Saturday, June 27, 2020

A Minnesota blogger has his say against female Democratic politicians in a way that could offend some people.

Online here, with the opening two paragraphs of the June 27, 2020, post reading as follows:

When Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats’ Speaker of the House of Representatives, said that Republicans were “trying to get away with murder, actually, the murder of George Floyd”, Democrats sat silent. Not a single House Democrat expressed outrage over Pelosi’s statement. Some might’ve said something in official statements but nobody got on the morning shows and lit her up like a Christmas tree. The lack of outrage is disgusting.

Saying that Mrs. Pelosi is heartless isn’t news. That’s something we’ve known since 2006. I’ll say this without any political correctness. Mrs. Pelosi is the biggest bitch in the Democrat Party, including Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Clinton, Harris and Warren are back-benchers compared with Pelosi. She is to bitchiness what Adam Schiff is to leaking and outright corruption. But I digress.

Read the entire post, see what you think. Half-assed partisan measures arguably fit the "half a loaf is better than no bread at all" cliche, but declaring things begin and end with a rushed Repubican proposal in the U.S. Senate is premature and arguably suggests a will to sweep things aside which clearly need deep "Defund the Police" examination, in detail, where alternative approaches offer a more comprehensive outlook toward necessary lasting promising and sane government rearrangement.

___________UPDATE___________
In fact: Each chamber of Congress has its majority bill. The House passed its bill which McConnell added to his tall stack of House bills he declines to bring to the Senate floor.

The Hill reports on Senate moves, here. The Hill also reports of the House passage, here; stating in part:

Three GOP lawmakers bucked party lines and voted to support House Democrats’ sweeping police reform bill Thursday night.

The legislation is aimed at reining in the use of excessive force by law enforcement in the wake of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who was killed by Minneapolis police last month.

The majority of Republicans in the lower chamber slammed Democrats for shutting them out while writing the bill, and many voiced concerns on key provisions.

However, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) opted to vote for the measure, which passed in a 236 to 181 vote Thursday.

The bill is not expected to see movement in the Republican-controlled Senate, where Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) introduced the GOP-led police reform bill, which was blocked by Senate Democrats from moving forward with debate.

Hurd — a former CIA officer who is retiring from his congressional seat at the end of his term — said the House missed an opportunity to pass “an overwhelmingly bipartisan bill,” but felt that it addressed the issue of removing bad actors in law enforcement.

“Everyone here believes as I do that whether your skin is Black, or your uniform is blue, you should not feel targeted in this country. We have failed to do one simple thing — empower police chiefs to permanently fire bad cops. This is one of the most important things Congress could have addressed,” Hurd, the only Black member of the House Republican Conference, said on the floor.

Keeping bad cops off the force could prevent another killing, like George Floyd. It would protect good police officers by ensuring bad officers, like George Floyd’s murderer, don’t soil the reputations of good officers,” he continued.

[italics added, links in original omitted] With it hard to find online coverage actually linking to either bill text, and with each house's bill DOA in the other house, getting into details of one or the other is futile, each being doomed until a new Congress is seated. The Republican blogger writes as if there were only one bill in DC, clearly not the case. Were there any real likelihood of either bill, or a compromise being passed, it would be worth reader time to compare and contrast. However, DC being strangled by its two party situation, don't bother.

Objectivity is always best, and the objective truth is both parties are facing November, and posturing. To write that one party has some kind of edge, however, can mislead. To imply that one party's declining to move to the other party's bill, as if there were not two bills facing the impasse, is false. Scott may be well intentioned but he's a junior Senator, while black, in the Senate by appointment and not elected there, and neither by schooling nor experience an expert on the law or history of police misconduct/removal/accountability, so that his having lead powers on the issue is itself an interesting Republican step, putting its black guy out front. In closing, The Hill's coverage of the gridlock problem is fair and balanced, not biased against either party exercising the despicable two-party stranglehold now held on our nation - a stranglehold even worse than the one police disproportionately have applied to black detainees.

_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
To avoid any misperception, Scott was a House member entering the Senate by appointment via a Governor of his party, then subsequently winning election. It is a situation similar to Minnesota's Tina Smith being appointed, with a subsequent incumbency advantage.

_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Per Wikipedia, Scott's skill set is as an insurance salesman and evangelical Christian; and like virtually all black men, he has police encounters in his background. No law enforcement litigation, not a lawyer, never a cop. Finally, to say as our Republican blogger has, "Republican Sen. Tim Scott has lived with racism all his life," is hyperbole. Yes, he's been a black man all his life. Were that "lived with racism" assertion the case then some other person would have been tapped to fill the empty Senate seat, not Scott, and he'd have had trouble selling insurance. He's been treated better than other black men, in that he's been the only black Senator from South Carolina in over a hundred years, others having been passed over based on race. Is his achievement to be minimized? No. But he's had it better than Michael Brown, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor. Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, Walter Scott, Laquan McDonald and others no longer sucking air. Say their names. Per NYT, "In a 13-year span, Philando Castile was pulled over by the police in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region at least 49 times, an average of about once every three months, often for minor infractions." That is facing racism to a greater degree than Scott has faced. 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks shot in the back while moving away from a use-of-force encounter in the parking lot of an Atlanta Wendy's fast food restaurant lot had his chance of reaching 54 and a seat in both Houses of Congress curtailed; unlike Scott. Scott seems to have basically gone along to get along, and he has been blessed to be a survivor - unlike Malcolm and unlike King, each of whom pushed harder, in harder times. Rosa Parks was more confrontational than Scott. And she got more done.

__________FINAL UPDATE___________
Gary Gross submitted a comment which I overlooked. After he by email called my attention to it I published it. Have a look. Gary is diligent and I believe sincere in what he does.