Sunday Blues

It is sunday. I am on the way to play the ponies and see Ziggy Marley with Les, no time really to chat. But for those of you whose internal engines like to baste in the fires of perpetual outrage there is plenty out there for you.

Interesting article in the New York Times about the lack of police shooting data, Are Police Bigoted? Race and Police Shootings: Are Blacks Targeted More? by Michael Wines.

Dr. Klinger and Dr. Rosenfeld, among others, examined all 230 instances over 10 years in which officers of the St. Louis police fired their weapons (the city’s police, in contrast to the police in Ferguson involved in Mr. Brown’s shooting).
Their conclusions, presented last November at the American Society of Criminology’s annual meeting, were striking. Officers hit their targets in about half of the 230 incidents; in about one-sixth, suspects died. Of the 360 suspects whose race could be identified — some fled before being seen clearly — more than 90 percent were African-American.
But most interesting, perhaps, was the race of the officers who fired their weapons. About two-thirds were white, and one-third black — effectively identical to the racial composition of the St. Louis Police Department as a whole. In this study, at least, firing at a black suspect was an equal-opportunity decision.In laboratory experiments, meanwhile, subjects who see pictures or videos of threatening activity, and then punch “shoot” or “don’t shoot” buttons befitting their evaluations of the threat, consistently “shoot” black suspects more often than white ones.

The article also cites contrary data, the entire topic worthy of discussion.

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Putin slowly ensnares his prey like a cat toying with a mouse that he knows is not capable of  responding, or even surviving for that matter, once he decides to pounce. He is obviously controlling every detail of the events in the Ukraine. NATO is now shown to be a sham, even though Ukraine is not a current member, they wan't nothing to interfere with their gas spigot. Poland could be the next domino in Putin's vision of a Greater Russia. Nobody in the neighborhood is going to step up and meaningfully resist and Putin knows this very well A very dishonest and ruthless man. Russia will remain a pariah until there is a leadership change.

In Hong Kong, all the 1997 promises of democratic self rule by mother Beijing are now seen to be empty bullshit as they vote today that all HG candidates must be pre approved by the mainland. Russia and China, another glowing advertisement for the honesty of communist statists.

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Man gets tossed out of an Orlando City Council meeting for not standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Ah, Sinclair Lewis. "It's not fair to our troops for him to refuse to stand."

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I assume most of you are aware of the St. Paul skyway incident. The bank never asked any white people to move from the area that was not evidently marked as private property. But police more and more serve businesses and corporations and the rights of the citizen are now clearly subordinate. Love the cop here, I'm not your brother.

The following audio leads into an interesting dialogue on gender and police dynamics. Some of it is very disturbing, be warned:



Cops seem to get real bothered by the whole topic of individual constitutional rights.

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Ted Cruz calls Obama a pussy today. Our President does seem a bit disengaged of late, World is okay, just messy, blame social media, no current policy for Syria, etc. He is plainly disinterested nowadays and appears to be just mailing it in. Unfortunate for everybody.

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Cool dermal cultural artifacts department:

Was hanging out in front of the shop with Andre when a guy walked by.

"Excuse me sir," I mentioned to the tall late fifty something. "Is that a freebird tattoo?"

He looked down at his bare arm. "Ya. About forty years ago. I was seventeen."

"You from the south?"

"Hollywood."

"Cool."