Minor Thoughts from me to you

Trump's use of false content is often defended as humor. But his supporters aren't always in on the joke

Mr. Trump’s campaign continually posts doctored videos to lie about Mr. Biden. When caught, they sound like idiotic teenagers: “Can’t you take a joke, man?” And when Facebook or Twitter flag the videos as misleading, they use it as an opportunity to claim that everyone is biased against them. Lie, deflect, sow mistrust—it’s the Trump way.

Trump's use of false content is often defended as humor. But his supporters aren't always in on the joke

Donie O’Sullivan, for CNN.

The video — which appears to show Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden sleeping as a TV news anchor repeats, "Wake up!" — was shared on Twitter by White House social media director Dan Scavino.

But the video was fake.

It was achieved by splicing together real footage of a 2011 interview between journalist Leyla Santiago, now of CNN, and entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte with footage of Biden looking down, his eyes appearing at least partially closed, to make it appear as if he were snoozing. An audio track of loud snoring was placed on the video to complete the effect.

When the video was fact-checked by news outlets, including CNN, and eventually labeled as "manipulated media" by Twitter, prominent Trump supporters complained that it was an obvious joke and a meme.

…The joke was lost on Chris, the Trump supporter in Bemidji, who apparently believed the video was real footage. He acknowledged, "I missed that one," when he was shown how the video had been manipulated.

…The dissemination of misleading videos about Biden by the Trump campaign in an effort to make the Democratic presidential nominee seem confused or senile has happened repeatedly.

On Tuesday, the campaign posted an eight-second video on Facebook that it titled "Joe Biden completely botches the Pledge of Allegiance." But Biden was not trying to recite the entire Pledge of Allegiance as the full version of the video shows. Facebook did not take any action against the video.

…Last week, Trump retweeted a video that was manipulated to make it appear as if Biden was dancing to the NWA song "F**k tha Police." He wasn't.

When false claims and doctored videos are fact-checked by Facebook or labeled as manipulated by Twitter, it is possible that they have already been viewed and shared for days.

And many of the Trump supporters who spoke to CNN in Bemidji said they simply do not trust the fact-checks that are deployed by Facebook.

This entry was tagged. Donald Trump Joe Biden President2020

Trump Promises Drug Discount Cards as an Expensive Pre-election Gift

Yesterday, Mr. Trump promised to send seniors $6.6 billion dollars using an existing program in an illegal way, paid for with funds that don’t exist. This is part of a healthcare plan that involves stealing credit from President Obama did and signing pointless, symbolic executive orders. The executive orders allow him to lie and claim that he’s actually done something, as long as you agree not to look behind the curtain. Another day, more proof that we elected a con man as President.

Trump Promises Drug Discount Cards as an Expensive Pre-election Gift

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Margot Sanger-Katz, for the New York Times.

President Trump vowed on Thursday to send $200 discount cards for prescription drugs to 33 million older Americans, a $6.6 billion election-eve promise with dubious legal authority that he announced as part of a speech billed as presenting a long-awaited health care plan.

Mr. Trump made the announcement before an audience of health professionals in Charlotte, N.C., where he laid out what the White House called the America First health care plan. Though senior administration officials had previewed the speech, they had not mentioned the drug discount cards.

Mr. Trump’s broader plan is short on specifics, and its two core provisions are largely symbolic. The first is an executive order aimed at protecting people with pre-existing conditions — a provision already in the Affordable Care Act, which Mr. Trump is trying to overturn. The second — a push to end surprise medical billing — would require congressional action.

That left the drug discount cards as the major advance in Mr. Trump’s speech. It was not clear where the money for the cards would come from or whether the White House could legally issue them. But they amounted to a gift to a key constituency, offered weeks before Election Day.

A senior administration official said the discount cards would be authorized under a waiver program that allowed Medicare to test certain new policy ideas. The money would come from savings gleaned from the president’s directive this month that required Medicare to pay no more for prescription drugs than in other developed nations, the official said.

But that program has not yet been devised or enacted.

“Is the plan to borrow from potential future savings from a program that does not yet exist?” asked Rachel Sachs, an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, who studies prescription drug policy.

The announcement came as a surprise because the White House had tried last month to strike a deal with the pharmaceutical industry on a broad effort to lower drug prices. But that deal collapsed after Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, insisted that the industry pay for such cards. The companies balked, fearing that they would be footing the bill for the “Trump cards” aimed at older American voters.

… Mr. Trump has been promising since he ran for president in 2016 that he would put together a plan to lower costs, expand coverage and protect people with pre-existing conditions — the primary goals of the Affordable Care Act. But Republicans cannot seem to agree on a replacement.

In laying out his broader plan, the president promised to lower costs and offer “true health security for you and your loved ones.” Instead, that plan was mostly a laundry list of steps he had already taken to lower health care premiums and reduce the price of prescription drugs.

This entry was tagged. Donald Trump Healthcare Policy President2020

Why Zoom School Is So Awful for Parents and Kids

COVID-19 has completely disrupted life. We can't get back to normal until we actually do the long-term planning now to make life better 2 months from now. As a nation, we keep refusing to do that planning. And life continues to be awful. We need better leadership.

Why Zoom School Is So Awful for Parents and Kids

Dan Sinker, for Esquire:

The lesson we refuse to learn with COVID-19 is that decisions we make today have no bearing on right now, but have a huge effect in a few months. That’s why locking down in March reduced the number of deaths in May. Why opening bars in May brought deaths right back up in July. Why parties on Memorial Day left us with COVID numbers nearly twice as high on Labor Day, and why reopening in-person school in September will likely do exactly what you’d expect come November. The delay between action and reaction means we keep half assing our way through a pandemic that kicks our asses in return.

Making school work in September required vision, action, funding, and resolve on the part of people far above your teacher or school board member in the spring when everything shut down. None of it came. The entire point of the shutdowns was to buy time, to make plans, to lay a foundation for a return that would work. All that time got flushed away by a president more obsessed with hyping miracle cures than doing the hard, thankless work of grinding out a workable plan with scientists and educators and then funding it at a level that could make it actually feasible. That’s what happened in pretty much every other country on the planet. None of them are foolproof, but they've done better than just the state of Florida alone, which had more than 10,000 kids under 18 test positive since their aggressive push for schools to reopen last month.

This entry was tagged. COVID-19 Donald Trump

Louis DeJoy's USPS changes brought operational chaos, delays

This is a great example of someone at the top making changes to policies that they don’t like, without taking the time to find out what’s behind those policies or why they exist. In this case, the new Postmaster General wanted to ensure that all USPS trucks leave exactly on time. This, and other changes, is why everyone’s mail has been getting delayed this summer.

Louis DeJoy's USPS changes brought operational chaos, delays — Los Angeles Times

Bockman said the pressure to leave five minutes early means that about four times a week he has been driving down freeways with an empty trailer.

Requiring trucks to leave exactly on time, or early, can exacerbate other problems at sorting facilities, including machines breaking down, a shortage of workers or a higher volume of mail than usual, union leaders say.

The trucking schedule change “seemed like the smallest thing, but it was the biggest thing to hurt the Postal Service,” said Eddie Cowan, president of the L.A.-area chapter of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union.

This entry was tagged. Government Efficiency

Funding promised by Trump for Kenosha can't be used to rebuild

Another story showing that Donald Trump is a con-man. He loves to promise largesse. It buffs his image and feeds his ego. But it often turns out to be a mirage. Either he doesn’t follow through or we later discover that his promise was just taking credit for something that he had nothing to do with. This story has a bit of both.

Funding promised by Trump for Kenosha can't be used to rebuild

None of the more than $40 million in federal help promised by President Donald Trump when he visited Kenosha earlier this month can actually be used to rebuild the community, according to Gov. Tony Evers and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

And all but $1 million was already coming to the state, regardless of the damage done during protests that followed the shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, by a white Kenosha police officer, the officials wrote Trump.

But Baldwin and Evers wrote Thursday in a letter to the president that the $4 million for small businesses was already earmarked by the federal relief bill known as the CARES Act for coronavirus pandemic-related losses, and can’t be used for other purposes.

“It cannot be used for damages tied to the unrest,” Baldwin and Evers wrote.

Of the remaining federal funding allocated for Wisconsin, according to Baldwin’s office:

  • $30.6 million is for the state’s crime victims fund in fiscal 2020, grants announced in April.
  • $10.5 million comes from U.S. Department of Justice grants announced earlier this year to pay for costs associated with implementing body cameras, drug treatment, prosecutions, reducing violent crime, Operation Legend, and other programs.
  • $1 million in new public safety funding has been allocated for the City of Kenosha, in a joint application with Kenosha County, for expenses incurred during the period of civil unrest. This funding is new but private businesses cannot use it to rebuild.

This entry was tagged. Donald Trump Spending Wisconsin President2020

How a Sean Feucht worship service convinced me I am no longer an evangelical

D.L. Mayfield wrote about her recent experiences as both an evangelical Christian and a Black Lives Matter supporter. How she feels is how I feel. I felt like I knew what I believed and that the subcommunity that I grew up in believed the same things. Then George Floyd was murdered and civil rights supporters started organizing Black Lives Matter protests. And I found out that many of “my people” cared more for White nationalism than they did for Biblical faithfulness and love.

How a Sean Feucht worship service convinced me I am no longer an evangelical

One can’t simply wish or pretend away what they are, I thought. Even though I felt confused, heartbroken and betrayed by the marriage of nationalism and Christianity I saw on full display in my community, that didn’t make me a sudden outsider. I simply was an evangelical; I had been born one — a home-schooled pastor’s kid who went to a Bible college to be a missionary — and I would remain one (until I got kicked out, I joked with my friends).

As a freelance writer who wrote primarily for evangelical audiences, I thought maybe I had a unique opportunity to evangelize my own people. They were, after all, the ones who raised me to love God and read the Bible, to become a disciple of Jesus. Surely they might be open to seeing how their views on immigration, police brutality, war, unchecked capitalism, the prison industrial complex and more might be at odds with the message of Jesus?

I should have believed my community when they told me over and over again exactly who they are.

Her experience attending a Christian counter-protest disguised as a concert just emphasized the gulf between her Biblical beliefs and their nationalist, White-supremacist beliefs.

Just standing on the edge of the worshipping crowd was enough to draw the ire and attention of many folks. For almost two hours I was constantly confronted, yelled at, livestreamed, prayed over and told I was not a real Christian (for the record, I was simply holding a sign that had a Bible verse on it).

I was not prepared for how much worse this would be than tear gas. I was not prepared for the pit in my stomach as I saw the thousands of Christians gathered, without masks, triumphantly singing songs to God, hands in the air and all eyes turned toward the worship leader on stage.

The person leading the event, Sean Feucht, has a mass of curly blond hair and is known for being opportunistic when it comes to marrying politics with worship leading. Feucht, a vocal Trump supporter and former congressional candidate, has been raising money to travel to spots in the United States where horrific deaths at the hands of police have taken place or where long-term protests in support of Black Lives Matter are going on. He sings happy songs about God being on his side, the speakers turned up to full volume in order to literally drown out the protesters’ cries for justice.

I knew almost every word to the songs the group was singing — but I could not bring myself to sing along.

Surrounded on all sides by people with arms raised high, eyes closed, joy and certainty shining on the faces of the true believers, it hit me: We read the same Bible, and we all call ourselves Christians. But we are not singing to the same God. I could no longer pretend otherwise.

This entry was tagged. Christianity Racism Black Lives Matter

Tucson police officer William Gallego accused of assaulting suspect

This is how things are supposed to work, every day. Anytime a police officer crosses the line into lawless behavior, they should forfeit the protection of the badge and be arrested, the same as every other American.

Tucson police officer William Gallego accused of assaulting suspect

As part of a standard review when force is used by an officer, Gallego's supervisor reviewed his bodycam footage from the arrest the next day. They also initiated a criminal investigation.

"Based on video evidence, investigators believe Gallego made intentional contact with the suspect’s head two different times while he was handcuffed on the ground," said Magnus's statement.

On Sunday, detectives arrested and booked Gallego into a Pima County jail on suspicion of aggravated assault.

This entry was tagged. Arizona Police Reform

We Can’t Just Stick to Football

Matthew Stafford, quarterback of the Detroit Lions, wrote the piece about racism and Black Lives Matter that I wish that I’d written. He’s saying, “It’s time for us to stop talking, start listening, and start empathizing.”

We Can’t Just Stick to Football

As most everyone knows, I haven’t exactly embraced social media over the years. It’s just not me. But I feel like it’s right to take the time to say what’s on my heart as we begin this new season together as a team. And what’s on my heart is that we all need to come together as a country and admit what we know is real. Deep down inside, no matter what political party we support, or what we do for a living, we know what’s real.

Police brutality, white privilege, racism — it’s all real.

It’s time we stop pretending, or defending, or just closing our eyes to what’s right in front of us. We have to listen, and we have to keep having these hard conversations.

And it’s not like this is just our history. This is right now.

These are not political problems. These are human problems. It should not be seen as a political statement to discuss this stuff honestly.

Later, he shares what he heard from a Black teammate.

But the one story that stuck with me so much was when Trey Flowers talked about how he copes with the anxiety of dealing with the police. Trey was explaining that if he were to ever get pulled over in his car — something that I have experienced many times without even thinking twice about it — he would roll down his window, put both hands on the wheel, and ask the officer if he would like him to step out of the car so he can handcuff him.

Just so that he is not seen as a threat.

Just so the officer can’t say, “Oh, he was reaching here, he was reaching there.…”

Just so he makes it back home.

If you’re a white person, all I’m asking you to do is to really think _about that. Imagine _that being your first instinct when you see police lights in your rearview mirror.

No one in America should have to feel this way.

Listen, I’m not some perfect person. I’m not trying to lecture anybody. I’ve made a million mistakes. I grew up in Highland Park, Texas, which is probably one of the most privileged places in the country. It’s a place that I still love very much, but it’s a bubble. That’s just a fact. I was not exposed to a lot of diversity or different ideas growing up. I was not educated on these issues, and I probably said a bunch of stupid things when I was young that I regret. But a big part of life is about looking inside yourself and trying to evolve as a person.

And when you hear your teammates telling these stories — and getting so emotional that they’re breaking down crying — you can’t just sit there and be silent.

And Matthew Stafford’s conclusion.

And if you grew up the way I did, and you still happen to live in one of those bubbles where you don’t have to worry about these things, maybe you’re tired of hearing about all this. Maybe you want to pretend it doesn’t exist, because you don’t see it with your own eyes. Maybe you just want us to “shut up and play football.”

That’s your right. I probably can’t change your mind.

All I can ask you to do, as we continue through this NFL season, is to close your eyes and really put yourself in other people’s shoes. Try for a minute to put all the social media and the politics and the arguing aside, and look within yourself.

Ask yourself hard questions.

But more than anything, listen.

It’s time.

This entry was tagged. NFL Racism Black Lives Matter

Trump’s businesses charged Secret Service more than $1.1 million

It sure is nice when you can use the Presidency to enrich yourself. The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold shares their latest data on how the Trump Organization is using the Secret Service to pad their own bottom line.

Trump’s businesses charged Secret Service more than $1.1 million, including for rooms in club shuttered for pandemic

President Trump’s luxury properties have charged the U.S. government more than $1.1 million in private transactions since Trump took office — including for room rentals at his Bedminster, N.J., club this spring while it was closed for the coronavirus pandemic, new documents show.

The documents, including receipts and invoices from Trump’s businesses, were released by the Secret Service after The Washington Post filed a public-records lawsuit. They added $188,000 in previously unknown charges to The Post’s running total of payments to Trump’s properties related to the presence of Secret Service agents.

In Bedminster this spring, the records show, Trump’s club charged the Secret Service more than $21,800 to rent a cottage and other rooms while the club was closed and otherwise off-limits to guests. The documents don’t give a reason for these rentals. Trump didn’t visit the club while it was closed, but his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her family reportedly visited at least once.

In case you’re new to this entire story. And, note, it doesn’t need to be this way. The Trump Organization could easily provide rooms to the Secret Service at no-cost or a truly nominal cost. But they don’t. And that’s a deliberate decision to siphon money from the taxpayers to Donald Trump’s own pockets.

When Trump and his family members visit Trump properties, aides and Secret Service agents follow. When those federal employees rent rooms, Trump’s businesses get the revenue. Taxpayers foot the bill.

The bills are usually paid in private, with no public disclosure. The government has not disclosed how much it has paid the Trump Organization in total. Instead, The Post has tried to create an accounting of these payments, one receipt at a time, using public-records requests and lawsuits.

“The waste inherent in this is appalling,” Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president at the watchdog group Public Citizen, said of the Trump Organization’s charges. Gilbert said the costs were especially galling during a pandemic that has brought economic ruin and stretched federal budgets. “They’re nickel-and-diming the American people. At a moment when every penny counts.”

The White House and the Secret Service both declined to comment for this story. The Trump Organization did not respond to emailed questions.

Before he took office, Trump said he would be “completely isolating” himself from his business interests. He didn’t. Instead, Trump has visited his properties 274 times, according to a Post tally, in addition to promoting those properties on Twitter, encouraging his vice president visit them and briefly choosing one of them to host a summit of world leaders.

This entry was tagged. Corruption Donald Trump Greed President2020

Trump’s $647 Million Ventilator Deal

This must be some of that endless winning and good dealmaking that Donald Trump promised us. Agreeing to buy ventilators for 4x the list price—a ventilator design that the U.S. government funded a decade ago as a low-cost option.

The Trump Administration Is Backing Out of a $647 Million Ventilator Deal After ProPublica Investigated The Price

The federal government is backing out of a controversial $646.7 million deal to buy ventilators from Royal Philips N.V., acting before the company had delivered a third of the order.

This week, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy announced it is expanding its probe to look at other coronavirus-related deals negotiated by Peter Navarro, the president’s trade adviser, who served as the point man on the Philips deal.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw the Philips contract, confirmed that the deal is the subject of an internal investigation and legal review.

The congressional investigation determined that the deal would have resulted in the U.S. overpaying for the ventilators by as much as $500 million, thanks to “inept contract management and incompetent negotiating by the Trump Administration.”

ProPublica first wrote about the U.S. government’s relationship with Philips in March, detailing how a decade ago government planners had paid Philips millions of dollars to develop a low-cost ventilator that could be stockpiled and deployed if ever there were a pandemic. The U.S. ordered 10,000 once the company received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration.

But when COVID-19 cases overwhelmed hospitals in New York in the spring, Philips hadn’t delivered any. Instead, ProPublica found, Philips was selling a commercial version of that ventilator — manufactured at its Pennsylvania factory — overseas at far higher prices.

Rather than force production of low-cost ventilators, a White House team led by Navarro cut a new deal for more ventilators, agreeing to pay more than four times the price.

ProPublica in April revealed that this new deal boosted the price of what appeared to be similar ventilators from $3,280 each under the Obama administration deal to $15,000 under the Trump administration. Neither Philips nor HHS would explain how the two models were different.

In its investigation of the deal, the House subcommittee asked Philips to turn over a trove of records and discovered that the more expensive ventilators were “functionally identical” to the cheaper ones.

Navarro and his team “appeared gullible” and there was no evidence that they even tried to negotiate a lower price, the House investigators found.

The U.S. government paid the highest price for the ventilators among American buyers, the investigators found. The company’s records show that Philips had sold more than 5,000 of that model at far lower prices before May 27.

As coronavirus sweeps the globe, there is not a single Trilogy Evo Universal ventilator — developed with government funds — in the U.S. stockpile. Meanwhile, Royal Philips N.V. has sold higher-priced versions to clients around the world.

This entry was tagged. COVID-19 Donald Trump Government Efficiency President2020

Trump is the anti-vaccine candidate

Trump is the anti-vaccine candidate →

Michael Hiltzik, a business columnist at the Los Angeles Times, documents how Trump recently tried to make himself look better by accusing Joe Biden of doing what Trump himself frequently does. Here, Trump displayed his own narcissism, lying, and ignorance.

Donald Trump’s habit of projecting his own failings onto his adversaries reached a new level of absurdity on Labor Day, when he attacked the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for “reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric” and accused them of a position that “undermines science.”

As for “reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric,” that defines Trump, too. For more than a decade, Trump has promoted the long-debunked and fraudulent claim that vaccines cause autism. He has advocated stretching out the schedule of childhood vaccinations, a practice condemned by creditable pediatric experts.

Trump has made common cause with anti-vaccine cranks such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and even lent credence to Andrew Wakefield. He’s the notorious perpetrator of the myth linking autism with the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, a stance that got Wakefield’s medical license revoked in Britain and that has caused needless disease and suffering in Britain, across Europe and in the U.S.

Now to Trump’s anti-vaccine rhetoric.

As ably documented by quackery watchdog David Gorski, it dates back at least to 2007. At a press conference that year, Trump said, “When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor. And now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic.... My theory, and I study it because I have young children, my theory is the shots. We’ve giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.”

“When a little baby that weighs 20 pounds and 30 pounds gets pumped with 10 and 20 shots at one time, with one injection that’s a giant injection, I personally think that has something to do with it. Now there’s a group that agrees with that and there’s a group that doesn’t agree with that.”

Trump repeated his “theory” on “Fox and Friends” in 2012: “It’s also very controversial to even say. But I couldn’t care less. I’ve seen people where they have a perfectly healthy child, and they go for the vaccinations and a month later the child is no longer healthy.”

He repeated it again during a Republican presidential debate in September 2015: “Just the other day, 2 years old, 2 and a half years old, a child, a beautiful child went to have the vaccine, and came back, and a week later got a tremendous fever, got very, very sick, now is autistic.”

The Marvelous Saguaro

One of the joys of living in southern Arizona is getting to see the saguaro cacti. I can see them all around town and there are large “forests” of them in the Sonoran Desert.

I recently saw this Kingfisher & Wombat tweet thread from Sat, February 22, 2020 at 05:34 PM about the saguaro. It's worth your time.

So following my retweet of the saguaros being cut down, it occurs to me that the extraordinary nature of the saguaro may not be common knowledge. Therefore, let us talk about this marvelous vegetative creature.

There’s a fairytale quality to the origin of this cactus. They sound more like how you make a unicorn or a cockatrice than a plant. “Born from an egg laid by a rooster under the Dog Star and incubated by a serpent.” “Sprung from the drops of blood from a martyred saint.”

Well, the saguaro fruit must be eaten by a coyote or a cactus wren and deposited in the shade of an ironwood to nurse. No, really.

Mesquite or palo verde will also work, but the cactus requires a nurse tree. The seeds can be eaten by a coyote, but a dove or a quail will digest them instead of passing them whole.

In the event the proper animal ate them and pooped in the proper nurse tree, it will take a decade for the saguaro to grow more than two inches tall.

Between 50-100 years, the first arm appears. It will likely flower before this, in its thirties. The flowers must be pollinated, probably by bats.

By this point, it will have outlived its nurse (and probably outcompeted it.) Those cactus with dozens of arms? OLD.

The cactus is not considered an adult until it is over a hundred years old. It can live to be two hundred, with luck.

To get away from the cold facts for a minute...saguaros, if you live around them, are, uh...Not just plants. There’s stuff going on there. People stuff. Saguaros have souls.

I realize I romanticize plants all the time, so you can feel free to dismiss this as my usual bullshit, but saguaros are...yeah. Okay, you ever met a tree that you thought was big and old and maybe like a person? The whole species is like that. Saguaros are special.

Giant redwoods are a little too obviously gods, any fool can see it, but saguaros are something else.

Anyway. It is worth noting that even if you dismiss my half-baked garden faith, saguaros are the pinnacle of a web of ecosystem arrangements. Three other species, minimum, are required to make a saguaro. Wren, ironwood, bat. Or coyote, mesquite, hummingbird. But three minimum.

This is why they’re so ultimately fragile. They rely on the others to even exist. They are a group effort! But they do repay it. Dozens of species live in them, on them, and by them.

Woodpeckers dig holes, elf owls live in the holes, hawks nest on top, everybody eats the fruit.

They are the nexus of the web. They’re special. Natives in the area have very respectful terms for them, though I do not know enough to give you any details. They’re one of the great goods of the world,and cutting them down is a cruel thing.

That’s all.

Well, no, one more thing. I joke sometimes that when I die, the primary witnesses for the defense will be all the turtles I helped across the road. I’m pretty sure if a saguaro spoke up for someone, they’d halt the proceedings and send you on your way at once.

And hey—we get down on humanity sometimes, we really do, and that border wall is an abomination, but the people of Arizona made laws to protect saguaros. Imperfect, flawed, but by god, they recognized and they’re trying. Credit where due.

This entry was tagged. Arizona

Black woman attacked by men wielding lighter fluid, racial slurs

Black woman attacked by men wielding lighter fluid, racial slurs →

Robert Chappell, writing for Madison365.

An 18-year-old Black woman says she was attacked with lighter fluid and flame early Wednesday morning by white men yelling racial slurs. She sustained second- and third-degree burns.

Althea Bernstein works as an EMT while studying to be a paramedic and firefighter. She says she was on her way to her brother’s house at around 1 am Wednesday when she reached a stoplight on Gorham Street near State Street in downtown Madison. She doesn’t remember for sure which intersection it was.

“I was listening to some music at a stoplight and then all of a sudden I heard someone yell the N-word really loud,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “I turned my head to look and somebody’s throwing lighter fluid on me. And then they threw a lighter at me, and my neck caught on fire and I tried to put it out, but I brushed it up onto my face. I got it out and then I just blasted through the red light … I just felt like I needed to get away. So I drove through the red light and just kept driving until I got to my brother’s (home).”

I never thought that I'd see this in Madison. This is absolutely reprehensible.

Accusing President Trump

Accusing President Trump →

In an election, I normally look for a candidate that I can vote for, rather than just voting against candidates. This Presidential election is not normal. In this election, I am absolutely voting against Donald Trump. Morally, he is our worst President since Richard Nixon. He may be the worst President since Andrew Johnson succeeded Abraham Lincoln.

But you don't have to take my word for it. David Roberts, writing for Vox, put together a damning indictment, as part of a larger article.

Trump has made no secret of his feelings toward protests and law enforcement generally. He once told Breitbart, “I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump — I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

He has advocated for the failed and racist “stop and frisk” policy to be expanded to new cities and called Democrats “anti-police.” He removed Obama-imposed limits on military equipment sold to police, encouraged police brutality, told states to “dominate” protesters, threatened protesters with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons,” and tweeted, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” a prominent segregationist rallying cry from the civil rights era. He wanted to deploy 10,000 active-duty American soldiers to US cities to quell domestic protests and considered firing his secretary of defense, Mark Esper, when Esper resisted.

All this comes in the context of a long history of lurching authoritarianism. The first thing Trump did on entering office is flout the longstanding US tradition of presidents separating from their personal financial interests while in office. His business interests are still mixed up in affairs of state in ways no one fully understands, and his administration is openly deferential toward sectors of the economy that pledge loyalty to him.

He has completely shut down congressional oversight and is currently engaged in a purge of inspectors general, the independent watchdogs within government agencies. One of those IGs, at the State Department, was in the final stages of an investigation into whether some of Trump’s arms deals with the Saudis were legal.

He has pushed for loyalty tests at the FBI, the State Department, and the Department of the Interior, put immigrant kids in cages, used state power to force international allies to launch bogus investigations of his political opponents, and flouted impeachment despite compelling evidence of his guilt. He voiced support for the armed mob of right-wing protesters that stormed the Michigan legislature.

He has waged relentless war on independent journalism, called journalists enemies of the people, threatened to sue journalists, and denounced or threatened any media platform that fact-checks him.

Throughout it all, he lies, lies, lies — 18,000 times during his presidency, as of April. There is no discernible set of principles or governing philosophy at work, only Trump’s day-to-day impulses as he watches Fox News, stews in the residency, and tweets.

Trumpism, if there is such a thing, is a shameless disregard for norms and laws in service of a will to power. It runs on demands for loyalty, disregard of oversight, and devotion to dominating and humiliating opponents.

Yet the GOP has supported him, enabled him, and protected him from accountability, right up to voting him free of impeachment, covering for his disastrous coronavirus response, and echoing his calls for state violence. The party has followed his every impulse.

This November, I will be voting for Democrats across the board. As far as I can remember, this will be the first time that I've ever voted for Democrats. But, as Mr. Reagan said, "I didn't leave the Republican party, the Republican Party left me." As long as the Republican Party is the party of Trump, authoritarianism, bullying, and lying, I cannot vote for a single member of the party.

Stupid excuses for not investigating hangings

Stupid excuses for not investigating hangings →

Erika D. Smith, writing for the Los Angeles Times on racism in rural California.

There are huge problems in California’s high desert, ones that rival those in parts of the Midwest and Deep South.

It was only five years ago, for example, that Los Angeles County settled with the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that deputies systematically harassed and discriminated against Black people and Latinos in Palmdale, including with military-style sweeps of federally subsidized Section 8 housing.

Unsurprisingly, when it comes to traffic stops, racial profiling is also a thing, which — and I’m just spitballing here — might be one reason so few Black men and women want to become deputies and patrol the high desert. Villanueva was complaining about this very thing on Monday, when a Palmdale resident called into the community conversation to press him about the lack of diversity on his force.

It’s an awful cycle of systemic racism that has led to where we are today.

Either the departments, if the sheriffs are to be believed, have deputies who are so ignorant that they can’t see why a Black man hanging from a tree would be evidence enough to start a homicide investigation.

Or, if we are to believe residents, we have deputies who believe Black lives are expendable. And since no one will notice when they are gone, why spend money and energy investigating a possible murder that will only rile up Black people and possibly shine a light on longstanding racist practices?

Republicans And Democrats Agree On The Protests But Not Why People Are Protesting

Republicans And Democrats Agree On The Protests But Not Why People Are Protesting →

Michael Tesler, writing for FiveThirtyEight on how Americans view the protests.

there’s a pretty big gap in just how strongly Democrats and Republicans back the protests. In last week’s Economist/YouGov poll, for instance, 73 percent of Democrats said they strongly approve of the nonviolent protests, compared with just 27 percent of Republicans. And according to the most recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll, Democrats and Republicans are also fairly split on how peaceful the protests have been, how long they should last and what’s driving them. In that poll, Democrats were 40 points more likely than Republicans to say that the protests have been mostly peaceful and three-quarters of Republicans said they wanted the protests to stop now, compared to less than one-quarter of Democrats. Republicans were also 44 points more likely than Democrats to say the protests were primarily motivated by long-standing biases against the police, whereas most Democrats said the protests were motivated by a genuine desire to hold police accountable.

Republicans believe that people are demonstrating because they hate the police, Democrats believe that people are demonstrating because they want to hold the police accountable.

Students of color challenge Arizona schools to do more to address racism

Students of color challenge Arizona schools to do more to address racism →

Lily Altavena, writing for the Arizona Republic.

As police departments and corporations face public reckonings over systemic racism, schools, too, are confronting accusations of racism from current and former students and parents.

The Republic revisited more than a dozen racist incidents reported at metro Phoenix schools since 2016: Those incidents ranged from basketball spectators directing monkey noises at a Black player to students repeating the n-word over and over again in videos posted to social media.

Why You Need to Stop Saying "All Lives Matter"

Why You Need to Stop Saying "All Lives Matter" →

I can't possibly say this better than Rachel Elizabeth Cargle did, two months ago, in Harper's Bazaar.

Black lives did not matter when they were inhumanely transported like livestock from Africa. Black lives did not matter when they were lynched by the hundreds at the hands of the KKK. Black lives did not matter when they were attacked by dogs as they protested for equal rights.

With the weekly news cycle seeming to, without fail, include the death of at least one black boy at the hands of the police, or the body of a black woman being thrown to the ground by local law enforcement, or a black child being manhandled by the services meant to protect them, my heart sinks as I cling to the desire that black lives will matter.

If a patient being rushed to the ER after an accident were to point to their mangled leg and say, “This is what matters right now,” and the doctor saw the scrapes and bruises of other areas and countered, “but all of you matters,” wouldn’t there be a question as to why he doesn't show urgency in aiding that what is most at risk? At a community fundraiser for a decaying local library, you would never see a mob of people from the next city over show up angry and offended yelling, “All libraries matter!”—especially when theirs is already well-funded.

This is because there is a fundamental understanding that when the parts of society with the most pain and lack of protection are cared for, the whole system benefits. For some reason, the community of white America would rather adjust the blinders they’ve set against racism, instead of confront it, so that the country can move forward toward a true nation of justice for all.

My personal message to those committed to saying “all lives matter” in the midst of the justice-driven work of the Black Lives Matter movement: prove it. Point out the ways our society—particularly the systems set in place to protect citizens like police officers and doctors and elected officials—are showing up to serve and protect black lives. Illuminate the instances in which the livelihood of the black community was prioritized, considering the circumstances that put us into less-privileged spaces to begin with. Direct me to the evidence of justice for the bodies discarded at the hands of those in power, be it by unjustified murder, jail cell, poisoned water, or medical discrimination.

These are the things that must be rectified for us to be able to exhale. Until then, I'll be here, my black fist raised with Black Lives Matter on my lips.

The Biblical Problem With "Black Lives Matter"

What's the Biblical problem with "Black Lives Matter"? There isn't one.

Many, many people become very angry when they hear anyone say, "Black Lives Matter". They loudly respond with "ALL lives matter!", as though saying "black lives matter" means that only black lives matter.

Here's my take: All lives matter. But black lives getting ended has been widely ignored—as though black lives don’t matter. So I’ll happily emphasize that, yes, black lives matter.

Let me put it to you a couple of different ways.

Prodigal Sons Matter

Lisa Koons shared this on Facebook, and it was sent to me by a friend.

The father was waiting there with a big sign: #ProdigalSonsMatter

When the older brother saw it, he was angry, wouldn't attend the party, and moped around with his own sign #AllSonsMatter

Father: "Dude. It's not about you right now."

Lost Coins Matter

A woman owned 10 silver coins and lost one of them. She wrote #LostCoinsMatter on her planning board and cleared her schedule. Her friends, greatly desiring a brunch date, said, "But #AllCoinsMatter! You still have nine. Come with us!"

She, being wiser, said, "#AllCoinsMatter when you have all of the coins in hand. But when one is missing, #LostCoinsMatter and that coin temporarily becomes more important than all the rest."

She swept the floor. She turned on her brightest flashlight. She looked under every couch cushion, dumped out every bag, looked under every area rug, and searched on her hands and knees until she finally saw the bright gleam of her missing coin.

She'd missed the brunch date, but she'd ensured that now, truly #AllCoinsMattered.

Lost Sheep Matter

A man had one-hundred sheep and lost one of them. He threw up #LostSheepMatter on Twitter and asked for help finding it. His city-slicker cousin mocked him, saying #AllSheepMatter.

But the man left the ninety-nine in the pasture and searched for the lost one until he found it. He placed it on his shoulders and carried it home. When he got there, he texted his cousin saying, "#AllSheepMatter now that all of the sheep are home safe."

The Sermon On The Mount

Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor…"

A heckler from the crowd interrupted to say, "Well actually, all people are blessed, Jesus."

Hurt Cities Matter

Seen on Facebook:

For my all lives matter folks: when the Boston marathon was bombed everybody's profile picture went "Boston strong" nobody said "all cities are strong!"

When the Las Vegas shooting happened, people changed their profiles "stand with Vegas", nobody sais "well what about the people that got shot in my city?"

Have you ever seen someone counter a "breast cancer" post with "what about colon cancer?"

But for some reason if someone says "Black lives matter", it turns into all inclusive "all lives matter"

It's not an either/or proclamation. When there is a crisis we have always ralled around that particular group. It doesn't discredit or diminish any other group, it just bings awareness and support to the group that needs attention.

  • Unknown (if you figure out who the original author is please let me know so I can properly give credit)

Your Crime Matters

When your home has been robbed, do you want to hear your neighbor say, "#AllCrimesMatter"?

After Police Reform, Crime Falls In Camden

After Police Reform, Crime Falls In Camden →

Sarah Holder writes at CityLab about a change in policing, in Camden, NJ.

In 2013, the Camden Police Department was disbanded, reimagined, and born again as the Camden County Police Department, with more officers at lower pay—and a strategic shift toward “community policing.”

That meant focusing on rebuilding trust between the community and their officers.

“For us to make the neighborhood look and feel the way everyone wanted it to, it wasn’t going to be achieved by having a police officer with a helmet and a shotgun standing on a corner,” Thomson said. Now, he wants his officers “to identify more with being in the Peace Corps than being in the Special Forces.”

A conversation with Thomson about community policing is likely to involve many such catchy maxims. “Destabilized communities,” he told me, “need guardians, not warriors.” He explained the “Back to the Future Paradox”—use technology wisely, but pair it with regular-old “Bobbies on the street.” And he stressed the idea that public safety is about access to social services, economic rejuvenation, and good schools, not just cops: “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

As someone committed to seeing what the data shows, I do have to point out that—as of 2 years ago—it was too early to definitively call Camden's experiment a success.

The numbers themselves can be potentially misleading: Homicide rates, for example, aren’t necessarily a complete measure of urban violence. Just because fewer people are dying from gunshot wounds doesn’t mean fewer people are getting shot: It could also mean they’re getting better treatment, faster. One of Thomson’s Camden policies, nicknamed “Scoop and Go,” may be at work here, which mandates officers to personally drive victims to the hospital if ambulance wait times are too long. That saves lives, without really addressing the source of the violence itself. (Another possible factor: More victims are just getting to the hospital faster by calling an Uber.)