We wish to prove that the great movement in society, known under various names, as Communism, Socialism, Abolitionism, Red Republicanism and Black Republicanism, has one common object: the breaking up of all law and government, and the inauguration of anarchy, and that the destruction of the family is one of the means in which they all concur to attain a common end.

At the same time, Fitzhugh claims to be a socialist, and also opposes a free society.

We (for we are a Socialist) agree with Mr. Carlyle, that the action of free society must be reversed. That, instead of relaxing more and more the bonds that bind man to man, you must screw them up more closely. That, instead of no government, you must have more government. And this is eminently true in America, where from the nature of things, as society becomes older and population more dense, more of government will be required. To prevent the attempt at transition, which would only usher in revolution, you must begin to govern more vigorously.

The whole book is an exercise in paradox. He goes on and on about how capitalism is exploitive and awful, and damn those Yankees with their population of white slaves creating an industrial machine, while also telling us that socialism is anarchy and must be stopped, while also announcing that he is a socialist. I’m sorry, Mr Troll, this isn’t an effective argument for anything. These are the rants of a confused old man who retired to a Southern mansion and spent his time firing off incoherent screeds at newspapers.

There is one thing he is consistent on, though: black slavery is a benign institution, and we ought to expand it to allow white laborers to be enslaved, too. They’ll all be happier under the kindly hand of a master.

The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. The negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides, they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. “Blessed be the man who invented sleep.” ‘Tis happiness in itself—and results from contentment with the present, and confident assurance of the future. We do not know whether free laborers ever sleep. They are fools to do so; for, whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is devising means to ensnare and exploitate them. The free laborer must work or starve. He is more of a slave than the negro, because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave, and has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right. We know, ’tis often said, air and water, are common property, which all have equal right to participate and enjoy; but this is utterly false. The appropriation of the lands carries with it the appropriation of all on or above the lands, usque ad cœlum, aut ad inferos. A man cannot breathe the air, without a place to breathe it from, and all places are appropriated. All water is private property “to the middle of the stream,” except the ocean, and that is not fit to drink.

Uh, yeah. I think he has built his twisty sociological edifice atop some extraordinarily fallacious premises.

Still, he was a fascinating hate-monger and kook, but not someone to look to for an insightful analysis of 19th century American society…or any society for that matter. I wouldn’t even recognize him as a socialist, since he’s not arguing for any kind of placement of any degree of ownership in the means of production to workers — he wants an authoritarian government of hereditary elites who strip all benefit from the workers’ labors and place it in the hands of hypothetically benign slave-owners. Far from being an effective argument that slavery is inherently socialistic, he’s really just a racist arguing that slavery is good.

Also, he later changed his mind.

He reversed course on capitalism’s pernicious effects, arguing that “the monopoly of property, or capital, by the few” was “the only means of begetting, sustaining and advancing civilization.”

Browsing his book, I recognize that what he really is is a predecessor to the Neo-Reactionary Movement, or the Dark Enlightenment, that libertarian wet dream of replacing the American government with an absolute monarchy in which the rich have total control. I don’t think I need to waste time any further with that horrible racist, Mr Troll: I don’t see anything coherent or true that I need to rebut.

Remember now

June 2003:

August 2021:

Never forget: George W. Bush is a stinking piece of shit. Please remember this next time the news networks decide to show him harmlessly puttering about with his bad paintings.

Oh, also: don’t forget that the 24 hour news networks exist to sell you gold, overpriced pharmaceuticals, buckets of freeze-dried survivalist food, and life insurance (you’ll need it), not information.

For me, it all brings back memories.

We never learn our lesson.

Here’s an interesting point from the Wall Street Journal:

You might wonder why we didn’t train the Afghan army appropriately, given their reputation as formidable fighters, and given that the less well-equipped, relatively primitive, but ultimately overwhelmingly victorious Taliban. That’s easy. This war was fought not for freedom, but to be a sink for the sale of extremely expensive gadgetry by defense contractors. Could we please remember that, too, next time the Republicans start rallying for invasions and assaults and bombing campaigns against civilians? Or when Democrats think they’re being clever by building sneaky little drones to murder people?

There’s a headline to freak out the white supremacists

I expect this will terrify the right-wingers — will Tucker Carlson be giving everyone his confused look over it? (No shock there — stupefaction is his only expression).

I’ll just say meh. It’s no big deal, this is a demographic shift that everyone has seen coming for a long time.

The first race and ethnicity breakdowns from the 2020 Census, released Thursday, show a more diverse nation than ever in the nation’s history.

The report marks the first time the absolute number of people who identify as White alone has shrunk since a census started being taken in 1790. The White population fell from 223.6 million in 2010 to 204.3 million in 2020, a decrease of 8.6 percent.

The country also passed another milestone on its way to becoming a majority-minority society in the coming decades: For the first time, the portion of White people dipped below 60 percent, slipping from 63.7 percent in 2010 to 57.8 percent in 2020.

That first paragraph is nothing but good news. If anything will erode the endemic bias in this country, it’s more diversity.

The decline is not a consequence of persecution or deaths. It’s a combination of a more rapidly increasing non-white population, more interracial children, and wealthier people (a lot of white people in that category) electing to have fewer children. Big whoop — my white children and grandchildren are not harmed by a shift caused by more brown people thriving. This is not ‘replacement’. The gene pool still contains many white gametes (it feels weird to write that, since gametes do not have a color), they’re just intermingling more. This is a good thing.

We can hope for a more egalitarian future, in which the color of your skin does not make a major difference in your success in life. Keep in mind, though, that history is going to reverberate for many generations to come.

Cuomo put in charge of the Department of Not Getting It

Governor Andrew Cuomo might not be governor for long. The New York state attorney general has determined that he was guilty of sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace for women. Biden has called on him to resign.

Investigators laid out a devastating portrait of Cuomo’s behavior and extensive examples of unwanted touching, including an incident last November in which Cuomo allegedly embraced an executive assistant and reached under her blouse to grab her breast. Witnesses also described an environment in the governor’s office that was abusive and vindictive, with one of the women who came forward targeted for retaliation through the release of her personnel file, investigators said.

In all, the independent probe found that Cuomo harassed 11 women, including a state trooper whom the governor arranged to be put on his detail.

Cuomo has made an absolutely mad rebuttal. He posted a document that includes 8 pages of photographs of Cuomo kissing and hugging various people, including his mother, and 15 pages of photos of other politicians kissing and hugging people (see, they do it too!). It’s embarrassingly irrelevant, and shows that he doesn’t understand the problem at all.

No one thinks it is wrong to hug your mother, as long as she consents. No one thinks public displays of affection are a crime. Were you abusive and vindictive to your mom? Did you create a hostile work environment for your mom growing up? There are specific, verified accusations of vindictive behavior in the New York governor’s office, and that is the problem.

You’re telling me police officers are people, too?

There is no denying that there are bad apples in the bunch, and that police culture favors bad actors, but we also have to acknowledge that there are many police officers who actually are there to “protect and serve”. It’s those officers who are made to suffer.

The District of Columbia’s police department on Monday said two more police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol have died by suicide, bringing to four the number of known suicides by officers who guarded the building that day.

Add to the tally the Capitol Police officer who was killed in the line of duty, and the 100 who were injured, and it’s clear that the 6 January Insurrection was more than a few tourists getting rowdy. This was a terrorist action. Those rioters were not good people.

During emotional testimony last week, four police officers told a House of Representatives special committee that they were beaten, threatened, taunted with racial insults, and thought they might die as they struggled to defend the Capitol against the mob.

Meanwhile, Republicans are squirming and lying and trying to pin the blame on anyone other than Trump supporters.

[Wisconsin Senator Ron] Johnson, one of Trump’s most fervent congressional supporters, has for months raised numerous questions about the circumstances surrounding the attack, including the security failures and the nature of the events. He has taken exception, for instance, with describing the attack as an “armed insurrection.”

In the recording captured Saturday, Johnson explained his view that “by and large those folks were peaceful protesters” and that the news media and Democrats are “painting 75 million Americans who voted for Trump as attached with domestic terrorists.”

It’s amazing. A nest of traitors is probably going to walk away scot-free from their actions.

The kind of strength we need

Simone Biles dropped out of the Olympics. The terrible, awful, loud scumbags of the right, like Piers Morgan, spluttered in outrage.

…Piers Morgan—the former British TV host who has repeatedly mocked Meghan Markle for saying she contemplated suicide and was a victim of racism—jumped at the chance to criticize Biles.

“Are ‘mental health issues’ now the go-to excuse for any poor performance in elite sport? What a joke,” he tweeted. “Just admit you did badly, made mistakes, and will strive to do better next time. Kids need strong role models not this nonsense.”

Or we could go to Charlie Kirk:

You’re representing your nation, you selfish sociopath, the 27-year-old community college dropout huffed. You know who has the gold medal? Russia! I have to look at the 4’11” Olympians chewing on their gold medals smirking at the Americans. I’m not okay with that!

Oh, we can’t let the Russians win! The Russians wouldn’t let such nonsense hamper their competitive drive. Remember Elena Mukhina?

Elena Vyacheslavovna Mukhina (Russian: Елена Вячеславовна Мухина; first name sometimes rendered “Yelena”, last name sometimes rendered “Muchina”; June 1, 1960 – December 22, 2006) was a Soviet gymnast who won the all-around title at the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg, France. Her career was on the rise, and she was widely touted as the next great gymnastics star until 1979, when a broken leg left her out of several competitions, and the recovery from that injury, combined with pressure to master a dangerous and difficult tumbling move (the Thomas salto) caused her to break her neck two weeks before the opening of the 1980 Summer Olympics, leaving her permanently quadriplegic.

Americans aren’t any better. We thought Béla Károlyi was a hero for forcing Kerri Strug to compete while injured.

In the time interval between Strug’s two vaults, she asked, “Do we need this?” Károlyi [her coach] replied, “Kerri, we need you to go one more time. We need you one more time for the gold. You can do it, you better do it.” Strug thus limped slightly to the end of the runway to make her second attempt. She landed the vault briefly on both feet, almost instantly hopping onto only her good foot, saluting the judges. She then collapsed onto her knees and needed assistance off the landing platform, to which sportscaster John Tesh commented, “Kerri Strug is hurt! She is hurt badly.” The completed vault received a score of 9.712, mathematically guaranteeing the Americans the gold medal, though while it was not known at the time with Roza Galieva of Russia having not yet completed her floor routine, the Americans would still have won the gold by a margin of 0.309 points had Strug not performed a second vault. Károlyi carried her onto the medals podium to join her team, after which she was treated at a hospital for a third-degree lateral sprain and tendon damage. Due to her injury, she was unable to compete in the individual all-around competition and event finals, despite having qualified for both; so Moceanu was chosen to take her place in the all-around, Dawes took her place in the floor final, and Miller took her place in the vault final.

The Olympics has a history of valorizing suffering in the name of national honor, and of granting bullying, authoritarian coaches power over young women, as if that is a good and normal thing to do. Meanwhile, her former coach, Larry Nassar, is in the news for failing to pay the restitution and penalties he owes.

Nassar has been accused of sexual abuse by more than 330 girls and women — including Olympians Biles, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney.

The internal review of the FBI’s handling of the initial allegations against Nassar was launched in 2018, shortly after Nassar was sentenced to a 60-year term for possessing and receiving child pornography, and a state court sentence of 40 to 175 years for assaulting girls.

It’s telling that the right-wing gasbags are the ones whining about a young woman exercising her autonomy. It’s what they do.

You go, Simone Biles. Standing up to the authoritarian right shows how strong you are.

Watch this

This is what doctors are dealing with right now.

Fox News must die.

Think of the children!

I don’t really care what Turning Point USA does, except when it’s funny. They had a big conference recently, and invited a woman who is both a porn star and writes for the Federalist to attend as a VIP. If you asked me, the latter qualification is what makes her unfit for civilized company, but oh dearie me, that’s not what made attendees clutch their fanny packs.

Oh no! Teenagers might see this fully clothed woman walking and talking like a normal human being, who also takes off all of her clothes and has sex with other people outside the con, apparently unlike any other woman in attendance. So Nicholas Fuentes and his groypers spotted this, and because they already hate Charlie Kirk, they shrieked and pointed.

Of course Kirk caved and disinvited her.

We regret to inform you that your SAS 2021 invitation has been revoked, an email from TPUSA stated, posted to Twitter by the adult entertainer. This decision is final. This revocation does not impact application to future events, and we hope that you will consider applying again in the future.

However, Love wasn’t buying it and said the Republican Party is “broken” due to TPUSA officials giving her the boot. “Can’t make this shit up lol!! I just watched Charlie Kirk, Dan Bongino, Rick Scott, Kat Timpf, speak about freedom, censorship, how inclusive the ‘movement’ is,” she stated. “And then they had me thrown out of the Turning Point USA conference. The Republican Party is broken.”

Remember, Free Speech über alles!

Keep doing the same thing over and over again

Ha ha ha ha haaa!

At the height of the controversy surrounding Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and the revelations that he’s under investigation for sex trafficking, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) bet big on a nationwide joint fundraising tour with her embattled colleague. But new campaign filings show that not only did the gamble not pay off, but that the much-maligned Republicans actually spent four times as much as they raised.

Try harder! You’ve got to spend money to make money!

Since Gaetz and Greene kicked off their joint fundraising committee with a May 7 event at The Villages in central Florida, their campaigns and joint fundraising committee have posted a combined loss of $342,000. And according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission, that joint fundraising effort, “Put America First,” reported only $59,345.54 in contributions.

That sort of meager haul would be fine for a dinner or one-time event, but Gaetz and Greene have repeatedly held high-profile events and spent a whopping $287,036.19 to hold them—meaning they’re in the hole by more than $225,000.

Keep digging, you two. I’m sure you can deepen that money pit to at least a million dollars with a little effort.