A thread to discuss the police killing of George Floyd and the protests that have arisen in the wake of his death. No trolls.
Categories
The Killing of George Floyd: Open Thread
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
@Dalillama
That was my guess, I was just curious how he would try to defend and twist it.
@Monzach
Yes, it was established that that is not a defense, but I don’t think that anything will happen to the officers regardless.
O/T, but JK Rowling is having another TERFy meltdown again, threatening to sue her critics à la Glinner and accidentally posting (then deleting) a weird transphobic blurb in response to a child’s drawing, then rambling about censorship.
@Naglfar
Blah blah law and order blah blah. There’s no point in wondering, it’s being echoed by above 3/4 of white America regardless of their alleged political position. As per usual.
They’ve just arrested Chauvin. No news on the other three yet. Press conference at 1:00pm local time (not sure what that is in relation to other time zones).
ETA: OK, that’s in about a minute.
Section 230 protects sites from liability for what their users post. If it’s repealed, Twitter will have no choice but to ban Trump’s accounts. They would drown in lawsuits otherwise.
@Amtep
Now that they’ve started flagging his tweets from both his personal and the White House twitter accounts, I wonder if he could get banned anyway (which might just make his head explode). Unlikely, but possible.
If he did get banned, I’m not sure what he’d do to vent his anger. Go on Gab? Use the presidential alert system?
@Amtep: Never underestimate someone’s willingness to shoot themselves in the foot if they think it’ll hurt those the other party more. That or Trump’s incapacity to comprehend any ramification from his actions.
Summary of press conference.
Current charges: Third degree murder; (‘second degree’ (involuntary))* manslaughter.
Charges under review and additional charges may be added.
Wanted to deal with “most dangerous” offender first.
Charges against other three “anticipated”.
Complaint document just being finalised and will be released once signed.
* That’s from reporter; not press conference.
President Trump is now trying to walk back his “looting/shooting” tweets. His disciples are buying it. No one else is.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1266434153932894208
@ Vicky P
“When I said ‘we need a final solution to the Jewish question’ I was obviously referring to how to conduct a Bar Mitzvah during social distancing. You lamestream media misinterpret everything!”
@Alan, Victorious
“When I shouted “heil Hitler” I was clearly warning of the weather forecast and pointing at the clouds while discussing German leaders. And when I painted a swastika on my face I was clearly trying to raise awareness of history. Everyone always jumps to the worst explanation.”
“Purification of DNA … final solution … removal of juice material … perfectly normal discussion on plant biochemistry lab protocols.”
@Paireon: they are always fans of small government when they are not in charge, and then when they are in charge, all of a sudden big government is fine. You can see it in the states rights arguments – republicans are ok with federalism when their guy is in office, but all of a sudden states rights becomes really important when it’s from someone who is more liberal.
Normally I would think of a better way to phrase this but it seems like my brain might have gone on strike for the rest of the day.
When I dressed in white sheets and burned a cross, I simply had run out of clean clothes to wear when I went out to roast marshmallows for my s’mores. Why do you people always make everything about racism!?
For a guy whose supporters say that he “tells it like it is” and is a “great communicator”, it’s funny how often his statements are “misinterpreted” or “taken out of context”, isn’t it?
@Yutolia
A fellow named Frank Wilhoit put it very well:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
When people say ‘small government” they mean ‘put me in the first group.”
@Naglfar: I wasn’t too aware of the Freedom Fund, but I did make a donation this afternoon to the George Floyd memorial fund on GoFundMe.
Hmm, I’m possibly being over optimistic, but I wonder if there’s a bit of doubt developing in Republican circles as to their electoral chances.
Lindsey Graham has asked all the older republican and conservative judges to step down. That’s so they can push through younger replacements before November. Could it be they might not be banking on a second term?
@Alan Robertshaw
One can only hope the judges are too self righteous and refuse to resign.
@Naglfar, Alan Robertshaw
Ah, and here we will see who pulls a Kennedy and who cares about their own career and/or believes in their own ability more. Given the cult of American exceptionalism and independence particularly encouraged by the right, I would be surprised if many lower judges do, but not at all surprised if many higher judges do, as I believe them to have corruptions that may be manipulated as Kennedy was.
A cop in Louisville deliberately fired pepperballs at a reporter doing a live report. I hope we don’t see someone get shot with lead live.
https://twitter.com/ChrisBishopL1C4/status/1266546753182056453
Apparently, the autopsy report of Floyd is a complete shitshow, with the coroner blaming among other intoxicants without a toxicology report.
Once again, french cops tried that very same tactic to disculp themselves. It’s stupid and transparent. What do they think ? Do that coroner have any shred of dignity ?
My guess is his dignity is simply not as large as his mortgage payments. Or medical debt. Or student loan debt. Or some other number with a minus sign and a dollar sign.
Meanwhile, this happened:
https://prospect.org/politics/leftists-who-wont-support-biden-overlook-trump/
It’s against voting third party instead of blue-no-matter-who, and excoriating the DSA for not endorsing Biden.
One thing I found very interesting was this tidbit:
Why does that imagery seem familiar?
Oh. Makes me wonder if James Cameron had read that Trotsky quote. Certainly Skynet and its Terminators seemed to represent fascism, what with explicitly being said to have run concentration camps (and people are seen being liberated from one of them in Terminator: Salvation).
And, on a personal note, I eventually did receive that phone and was able to use it to unlock my Facebook account. The weird thing was, the FB account was instantly reinstated as soon as I did a 2FA authentication. It explicitly said I had not violated any community standards and then logged me back in normally, leaving me somewhat mystified. It does not seem likely to me that the review link actually triggered human review of the situation, if it took literally seconds. Seems more like the automation just decided it wanted to reverify that I was me. But if it thought my account might have been hacked shouldn’t it have said “suspicious activity on my account” rather than “violated community standards”? And simply logging me out so I’d have to log back in (with 2FA) would have had the desired effect without baselessly accusing me of having done something naughty.
And, of course, I’ve no idea what triggered this and how to avoid triggering it again. The whole thing seems very Kafkaesque, save the outcome: a pat on the back and a “sorry about that” after all of the baffling rigmarole, the non-reading of any specific charges, and whatnot. I also have no idea if I will lose the account permanently on a 2nd, 3rd, or however-many “offense”. It seems kind of like I might be walking through a minefield …
Needless to say, the universe isn’t willing to let me have a problem solved without generating a new one to replace it. I got this from Bell in my email within 24 hours of restoring my FB access:
Once that happens, the next time the disability payments people get it into their heads to send me a bunch of forms to fill out to prove my income and expenses to them again, I’m dead. They always want an example of each utility bill (rent, phone, hydro) mailed back to them with the completed forms, and that time I won’t have a phone bill to mail back to them. At best they’ll claw about $120 off my benefits (the amount of those phone bills — Canadian telcos are evil), and I’ll start slowly circling the drain since I’m in the black by less than that on average per month. At worst, they’ll terminate them, and me since the winters here are emphatically not survivable without money for shelter.
Bell pulled this before once, but that time there was an option to keep receiving a paper copy, which I used. (Ironically, between then and now the disability peeps didn’t decide to audit me once.) This time I’m not seeing any such option, which as far as I can tell means I’m screwed. At best I could save a copy of the “e-bill” to a thumbdrive, haul it over to Wal-Mart (an 8+km round trip on foot for me), and print a copy to include in the response, and hope they’re stupid enough to accept it despite the fact that a printout of an electronic document could very easily be faked. One wonders, though, why they can’t just directly phone up the landlord and utility companies and just ask them to verify what they’re charging me, after I mail back some sort of signed consent form? Maybe they are stupid enough that a much more easily faked document than an original print invoice will be accepted. Hmm.
@Surplus : I bet the requirement for bills and all are here to shame and dissuade people from claiming benefits. At least, the bureaucracy in France have this effect, and I bet it’s voluntary.
It pains me to see that the demand for justice will be overshadowed by the riots and the property damage they bring.
@Surplus: Damn, as a fellow Canuck I feel for you. IIRC (though my memory could be playing tricks) printing out a copy, as stupid as it is, should probably do the trick; maybe going to your local Service Canada office to try and explain the situation could help (yeah I know, I’m grasping at straws a bit given our bureaucracy, and if it’s 8+km to your nearest Wal-Mart I dread about learning how far your nearest SC office is)? That or maybe there’s a copy shop nearer to your home (again grasping at straws – those haven’t all gone the way of the video rental store but they’re a lot rarer than they were; if there’s one it’s probably near both commercial and industrial districts, those catering to businesses survived better than those catering more to people).
@Ohlmann: Oh yeah, that’s always been a feature rather than a bug. I remember when Emploi Québec decided that hey, since my Asperger’s counted as a disability, instead of continuing to handle my case in my town’s employment center, they’d send it to the employment center where they’d centralized disability cases the next town over! …Which, as both are mostly sleeper communities in different administrative sub-units, have barely any public transit links between the two. And forget walking, it was over 13 km from where I lived. It was super annoying to report there every two weeks while I was unemployed, but once I did get a job, it became a nightmare, especially since they closed at 17:00 every weekday (and weren’t open on weekends) so not long after I just said “fuck it” and stopped going. I shudder to think how people from much farther away in my region and with much bigger disabilities than mine fared with such shitty policies.