The Death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri

young black men cops behave as though they can abuse, harass, rape, rob, sell drugs and kill because they FEEL like it

fixed

this is the worst public speaker I've seen in months

looks a little blue

oh look it's the dudes i see at jimmy john's every thursday

http://38.media.tumblr.com/fa08cd5548bad2311b5c76a886561a69/tumblr_na79r4cBTX1qjk3vuo2_500.jpg

Obama leading with Iraq mission

that has been going around and repeatedly described as fake xp

christ that military action in Iraq is the good news

xp ah ok my bad.

lol williamson's very next line is:

These confrontations are a reminder of the eternal question: Who? Whom? Who is to protect and serve whom here? Is government our servant or our master?

yes, this police action strikes me as very much leninist, wouldn't you agree *sips tea*

dunno if Barack Hussein Obama is the president I want to hear defend journalists' right to exercise First Amendment

O has gone so grey

that was such an uninspriing damp squib of a "speech", why even bother if you've got nothing to say beyond "children, behave"

that's pretty much what he always does iirc

Rand Paul's piece includes both Cato Institute and Heritage Foundation concern about militarization of police, related to that NRO quote.

http://i.imgur.com/tFqIWGN.png

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/10-insane-numbers-ferguson-killing

http://i.imgur.com/gZOJFEa.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/J2AaNIa.jpg

he couldn't resist blaming it on "big government" rather than the perhaps more-accurate "big defense" but man, what's going on in the world

xp infographics are a scourge

On the other hand, I think these stats indicate that, as a white person, my chances of operating a rolling meth lab in Ferguson probably are pretty good! Thanks infographic!

xp infographics are a scourge

― heck (silby), Thursday, August 14, 2014 1:16 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Heh

did O's mewling at least include the line "Don't arrest journalists, prosecute them"?

sadly part of the problem in this scenario is that the african american community in ferguson doesnt vote.. hence all the white people runnin/ruinin shit

There are still three of the original agencies operating in Ferguson, and nobody is in charge and nobody is accountable. Sigh.

there is probably a lot on the ground to discourage that from happening xp

Last time I checked police officers weren't elected

jingleberries is that a statement from some evidence or are you inferring low voting rates from the current situation?

that was such an uninspriing damp squib of a "speech", why even bother if you've got nothing to say beyond "children, behave"

seriously that was not good

goole my source was an interview on npr yesterday. let me try to find it.

SIEGEL: We've all heard about how few black police officers there are in Ferguson. There aren't many black elected officials either - 1 councilman in 5. Why is that?

BYNES: Well, anything other than a presidential election there is low voter turnout. And the African-American community has been disenfranchised for a very long time. When you have people who are worrying about can I get a job - can I get to work - can I put food on the table - when election day on Tuesday comes around, that is the furthest thing from their minds. And the whites that live in the community - they participate. And so they vote for who they want for counsel and mayor, and they don't always put practices in place that are best for the majority population there.

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/13/340153388/between-fergusons-police-and-population-a-racial-divide

This is great:
https://storify.com/AthertonKD/veterans-on-ferguson

SIEGEL: But in a place with population 20,000, I'm a little bit surprised that actually most people don't know who the police officer was. I mean...

BYNES: Robert, I was just going to tell you people in the community have told me who the police is. They know who he is. It's about, I guess, releasing it at the much larger level. But people locally know who the cop is. The kids knew him. They told me that he would harass them all the time.

wow

BYNES: I was actually out there the night of the looting. I was trying to help calm things down, and I know that the people that were looting - they don't live in Ferguson. There have been reports that have been released from people who they arrested and they highlighted that, you know, so many of them came from the city of St. Louis, and they weren't actually Ferguson people.

Never underestimate the power of gerrymandering to ensure that only white people get elected. xp

How can we arrange to have FOX News firebombed? Anyone?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qcqRmJLudvY/U-zgG9Ag63I/AAAAAAAATuU/_sjBU9BSByU/s400/enhanced-1267-1408029765-17.png

sometimes i wonder just how different our politics would be if election day were a national holiday. xp

jesus christ, that FOX News still is like one of those Onion editorial comics

because you know it's vote or get fired for a lot of these people who don't vote xp

ppl, Fox News is preaching to the perverted

and trolling the troll-addicts

otoh, the cops have not forgotten H Rap Brown's message, amirite

Why don't you just write it, it's pretty obvious that you're dying to

? i thought people would know it

i'm not dying to do anything. everything's a mess.

Fox News is preaching to the perverted

Yes, and also to relatively well-meaning members of some of our families.

I believe it was Martin Luther King, Jr. who said "disperse!"

riot vs. peaceful demonstration becomes a false choice when police are this eager to unconstitutionally suppress lawful free assembly

in other words, I lay the blame for everything at the cops' feet #riotapologist

For those unaware, I am assuming the punchline to Morb's joke is "Die, nigger, die!", which was the title of H Rap Brown's autobiography

yeah I think that was not his message, but a cynical book title, but I may be wrong

I was unaware of that one; was thinking of "Violence is as American as cherry pie." My apologies.

our Nobel Peace Prize winner in action

The Obama administration has defended the use of aggressive, militaristic police actions in court. In the case Avina v. U.S., DEA agents pointed their guns at an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old during a drug raid on the wrong house. The agents had apparently mistaken the license plate of a suspected drug trafficker for the plate on a car owned by Thomas Avina. Obama's Justice Department argued in federal court that the lawsuit should be dismissed before being heard by a jury because the agents’ actions were not unreasonable.

To be fair, the Justice Department almost always defends federal employees from lawsuits. And it seems likely that any other modern administration would do the same thing. But it wasn't always this way. In 1973, even the drug-warring Nixon administration fired, and then criminally indicted, 12 narcotics cops for raiding the wrong homes and terrorizing innocent families. Obama may be no different than Bush, Clinton, or his rivals for the presidency in defending drug cops who point guns at children during botched raids. But there was a time in America when even the original tough-on-crime administration was appalled enough at the idea to hold such overly zealous drug cops accountable.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/obama-police-militarization_n_3566478.html