The whole family voted today.
We got absentee ballots and then drove to Hannah Moore park to drop them off.
I voted for Biden, though the I was very tempted to vote for the Bread and Roses Party candidate, they are socialists on the ballot only in non-swing states like Maryland, but in the end, my family’s arguments prevailed.
I wanted to stop at the marijuana dispensary down the street after voting though.
It took about 15 minutes, and we caught it on video:
I understand that a wedding, particularly the wedding of the grandson of a prominent rabbi, will traditionally be a time of celebration, but authorities were correct to shut down a wedding in the Hasicic community that would have had over 10,000 guests.
After the debacle that was the Sturgis rally, where thousands, if not tens of thousands of cases resulted, it is clear that these sorts of large social events are a clear and present danger to society.
The one of first steps to mending the world (תיקון עולם) is not to spread disease during a pandemic:
New York State health officials have taken extraordinary steps to shut down an ultra-Orthodox wedding planned for Monday that could have had brought up to 10,000 guests to Brooklyn, near one of New York City’s coronavirus hot spots.
The state health commissioner personally intervened to have sheriff’s deputies deliver the order to the Hasidic synagogue on Friday, warning that it must follow health protocols, including limiting gatherings to fewer than 50 people.
On Sunday, the synagogue, the Congregation Yetev Lev D’Satmar, accused state officials of “unwarranted attacks” on the wedding, where a grandson of Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, the synagogue’s rabbi, was to be married. The congregation said that the ceremony and meal would have been restricted to “close family members,” while the public would have been invited to participate only “for a short period of time.”
The wedding will continue, the synagogue said, but will be limited to a smaller group of family members. “It’s sad that nobody verified our plans before attacking us,” Chaim Jacobowitz, the congregation’s secretary, said in a statement.
The state health commissioner, Dr. Howard A. Zucker, took the rare step of issuing what is known as a Section 16 order, which can carry a daily fine of $10,000 if violated. The state has issued dozens of Section 16 orders during the pandemic.
A wedding involving 10,000 guests is insane even when you are not in the midst of a pandemic.
The Michigan Secretary of State has banned the open carry of firearms within 100 feet of polling places.
The theory is that open carry of weapons at a polling place is a clear attempt to intimidate, which it is.
Needless to say, the ammosexual crowd are squealing like the pigs that they are:
Michigan is prohibiting the open carry of guns within 100 feet of polling places amid fears of voter intimidation during the pivotal Nov. 3 election, prompting criticism from the National Rifle Associationand the possibility of a lawsuit from Second Amendment advocates.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sent guidance to local election officials on Friday — 18 days before Election Day — to clarify that the open carry of firearms on Election Day in polling places, clerk’s offices and absent voter counting boards is banned.
“The presence of firearms at the polling place, clerk’s office(s), or absent voter counting board may cause disruption, fear or intimidation for voters, election workers and others present,” the new guidance says.
Open carry these days is primarily an attempt to intimidate people that the ammosexual crowd disagree with. It has been for decades.
The intent is to terrorize their opponents, and they should be treated as such.
Despite the best efforts to destroy the left wing Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) by the racist white elites in La Paz, as well as efforts by tye US state seucrity apparatus to overthrow the government, including a fraudulent claim of electoral fraud by the OAS, they outright won the first round of elections today.
The election, though the numbers are not official yet, are so overwhelming that the people who promulgated the coup have conceded.
My guess is that during the interregnum, the right will attempt to do whatever they can to privatize public resources and otherwise hamstring the MAS, despite the fact that the MAS presided over historic economic success and a reduction in poverty over its 14 years in power.
Actually, the right will try to hamstring MAS BECAUSE it presided over historic economic success and a reduction in poverty over its 14 years in power.
After all, the exiting president was not only a right winger, but she thought that the indigenous populace was literally Satanic:
Evo Morales’s leftwing party is celebrating a stunning political comeback after its candidate appeared to trounce rivals in Bolivia’s presidential election.
The official results of Sunday’s twice-postponed election had yet to be announced on Monday afternoon, but exit polls projected that Luis Arce, the candidate for Morales’s Movimiento al Socialismo (Mas), had secured more than 50% of the vote while his closest rival, the centrist former president Carlos Mesa, received about 30%.
Mesa conceded defeat on Monday lunchtime, telling supporters that a quick count showed a “very convincing and very clear” result. “There is a large gap between the first-placed candidate and us … and, as believers in democracy, it now falls to us … to recognise that there is a winner in this election,” Mesa said
Arce, a former finance minister under Morales, had earlier claimed victory in a late-night broadcast from La Paz. “We have reclaimed democracy and above all we have reclaimed hope,” said the 57-year-old UK-educated economist, who is widely known as Lucho.
………
Even Morales’s nemesis, the rightwing interim president, Jeanine Áñez, conceded that the left had come out on top. “We do not yet have the official count, but the data we do have shows that Mr Arce [has] … won the election. I congratulate the winners and ask them to govern thinking of Bolivia and of democracy,” Áñez tweeted.
………
For Áñez’s outgoing conservative interim government, which took power after Morales’s banishment, it was a stinging rebuke. “It tells us that the rightwing in Bolivia has no broad political support – not even close,” Shultz said. “The rightwing was given a chance to govern and proved that it is only interested in its own power and in itself and has contempt for the indigenous and poor of the country. They demonstrated that by pretending they had legitimacy that they didn’t, by overseeing real human rights abuses and impunity, and by being incompetent and corrupt in their governance. And people weren’t going to have it.”
I expect to see more attempts by both the right in Bolivia, as well as by the US state security apparatus to overthrow this government.
I’m pretty sure that he won’t care about this. He has his hands full. (Heh)
My standard statement upon putting someone on this list is:
Absent some sort of political activity, such as endorsements, running for office (PLEASE GOD NO!!), or their attempting to assassinate someone, they will not be mentioned here.
Toobin is primarily a pundit, so it’s unlikely that he will actually break news, or have an original idea, so this is probably the last time that you will hear about him here.
Machiavelli’s Advise for Nice Guys:
Asteroid 2018VP1, a refrigerator-sized space-rock, is hurtling towards us at more than 40,000 km/hr.
It may buzz-cut Earth on Nov 2, the day before the Presidential Election.
It’s not big enough to cause harm. So if the World ends in 2020, it won’t be the fault of the Universe. pic.twitter.com/eiy9G9w4Ez
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) October 18, 2020
Definitely Mar a Lago
Prominent astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson has just announced a refrigerator-sized asteroid might hit the United States on November 2.
While this would not create widespread damage, given that iron has a density of 7,870 kg/m3, we would be looking at about 15,000 kg hitting the ground at about 10,000 m/s. (I am figuring an iron asteroid of 4 m3 volume, with half of it vaporizing before it hits the earth)
The kinetic energy involved is therefore ½mv2, or about 7.5✕1011 Joules.
This is roughly equivalent to the detonation of about 180 tons of TNT.
So, the blast is much smaller than Hiroshima, but about 15 times bigger than the GBU-43/B MOAB.
Definitely enough to depress property values:
A certain asteroid is currently moving toward Earth, said the world’s most prominent astrophysicists Neil deGrasse Tyson.
It could theoretically strike the planet just before the forthcoming US presidential elections slated on November 2.
The prominent astrophysicist said that if the planet eventually ends in 2020, it would not entirely be the world’s responsibility.
The asteroid identified as 2018VP1 has been on the radar since the moment it was observed by the famed Palomar Observatory in California in November 2018.
This is so 2020.
The PRC is threatening to detain US Citizens in China in retaliation for the US detention of Chinese scholars.
This was foreseeable, particularly given that the US prosecutions appear in some cases to be largely pretextual and politically motivated:
Chinese officials have told the Trump administration that security officers in China might detain American citizens if the Justice Department proceeds with prosecutions of arrested scholars who are members of the Chinese military, American officials said.
The Chinese officials conveyed the messages starting this summer, when the Justice Department intensified efforts to arrest and charge the scholars, mainly with providing false information on their visa applications, the American officials said. U.S. law enforcement officials say at least five Chinese scholars who have been arrested in recent months did not disclose their military affiliations on visa applications and might have been trying to conduct industrial espionage in research centers.
American officials said they thought the Chinese officials were serious about the threats. The State Department has reiterated travel warnings as a result, they said. Western officials and human rights advocates have said for years that the Chinese police and other security agencies engage in arbitrary detentions.
This is not a surprise.
And by that, I mean, as Yanis Varoufakis notes, that they are objectively pro-Fascist.
He is talking about Greece, but the same thing happens in the US, France, Germany, the UK, former Soviet Republics, etc.
Perhaps the only police force that MIGHT not tilt toward Nazis is the Saint Petersburg constabulary, but that is an accident of history, specifically the 872 day Siege of Leningrad.
I rather imagine that even in the former Leningrad, the police are still reactionary:
October 7 was a good day for democrats. The Greek Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of the leaders of Golden Dawn, the only openly Nazi party to have won seats in any parliament since the 1940s, on charges of murder, grievous bodily harm, and directing a criminal organization. A crowd of 20,000 Athenians celebrated outside the court.
Our celebration lasted precisely 40 seconds, before the police dispersed us with teargas. Gasping for air, my wife and I tried to join hundreds of others struggling to escape via a narrow street leading to the safety of nearby Mount Lycabettus. A dozen riot police were there, firing gas canisters into the fleeing crowd. I pleaded with their commanding officer to stop. “There is no purpose in gassing people trying to go home,” I told him calmly. He swore at me. When I produced my parliamentary ID card, his response startled me: “Yet another reason to fuck you.”
The conviction of Greece’s Nazi leaders is a decisive victory against the revival of far-right extremism in Europe. But while they were being sent to prison, their ideas, manners, and hatred of parliamentary democracy were in police uniform, terrorizing the streets.
A week later, a police internal affairs officer interviewed me as part of an investigation triggered by my testimony. I could not recognize the riot policeman’s face, because I was unable to breathe or see properly at the time of the incident. But I did recognize one thing: the look of calm loathing in his eyes – a look that reminded me of Kapnias, once a trained Gestapo interrogator.
………
When I met him in 1991, I had assumed that figures like Kapnias were relics that would disappear one funeral at a time. I was wrong. A sense of permanent defeat, hopelessness, and widespread humiliation create an environment in which Nazism’s dormant DNA reawakens. Once Greek society was immersed in wholesale indignity, following our state’s bankruptcy in 2010, a new generation of Nazis, with Kapnias’s look in their eyes, took their seats in Parliament. Now, most of them are in prison for heinous crimes. But that look remains in the eyes of too many, not all of them in uniform.
At this I’m inclined to believe that law enforcement is INHERENTLY pro-Fascist, and pro-Nazi. It just comes with the job.
Trump has been saying that he might leave the country if he loses the election.
This raises an obvious question: When is revealed to be both a criminal and broke, and this is clearly the endgame, who would actually not just put his sorry ass back on the the next plane to the Southern District of New York?
There are doubtless some tin-pot dictators out there who would be inclined to host him for ideological reasons, but the costs, both in terms of domestic unrest and foreign pressure.
I’m wondering what the over and under is on Trump ending up in prison.
I’m not a big fan of Representative Tulsi Gabbard, but her proposal to allow defendants to use a public interest defense in cases of releases of classified information is an idea long overdue.
Prosecutions under the Espionage Act frequently resemble a kangaroo court, particularly in Judge Leonie Brinkama’s court, where she has consistently made a vigorous defense by the defendant impossible.
Still, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop about it, because I do not trust Gabbard:
Legislation proposed in Congress would amend the United States Espionage Act and create a public interest defense for those prosecuted under the law.
“A defendant charged with an offense under section 793 or 798 [in the U.S. legal code] shall be permitted to testify about their purpose for engaging in the prohibited conduct,” according to a draft of the bill Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard introduced.
Such a reform would make it possible for whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Reality Winner, Terry Albury and Daniel Hale to inform the public why they disclosed information without authorization to the press.
The legislation called the Protect Brave Whistleblowers Act is supported by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
“If this long-overdue revision of the 1917 Espionage Act had been law half a century ago, I myself could have had a fair trial for releasing the Pentagon Papers in 1971: justice under law unavailable to me and to every other national security whistleblower indicted and prosecuted since then,” Ellsberg declared.
………
As noted, government employees or contractors prosecuted under the Espionage Act would be allowed an “affirmative defense” under the Protect Brave Whistleblowers Act that they engaged in the “prohibited conduct for purpose of disclosing to the public” violations of laws, rules or regulations, or to expose “gross mismanagement, a gross waste of funds, an abuse of authority, or a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.”
………
However, the Espionage Act Reform bill appears to do more to prohibit the Justice Department from prosecuting journalists. It specifically ensures “only personnel with security clearances can be prosecuted for improperly revealing classified information” and aims to protect the rights of members of the press that “solicit, obtain or publish government secrets.”
“When brave whistleblowers come forward to expose wrongdoing within our government, they must have the confidence that they, and the press who publishes this information, will be protected from government retaliation,” stated Gabbard.
I like the bill, though my preferred solution, adopting the Swedish concept of Offentlighetsprincipen (openness) as an explicit constitutional right.
Anything that provides more accountability and exposure to the US state security apparatus is a good thing.
Members of the Trump administration have discovered that with Donald Trump flagging in the polls, they have become toxic to future employers.
They aren’t getting calls returned.
Oh the humanity:
Four years ago, some Republicans who said unsavory things during the campaign about the new president worried that such remarks might ruin their chances of redemption via employment in the Trump administration.
Today, some of those same Republicans are now quietly on the job hunt as President Trump’s standing in the polls continues to slide against Democratic nominee Joe Biden with decision time in just 18 days. But now, these GOPers are hoping the Trump presidency isn’t a disqualifying blemish on their resumes or Google footprint as the door revolves the other way and they seek to land, once again, in the private sector.
………
“There’s always a market for lobbyists, but look at someone like [former White House Press Secretary Sean] Spicer who had high-profile gigs in the White House and where did he land?” noted Amanda Carpenter, a Trump critic, CNN contributor and former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). “He’s a host on Newsmax right now. That’s not the kind of leg-up to high-profile communications in the corporate world that’s the typical path…. If he can’t do it, I think people with such a high profile will have similar problems.”
………
Over a dozen Republican strategists, former Trump administration staffers, current Capitol Hill hands and associates close to the Trump White House predict that many graduates of the Trump administration could have a tough time sticking a landing in the private sector.
They say Trump’s shaky standing in the campaign — and his pull on down-ballot races — is already making Republicans especially nervous.
“Quiet conversations in Gmail are more active now than would be expected a month before an election,” said a senior Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. “I have a buddy in the administration who is starting to quietly move his resume around, and he’s noticed people who he thought would be quicker to respond to inquiries have been less so. He called it ‘the Trump stink. How much Trump stink is on my resume right now?‘”
………
This strategist said more prominent White House aides such as Mark Meadows and Stephen Miller may have bigger hurdles than more anonymous mid-tier aides seeking a job.
“But I don’t think Stephen Miller ever foresaw a job on K Street,” the strategist added.
Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, is one of the most recognizable current Trump White House officials. Carpenter predicts she will have an even more difficult time than Spicer if and when she exits but adds that for someone like McEnany, who made her name defending Trumpism on cable news, the benefits of the job might have outweighed other prospects.
………
Many of those interviewed for this story did not want to go on the record in order to discuss private conversations with candor. But they say concerns about hiring people from Trumpworld are real.
………
The longtime GOP strategist who runs a public affairs firm recalled coming close to hiring a former Trump White House staffer until a Google search revealed the prospective hire’s track record defending Trump on race and immigration. It ground the interview process to a halt, the strategist said.
“A lot of people who came into this in 2015 and 2016, they knew that there would be a stigma going into this — and it’ll likely last for a very long time,” said a Trump campaign staffer. “Probably for the rest of their lives. I don’t think that’s lost on anyone.”
(Emphasis mine)
No sympathy from me.
You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
After an almost 6 month hiatus, we have the 3rd bank failure of the year, First City Bank of Florida, of Fort Walton Beach FL.
I’m not sure if it means anything, except the obvious that the economy is beginning to hit the banks.
It may be the first of a few, or the first of a tsunami. No clue as to which one.
By way of context here is the Full FDIC list going back a number of years.
Still not at a number where graphing makes sense though.
As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.
Howard Phillip did love him some long and florid paragraphs, but this is spot on.
take a look at this absolutely insane, totally incredible organizing strategy from the UMW in their 1913 campaign to organize the Colorado oilfields: pic.twitter.com/5G0RaoI0bk
— lex 🎃🍂 (@postlexical) October 10, 2020
Seriously, this is some impressive labor tactics.
Using an employer’s own anti-union paranoia against them.
Today’s union organizers should take note.
Initial unemployment claims rose by 53,000 to 898,000 last week.
Some recovery, huh?
The much-touted recovery is increasingly looking like a dead cat bounce:
The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level since late August, with fresh layoffs adding to other signs the economic recovery is losing steam as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
Claims increased to 898,000 last week, holding well above the pre-pandemic high point of 695,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. After declining from a peak of near 7 million in March, weekly claims have clocked in between 800,000 and 900,000 for more than a month as companies readjust their head counts.
The economy more broadly is flashing signs of slowdown. Monthly job gains have cooled recently, as has growth in consumer spending and factory output.
“The jobless claims continued to reflect very difficult labor market conditions,” said Kathy Bostjancic, an economist at Oxford Economics. “It’s representative of still uncertain and challenging economic conditions at large.”
The number of people collecting unemployment benefits through regular state programs, which cover most workers, fell to about 10 million in the week ended Oct. 3 from 11.2 million the previous week, according to the Labor Department. So-called continuing claims declined throughout the summer, indicating employers continued to hire workers.
However, some of the recent declines in continuing claims represent individuals who have exhausted the maximum duration of payments available through regular state programs, and are now collecting money through a federal program that provides an extra 13 weeks of benefits. About 2.8 million people were receiving aid through this extended-benefits program in the week ended Sept. 26—the largest number since the program began this spring, Labor Department data show.………
This suggests many Americans are experiencing long spells of joblessness and relying on unemployment insurance to keep paying bills. The extended-benefits program is set to expire at the end of this year without additional federal stimulus. ………
………
Weekly figures can be volatile, but the four-week moving average for claims rose as well, to 866,250, a sign more workers are losing their jobs.
“We’ve seen a number of large firms report layoffs, some of it because the pace of recovery is slower than maybe they had hoped for,” Ms. Bostjancic said.
A Wall Street Journal survey found more than half of business and academic economists polled this month said they didn’t expect the labor market to regain all the jobs from the pandemic until 2023 or later. That is a slower timeline than economists predicted six months ago.
There will be no V-shaped recovery.
So, you want your buddies to get their tax dollars so that they can buy a better boat, but you don’t want to tarnish your reputation as a good government Republican?
The solution is simple: A public-private partnership.
Your friends get their vig, and you get to pretend that you are working for the taxpayer.
Unfortunately, as Maryland Governor Larry “Governor Rat-F%$#: Hogan as demonstrated, these efforts never save a dime, and frequently cost money, as Richie Daley’s infamous Chicago Parking Meter Deal.
Well, sooner than anyone expected, Hogan’s public private partnerships are descending into chaos and litigation:
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan differs from President Trump about as much as possible for a Republican, but they share one characteristic: Both won their offices in part by selling themselves as experienced business executives who would run government efficiently and cheaply.
Hogan has applied that approach to his two biggest transportation projects, the light-rail Purple Line and a plan to add toll lanes to the Capital Beltway, Interstate 270 and the American Legion Bridge. He brought in private companies to share responsibility with the state for the enterprises, saying they would complete the work more efficiently than the government and save taxpayers money.
If it saves taxpayers money, then how are the profits generated, particularly the ridiculously high profits that the finance types demand?
It isn’t working out that way, and the difficulties threaten to tarnish Hogan’s legacy as he approaches the midpoint of his second and final term as governor. (Maryland governors are limited to two terms.)
The construction contractor for the Purple Line quit mid-project in a dispute with the state over a reported $800 million in unpaid cost overruns. The Maryland Transit Administration has taken over hundreds of subcontracts to continue the work while the state negotiates with the consortium of companies managing the project over whether the larger $5.6 billion partnership can be salvaged.
The Purple Line problems raise fresh questions about whether the much larger toll lanes project will fare any better.
“With the Purple Line, we have basically a fiasco on our hands,” said Melissa Deckman, chair of the political science department at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. “It calls into question in some way his legacy, his promotion of having the private sector solve big public problems.”
The Purple Line project is structured as a public-private partnership (P3). The state is also pursuing a P3 for the toll lanes project. In such deals, private companies help finance and construct the projects, then receive a return over the long-term either from state payments or money earned while managing the enterprises.
The theory is that taxpayers gain more from the private investment and promised efficiency than they lose by letting the companies reap a profit.
Which never happens. Just profits for the private sector, with perhaps a nickel on the dollar up front to the politicians.
The strategy has backfired with the Purple Line, a 16-mile light-rail line running from New Carrollton in Prince George’s County to Bethesda in Montgomery County. The construction contractor has quit and the consortium managing the project, Purple Line Transit Partners, is in a legal battle with the state over extra costs caused by more than 2½ years of delays.
………
Critics say the experience highlights the risk in some P3s that private companies get too much power.
“The private entity can essentially hold the government and taxpayers hostage to ask for more money,” said Jeremy Mohler, communications director for In the Public Interest, a think tank.
Meanwhile, concerns have arisen about Hogan’s ambitious plan to add four toll lanes — two in each direction — to I-270 and the Maryland portion of the Beltway and build a new, wider American Legion Bridge. Tolls would vary according to congestion, and the existing lanes would remain free.
Hogan famously promised that using a public-private partnership would mean the project, with an estimated total price of up to $11 billion, would not cost taxpayers any money. But a draft state study warned in July that the plan could require a government subsidy of up to $1 billion, depending on how toll revenue compares with construction and financing costs.
Oops.
………
Even if both projects collapsed entirely, which seems unlikely, Hogan could point to other accomplishments in what has generally been a politically successful governorship.
He was the state’s first Republican governor in 64 years to win reelection and has consistently had one of the highest favorability ratings among the nation’s state chief executives. He has blocked tax increases — his signature issue — and acted early to stem the coronavirus pandemic.
Which is what the PPP is all about: He wants to keep his no new taxes pledge, and doesn’t care that he will be shafting the next 2-3 generations.
Same as Richie Daley.
We now have more witness reports of the shooting of Michael Reinoehl by a federal task force, and it reinforces the perception that they just rolled up and started shooting.
The reports now are that there were no lights or sirens, and no attempt by officers to get Reinoehl to surrender.
Considering the proclivities of law enforcement, the support for white supremacists is obvious, and the case of Fred Hampton comes to mind:
Michael Reinoehl was on the run.
A few days after a shooting left a far-right Trump supporter dead on the streets of Portland, Ore., Mr. Reinoehl, an antifa activist who had been named in the news media as a focus of the investigation, feared that vigilantes were after him, not to mention the police. Even some of his close friends did not know where he was.
But the authorities knew.
On Sept. 3, about 120 miles north of Portland, Mr. Reinoehl was getting into his Volkswagen station wagon when a pair of unmarked sport utility vehicles roared through the quiet streets, screeching to a halt just in front of his bumper. Members of a U.S. Marshals task force jumped out and unleashed a hail of bullets that shattered windows, whizzed past bystanders and left Mr. Reinoehl dead in the street.
Attorney General William P. Barr trumpeted the operation as a “significant accomplishment” that removed a “violent agitator.” The officers had opened fire, he said, when Mr. Reinoehl “attempted to escape arrest” and “produced a firearm” during the encounter. But a reconstruction of what happened that night, based on the accounts of people who witnessed the confrontation and the preliminary findings of investigators, produces a much different picture — one that raises questions about whether law enforcement officers made any serious attempt to arrest Mr. Reinoehl before killing him.
In interviews with 22 people who were near the scene, all but one said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give any commands before opening fire. In their official statements, not yet made public, the officers offered differing accounts of whether they saw Mr. Reinoehl with a weapon. One told investigators he thought he saw Mr. Reinoehl raise a gun inside the vehicle before the firing began, but two others said they did not.
………
Five eyewitnesses said in interviews that the gunfire began the instant the vehicles arrived. None of them saw Mr. Reinoehl holding a weapon. A single shell casing of the same caliber as the handgun he was carrying was found inside his car.
Garrett Louis, who watched the shooting begin while trying to get his 8-year-old son out of the line of fire, said the officers arrived with such speed and violence that he initially assumed they were drug dealers gunning down a foe — until he saw their law enforcement vests.
It increasingly looks like a preordained execution.
In addition to calling 911, and trying to convince police that a Black bird-watcher was a threat, Amy Cooper made a second call to the cops stating that he had assaulted her.
If the DA has any stones, he should charge her with attempted murder:
Amy Cooper, the white woman who called the police on a Black bird-watcher in Central Park, made a second, previously unreported call to 911 in which she falsely claimed that the man tried to assault her, a prosecutor said on Wednesday.
“The defendant twice reported that an African-American man was putting her in danger, first by stating that he was threatening her and her dog, then making a second call indicating that he tried to assault her in the Ramble area of the park,” Joan Illuzzi, a senior prosecutor, said.
The second call was disclosed as Ms. Cooper appeared remotely in Manhattan Criminal Court to answer a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report, which carries a maximum sentence of a year in jail.
Not enough.
Ms. Cooper had been charged in July, and no additional charges were announced on Wednesday. Ms. Illuzzi said the Manhattan district attorney’s office was negotiating a possible plea deal with Ms. Cooper that would allow her to avoid jail.
No. She tried to get police to kill this man, same as if she unleashed a shark into his swimming pool.
………
But prosecutors said Ms. Cooper made a later call to 911, which was not shown in the video. In that call, Ms. Cooper told the dispatcher that Mr. Cooper had tried to assault her, according to a criminal complaint.
When the police arrived, however, Ms. Cooper told an officer that her reports were untrue, and that Mr. Cooper had not touched or assaulted her, the complaint said.
………
Still, the prosecutor said the district attorney’s office was exploring a resolution to the case that would require Ms. Cooper to take responsibility for her actions in court and attend a program to educate her on how harmful they were.
No. This is more white privelege bullsh%$. If she were Muslim, she would still be in Rikers with no bail.
She needs some incarcerated time, because otherwise, we will see another Karen doing the same Karen thing.
A protrait of the cat as a young kitty
Destructo, our 7 year old long hair cat shut down yesterday.
He was just lying around.
He did not nip at us when he rubbed his stomach.
He did not react at all to catnip, when normally he’s a drug fiend.
Finally, in the evening, we took him to the veterinarian.
It turns out that he had a urinary tract blockage, not uncommon in male cats of a certain age, he is technically middle-aged now.
His blood work was good, and there is no sign of kidney damage, so it looks like we caught it early.
He has been catheterized.
We are probably going to have to change his diet, something lower in magnesium, I think, but I’m an engineer, not a veterinarian, dammit!*
The prognosis is pretty good.
*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!