Notes On That Darren Wilson Interview

So the New Yorker has an interview with Darren Wilson of Ferguson fame. I first heard about it through Gawker *spit* which of course did it's best to do the "Look! Racist!" shtyck that doesn't work on me. So I got a chance to read the article and there are a few items I wanted to point out (this will be lengthy).

Many Americans believe that Wilson need not have killed Brown in order to protect himself, and might not have resorted to lethal force had Brown been white. Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his new book, “Between the World and Me,” writing of the psychological impact of incidents like the Brown shooting, says, “It does not matter if the destruction is the result of an unfortunate overreaction. It does not matter if it originates in a misunderstanding.” Coates also notes, “There is nothing uniquely evil in these destroyers or even in this moment. The destroyers are merely men enforcing the whims of our country.”

Many Americans are total idiots.

That aside it's pretty funny to see people armchair quarterback a life or death situation in a high crime area when they have exactly minus zero experience in gun use, law enforcement or even the basics of self-defense. I wonder if these "many Americans" think that trying to rob a convenience store "need not" have happened? Or if physically assaulting a police officer because he told you to get out the street "need not happen"? This goes to agency and whether one believes that black people ought to be held to the same standards of behavior as everyone else. What part of Michael Brown's actions were "necessary"? Ta-Nehisi Coates needs to have a seat. That is all. The "whims of our country" is: Don't rob people. Don't hit police (generally speaking). Apparently this ass has a problem with law abiding behavior.

en Wilson applied for a police job, he focussed on the northern portion of St. Louis County. The towns in what is called North County tend to be poorer, and to have a higher percentage of black residents, than other towns in the St. Louis area—such as St. Peters, the broadly middle-class, white town where Wilson grew up. North County also has more crime. Wilson felt that working in a tough area would propel his career. “If you go there and you do three to five years, get your experience, you can kind of write your own ticket,” he said. [my underlines]

So by the New Yorker's admission: More blacks, more crime and more poverty. Is that racist to write? Is it racist to say? If a police officer notices that the more blacks there are in a location there is more crime, just as the New Yorker just wrote, would he or she be punished?

McCarthy had spent two years working as a police officer at a predominantly black middle school in the city of Normandy. (Michael Brown attended the school, but not when McCarthy worked there.) McCarthy told me that police officers he knew often disliked working in North County schools, because many students had an “us versus them” attitude. But he loved talking with the kids and “investing in the community.”

Why do students have an "us versus them" attitude? If you're school age and doing school things there shouldn't be a care either way about police. If you're concerned about what the police are doing it seems to me that either you've been trained to have a certain attitude about police or you're doing something which would make police presence a "problem".

He recalled, “I would do the adopted-student program—take them to basketball games and things of that nature.” Many of the kids confided in him about the stress of having to be “man of the house” when a parent worked nights. McCarthy said that his openness made the students more respectful: “I wasn’t the police to them, because they knew me on a personal level, rather than what that badge stood for.”

In other words he was a man who can guide and punish. Exactly what a father is supposed to be. Of course these boys are missing fathers. All those women talking about not needing no man but fucking up their children. Go on with that.

Too many cops, he went on, weren’t interested in understanding the “root causes” of crime; they preferred to “go on calls, handle the call, and leave.”

Or perhaps they didn't feel like being parents to other people's kids for a living 'cause that's not what they signed up for.

Wilson recalls hearing “old-timers” talk about racism in Jennings’s past, but their stories didn’t make a vivid impression on him. McCarthy, however, said that in the seventies and eighties the Jennings police “did not play.” He added, “Basically, they’d beat you.” During that period, many blacks from St. Louis moved to North County. Numerous towns there went from being majority white to being majority black. The police forces remained almost completely white.

Generally speaking when a black person tells you that so and so "don't play" it means that when it comes to whatever it is, they don't mess around. So if black residents knew that the Jennings police did not play, then they knew that they couldn't carry on with whatever bullshit they were carrying on with in their own neighborhood. And why did blacks move to Jennings? Because they were escaping the nonsense they were doing in St. Louis. Of course that goes unsaid in the article.

McCarthy showed me several police logs from those decades, and many entries documented bigotry on the part of Jennings authorities. In April, 1973, a lieutenant described a holdup that had occurred near the police station. The suspects were two black males. At the bottom of the entry, someone had written, “Men, you better leave your wallets at home. Niggers are going to come in the police station next and rob us.” An entry from December, 1979, described an eighteen-year-old black male who was believed to have been involved in the shooting of a police officer but was then released, “due to his lack of mental capacity.” Below this, someone had scrawled, “Kill the Fucker.”

Excuse me for being more concerned about the hold up (near a police station!!) and the shooting than the names police officers called the criminals that did those things.

“We have to fix what’s happening now. That’s my job as a police officer. I’m not going to delve into people’s life-long history and figure out why they’re feeling a certain way, in a certain moment.” He added, “I’m not a psychologist.”

I think Wilson has a point here that should be addressed. What is the job of the police officer? Is it to be substitute father's for boys who lost their way? Isn't that a social worker's job? If there is agreement that a lot of what Wilson saw was a result of social issues, then I would agree 100% that there needs to be social services directed at those individuals. Question though: How far would the public allow that to go? Removing children on the table?

“If you live in a high-crime area, with a lot of poverty, there’s going to be a large police presence. You’re going to piss people off. If police show up, it’s because it’s something bad, and whoever’s involved can’t figure out the problem for themselves.”

Police are where the crime is. Simple. Drop the crime rates, drop the police presence. A informs B.

“When I left Jennings, I didn’t want to work in a white area,” Wilson told me. “I liked the black community,” he went on. “I had fun there. . . . There’s people who will just crack you up.” He also liked the fact that there was more work for the police in a town like Jennings—more calls to answer, more people to meet. “I didn’t want to just sit around all day,” he said.

"I didn't want to sit around all day." So there is so little crime in non-black areas that police sit around all day. It stands to reason then that if police are very active in your hood, it means that there are a lot of people doing things they shouldn't be doing AND it's likely that those persons are not white. Don't be mad at me, this is what is written in the New Yorker. Now if Wilson is full of shit, then the New Yorker should have shown that in fact in white areas police are not sitting around all day.

Barb had been working in Ferguson for seven years, as one of three women on a force of roughly fifty officers. “I always thought it was easier to work with guys, because they’re not as catty,” she said.

I'm certain she meant "bossy".

uly, 2014, Wilson visited the home of Scottie Randolph, a sixty-seven-year-old African-American man, after Randolph reported hearing gunfire. Randolph says that shootings often occur in his neighborhood when “the teen-agers are out of school.” The frequency “depends on whether they’ve got a drug war or a gang war going on.” His neighborhood had fallen into disarray because of “the economic meltdown.” He added, “A lot of people lost what little they had.” Young people who couldn’t find work resorted to selling drugs. Randolph told me that he needs the police for protection, but—echoing the Justice Department’s findings—feels that they target blacks for fines: “I kind of resent the fact that they’re using minorities as a cash cow.”

Scottie is so used to the gun fire that he knows the difference between gang conflicts and drug conflicts.

:-/

As for the jobs situation, it reminds me of Frantz Fanon's comment on the native middle class and it's failures. I'll let you look it up.

I asked him if he agreed with Randolph that the neighborhood’s main problem was the absence of jobs. “There’s a lack of jobs everywhere,” he replied, brusquely. “But there’s also lack of initiative to get a job. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” He acknowledged that the jobs available in Ferguson often paid poorly, but added, “That’s how I started. You’ve got to start somewhere.”

There are some who blew their top at the lead the horse to water" comment. Of course the full statement is far different than how it was portrayed. That said though there are a couple of points to make here:

1) If a person drops out of school then getting a job is going to be hard. A lot of young men who are unemployed are so because they failed to finish high school.

2) With immigrants taking a lot of construction jobs (I see them all the time) poor and uneducated black men have very few avenues to get jobs in a field that can result in wage growth. But you don't see the local Black Lives Matter group discussing reducing legal immigration and a total end to illegal immigration. Too busy filming police I suppose.

3) It must be admitted that there are a lot of young men who want that quick cash. I've seen plenty of documentaries where young men and boys said that they wouldn't take a minimum wage job when selling [whatever] gets more money. So you can lead that horse....

Good values, Wilson insisted, needed to be learned at home. He spoke of a black single mother, in Ferguson, who was physically disabled and blind. She had several teen-age children, who “ran wild,” shooting guns, dealing drugs, and breaking into cars.

We should ask the New Yorker straight out if it disagrees with the "good values" advise. Forget the single mother for a minute. Is ANYONE going to argue that teaching values to children is not a top priority for parents?

If he caught the kids, he checked them for weapons, then questioned them. He recounted a typical exchange: “ ‘Why you running?’ ‘Because I’m afraid of getting caught.’ ‘Well, what are you afraid of getting caught for?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Well, there’s a reason you ran, and there’s a reason you don’t want to get caught. What’s going on?’ ” Wilson said that he rarely got answers—and that any contraband had already been thrown away. Once, he arrested some of the woman’s kids, for damaging property, but usually he let them go. In his telling, there was no reaching the blind woman’s kids: “They ran all over the mom. They didn’t respect her, so why would they respect me?” He added, “They’re so wrapped up in a different culture than—what I’m trying to say is, the right culture, the better one to pick from.”

"I don't know". Every time it's "I don't know" and "I didn't do nothing". Every damn time. For real though. If you're going to do a crime and get caught at least learn how to say something along the lines of "I decline to speak until I see a lawyer." When you are caught in the act of committing a crime and say "I don't know" and "I didn't do nothing" to the police, who will be on the stand repeating your words to the jury, you are instantly considered a liar with no credibility. At least the person who says "I'll speak with my lawyer" comes off as somewhat bright.

I saw a lot of people fall out over the culture comment. But you cannot escape that there is a criminal class with a criminal code, a culture if you will. We know it. The police know it. It's not racist to point it out. And it's hypocritical when you live a "law abiding culture" life to be upset when the police point out the culture of those who's behavior you choose not to engage in.

I met a man from St. Louis named Sean Bailey, who had been stopped by the Ferguson police in 2005. He had parked his mother’s car outside a Chinese restaurant, left a friend in the car, and run in to get take-out food. The police issued three violations, charging Bailey a hundred and two dollars for parking in a fire lane, and citing him for failure to register his car and driving without a valid license. Bailey, who was unemployed, couldn’t afford to pay, and when he missed deadlines he was charged additional fines. He has since been arrested half a dozen times for having outstanding fines, and has spent three weeks in jail. He says that, cumulatively, he has paid hundreds of dollars, but the city says that he still owes another hundred and fifty-eight. He has little hope of paying the debt, because he and his four-year-old daughter are homeless.

Lets count up the mistakes:

1)Parked the car in a no parking zone (fire lane). These things are marked. You know the risk when you park there. But that's a compound on...

2)Driving an unregistered car. This car shouldn't have been on the street ANYWAY but this fool not only puts it on the road but also parks it in a no parking zone. You'd think in the interest of discretion he'd make sure not to park it somewhere where police would have a legal excuse to investigate it. But that's a compound on....

3) No license. So this fool has no valid license. No registration (and I'll assume no insurance) and STILL took his behind to a store and parked the car in a no parking zone.

What kind of special stupid are we dealing with here? And wait. He's unemployed to the extent that he cannot afford to pay the fine that he practically begged to be given, but has enough money to purchase take out food when EVERYBODY *should* know that home cooked meals are far cheaper? What kind of special stupid are we dealing with here?

Look, I'm sympathetic to the man being homeless and it's sad that his daughter has to suffer for his mistakes but this guy walked straight into this problem on his own. It wasn't the city's fault his dumb ass drove on an invalid license in an unregistered car and parked it in a no parking zone while buying food he couldn't afford. His choices landed him in the situation. Lets treat this man like the adult he is and stop blaming the police and courts for his predicament.

The Justice Department found other examples of systemic racial bias in Ferguson. From 2012 to 2014, the Ferguson police issued four or more tickets to blacks on seventy-three occasions, and to whites only twice. Black drivers were more than twice as likely as others to be searched during vehicle stops, even though they were found to possess contraband twenty-six per cent less often. Some charges, like “manner of walking in roadway,” were brought against blacks almost exclusively.

This paragraph makes the same assumptions the DOJ report did, that each group, blacks and whites commit offenses at the same rate. We know this is not the case nationally, or in any town or city where statistics are kept. And I'll say from experience in various mixed environments that walking in the roadway is almost an exclusively non-White, non-Asian thing. In my experience while whites will jaywalk across a street as frequently as anyone else, black youth far outnumber any other group I've seen walking down the street in a manner to disrupt car flow.

Just before noon on August 9, 2014, Darren Wilson was heading for a lunch date with Barb when his radio announced that there was a “stealing in progress” at the nearby Ferguson Market and Liquor. The dispatcher offered a description of the two suspects. Wilson radioed back: “Do you guys need me?” The dispatcher replied that the suspects had “disappeared.” [my underlines]

So Wilson knew what the suspects looked like when he came upon Mike Brown who literally "fit the description".

Brown, Sr., recalls worrying that his son’s physical stature might make him a target for the police. “We had a conversation about just following orders,” he said. “After you thought that you were being disrespected, get a name and a badge number, so your parent can reach out to the police department and file a complaint.” Most important was a simple directive: “Obey.”

I'll take Sr. at his word. It's too bad Mike didn't listen to his father.

Each spring, Duane Foster, a music teacher at Normandy, who knew Brown in passing, tells his seniors, “Since you’ve been a child, you have known every year, from August to June, that you’re going to go to school. . . . For the first time in your life, you won’t have anything set in stone. And that should make you scared.”

Please stop this Foster fellow from giving this speech. If the school and parents have done their job, then the lack of structure shouldn't be scary at all. It should be looked forward to. It should have been prepared for. In fact before it even happened, the youth should have been given enough responsibility so that the transition is from guided freedom to complete freedom and full responsibility. If your kids are scared at the new freedom and responsibility then I suggest you have not done your job properly.

“How do I compete with somebody struggling with poverty? How do I come into a classroom and say that you don’t need to be selling drugs or participating in gang-like activity?”

The above is so sad. An adult, responsible for moulding the minds of young people doesn't know the answer to drug selling and gangs. I think Foster should stick to teaching music and leave the rest to more qualified people.

Michael Brown’s father played an active role in his life, but this isn’t always the case for Normandy students. A third of Foster’s students have a father in jail. Many of them believe, rightly or wrongly, that their father is innocent, and this inevitably shapes how young people in Ferguson view the police.

Suggestion: If papa is in jail, he probably did something wrong. That's what we call a teachable moment. He's your dad but he fucked up. Don't do what dad did. There shouldn't be any confusion here.

Dorian Johnson told me that, before entering the market, he and Brown “never talked about stealing things.” Johnson claimed that they were instead immersed in a discussion “about the Bible and God—how you’re supposed to be as a human going through life.” After Brown stole the cigarillos and they left the store, they resumed this conversation. Johnson also claimed that he didn’t even acknowledge that the theft had taken place, because he didn’t want to rub Brown “the wrong way.” He told me, “I was being a real good friend and staying with him, even though I know he committed a crime,” and added, “It wasn’t like he robbed the store—like he held it at gunpoint or anything—so I didn’t think the guy was really gonna call the police.”

When I did my write-ups on the incident I wrote that Dorian Johnson was one of the best witnesses for Wilson. I honestly think Dorian is and was a person of conscience who was caught between a sense of loyalty and knowing right from wrong. A lot of brothers are put in these situations Johnson has his own issues, but I see him in a far better light than Brown and had HE been shot instead of Brown I would probably feel far more sympathy. As this paragraph shows, Brown was entirely indifferent to the fact that he had tried to (or did) rob a store and assault the manager. I've known people who thought that their criminal activity was normal and it was proper to just go along with your boys when they do criminal shit.

Jonathan Fenderson, who is a professor of African-American studies at Washington University, in St. Louis, told me that young black men are inclined to see the police as an “occupying force.” Intentionally or not, Wilson’s decision to blockade the street sent a message: You will defer to the power that I exhibit, or I am going to force you back into place.

I'm going to hope that Fenderson had more to say than that. Of course it is a power move as well. Police shouldn't exercise power? African-Americans aren't supposed to be subject to the same police procedures as everyone else? There should be special procedures for black folks? Am I reading DailyStormer or The New Yorker? Lets be clear here: Either you think black people are homo-sapiens sapiens with the same capacities as everybody else (A Garveyite position) or you think black people are somehow different than everybody else and need special black[people] codes. Make up your mind 'cause you absolutely cannot have it both ways.

According to Wilson and several witnesses deemed credible by the Justice Department, Brown reached into the Tahoe’s open window, grabbed Wilson, and punched him. This narrative, the report says, is supported by bruising on Wilson’s jaw and samples of Brown’s DNA found on Wilson’s collar, shirt, and pants. It’s not known why Brown did this, and many have speculated that Wilson provoked Brown somehow.

I'd like to know whether the New Yorker deems the witnesses credible. If they do not, I would like to know on what basis they find those witnesses non-credible.

Secondly I'd like to know what people have speculated Wilson to have done that justifies Brown hitting him particularly given the fact that Brown had just finished robbing a store and assaulting the manager. Clearly his prior behavior and his nonchalant attitude about it shows that it is Brown who is most likely prone to violence and provocation rather than Wilson.

Melissa Harris-Perry, the commentator on MSNBC, noted that Wilson’s use of language—much like his use of the word “demon”—was dehumanizing, and conformed to the “myth of the black brute incapable of pain himself bent on inflicting pain on others.” She added, “Americans long have had difficulty in understanding, acknowledging, and having empathy for the pain of black men.”

Melissa- Harris-Perry. Sigh.

Yeah Mz. Harris-Perry, never you mind that this particular black man had just finished robbing a store and assaulted the manager and punched a responding police officer in the face. Let's talk about racial code words.

Aldridge talked with residents, gathering firsthand accounts of what had happened.

As the DOJ report showed a lot of people claiming to be witnesses didn't witness anything at all. So the correct way to present this would have been to say Aldridge spoke with residents, gathering what [they said was] first hand accounts of what [they thought} had happened.

A few days later, he returned and watched, horrified, as looters ransacked a store. He and several others formed a raggedy line of defense. Some looters walked away, Aldridge says; others didn’t. “Some called us house niggers,” he said, his voice cracking.

Guess what I'm called for writing all this truth?

Aldridge told me that, based on what he had heard and read, he believed that Brown was in “surrender mode” when Wilson shot him. When we spoke, he admitted that he had not yet read the Justice Department’s report on the shooting. It was hard not to notice a parallel: both Aldridge and Wilson had turned to the report that buttressed their own world view. It was as if the two Justice Department reports had come to present opposing realities.

So Aldridge, like a whole lot of people simply went with whatever narrative fit their personal views of police, poverty and black folks. The justice department had not presented opposing realities. It presented a reality that a large number of people are unwilling to accept because it shatters the mythos' that they abide by. The DOJ report doesn't support Aldridge's position on what happened between Brown and Wilson at all. He cannot admit it. He like far too many "educated" black people have completely dropped the critical thinking skills that they have acquired for some two bit movement that they believe represents the best interests of the black collective. In a sense they are like Dorian Johnson who didn't want to rock the boat with Brown by pointing out he was a crook who just committed a crime. Instead these people want to behave as if no crime had occurred.

Legitimate questions linger about the shooting. If Brown was unprovoked, why did he reach into the police car and punch Wilson in the face? Why did Wilson fire ten shots? A young activist in Ferguson, Clifton Kinnie, said, “The story doesn’t make sense. Black youth don’t fight police—we run.”

Except when black youth shoot at cops.

In May, I posed this question to Brittany Ferrell and Alexis Templeton—a charismatic black couple who are two of the most visible activists in Ferguson. Templeton said that the two Justice Department reports “pretty much contradict one another,” adding, “You have to say, Damn, if the Ferguson Police Department is racist, and Wilson works in the Ferguson Police Department, that means he might be racist, too.” She said, “They need to open up and relook at this case.” Ferrell said, “The system is going to do whatever it has to do to protect itself. And if that means protecting Darren Wilson, the officer who represents that system, they’re going to do that.”

So if the police department is generally "racist" then one should suspect that everyone in it is racist. OK. Soo....

Since black folks commit crimes at a rate 7x that of the white population, and by the New Yorker's own writing, where there are large numbers of black [and poor} people, there is a lot of crime, we should assume that all blacks are criminals.

Or...since most black males who commit crimes, wear baggy jeans and oversize t-shirts, any black wearing baggy jeans and oversize t-shirt should be assumed a criminal.

See generalizations, group blame and stereotyping works in a whole lot of ways. Do we REALLY want to take it there?

. He urged me to consider what might have happened if Wilson had known Brown, or Brown’s grandmother, and was able to say, “Does Miss Jenny know you’re out here?” Such a question, Reverend Wilson said, has a more potent moral authority.

Clearly Brown didn't give a damn about what his granny or daddy thought. And the Rev should see Wilson's story about the blind, disabled mother. I'll also remind the reader that one grown up in the Canfield apartments saw Brown walking down the street and said to himself that Brown ought to get out the street, but he didn't go out and say that to Brown himself. Why? Why do we expect more from [white] police officers, than we do our own black neighbors?

Michael Brown, Sr., also feels “resentment” toward Wilson, and feels that nothing, not even Wilson’s going to jail, can rectify what happened. When we spoke of the day of the shooting, I asked him what he believed had happened at Ferguson Market and Liquor. “That’s just out of character,” he said. He also insisted that the video didn’t “show all the facts,” though he wouldn’t elaborate. His son, he said, “was an average kid that did teen-age things and had fun and tried to live his life.”

Yet another parent in deeeeep denial about what their kids are doing and are capable of doing. The tape says Brown did it. Johnson was there and said Brown did it. Yet Brown Senior thinks he knows more than the tape, Johnson and the guy who Brown assaulted. Just a reflection of the deeeeeep denial that is afflicting many who are still talking about hands up don't shoot.

Manufacturing a Magical Reality

Magic is the art of deception. The phrase "watch the hands!" comes immediately to mind whenever I see a magic show. No. Chris Angel is not floating in the air. No the person was not cut in half. No, no and no. When we see these tricks what we are seeing is manufactured reality. We have deception, distraction and optical illusion used to create a reality that the viewer has "witnessed" and cannot be told didn't happen.

The current Black Lives Matter movement is much like a magic trick. It's entire purpose is to get the viewer to believe the manufactured reality that they are presenting in order to push an agenda that does not square with the facts. The Black Lives Matter movement is a lie of the worst kind in that it uses a kernel of truth, that there are police that abuse their power and sometimes kill black persons, and gets the people watching to believe that if somehow the police were "brought under control" that black folks as a whole would somehow be better off. Left leaning publications keen to show that they are not "racist" fail to question and critique this movement but allow their publications to be used as a means of manufacturing this reality. Here is the latest example. Over the past 3 days I have received e-mails from the Guardian in regard to what they felt was important US news

So from Friday until today the top stories as it relates to the Black Lives Matter movement were "Campus Police...", "July is Deadliest Month of 2015 for Police-related killings", "Philadelphia Police-related Deaths Plunge, But Is Reform Enough?"

Lets focus on the second title. July the deadliest month of 2015 for police related killings. Well OK. What ELSE has happened in July 2015?

Worst in 43 years?

Hey Guardian did anyone over there think ANY of that is relevant to the "July the deadliest month of 2015?" No one at the Guardian thought that was an important "US News" report? I mean if you want to discuss police killings and police are usually where the crime is happening; why not report on that too?

With their deaths, this year's homicides reached 189, far outpacing the 119 killings by July's end in 2014. Nonfatal shootings have soared to 366, compared to 200 by the same date last year. July's total was the worst since the city recorded 45 killings in August 1972, according to The Baltimore Sun.

And

Perched on a friend's stoop, Sherry Moore, 55, said she knew "mostly all" of the young men killed recently in West Baltimore, including an 18-year-old fatally shot a half-block away. Moore said many more pills are on the street since the riot, making people wilder than usual.

"The ones doing the violence, the shootings, they're eating Percocet like candy and they're not thinking about consequences. They have no discipline, they have no respect — they think this is a game. How many can I put down on the East side? How many can I put down on the West side?"

So it's not police doing the shooting. Probably explains the lack of "Black Lives Matter" protests. And this is why I call this the manufactured magical reality. No sane person who really thinks black lives matter would be spending this amount of time on the police. Sane people know who kills the vast majority of black people. They know that it is those killings that bring police attention to the various places where black people meet their maker at the hands of the police. If you solve the first problem you simultaneously solve the second. But you CANNOT solve the latter before and without solving the former. It's like putting an empty cake pan in an oven having not made the batter. Don't care how long that oven is going, you get no cake.

The Many Issues With The Dubose Shooting

So having finally watched the entire interaction between Dubose and Tensing. There are a lot of issues here BEFORE the shooting even occurred. Let me say this first. For 20 years I have driven my car with a custom front plate in a state that requires 2 identical license plates on a personal vehicle. I have done so with the full knowledge that at any time I may be stopped by the police for having such a setup or come back to my vehicle to find a ticket for not having the plate. I repeat: I FULLY understand that my actions will bring the attention of the police. And I have had the attention of the police. I don't act a fool when this happens. I take my warning or ticket, pay it, and move along. If I don't want the attention of the police I put the proper plate on. This is my choice.

This leads us to Dubose. In the video he claims that it was legal to have only one plate on his car when in fact it was not. I have lived in states that only require one plate and you know what? They ONLY give you one plate. States that give you TWO plates do so because it is what the law requires. So either Dubose was a total idiot OR he knew full well he was lying to try to get out of a ticket. Why not simply admit you took it off? Instead Dubose lied about having the plate in his glove box. So having established himself as a liar on top of not having the required plate, Officer Tensing probably thought he had a possible car thief. Had the Dubose produced the plate, the interaction would have probably ended there (as mine have) but his lack of product lead to more interaction.

Next thing Dubose does is hand the police office a closed bottle of liquor from the driver side floor. Now I don't know the specific laws in Ohio, but I think if you hand a police officer a bottle of gin off the driver side floor of your car, a police officer will think that you were about to do the drinking and driving thing. That's a felony. Now possessing alcohol in your car is not illegal. But I'm going to ask why this bottle was on the driver's side floor.

Now Dubose knew full well that he didn't have his license and registration with him yet he lied and said he had it in the glove box. He was asked multiple times to produce his license by Tensing who actually had a right to ask him to produce that. So lets add the suspicious moments up:

1) Driving with a missing front plate.
2) Having a bottle of Gin on the driver's side floor.
3) Failure to produce a current driver's license.

At that point Tensing asks for Dubose to step out of his vehicle. This was a lawful order unlike the situation with Sandra Bland. Sandra bland produced the papers asked for and had complied with all orders up to that point. There was no probable cause to remove Bland from her vehicle. Dubose on the other hand, had no front plate as required by law and was driving without a license. If you're stopped and cannot produce your license expect to be asked to step out of the vehicle especially if there are issues with the vehicle like a missing plate. If you hand the officer a bottle of Gin too, well yeah, expect to be asked to exit the vehicle.

And this is where Dubose really messed up. When he refused to exit the vehicle, even though he KNEW he had no license on him, HE escalated the situation by pulling back on his door. This is one of the things that bothered my about the commentary I read. Someone said that being stopped for not having a front plate "inflames African-Americans." Lets address this bullshit right now. As I said earlier, I have a custom front plate. I cannot be "inflamed" because a police officer decides to enforce the motor vehicles law that I knowingly violated and decide I'm not going to cooperate. Also the statement implies that there are laws that African-Americans don't have to obey simply because they don't like them. That is a very very dangerous concept for any so called leader to advance. African-Americans have to obey the same laws every body else does, whether they like them or not. If they don't like them, they are free to vote in representatives to change those laws.

It is entirely reasonable to say that Tensing thought that perhaps Dubose was more than just a guy missing a front plate once Dubose refused to exit the car and doubled down by pulling closed his door. However, after that Tensing is completely in the wrong. I don't know if he forgot that he had a body cam on him, but his lying about what happened after that was totally unnecessary. Watching the video, he could easily have said that Dubose refused to exit the vehicle after a lawful stop and not having a license and became combative when he was being removed from the vehicle resulting in a shot. It was Tensing's lie that changed the situation. He was not being dragged. he fell as the car took off.

I don't think Tensing will be found guilty of murder. The video from the body cam does not prove malice or forethought. Tensing is definitely guilty of fraud for the statement he made in regards to being dragged. He might even be guilty of criminally negligent homicide because one could argue that pulling his gun and firing was reckless in that situation. However, the fact that we know that Dubose had no license and no front plate and had resisted lawful orders made after those discoveries (because they establish probable cause) will almost certainly lead to an acquittal if this goes to trial.

They Know Who The Bigger Problem Is

While situations such as Sandra Bland and Eric Garner get the attention, those of us who have the eyes to see and the ears to hear understand what the number one killer of black people are. And the ones who are doing the killing know it too:

Mark Jones, a former special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and an expert on illegal firearms at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, says interviewees consistently tell him, "We are not afraid of the police. We're afraid of other people in the neighborhood who might try to kill us." [my underlines]

Arrested For Being An "Uppity Negro"

Sandra Bland was wrongfully arrested for being an Uppity Negro(tm). The dash cam video proves this beyond any doubt whatsoever:

[This link is broken]

You need to watch the video from the beginning because it is instructive on what was going on in the mind of the officer. The footage starts with him giving a "friendly" warning to a driver he had pulled over. Apparently that person did not have their insurance on them. He's friendly to the driver. It is apparent, later that he EXPECTS that people he pulls over should all be happy about being pulled over.

After giving the warning to the driver he pulls a U-turn and heads up the road. He runs up on Sandra's car, which is in the left lane. Sandra seeing the police car running up behind her quickly pulls into the right lane to let the officer pass. She does so without using her signal. A reasonable officer (or any other person for that matter) would have seen the courtesy given to them and moved to pass the slower moving vehicle. This cop uses that courtesy as a pretext to stop Sandra on a technicality. Let me be clear here, under law the officer has a right to pull Sandra over for non indicating a lane change. However, they have discretion as to the enforcement of such an infraction. I would suggest that because Bland had out of state plates, the officer decided to use his "discretion" to "investigate" an out of stater. It happens in parts of Texas often.

I will also point out that Bland pulled over immediately which indicates that she was cooperative. Cooperative does not mean "happy to be in the situation".

The officer approaches the passenger side of the vehicle (standard procedure) asks for Sandra's documents and asks her if she's OK. Now personally I think the officer was being an ass for asking the person he just inconvenienced whether they are OK. BUt maybe in that part of Texas he expects people to be OK with that. She doesn't say much. He returns to his vehicle to run the plates and whatever else police do in such situations. When he returns to Sandra's vehicle, this time at the driver's side, he asks again if she's OK. She says she isn't and he asks why and she tells him that she didn't appreciate being pulled over after moving over to let him pass. That is reasonable. At that point the entire attitude of the police officer changes and he steps outside the law. It is not resisting an officer to tell him why you're bothered by a stop, particularly after that officer just asked for that information. The old rule applies: don't ask questions you don't want the answers to.

Then the officer goes further into abuse of power by telling Sandra to put out her cigarette. Why? What did her smoking have to do with being given a ticket for changing lanes? Sandra was absolutely right to question him on that. When he then takes her refusal to comply with what is CLEARLY an UNLAWFUL order, he orders her out of the vehicle. Although an officer can order a person out of a vehicle, it must be under probable cause. He has none. You cannot give a lawful order to enforce a previous UNLAWFUL order.

The officer tries to tell Bland that he was going to do her a favor by giving her a warning. This goes back to the stop at the top of the video. He expects everyone to smile and be thankful that he's only wasted his time demonstrating his authority. This is why I say that it is clear that Bland was arrested for being an "Uppity Negro". Once Bland answered his question as to why she was upset he should have given her the ticket and gone about his business and he knows this. Everything that happened after that was because he was personally offended. This was not law enforcement this was ego enforcement.

At this point I cannot say beyond reasonable doubt whether Bland was murdered in the jail cell, but I can say for certain that had the officer at the initial point of contact acted in a professional manner that Bland would be alive today.

Your Reputation PRECEDES You

The next time you hear about a cop shooting a black minor who he thought had a gun. Where on earth would that cop get that idea from?

Tomorrow's Tech Stars Sound Off On Why Silicon Valley Should Embrace Diversity

First watch the video:

Now read carefully on what the kids said in reference to Facebook and Google:

"Companies like Google and Facebook, they're very powerful," says one of the teens, Isaiah. "And they're also very progressive and liberal companies. But according to demographics, there's only like 2 percent of African-Americans at Google and Facebook."

Why?

"I wouldn't be able to get into Facebook, have a programming job or anything if they don't change their percentages in minorities," says another teen, named George.

Really? Why? Does this kid think that Facebook has some 2% Negro quota?

Ahh the "soft racism of low expectations". Who told George that he couldn't get a job at Facebook assuming he is even QUALIFIED to do so unless for some reason Facebook upped it's numbers? And on what basis did whoever told George this "fact" do they make such an assertion? Did anyone inform George the percentages of African-Americans that have advanced computer science degrees?

One of these students said that Google and Facebook NEEDS to increase their diversity if they want to take the next step of being progressive. What kind of bullshit is that? Someone told this kid that Facebook and Google exist to be "progressive". This fellow is in for a rude awakening when he finds out that "progressive" does not pay for electricity or salaries for top flight engineering talent.

What is also quite disturbing about this clip is that in the demands for "representation" not a one of these so called up and coming programmers (Lets see them say 8 years from now) had anything to say as to what they offered Facebook or Google that their current staff does not (and please please please do not talk about the "gorilla" incident. That wasn't racism, that was an honest mistake on the part of a computer).

Only one kid said anything about working for himself (Bravo!). That should have been the attitude of most of these folks. But the real deal kicker? No one mentioned that Jay Z's music streaming venture Tidal is the creation and is maintained by a company with ZERO black folks. It's kinda sad when the African-American front person of an internet based company cannot even build a company (or find one to use) that has at least the number of black folks as "not diverse enough" Facebook.

But we don't wanna have that conversation.

Prison As A LifeStyle Upgrade

There's a lot I can say about this piece on women convicted of tax fraud but this recurring theme stood out to me:

Prison itself isn't bad, said Frazier, the mother of four. Outside, she depended on a $625 a month disability check and food stamps. Here she gets three meals a day, a shower, a roof over her head.

She just misses the kids. It's an extra penalty paid by parents.

"Now that I sit in prison, I say it's not worth it," she said.

I'f I'm reading this right, the part that is NOT worth it is the missing the kids, not the loss of freedom.

It appears that it costs $21k/year/prisoner for federal lockup. Honest question: which way would money be a better return on investment? $7500 or $21K? Of course since not all people on disability or food stamps are committing these frauds so it's not a one to one investment so that would have to be considered. The second thing is even if the "pay outs" were increased, how many of these individuals would have committed the crime anyway?

The English Discover Brown v Board

The Guardian reports on a discovery about English schools:

The education of white pupils is being hampered by increased school segregation on racial grounds, according to analysis by an influential think tank.

A study by Demos pointed out that many schools outside Britain’s big cities are becoming more segregated than the communities they serve.

Real quick note here. How does a country in which whites are the native population that is not a "colonial nation of immigrants" have a problem of segregation? And if it does have such a problem, it would seem to me that it is a problem of their own making. It would seem to me that the government ought not have let in so many non-English as to enable such a thing to happen in the first place.

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of Demos’s mapping integration project and former head of the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE), warned this is dividing society and holding back white children who tend to do better when taught in racially mixed schools.

This reminds me of the Brown V Board decision but in reverse. In Brown V. Board it was argued that black children, in the absence of white children failed to perform because their self-esteem and academic performance depended on being in proximity with white students. Anyone who actually believes that also believes that black students (people) are inferior to whites (and others). What is most striking about this report is that it is using the reverse logic. Whites, who heretofore were considered The Master Race now suffers from lack of contact with his "inferiors" who are actually his inferiors. I know..very confusing.

Launching the report on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Phillips said: “To some extent, in London the clever thing for smart middle-class parents to do is to look for schools which have substantial numbers of Indian heritage children, because the statistics say that their child will benefit from sitting in the same class as those motivated kids.”

Indians you say?

He claimed that greater racial integration in schools would improve community cohesion and increase the educational attainment of ethnic groups, such as white children, who are currently falling behind.

Although studies have actually shown that non-homogenous communities actually have less cohesion. But never mind that. Why are whites (the natives of England) falling behind in education to people who are not natives of the country? I would think that issue would be most alarming.

“White children are the ones who are doing least well. Those white children who are in schools where there are a lot of high-performing minorities tend to do better. There is something about sitting in class with those kids that improves performance ... We are trying to prepare children for a diverse world – schools should reflect that.”

Yup. Someone read Brown v. Board. Odd thing about this claim is that in the US where the same claim was made, when you look at the broader data, the levels of academic achievement between groups is consistent regardless of school types. Asians are at the top, followed by whites with blacks usually trailing way behind.

It is interesting that there is no mention of black students.

Clarence Thomas: Prophet?

In pondering events of the past few years including the recent Supreme Court rulings I have come to the conclusion that it is entirely possible that Clarence Thomas is in a sense a prophet. What would make me come to this conclusion? His statement during his confirmation hearings:

This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.[63]

Of course Thomas was referring to the allegations of sexual impropriety towards Anita Hill. But we know that the reason that Anita Hill was even put forth against Thomas was because he was a black conservative. The same black folks, including me at the time, were perfectly fine with seeing Thomas embarrassed publicly and the chance to keep him off the Supreme Court while simultaneously defending Bill "first black president" Clinton for lying about receiving head from an intern (among other events). Bill Clinton was the "right kind of person". Thomas was not. But if we look at Thomas' statement in a more abstract sense we find that he was in fact telling us what was coming down the pipe.

As I've discussed before the purpose of public lynchings is to keep order(Please note that my posts from that era were done in a program that failed to honor paragraphs. That's why they look like one big run on sentence. Sorry about that). That is, whites who lynched black people who may or may not have been guilty of a particular crime (or social custom) did so to let the surviving blacks know who was in charge and to what ends those persons in charge are willing to go to maintain control.

Once you understand lynching as a tool of a larger purpose, rather than simply as an act of violence then you start to pay attention to the WHY rather than the WHAT. This is of course what Thomas meant when he said:

it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you.

The events of the past few years would justify modifying this statement to read:

it is a high-tech lynching for uppity [straight, generally male, generally Christian], who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to [the new] order, this is what will happen to you.

Isn't that what happened to the Baker? The Florist? Brandon Eich? The people on the "wrong side" of GamerGate? Tim Hunt? The UVA Fraternity members? Hell Donald Trump (who I have my issues with). If anything, we saw during the entire Ferguson episode that there was an actual lynch mob mentality as in black people actually holding signs asking for a lynching. But worse than that there was an actual attitude that if you wished to get at the facts and the truth that somehow something was wrong with YOU.

Just now there have been a bunch of black churches burnt down. Out of 7 so far, only one has been deemed actual arson with an unknown suspect. Yet news [sic] reporters keep showing people talking about how they know it was some white supremacist. Not a single one of these reporters [sic] asked basic questions such as: How do you know? Do you have proof?

Tim Hunt was fired from his job due to the tweets of a person who purposely distorted his presentation. What was worse than the random tweet was that the alleged adults that run the university Hunt worked for didn't even have the maturity to look at the entire situation to find out whether Hunt was in fact putting down female scientists or if he was actually noting how backwards his own attitudes towards women were. Hint: it was the latter.

Now as soon as someone on twitter makes noise, governments and corporations go into full censorship mode. The government can't legally do it yet, but they can certainly lean on corporations. After all, no corporation wants an EEOC or DOJ investigation as to why x,y or z "hateful" [enter subject matter here] is still available in their stores or why x,y or z employee is still employed after making a,b or c statement that the "right group" has found upsetting. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who remembers the old "does not mean we endorse...." mantra. Now "guilt by association" is the new normal, even if the associate is not guilty of anything!

The dictionary defines fascism as:

(sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

When I first learned this term, I focused almost entirely on the race angle. At the time, for me it was the central problem of fascism. I could not conceive of fascism divorced from race. Yet if we were to remove the racial angle and the need for a dictator we could easily see that we are in the formative stage (some say "formed") of fascism. If you step out of line on a growing number of ideas you will find yourself in trouble. Your ability to work, even for yourself, will be destroyed with the full cooperation of the business community and a helping from the state.

One could argue that there is in fact Democratic Fascism. Instead of having a dictator you simply have a growing state apparatus, with "justice departments" that can swoop down on any individual, company, town or state and inflict a high tech lynching with real time feedback from Twitter. All a Democratic Fascism needs is for the elected representatives to be believers in the institutional line and willing to enforce them to the death (of those who oppose of course).

Isn't this all what Clarence Thomas told us would come to pass? Clarence Thomas: Prophet?

First The Fourth Now The First

For those of us who understood the Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage for what it was, we knew that it effectively nullified the first amendment of the US Constitution. We knew that it was only a matter of time before the state would step in and declare free speech and free exercise to be illegal if such speech and exercise did not meet the approval of certain entities. Though some private companies like newspapers decided to gag their audience, private companies are supposed to be able to regulate what appears in their private property. However, I believe today marks the first time that a state agency has explicitly abridged the first amendment rights of a private citizen:

The Oregon official imposed a gag order on the couple, mandating that they “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.

While the state may issue a gag order in such cases like a trial or a settlement case that has a gag provision as a part of it's agreement, the state may not order a private citizens to not discuss their beliefs and activities in public if they so choose. Such activities are explicitly protected by the US Constitution. The order is on pages 42-43 of the decision The flimsy reasoning offered by Oregon:

“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”

In actuality the business refused to participate in a wedding which violated their beliefs. They did not refuse service to homosexuals. Homosexuals, as far as I know the case, can still buy items from that place of business. The way the Oregon court thought[sic] about it was that the Oregon Bureau has a mandate to make sure people aren't discriminated against and if it means restricting your first amendment rights to do that then so be it. Prior to last week's ruling I would have said that based on the Hobby Lobby decision, enumerated rights would triumph over these kids of rules. But since then I believe there is no reason to believe that any court in the US will uphold enumerated rights and if any court does, it is only a matter of running to another with the same or slightly modified argument to get what they want.

And remember, just last week Justice "I am the law" Kennedy told us that Christians and others who object to SSM on religious principles would be free to speak. Well that was quick wasn't it.

Twitter employs only 49 African Americans despite diversity pledges

On the heels of Facebook's report here goes Twitter:

Twitter employs just 49 black people out of a total US workforce of 2,910. The tiny number of African American staff – 35 men and 14 women – represents just 1.7% of Twitter’s US staff.

And what do they do?

The Rev Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow/Push Coalition, who has long campaigned for tech companies to be more transparent about their lack of minority employees, told the Guardian that black people are “becoming intolerant” of Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies’ lack of progress in making their offices more diverse.

And just what are black people going to do about it? Go to their own twitter? Oh wait. Right. There's a black search engine. How's that project going? Imagine being upset because someone built something themselves, that you voluntarily use.

and as Twitter actively exploits its large number of minority users to bring in more advertising revenue.

Twitter be like a slave master yo!

Seriously though. Are we to believe that Twitter management is on some "Lets sell these niggas hard on this advertisement auction block!" Are we to believe that Twitter is not interested in leveraging EVERY SINGLE USER that VOLUNTEERS to use it's "service"? I mean really. If black folks being mad about Twitter is like a slave volunteering to stay on a plantation after the Civil War. If you like it so much you don't wanna leave, then don't complain about the beatings.

African Americans account for 13.6% of the US population, according to the 2010 US census, and Pew Center Research shows that black people use Twitter disproportionately more than white people.

Black people do a lot of things disproportionate to their population. Do we really want to have a conversation about that?

Twitter’s vice-president of diversity and inclusion, Janet Van Huysse, said: “We are committed to making inclusiveness a cornerstone of our culture.”

I would think the most important cornerstone of a business would be say...profitability and hiring the most productive employees (while human employees are needed). Lets be totally real here, how exactly does "inclusiveness" (whatever that's supposed to mean when folks can be subject to mob rule if they have the wrong opinions) affect the profitability of Twitter?

And if the results of the VP's work is 49 people, shouldn't this person be dismissed for lack of results?

It showed that 93.8% of employees were white or Asian, with just 180 people out of a total workforce of 2,910 being drawn from other minorities.

Interesting. Tell me what two groups are largely responsible for the invention of the computing hardware and software in use around the world?

Twitter’s lack of minority employees contrasts starkly with the rainbow nature of its users. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 27% of black adults and 25% of Hispanics use Twitter, compared to just 21% of white people.

Because all companies should have staff that reflects its users. Before you agree with that...you think really really hard...

“I am very disappointed,” Jackson said. “Black people are greater users of the product and capable of doing the jobs, but there has not been an adequate commitment to hire, train and maintain [black people].

That a certain group represents a "greater user" has squat to do with who should be employed by a company. Secondly the issue has never been whether there are black people that can "do the jobs" (and we are assuming these are programming jobs). The actual relevant fact is how many black people there are with the necessary qualifications. We already know that only about 4% of African-American college graduates have a computing degree and that number shrinks dramatically when you move to the level of PhD. Therefore anyone who understands the entire concept of supply and demand as it pertains to skilled labour knows full well that there aren't that many black high level programmers to go around. And really people. just because you can tweet does not mean you can program. And no, just because you set up a WordPress website does not qualify you to program for Twitter or any other high tech company.

“Some people call it ‘Black Twitter’ because we over-index so much, but they still don’t hire more black people. We are becoming intolerant with these numbers, there’s a big gap between their talk and their implementation.”

Translation: We waste a disproportionate amount of time tweeting so hire us.

Jackson said Twitter “should set a timetable to make their workforce look like the market place, and a commitment to make the board of directors more diverse”

Have a seat Mr. Jackson. How about since black people are 13% of the population, the engineers at Boeing ought to be 13% African-American regardless of qualifications. Think hard on that one.....

He said that at the moment, Twitter is benefitting from black people’s love of its medium – which often leads to black issues trending worldwide – without paying enough back to the community. “They hire people they know, they trust and like,” Jackson said. “We’re not in that the circle.”

Twitter owes pay to black communities? Is this that new reparations? I will agree with the latter part of the statement. There is a lot of hiring of buddies and people in certain circles which leads to exclusion. Absolutely. That can be addressed without the untenable comparisons to population demographics.

“It appears that the tech companies seem to treat it as a public relations issue rather than addressing the actual problem. African Americans use social media more than others, the corporations continue to build and profit from that, so it is especially problematic that they do not have an employee base that in any way reflects its users. They have really failed on this.”

A problem for WHO? Twitter needs to be profitable. That is all. If it isn't, that's the only problem they have that is important to Twitter. Notice that COC hasn't even addressed that. Color of Change could give a hoot about what Twitter needs. And this is the bottom line that none of the critics can bring themselves to even discuss:

If this lack of diversity is so bad for business how the hell did all these companies come to be so successful? It's abundantly clear that the product isn't damaged by the makeup of the employees and management. It's pretty clear that Twitter could be just as successful with 0 non-white employees (and I'm certain at one point it was like that). Furthermore I would make a very large wager that if all the black users of Twitter disappeared tomorrow, it would continue to be successful (I can't say anything about profitability). Why would I make such a statement? Wiebo

So The EU Paid The Bankers....

From The Guardian:

Only a small fraction of the €240bn (£170bn) total bailout money Greece received in 2010 and 2012 found its way into the government’s coffers to soften the blow of the 2008 financial crash and fund reform programmes.

Most of the money went to the banks that lent Greece funds before the crash. [my underlines]

They could have just written the cheque to RBI and cut the middle country man out. But really, if this is true then it's pretty clear that it wasn't a Greek bailout it was a bank bailout.

The troika of lenders first stepped in during the spring of 2010 after Athens could no longer afford to finance €310bn borrowed from a wide range of major European banks...

Greek government debt is still about €320bn, 78% of it owed to the troika.

I saw a credit card statement like that many years ago. I advised that person to cut the card up and toss it into a fire.

Wal-Mart apologizes for turning down Confederate flag cake, baking an ISIS cake

And the reason?

“For that reason we did not make the cake. [Netzhammer] brought in the other image of ISIS and really, what happened, was our associate didn’t recognize what that image was and what it meant or it wouldn’t have been made.”

I say that generally that fits for more than Walmart. A lot of people don't recognize the signs and don't know what they mean until they've already FUBAR.

Facebook only hired seven black people in latest diversity count

*laughs hysterically*

Ok I'm done.

The most recent EEO filing available shows Facebook hired an additional seven black people out of an overall headcount increase of 1,231 in 2013. At that time Facebook employed just 45 black staff out of a total US workforce of 4,263.

Really?

Facebook’s black female headcount increased by just one person over 2013 to 11, and the number of black men increased by six to 34. There were no black people in any executive or senior management positions.

Just like where I work. Seems to be standard operating procedure.

Over the same period the company’s white employee headcount increased by 695. There were 125 white people holding executive and senior management positions at the firm.

Similar to where I work. They get hired and run up the ladder, quick fast and in a hurry. What actually bothers me about this though is the sheer hypocrisy of Facebook, Apple, etc. in that they talk a whole lot of game about "diversity" but the senior offices have "No negroes allowed" policies.

“We need a team that understands and reflects many different communities, backgrounds and cultures. Research also shows that diverse teams are better at solving complex problems and enjoy more dynamic workplaces.

Now now Zuckerberg. If that were the case then Facebook wouldn't be doing as well as it is. The fact of the matter is that Facebook does just fine hiring (and not hiring) the people it does. if it were in the shitter then Zuck could say something like that. But the fact is that the hiring practices of Facebook are serving Facebook very well. There is no economic incentive to do anything differently.

Guardian UK

Rise Of The Robots: An Interesting Note On American Spending

So my new read is Rise of the Robots. There is an interesting note on page 53:

Second, although it may appear that virtually everything sold at Walmart is made in China, most American consumer spending stays in the United States. A 2011 analysis by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijin, two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, found that 82 percent of the goods and services Americans purchase are produced entirely in the United States; this is largely because we spend that vast majority of our money on nontradable services. The total value of imports from China amounted to less than 3% of US consumer spending.

The Supreme Court Is Sick

After yesterday's ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States made yet another ruling in which it shows that it's membership has no regard for the Constitution or it's own purpose. Just yesterday Justice Roberts released a ruling in which he said:

(e) Petitioners’ plain-meaning arguments are strong, but the Act’s context and structure compel the conclusion that Section 36B allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any Exchange created under the Act. Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid. Pp. 20–21.

Get that? It doesn't matter what the legislation actually SAYS. It's what we think the congress thought when they voted on it and we should be concerned about the "Calamities" that would ensue if we did our jobs.

Now with the gay marriage ruling we see this from Roberts:

But this Court is not a legislature. Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be. The people who ratified the Constitution authorized co urts to exercise “neither force nor will but merely judgment....

Although the policy arguments for extending marriage to same-sex couples may be compelling, the legal argu - ments for requiring such an extension are not. The fun - damental right to marry does not include a right to make a State change its definition of marriage. And a State’s decision to maintain the meaning of marriage that has persisted in every culture throughout human history can hardly be called irrational. In short, our Constitution does not enact any one theory of marriage. The people of a State are free to expand ma rriage to include same-sex couples, or to retain the historic definition.

And this is his dissent!!

He is using the same language and even references from the dissent in yesterday's ruling to justify is current dissent. How can a neutral judge use two very different lines of reasoning on the very same set of issues? Either the court cannot legislate and think up what is and isn't good law or it can.

It's pretty clear here that the SCOTUS is a corrupted institution that can't keep it's thinking straight and is hell bent on ruling on emotion rather than the law. Peeking at Alito's dissent I saw many references to other countries and the past, but not ONE mention of English common law that is the basis of common law in the US. At this point we can stop saying the US is a country based on the rule of law and say that it is ruled by popular opinion.

Edit: Alito did not mention English common law but Roberts did. For that reason I have struck the sentence from the original. Also Thomas (wow...I'm referencing Thomas...) deep dives into Blackstone, the Magna Carta and the rights of Englishmen.

"Plain Meaning Arguments"

Allow me to present a thought argument. Imagine if you will that you have a child in school and they had a test. A math test. Say that little junior said that two plus two equals three. imagine that the teacher marked the answer correct. Imagine that for every question that junior answered incorrectly, the teacher actually marked it correct. You'd be very concerned right? Concerned enough to go to the school (or at least call) to find out what's going on right? Because since we all know that two plus two equals four, why would any teacher mark any other answer as correct??!! How would you feel if upon asking about the clear discrepancy the teacher told you:

"Although in plain meaning, your argument that two plus two is four are quite strong the context and structure of the problem as well as a desire to not have a calamity lead me to just mark the answer correct."

If you are a sane person your next move would be to the principals office to have the teacher removed.

Lets try another one. imagine you are on trial for murder. And you're in a death penalty state. Say we have an expert witness who is supposed to testify as to the time of death of the person you are accused of murdering. Your alibi is that you couldn't have done the crime because you were too far away to have possibly made it to the crime scene, committed the crime and then arrive back at the location where you said you were. Say that the expert witness had data that showed that the body's drop in temp showed the murder took place 2 hours [ago] but on the stand said it was something like 7. That time difference puts you in the execution chamber. Upon cross examination your attorney challenges the clearly wrong interpretation of the data and the prosecution objects saying that though the plain meaning of the argument is strong, the context and structure of the testimony as well as a desire to not have to go find another witness or are more likely suspect which would be calamitous means we should just let that testimony stand.

Yeah. me too.

Now imagine that there is no appealing this objection, which of course was granted. Well you're dead.

This my friends is what the Supreme Court of the United States did yesterday. In their ruling in favor of the Obama administration we find the following in the summary:

(e) Petitioners’ plain-meaning arguments are strong, but the Act’s context and structure compel the conclusion that Section 36B allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any Exchange created under the Act. Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid. Pp. 20–21.

I haven't read past that. It is unlikely I will because the statement here is so powerful that it will undoubtedly have a profound effect on future courts and the nation as a whole. How is it that "plain meaning arguments" in a court of law be less important than congresses duty to write law properly and for the courts to enforce the laws as written? Consider the recent case in Mass. where a man was caught filming up women's skirts in a store. He was arrested and prosecuted based on what the state thought was the law. They thought that surely the statute meant to include that kind of behavior. The judge in that case read the law and saw that whether the intention was there or not, the law as written did not criminalize the actions of that person. The Mass. legislature did what they are constitutionally bound to do: legislated and created a law that added upskirting as a crime.

This is exactly what the courts are supposed to do. If the legislature wrote a law in a manner that excluded something they may have wanted to included, the legislature must amend that law. It is not for the courts to change the "plain meaning" of the laws to fit whatever views that the justices may have. This is what is meant to be governed under LAW and not men. Consider their very brief explanation for dismissing the "plain meaning" argument:

Petitioners’ arguments about the plain meaning of Section 36B are strong. But while the meaning of the phrase “an Exchange established by the State under [42 U. S. C. §18031]” may seem plain “when viewed in isolation,” such a reading turns out to be “untenable in light of [the statute] as a whole.” Department of Revenue of Ore. v. ACF Industries, Inc., 510 U. S. 332, 343 (1994). In this instance, the context and structure of the Act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.

Reliance on context and structure in statutory interpretation is a “subtle business, calling for great wariness lest what professes to be mere rendering becomes creation and attempted interpretation of legislation becomes legislation itself.” Palmer v. Massachusetts, 308 U. S. 79, 83 (1939). For the reasons we have given, however, such reliance is appropriate in this case, and leads us to conclude that Section 36B allows tax credits for insurance purchased on any Exchange created under the Act. Those credits are necessary for the Federal Exchanges to function like their State Exchange counterparts, and to avoid the type of calamitous result that Congress plainly meant to avoid.

I would agree with this IF the "context" was that there was only that one statement. However I wrote extensively on the subject and showed that the term "state" was used a number of times in relation to Fed and that the paragraph in question, not just the quote in contention clearly never mentions the federal government even though in the context of the legislation, when they wanted to put the federal government on the hook, they were not shy about doing so. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that these justices, like many of the congresspeople who voted for the ACA didn't actually read the document.

But here's another thing with the statement by the court. If the "context of the entire document" is going to be the standard then it's probably time to let the gun control people have a go at the second amendment. It has been pointed out by many that the second amendment's right to bear arms is in the context of a well maintained militia.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

So it is veryeasy with the context argument to say that individuals not connected with a militia have no right to keep and bear arms. It's an easy argument to make on both "plain meaning" and "context" grounds. But perhaps they don't want to in order to avoid "calamity".

Did He Say That?

Doing my morning reading when I saw the following:

This year’s attacks on Jews in Paris and Copenhagen have led to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling on European Jews to immigrate to Israel.

If Jews do it, that would trigger a serious economic crisis in Europe, Kantor warned.

"I think out of three million Jews that are living in Europe at least one million, a very active part or young part, self-sufficient part are going to leave and it will be a disaster, an economic disaster for Europe in general because first of all some supporters, non-Jewish supporters will come with Jews. It's a lot of cash and money currents are going to leave Europe and also businesses," he said.

Three million Jews in Europe out of a population of around 740 million total. That's what? Not even one percent of the total population? If the exit of less than one percent of the total population of Europe would lead to an "economic disaster" then one would think that this extremely small population must have an inordinate amount of economic power in Europe. No? And isn't it usually the case that those holding inordinate amounts of economic power also have inordinate amount of influence in government policy?

I suppose if I were in France and published this, I would be soon hearing that knock on the door.

Five Social Disadvantages That Depress Student Performance

I saw this report two days ago and wanted to address it since education is one of the issues important to The Ghost. Though this report lists 5 disadvantages I'm going to add more particularly for black folks (and not so black folks who are called African-American...ahem...I'll deal with that on another post). The short list is as follows:

This report describes how social class characteristics plausibly depress achievement and suggests policies to address them. It focuses on five characteristics for purposes of illustration:

*parenting practices that impede children’s intellectual and behavioral development
*single parenthood
*parents’ irregular work schedules
*inadequate access to primary and preventive health care
*exposure to and absorption of lead in the blood.

Leaad poisoning is definitely an external factor. A parent that has no idea that there is lead paint in their home that their kid is eating cannot be blamed for that. So lets get to the findings: I want to add something to the talked with children. If the adult is speaking street slang to their children or other forms of so called "ebonics", they are not helping their children in the least bit. In fact I would suggest that it creates a barrier to later learning as proper English has to be learned in the classroom almost like a second language rather than English being primarily improved in the classroom.

Also allow me to take issue with the following:

ECLS-K reports responses by socioeconomic status (SES), using an SES definition including parents’ income, education, and occupational prestige. Such definitions are useful but limited, missing other important social class characteristics. For example, in 2010, the ratio of black to white median family income was 56 percent, while the ratio of black to white median family wealth was 5 percent, owing largely to 20th century housing policy that barred African Americans from purchasing suburban homes that later appreciated in value, a primary source of wealth for households.

While these economic disparities do exist they do nothing to explain why a parent doesn't buy a book for their child. Anyone rolling through the 'hood will note that black folks of "poor" backgrounds have no problems purchasing expensive sneakers, spending inordinate amounts of money on vehicles and of course on weaves of all hues. Also, even within the middle class of black folks who are still behind their white counterparts in wealth, they generally have enough income to purchase books for their children but choose not to. I grew up with a wall of books of all kinds and my parent never made more than $46k/year in her entire life until well after I graduated college. Parents who are bullish on education do what they have to do.

Patrick Sharkey, for example, has shown that the quality of the neighborhood where a child’s mother was raised has a bigger influence on the child’s achievement than the quality of neighborhood where the child was raised.

This was also pointed out in the Bell Curve. Poor smart people have better chances at being successful than poor dumb ones. If you are poor but live in a home that values hard work and education, that will likely pass on to the children who generally will do better than the parent. If you live in a house of deadbeats who think living that life is acceptable, then the children of those people are going to also think that such behavior is OK. This is old news to those of us paying attention. There is something very important in this chart. It shows that on average the HIGHEST SES blacks own less books than the LOWESTSES whites. So the question would be what are the characteristics of this high SES class of black folks that they simply do not read? I would be very interested in how other groups (Asians, Hispanics of various racial backgrounds) rank.

Other research finds that parents on public assistance, unemployed, or with less than a high school education typically provide less cognitive stimulation to children.11 When reading aloud, lower-class parents provide less guidance and are less strategic in building on children’s prior knowledge to expand it.12

This is not surprising. If the parents were prone to "building on prior knowledge" they most likely would not have "less than a high school education and/or be on public assistance. Dropping out of high school is generally a good sign of lack of forward looking thinking and desire for "knowledge expansion".

By age 6, white children have typically spent 1,300 more hours engaged in conversations with adults than black children.

I'll repeat here that not only would these children be lacking the 1300 hours but the quality of the hours that were spent are per previous paragraph probably lacking as well.

How parents shape children’s choice-making, self-direction, and stances toward authority varies by social class. Middle-class parents typically give fewer direct orders, instead providing controlled choices. Lower-class parents expect more deference to authority. Lower-class children typically have more unstructured leisure time where they need not follow adult rules, while middle-class children typically have more structured schedules. [my underlines]

I think the underlined passage directly contradicts the preceding sentence. If a child is in a situation where they do not have to follow adult rules, then expectations of deference to authority (particularly male authority) moot. However; I think there is a great deal of value in "unstructured" leisure time IF it is within a set of boundaries. For example, saying to your children "go outside and play" means they are not sitting in the house watching TV. If they are in the house and told to "play" but play does not include video games, iPads or the like, forces a child to use their imagination which IS good for education. It would probably be best for the researchers to define or refine "unstructured".

Math and reading skills of entering kindergartners in the top and bottom SES quintiles differ by about 40 percentile points in normal distributions.16 Cognitive gaps do not change much from kindergarten to middle school. This does not mean that schools are ineffective with lower SES children; rather, lower SES gains resemble those of higher quintiles, and initial gaps are left mostly unchanged. [My underlines]

Meaning if your kid wasn't very bright in the beginning, he will still not be very bright in the end. Bright children will still continue to acquire and build on prior knowledge as they progress. They don't generally slow down. I brought this up in the "20 Minute Kids" post.

Parents who are more involved in their children’s educations by volunteering outside the classroom, helping their children with homework, and checking their children’s homework have children with fewer behavioral problems in the classroom.

That would be "structured time" no? If they weren't prone to doing that before...

The availability of children’s books and whether mothers read aloud, share meals with their children, use non-harsh discipline, expect their children to help keep their homes clean, are affectionate with their children, and encourage children to contribute to conversation all predict better social skills and fewer teacher-reported behavioral problems. [my underlines]

You know that "non-harsh" discipline is code for spanking right? Oh and we will definitely notice that fathers are mention nowhere. Let me suggest a different formulation:

The availability of children's books and whether mothers and fathers read aloud, share meals with their children, use proper and proportionate discipline, set high expectations of their children's behavior and are affectionate with their children...

We have seen what happens when so called "harsh discipline" is removed from the equation. Teachers assaulted in schools. Kids deciding to not go to class. Kids deciding to act a total fool in class. swift, certain and consistent discipline, sometimes "harsh" is a key factor in the proper socialization of children.

Parents with less education have fewer educational interactions with their children at home. Among low-income African American mothers, those who are less educated tend to provide less assistance and be less supportive and encouraging of their children during home-based teachable tasks like puzzle-making. [my underlines]

Aside from the complete absence of "father" in this paragraph I would like to know whether there is a recorded difference in attitude, specifically in the area of support between mothers and their male children vs. their female children. I would also like to know if any of this relatively hostile environment is the result of any hostility on the part of the mother towards their father that has been redirected towards the children.

Moving on: 51% of black children living without a father in the home?!!!

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Although black children are more likely to be living with the mother alone than white children, the share of both white and black children in single-parent homes has grown, partly because falling real wages have made it more challenging for women to find marriage partners who earn sufficient incomes to support families.

Partly. How about largely because the types of jobs that guaranteed a middle class lifestyle have all but disappeared from the US. How about partly because in some professions there may as well be a "no negro allowed" sign on the door for the low numbers of black people employed but the high level of immigrants that are. You might not "need no man" but clearly your children do.

The number of years fathers work nights before children’s fifth birthdays predicts increased sexual activity for the children when they reach adolescence.

I'm going to take this with a few grains of salt. If they are saying that *Single* father's who work night shifts have these issues, then I'd be prone to believe it. If they are saying that where the mother and father live together and the father is working a night shift while the mother is at home, meaning the children are supervised, then something is very wrong. There is a linked paper so I'd have to read it to be certain.

Children with parents who work non-standard hours are heavier than those whose parents work regular schedules. Lower-middle-class children (those whose families are in the second income quartile) whose mothers have worked non-standard shifts for from one to four years have close to twice the odds of being overweight at age 13 or 14 as children from economically similar families whose mothers do not work non-standard shifts.

They did not say the age of these children, which is relevant but it would suggest that either the parents are "rush cooking" and/or the children are being left alone and therefore are prone to digging in the fridge for food.

Parents with non-standard schedules find it more difficult to spend time with children and engage in cognitively stimulating activities with them.74 For example, for low-income African American mothers of preschool children, each additional nighttime hour of work is associated with a decrease in cognitively stimulating mother–child activities of about 1.5 percentile points in a normal distribution of mothers’ engagement in such activities. Thus, mothers who work a full eight-hour night shift decrease their engagement in cognitively stimulating mother–child activities by about 21 percentile points in such a distribution.

This brings an implication for mothers who decide to pursue additional education (or make up education) after having a child. If this paper is correct and each hour costs the child 1.5 percentage points of less engagement and it doesn't matter what the mother is doing for that hour, it would mean that if she pursues an education after work, the children are losing that much more time. She may become better off financially at the end of x years but how damaging has that been to the child's development?

I'm skipping over the doctor visits and lead issues and going to the recommendations.

The employment-to-population ratio of African American men age 20–24 was below 50 percent in early 2014, the lowest rate for any demographic group.121 We can enhance outcomes for African American children by creating opportunities for their fathers to support them. This requires a national full-employment policy, including public jobs when the private sector is too weak to absorb the unemployed.122 Macroeconomic policy is education policy.

Not sure what utopia this group is living in or imagines will happen but there is never full employment in a society where one is not a farmer or hunter. Secondly, with automation gaining steam jobs are going to get more scarce, not less scarce. Furthermore the jobs that are the last to fall will be the ones that these 20-24 year old, high school drop outs cannot do as they generally lack the IQ to do them. Lastly, in the interim the high levels of illegal immigration and the jobs they perform, places they live and strains they put on the educational systems which poor black people already suffer from only means that such employment opportunities will not show up. If the authors are not willing to face up to these issues then their recommendations are extremely faulty.

Young African American men as a group are less employable because they are discriminatorily incarcerated at very high rates.

Sorry but being jailed because you shot someone isn't discrimination. And no, the white man didn't make you do it.

But when growing numbers of middle-class women are single mothers by choice, we cannot expect lower-income women to delay childbearing indefinitely when we fail to create conditions for economically viable marriages.

And why exactly are middle class women choosing to be single mothers?

With 40 percent of births currently to unwed mothers, even if programs to reduce this rate are effective, single parenthood will continue. Ameliorating single parenthood’s negative outcomes requires reforms discussed above: home-visiting programs like the NFP, high-quality early childhood care and education, and high-quality after-school and summer programs for children whose home lives are unstable and resource-starved. The federal tax code’s child care subsidy is inadequate and its availability insufficient to enable low-wage single mothers to afford high-quality child care.

Lets see...the state should provide resources like medical care. Child entertainment, an environment that is conducive to rearing a child. You know what? That sounds like what we expected fathers to do. So in essence the state should be the daddy. Let me ask you a question: You have a choice between two men to have a baby with. One has a job, some savings, car, decent place to live, BUT you never know. He might bail. The other one has millions coming in every year from recurring income and will never disappear. Which one do you decide to have a baby with? Now about that "why are middle class women choosing single parenthood..."

Live Where You Want?

So I'm reading this piece about "diversifying" wealthy neighborhoods where I found the following:

“We have a history of putting affordable housing in poor communities,” said Debby Goldberg, vice president at the National Fair Housing Alliance.

Maybe that's because that's where the people that can afford it live. Wealthy neighborhoods don't need "affordable housing" cause they can already afford the housing that is there.

The agency is also looking to root out more subtle forms of discrimination that take shape in local government policies that unintentionally harm minority communities, known as “disparate impact.”

There's that garbage concept again.

“This rule is not about forcing anyone to live anywhere they don’t want to,” said Margery Turner, senior vice president at the left-leaning Urban Institute. “It’s really about addressing long-standing practices that prevent people from living where they want to.” [my underlines]

You know what? I'd like to live in Alpine NJ. Maybe a house overlooking the Hudson. No. I want to have a house in the Hamptons. Oh wait. I don't have enough money. But I WANT to live there!!! Let me get the government to make them build a house I can afford in those places.

0.0

Look. News for the cry babies out there. You don't get to live where you WANT to live. You get to live where you can afford to live. That said, let me be clear that I am for rent stabilized places. I am for building places that are affordable for people who are not making 6 figure salaries.

“In our country, decades of public policies and institutional practices have built deeply segregated and unequal neighborhoods,” Turner said.

So long as there are people who make more than other people, there will be "unequal neighborhoods". That's a fact of "free enterprise". Secondly the vast majority of people want and like to live around people who are of the same racial and ethnic backgrounds as them. Why is this a problem? Those who WANT to live in highly mixed neighborhoods find and move into such neighborhoods.

Children growing up in poor communities have less of a chance of succeeding in life, because they face greater exposure to violence and crime, and less access to quality education and health facilities, Turner suggested.

Well there are a few things here. First the "violence and crime". Who is committing all this "violence and crime"? Wouldn't that be the other people in those communities? It certainly isn't people coming in from the wealthy neighborhoods deciding to take a trip "slumming" and shooting and robbing the residents for fun. So why not point out that it is the very residents who are creating this violent and criminal environment? And furthermore why not realize and say that the reason that there isn't "affordable housing" in these wealthy areas is specifically to keep those persons prone to "violence and crime" OUT of their neighborhoods so that they do not become subject to "violence and crime".

“Segregation is clearly a problem that is blocking upward mobility for children growing up today,” she said.

Segregation has been legally dead for decades. Negroes who can afford it can live just about anywhere they want. Restrictive covenants are illegal. Why is this person talking about segregation like it's the 1950s?

More Adventures in One Drop Rule Land

NAACP leader of Washington state chapter lied about being black, parents say

Dolezal’s parents, who are both white, provided a birth certificate and childhood pictures of their daughter to the Coeur d’Alene Press to back up their claims she has been grossly misrepresenting herself. The birth certificate confirmed she was born to the white couple, and the pictures show Dolezal as a pasty, blonde child — a complete contrast the darker skin and curly brown hair she has now...

A black man who Dolezal has publicly claimed to be her son is in fact her adopted brother, they said — a fact Dolezal confirmed to the paper.

Dolezal also lied about growing up in a teepee, hunting for her own food with bows and arrows, being abused by a stepfather and once living in South Africa, her parents said.

When you accept One Drop Rule you inevitably get stuff like this.

I will say this though, She either was keeping some tanning salon in good business or has stock in a spray tan company.

Drinking The Haterade

David MacCaray is hating on horse racing. Just like Tim Wise had to take time out of his day to shit on the bicycle dude who did some impressive stunts while white. David feels the need to shit on American Pharaoh

Consider: When Miguel Cabrera won the “real” Triple Crown, in 2012 (the one in baseball, the one that requires genuine athletic talent and isn’t joined at the hip to pari-mutuel wagering), it hadn’t been done for 45 years, not since 1967, when Carl Yastrzemski led the league in batting average, homers, and RBI.

Now that’s a real achievement, one done by a human being and not by a horse or trained dog. Nothing against animals, mind you. I’ve watched the Kentucky Derby and I’ve watched the Westminster Dog Show, and have been amused, if not overly worked-up, by both. But those aren’t “sporting events.”

Don't let the "Nothing against animals , mind you" distract you. This is full on hateration and holeration to quote on MJ Blige. Look anyone who's daft enough to compare the dog show with horse racing has clearly not run any distance further than couch to toilet while having the runs. The WDS is an entirely different event than the Kentucky Derby. You can't even compare the two. the WDS is perhaps comparable to say NY Fashion Week, with one having more proportional models.

Yeah, running a horse around a mile and a half track and not fall off or break one the legs (as I believed happened during one of the training runs) is a big deal. If it wasn't all that, then it would have been done regularly. And the whole baseball comparison is irrelevant. If you like baseball, then why not just write about that instead of bothering The Derby?

I think the real problem David has with Pharaoh is that he's gonna be breeding real soon now and that bothers people who don't like to think that certain abilities are genetically determined. Oh dear.

Moreover, after Cabrera won his Triple Crown, you didn’t hear the media get all dollars-and-sense about it. You didn’t hear broadcasters speculate about how much more money Cabrera could expect to earn now that he had accomplished this milestone.

Well maybe if they started a breeding program for baseball players (and other athletes) maybe they could start getting dough for impregnating worthy fillies...hmmmmm there's an idea for a business...

Bikini Girl vs. Dead Black People

This past week is a slam dunk example of how out of whack the national consciousness is as it regards the supposed significance of black lives. All week we have heard about the bikini clad young lady who was roughed up by a police officer after disregarding numerous orders to clear the premises of a crime scene investigation (trespass and assault).

While reports of the gun pulling cop have been on repeat little has been said about the trespass and assault that prompted the call to police in the first place. Not a single talking head or writing hand in the MSM has found the courage to ask why the pool party crashers were there in the first place. Or why some of them felt it was appropriate to assault one of the residents.

Of course none of that surprises The Ghost because The Ghost has already explained a number of times that in America, Black people of all ages are considered children and cannot be held responsible for anything they do. Cops should be held to high standards of behavior in the face of angry people who threaten them (and sometimes carry out said threats) but black people should never ever be held to answer for trespassing on someone's property and assaulting people. But that's not even the point here.

The point is that while this stuff has been making the rounds of all major media outlets, Chicago saw it's murder total top 1000

5 persons were killed and 30 wounded just last week!

None of these involved police or bikini clad black girls.

In Baltimore 5 people were shot on Sunday. Just Sunday. There were 43 murders in Baltimore in the month of May alone. That doesn't include ANY of the people who were shot and survived.

Not a single police officer was implicated in any of these shootings. There were no bikini clad black girls involved either. Yet for the past week the top news on major news outlets has been bikini girl who can't follow directions and the cop who put her head to the ground. It is pretty clear then that the so called significance of black lives has nothing to do with actually saving the lives of black people from those who pose the greatest harm to them. Rather it is something else entirely. I know what it is. Do you?

The Purpose Of The Supreme Court According To Counterpunch

I know...I know..I've been putting my foot in Counterpunch's arse of late. But really, some of the stuff that has been showing up there is deserving. Here's the latest by a PhD no less. First:

The Supreme Court has a very mixed track record when it comes to protecting women.

I had no idea at all that it was the duty of the Supreme Court to protect women. Article III of the US Constitution states:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;— between a State and Citizens of another State,—between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Yup. Just as I thought. Nothing at all about a duty to "protect women". This woman has a PhD eh?

As a domestic violence advocate, Criminologist, and activist for a decade, I am deeply concerned that the U.S still fails to prioritize women’s safety.

And here I was thinking that the government shouldn't prioritize any particular group's safety but rather provide safety for all it's citizens equally. And besides going strictly by the statistics, if the state was concerned with the safety of citizens most likely to be victimized by anyone, it would be prioritizing the safety of male citizens. But it must be special to be able to guilt trip people by effectively saying "I have a vagina prioritize me!"

Given that globally more women ages 15-45 die from men’s violence than of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined, far more needs to be done to protect women and girls.

I believe I covered the duties of the Supreme Court above. And I believe the jurisdiction of the US ends about 12.1 miles east of Myrtle Beach, SC. and 12.1 miles west of Malibu Beach CA.

Why is it that these liberals who spent so much time talking about imperialism when they lacked the power, now want to extend US jurisdiction worldwide? Oh right, hypocrites.

In 2000, the court overturned part of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that allowed women to sue their abusers in federal court.

I don't know the specifics of the case but since I'm anti VAWA (because it disregards nearly half of domestic violence victims, men) I do not care what's gutted from that law.

So, we can sue darn near anyone for anything, just not the people who hurt us most deeply.

I actually think we shouldn't be able to sue for darn near anything.

In 2005, the court ruled in Castle Rock v. Gonzales that a town and its police cannot be sued for failing to enforce a restraining order.

As it would surprise many people that police are also not under any obligation to protect citizens. Look it up. As per the case the Supreme Court decision does not say that the police cannot be sued for failing to enforce a restraining order. It actually makes an argument about whether the law in Colorado created a 14th Amendment right that could be acted upon in a federal court. It also recognized that police often use discretion when enforcing the law. This is why you don't usually get a ticket for jay walking though it is an offense in just about every city in the US.

Jessica Gonzales, now Lenahan, had a permanent restraining order against her husband Simon, who had been stalking and harassing her. Simon was prohibited from seeing her son (not his biologically) and the couple’s three daughters except during specified visitation times

That is a misstatement of the restraining order:

On June 4, 1999, the state trial court modified the terms of the restraining order and made it permanent. The modified order gave respondent’s husband the right to spend time with his three daughters (ages 10, 9, and 7) on alternate weekends, for two weeks during the summer, and, “ ‘upon reasonable notice,’ ” for a mid-week dinner visit “ ‘arranged by the parties’ ”; the modified order also allowed him to visit the home to collect the children for such “parenting time.” Id., at 1097 (majority opinion). [my underlines]

I would take a guess that the underlined portion was what the husband used to scoop the children up. It does not appear to have any time constraints at all.

The court held 7-2 that the Colorado statute did not require that police actually enforce restraining orders.

For the same reasons a police officer may decide to not give you a speeding ticket.

What?! Absolutely insane.

No. No it's not.

In 2014, the court seemed to improve, as it determined in United States v. Castleman that a state law requiring persons convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, even when it did not involve force, must still surrender their firearms per federal law. In doing so, the court used a broad interpretation of domestic violence, recognizing it as more than physical.

Broad definitions in law are usually not a good idea. In this case it is even worse since there are people who wish to declare that if you say "unkind words" to someone, then you have committed domestic violence. Lastly:

One of the first things a domestic violence advocate knows is that if an abuser is making claims that he intends to hurt his partner, we should go ahead and presume he will at some point act on them.

Him you say? Sometimes a man fi get kuff:

For those who have issues with reading comprehension, let me highlight the important parts: 1) Men account for 1/3 of domestic violence injuries and deaths. When was the last time you heard this from any of the talking heads you listen to?

2) 50% of reported domestic violence is reciprocal. This was illustrated in the Rice video. They were engaged in reciprocal violence.

3) in 70% of single sided violence women were the perpetrators. For the hard of reading this is when men stand around, or sit around, or lay around and allow themselves to be hit.

The NRA Made 'Em Do It

Michael Pfleger and Jesse Jackson are of the opinion that the NRA is responsible for all the shootings in Chicago

Last night in Chicago, three were killed. And ten were shot just last night. In Chicago.

Let me stop here. "were killed" and "were shot". By whom sir? By whom?

The NRA...

The NRA what? You mean the staff of the NRA were the ones who did the killing and shooting "just last night"?

The NRA lobby...The gun manufacturers and John [garbled] of Chucks want to make you think I'm a gun grabber

Wait. Wait. Who did the "killing" and "shooting"? Shouldn't we be told who did the killing and shooting?

I love life more than the more than the death they are perpetrating

Wait. Wait. Did 'Chucks do the killing and shooting? Is that what is being said here? Is there evidence for this? Because if Michael is saying that the mere existence of a gun shop means high murder rates, then someone needs to explain to me why Tuxedo NY has a gun shop and no murders that I know of.

I'm just tired. Tired of the NRA

You know what I'm tired of? Liberals who treat black people like children and do not hold them responsible for their actions. That's what I'm tired of.

What I want is for Chucks to be responsible

He wants Chucks to be responsible. Not the parents of the kids roaming the streets shooting. Not the people actually doing the killing and shooting. Chucks.

This is why black people will get NOWHERE. Never held to high standards. Just treated like large babies.

Conspicuously Missing

So some South Koreans won the top prize in the recent DARPA challenge.

Here's a photo of the winning teams:

Can you spot the Negro?

Above is the picture of an "American" team, Team THOR:

Team THOR is a union of two robotics laboratories: the Robots and Mechanisms Lab (RoMeLa) at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Lab (GRASP) at the University of Pennsylvania. The team consists of roughly 35 official members composed of graduate students, undergraduate students, and post docs under the guidance of Professor Dennis Hong at UCLA and Professor Daniel Lee at UPenn.

Can you spot the Negro?

How about that team from Florida, Team IHMC? Well I looked through all the linked profiles (there are a number that are NOT linked) and not a negro among them. Now it's certainly possible that there is one or more not linked, I'm not motivated to find out.

The significance here is that while other groups are doing this advanced stuff, we, black folks collectively are doing what?

Only One "Real"Extreme Eh?

So Henry Giroux is of the opinion that there exists only one extreme in politics:

Conservatives such as David Brooks trade in this kind of discourse only too willing to portray leftists as the real extremists in American society. [my underlines]

Given the amount of academic gobbledegook that is present in this fellow's piece I cannot believe that Henry wrote that sentence the way he did by accident. I believe that Henry believes that there is only really ONE REAL extreme in politics and that they are "the right". For Henry the political spectrum probably looks like this: *The Left-------->*American Public*--------->*Republicans*------>*Police*->| Where The Left is the base of rational political thought and everyone else is somewhere to the right of it with police of course being the worst of the worst. His thinking is kind of like the Kelven scale. Either you are at absolute zero or you are not. The only question is how far from absolute zero are you.

Of course political thought is more like the centigrade scale where there is a marking designating "zero" ("frozen" to the common man) and temperatures above and below freezing. When people inhabit such sane scales one can see clearly there are "real" extremes to either side of zero. Neither of them are very comfortable.

Similarly when we look at the Ph scale we find that 7 is neutral. We find that the human body generally functions best when it has a slightly alkaline Ph (7.4), which I will note would be a "right leaning state". Just saying. If ones body goes to far to either extreme then one is either sick, dead, or soon to be dead. Within this optimal Ph level various parts of the body may have specific Ph levels. Saliva is (should be) acidic. So within the human body the interactions of acidic and alkaline sub-environments creates an optimal state.

In politics and society we can and should see these things on a macro level. Being "Left" is not "right" or "Optimal" anymore than being "Right" is optimal. There are times for one to be "conservative" in nature and times to be liberal in nature. If either one of these things come to dominate, then society is screwed.

Beware of commentators who act as if there is only extreme.