Tuesday, June 02, 2020

He did not pray, he came to pose. Upset citizens were teargassed so he could. Photos never showed him opening the bible prop he held. He does not read anyway. He watches TV and tweets. He's a disaster, but, Joe Biden? How awful a choice? [UPDATED: where within the string of updating the final item is most resonant].

Asshole in Chief. The entire world sees racists elected a total asshole. Guardian, across an ocean, sees truth.

Strib, carrying the AP feed on the rebuke of Trump's disgraceful disrespect for actual religious values.

The son-of-a-bitch acts as if he's the Wizard of Oz, and should stop and be a human being, if he can. Guardian, here, the 8:36 am entry on dissembling by the Dissembler in Chief.

He is a disgrace to the entire nation. A total charlatan and inept huckster. And proud to be an illiterate wreck of a human being.

And then there is Mike Pence.

And then there is Joe Biden. The meanness and wholly bought character of Dem inner party decision makers exposed.

No wonder people are in revolt in the streets. Trump's earned it.

UPDATE: The meanness and wholly bought character of Dem inner party decision makers exposed.

FURTHER: Cornel West.

FURTHER: AP, via a Strib carry.

FURTHER: Tone deafness. In the extreme! Equal idiocy.

FURTHER: Politico, here. Clyburn, here. What do you see in the photo Politico uses? Biden will dither. It is his nature. When he should seize today. I like that Politico photo and the allegiance Warren and Clyburn have formed, finding common ground. Talking with each other. Biden's earlier gaff, about passing things on to another younger generation aside, he wants to win and will meet his betters half way out of that ambition. Fun to watch? Warren is agreeable to a second spot on the ticket which is a step further than Biden may deserve. With Trump having totally discredited himself by trying to bully his way out of George Floyd complications and implications, he only needs a slight push to out the door. Biden alone, being too slight.

FURTHER: More Politico, from two days ago, "Minneapolis unrest shakes up VP shortlist - Law-and-order credentials suddenly lose their luster in wake of outrage and unrest over police brutality." The item looks past Klobuchar, at black female politicians Kamala Harris [prosecutor] and Val Demings [police chief]. Harris, we know, another conservative like Biden, with Demings a "New Democrat" which is NOT a progressive stamp, by any sane measure. Cut from the same cloth as Biden and the Clintons. The Atlantic in 2015 published:

When Demings first ran for Congress in 2012, discussion of her tenure leading the OPD tended to start and stop at one statistic: a 43.6 percent drop in violent crime from 2007 to 2011, according to FBI reports. But over the last year, a string of highly publicized shootings and violent arrests of African Americans by police has changed the criteria that voters and the media use to judge officeholders on law enforcement.

The growing focus on police misconduct highlights less agreeable aspects of Demings’s time helming the Orlando Police Department from 2007 to 2011.

The department has a long record of excessive-force allegations, and a lack of transparency on the subject, dating back at least as far as Demings’s time as chief. From 2010 to 2014, the department paid out more than $3.3 million in damages following at least 47 lawsuits alleging false arrest, excessive force, and other complaints against the department’s officers, according to WFTV. (Records about these cases and other allegations of police misconduct in Orlando are not centrally housed or publicized, and some lawsuits are still outstanding.)

“This has been a problem for a while, through her administration and others. The problem is the leadership of the department,” said Lawanna Gelzer, president of the National Action Network’s Central Florida chapter. “… She’s not going to get my vote.”

Demings declined to comment on her record as police chief. Her campaign referred questions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which also did not comment.

Demings has not spoken out about criminal justice since she announced her 2016 congressional run, but it will be hard to avoid. Before she became a candidate, she became a recurring guest discussing police news on MSNBC, where she highlighted her efforts to improve relations between her police department and city residents.

The only potential female VP Clyburn has put the kibosh on, so far, is Klobuchar.

Seeing Demings as an MSNBC favorite talking head means the bullshit meter unpegs from zero and starts moving. Biden's backing by Comcast money [MSNBC's owner] has been covered. Demings' ducking the police brutality and disproportionate incarceration issue [the mushrooming of black men being incarcerated after passage of the 1994 crime bill] by Demings back in 2015 is before the Floyd situation.

Harris has attempted a record redefinition. Will Demings? Also, reporting that Demings was referring questions to the DCCC suggests a closeness to that Cheri Bustos cesspool.

FURTHER: CNN coverage of the process of gassing of orderly protesting Americans to allow Trump to do a church/bible super-dumb photo-op; because he could.

It's the Tyler Durden in him. What is interesting: Neither Pence nor Jarad went near that crass stunt.

FURTHER: There is irony in the use of instant overwhelming force including chemical munitions to herd and remove regular orderly citizens exercising calmly their First Amendment rights to peacefully demonstrate together, so that the Idiot in Chief could stand in front of cameras next to a sign saying, "ALL ARE WELCOME." He overstepped reasonable bounds, and has to go.

[FURTHER: a gramatical glich or two and misspelling of the Demings name were corrected from the previous version of this post]

FURTHER: This complaint of a civil rights violation investigation was announced today, June 2, 2020, by the Governor. Tim Walz is a veteran who served in Congress, and while likely disturbed by the Trump threat to unleash the nation's armed services against the nation's people on the nation's homeland soil, this step was within the Governor's powers and duty; as an internal matter to the State of Minnesota (and involving events wholly within State boundaries). There is concurrent state and federal jurisdiction and no lawful basis of federal preemption to it. An in-state situation, investigated under normal procedures, under Minnesota administrative and substantive law.

-- close the thread --