UPDATE: Video (strange left hand positioning - opening image). Mullen and Mattis; per The Atlantic here, here and the AP, here.
FURTHER:
Floyd’s death on May 25 prompted many days of protest in large areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul that included acts of looting, arson and property damage along with peaceful expressions of grief and outrage. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives National Response Team arrived in Minneapolis this week to investigate who was responsible for starting the fires during the riots.
While the unrest has ebbed since the mobilization of thousands of National Guard troops and the imposition of nightly curfews, nonviolent gatherings and activities have continued largely without incident.
[Strib local content, June 4, 2020 - italics added]
FURTHER: Compare: Here, here with here [hat tip Gary Gross].
FURTHER: Does the Mattis and Mullen situation mean that if the Klan were to arise again it would be a civil police matter, not one of a kind that would be "insurrection?" What would be, then? Black folks protesting, but not the Klan? A bonespur boogaloo as insurrection, or not that? How deep is the state, today? How resilient? To what range of pressures? What agency or arm of government does the sounding of state depth as ordinary practice? The Barr battalion? Or some agency whose letters even are top secret? Where is Flynn these days?
Whatever happened to the interim AG, Matthew Whitaker, from Steve King's state, the Daddy Warbucks look-alike? Was he part of the entourage to the bible waving, and was that stunt a message for some subpopulation of the US of A? Inquiring minds wonder.
Where's Bannon? Doing what? Why were Pence and Jarad absent from the bible clutch-and-wave?
FURTHER: It's Colbert's joke but worth repeating, Trump thinking The Posse Comitatus Act means that even with peaceful protesters he can grab 'em by the posse. Another video, starting with the [somewhere maybe] highly respected Bill Barr telling a fairy tale.
FURTHER: Chris Hedges writes of the choice offered us between Biden and Trump - sort of.
FURTHER: Breitbart post's that surrounded by co-idealogues trying to not look too uncomfortable more intentional divisiveness, meanness and disdain is spun by a thug.
FURTHER: Is self-image Trump's problem re protest management?
FURTHER: image source
 |
| Bop, bop - bop bop. |
FURTHER: Friday, 6/12/20 -- Two images from two sources, Politico, and American Conservative. (Worth reading the text too.) In each, Trump, different hands, looks to be pinching the bible prop between thumb and forefinger, with the other three fingers showing. It does not look like a natural way to hold a book, as an object. Is there more to it than holding his prop in a funny way? After having used compelling force by a cadre of Darth Vader lookalikes to move peacefully protesting citizens aside to enable the stunt? I ask. I am not answering. I am imagining a possibility, only that. Think what you like, readers, but THINK. Last on this update, they say Trump has asked Stephen Miller to write a speech for him about race. Really. Do your own web search if you find that hard to comprehend. To me, it is in character. Roy Cohn died before Trump could ask him to write it.
FURTHER: On the Biden front: Susan Rice is a deal killer. Kamala Harris, more of a deal killer. Stacey Yvonne Abrams would do fine. Elizabeth Warren would, as a VP choice, be both a bright ray of sunshine and a Biden salvation. The Biden cramdown was, itself, a nasty and arrogant thing for the Republican wing of the Democratic Party to engineer and implement. It stunk. It stinks still. Biden is mediocre. Compromised as Ukraine Joe. The arrogance of Bloomberg and the Dem inner party galls so much that instead of voting for Trump out of spite, it would be a sitdown strike; and let losing Dems down ticket deal with bottom up message delivery to the DNC, DCCC and DSCC cramdown thugs, and others.
If the inner party pack is dead set on refusing to fight against the Republicans' long standing war on the poor, what good would voting Dem do? Aside from the spoils seekers, who benefits from that sack of stuff? It would only bake in identity politics, which would be bad for the future. It is the billionaires ripping off the rest of us - old fashion class politics with the elites of both parties wanting to divide and conquer the underprivileged shrinking middle class along with the poor, for the benefit of their consultancies, lobbyists and bankers.
Getting a fair deal for the underrepresented, independent of identity political tensions within the disadvantaged majority, is the only valid answer.
Or just stay home. A sitdown strike. Work on third party needs as the only option they leave US.
In summary, Stacey Abrams or Elizabeth Warren, or forget it.
FURTHER: Back to the Trump bible stunt: RSV is not a favored translation among the GOP's most rabid evangelicals; per MoJo reporting. If you do a stunt, you can do it two ways; the right way or the Trump way. Also the nearest most convenient church is not one of a favored denomination among that same evangelical GOP base. Such Trump insensitivity to truthful detail important to others is nothing new, and probably brought a forced but forgiving smile to practical evangelicals (who, for example, like his judges and tolerate his bloviating).
FURTHER: Back to Biden and his VP gaming: Susan Rice, like the little mayor from South Bend, was a Rhodes Scholar who took a job with McKinsey. Went to a private prep school, then Stanford. Bright, yes like the little mayor; progressive - as much as the little mayor (and Biden). Yes, a cut better than Harris, but so what? There is a gulf between her and Warren on policy favoring the 99% over elitism, and Warren at least faced an electorate and won a Senate seat (a distinction Harris shares, but not Rice). Abrams has her Yale JD degree, and has a sincerity in her progressive belief set. Abrams is not yet as accomplished as Warren, but is younger with more time to make her mark. Barbara Lee is another posslble VP if being black is to be a litmus test and being a progressive is not a deal killer to Joe Biden, himself. Lee, like Warren was not born into wealth, but reached levels of success without distancing herself from her roots and early life experiences. She would be a sound and helpful VP choice, but her name is not mentioned in mainstream coverage, and whether she'd take the job or stay where she is remains unclear - unless/until she may be asked onto the ticket. Bottom line, Abrams or Lee, good; Warren, better. With Harris, why not just offer the spot to Hillary, directly.
FURTHER: So, who is MediaTouch? Who funds them? Who produces their stuff? Dark money has no place in any sane ramp-up to election day. The MediaTouch funding is as dark as any other phony negative advertising political shop. Not as content deficient as Tweeting, but a one minute mud-sling sound bite is less than intelligent discourse. All of those "Gimme a gotcha" DC shops -- Regardless of whose mud, where slung, they suck. - more to this update - Thinking of a Biden-Trump debate or two; hordes will be crying out, "Give us the soundbites." Those two, each in his style, are unpleasant to contemplate. The English language and TV viewers each suffering. For how many will it be watch ten minutes and then apply the used-car test. And the upshot, buy new, a Tesla, despite Elon, who'd perhaps add to a debate if they made him moderator. Or have a nun with a ruler moderate, ready to rap knuckles and challenge departure from dogma, or from discussion of the lesson of the day. A ruler handy to keep each on point and required to speak in complete sentences, Trump under the added burden to not be able to speak the word "beautiful." Balance that with Biden barred from saying "Obama."
FURTHER: Link. This is local coverage of a situation blown out of truthful proportion by hateful DC people at FOX, etc. - including threats and speculative lies from the White House. For which Seattle's mayor said, "Go back in your bunker." And Governor Inslee said the affair is one local to Washington State, which shall handle it as deemed appropriate (outside interference not welcome). Bless thinking people. Peacemakers. A Wikipedia page. MORE: The Stranger has coverage; a CHAZ blog has been put online. A live webcam showing Trump's anarchy. He could walk to church here, but he does not really regularly attend any services. But, truth is more resonant than blarney. Truth is more rational than Tucker Carlson, Hennity, their bozo-tron channel of deceits.
FURTHER: You get Trump bloviating, and this Mpls based misperception of Seattle events. Compare sampling from this lengthy actual man-on-the-street mini-documentary visit to the CHAZ area, where people are peaceful, but determined to see a better tomorrow. It's kind of boring to my view, but it most certainly is not violent nor threatening in any fashion to the boarded up cop shop or the neighborhood. FOX lies aside, sample that item, and get real. The fact is the Seattle police walked back earlier false claims of CHAZ area businesses being "extorted." That assertion was pure falsehood. Gary may have missed that walk-back, and is generally careful, so he may have believed Trump or Tucker/Hennity horseshit representations of "fact" without delving further. The violence during earlier days came from the militarized policing, and when the heavy badges were drawn out of an area that allowed the protests peace, the protests were peaceful from that point onward.
Lesson learned? Don't trust anything Trump says as one good lesson, but what else? That Trump incites violence? Yes, but beyond that, well motivated people wanting CHANGE did not get it from Obama/Biden, but remain well motivated; and that racist killer cops are unwelcome in any sane community as not in any way part of any solution to racism, and on . . .
FURTHER: Trump being the snake he is.
FURTHER: Aside from that snake move, ground enough to oppose the clown's reelection, there are two overlapping items, DWT, and WaPo reporting, on how the Trump mirror of nasty Nixon is a brand causing discontent among those who protest and those with the moral compass to support the protesters - among the young - and what that may mean long term. In the DWT item Trump is likened to Strom Thurmond (where the DWT author could not resist a Thurmond photo with his protege, Biden). The hope - Kent State/Jackson State murders by National Guardsmen which stifled the resolve of my pre-Boomer and Boomer generation will not be done to these young idealists; despite Trump wanting exactly that brutal stand-on-their-throats step, but with sane men and women this time saying "NO!" One reader comment to the DWT item:
It's clear to this Boomer that the torch has been passed. I wish them great success in doing what my generation failed to do: make this planet a better place for all to live on.
Amen! And for more emphasis you can wave a bible around on that score, with a forced scowling frown, were you crass and tone deaf enough to do something that patently stupid and offensive to the nation and the world. As then, the whole world is watching.