It's an independent autopsy and only a partial forensic picture but still, pretty fucking terrible. This just kind of gets worse with every passing day - I think it's pretty clear at this point why the cops are doing what they're doing, there's literally nothing that will make them look better. Doubling down is their only play. What a clusterfuck. The question is whether it sucks more from a racism standpoint, a militarization of the police standpoint, a government coverup standpoint or a bureaucratic ineptitude standpoint. So many things have to go so very wrong to end up where we are. I haven't shared this, I don't think - not on here anyway. I did a ride-along with the LAPD a day or two after Fruitvale. At the time, the going theory was that Mehserle shot Oscar Grant by accident having intended to only tase him. I asked my driver what he thought of that theory. "No," he said. "No way." He went on to describe how the taser is always on one hip and the service weapon the other, how they're weighted completely differently, how you practice shooting with one hand and tasing with the other, how your body acts completely differently... "Still," he said. "Everybody has a bad day." And there it was. Here's a job where you carry a taser, a pistol and a baton. Your car has an M4 assault rifle and an assault shotgun. You're wearing body armor and operating with close air support - I mean, GI Joe didn't have toys like this. And on the one hand, killing a kid is the same level of muscular fuckup as glitching a move on Dance Dance Revolution. And on the other hand, glitching a move on Dance Dance Revolution feels similar to killing a kid. I was just setting up to run interference for youngluck back then. Mehserle went in eight months after Youngluck did. He came out four months before. Youngluck muled 5 kilos of coke for an informant in a DEA reverse sting. Mehserle shot a black kid in the back. It's gotta stop. Or at least get better. Jesus. Six times.
I wonder. I added it up tonight - our health insurance costs $600 a month. We have a $5000 deductible. Those assholes at Blue Shield decided that my daughter's well-child visit and vaccinations weren't covered under our plan. It's costing me $7200 a year for the privilege of paying only the first $5000 of any medical problem we might encounter - realistically speaking, my out-of-pocket expenses are $12,000 a year before my insurance does jack shit. I mean, that's shitty insurance. But shitty insurance beats the fuck out of no insurance when you need it, and Obamacare wasn't aimed at me, it was aimed at poor people. People - including GWB's grandpappy - hated FDR so much they tried to overthrow his ass. Yet he's got a hell of a legacy, outside a few whackadoo monetarists. There's also a giant hole in military conduct caused by drone warfare. The only reason we aren't being deafened by the giant sucking sound is nobody is flying them but us. That said, go to Amazon and try to buy a quadcopter not built in China. And if a UAV pilot at Creech AFB should happen to fire a Hellfire missile at an ISIS tank in a legitimate combat engagement, is the car bomb set off in the Walmart parking lot in Indian Springs NV any less legitimate? The long lens of history can't focus on this administration yet. It can't focus on Ferguson, either. I'm hopeful that more good than bad follows from this point forth, but I don't confuse hope with prediction.
I know that if I was attacked by robots, top priority would be bringing the hurt home to those in control. Which leads to a vicious circle of convenient military idiocy: Fight wars with minimal civilian awareness, instigate terrorism, respond to terrorism by fighting more wars with minimal civilian awareness. Obama seems to think that public engagement isn't something that separates a 'smart' war from a 'dumb' one. I think that the ACA will be a feather in Obama's hat, but not for at least another decade. The mandate didn't address a large number of problems, but will be a catalyst that causes many of them to be addressed. That said, as long as the House remains red, it's going to be slow going. I would guess that he would like to be more than the first black President; however, if that is all that he is, as flagamuffin said, it's enough.And if a UAV pilot at Creech AFB should happen to fire a Hellfire missile at an ISIS tank in a legitimate combat engagement, is the car bomb set off in the Walmart parking lot in Indian Springs NV any less legitimate?
What is this idiocy you talk about? That's a business model, son. If you look at the PNAC as a business plan it all makes perfect sense. All you've gotta do is forget that brown people are people and it's wine and roses. As far as Obama, I think people aren't quite realizing that Bush set us back 40 years. If Obama can get us all the way to 1988 he'll be a goddamn miracle worker.I know that if I was attacked by robots, top priority would be bringing the hurt home to those in control.
And that had fuck all to do with bush, and everything to do with the events surrounding the president. Do you think anyone else would have acted differently? Would a democrate stood by without going to war in the middle east? Would a democrat not have approved of the same economic muckery that bush did in order to boost the economy? Bush didn't set us back forty years. We did.
I don't know why we're even having this debate in 2014, 12 years after the push to invade Iraq. No president since LBJ save for Bush has had the audacity to lie through his teeth to start a war (or escalate in LBJ's case).Do you think anyone else would have acted differently? Would a democrate stood by without going to war in the middle east?
Because you still seem to think it is the fault of Bush for what happened in his term. We have had only a single president since Bush, Obama, who still has yet to go to war in Iraq even after all the things to have happened there with ISIL/ISIS/DumbFucks. Secondly, the conversation is not about LBJ setting the US back fourty years, it is about bush.I don't know why we're even having this debate in 2014, 12 years after the push to invade Iraq.
No president since LBJ save for Bush has had the audacity to lie through his teeth to start a war (or escalate in LBJ's case).