PETAL, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi mayor who sparked outrage when he said he "didn’t see anything unreasonable" about the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody is resisting calls to resign, including from his own town’s board of aldermen.
"Why in the world would anyone choose to become a police officer in our society today?" Petal Mayor Hal Marx tweeted Tuesday, the day four Minneapolis police officers were fired. The 46-year-old Floyd, a black man, was handcuffed and pleading for air as a white police officer kneeled on his neck Monday.
In a follow-up tweet, the Republican directly referenced the Floyd case, saying he "didn’t see anything unreasonable": "If you can say you can’t breathe, you’re breathing. Most likely that man died of overdose or heart attack. Video doesn’t show his resistance that got him in that position. Police being crucified."
#1
"If you can say you can’t breathe, you’re breathing. Most likely that man died of overdose or heart attack. Video doesn’t show his resistance that got him in that position. Police being crucified."
My guess is the medical reports will not be made public.
#6
"Potential intoxicants"? IIUC, it takes a while to get a complete toxicological report so this kind of speculation seems a bit premature.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/30/2020 12:51 Comments ||
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#7
From Skidmark's link: Police had arrested Floyd and were trying to put him in a squad car when he stiffened up and fell to the ground, saying he was claustrophobic, according to the complaint.
I think the prospect of going to jail might make a lot of people claustrophobic. But resisting arrest can be hazardous to your health.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/30/2020 12:57 Comments ||
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#8
He was not choked out, he was not murdered. He died of a heart condition and intoxicants. People in bad health should not fight the police.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
05/30/2020 12:58 Comments ||
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#9
If he had an underlying condition then the cause of death was COVID-19.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/30/2020 14:53 Comments ||
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#10
If he had an underlying condition then the cause of death was COVID-19.
Strangely enough, that might actually be the underlying cause. There have been patients who did walk-ins, were tested for the virus and immediately put on ventilators because their lungs had sustained damage equivalent to the kind mountain climbers get from being up too high for too many days.
They were ambulatory until their vital organs suddenly packed it in. The final straw and all that. Tack on alcohol and narcotic drugs, and I'd expect the symptoms to be worse.
#11
It does not sound like his being black was much of a factor.
Still cops need to be aware of optics. These cops actions caused a string of events that has cities burning. Time to reevaluate police rules and training in a few cities.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WATE) — A Tennessee police chief’s response to the death of George Floyd, who died while in Minneapolis police custody, is going viral on Twitter with more than 600,000 likes.
On Wednesday, Chattanooga Police Department Chief David Roddy called on law enforcement officers who don’t see a problem with what was captured in disturbing video of the arrest to turn in their badges.
"There is no need to see more video. There’s no need to wait to see how it plays out. There is no need to put a knee on someone’s neck for nine minutes. There is a need to do something. If you wear a badge and you don’t have an issue with this, turn it in."
#2
I assume that any Caucasian who becomes a cop in USA is crazy. Sooner or later, he'll have to confront a black perp and die or use "excessive" force.
#3
Sh*t runs down hill. City hall is uphill from Police HQ. Police HQ is uphill from the precincts. The top rank in the precinct is uphill of everybody else in that "house." So, guess how that works out.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/30/2020 12:37 Comments ||
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#4
You don't see a problem with judging a case based on 10 seconds of amateur video that you've seen on TV?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
05/30/2020 13:15 Comments ||
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[PJ] "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans," President John F. Kennedy said at his inaugural in 1961. Today, this generation is passing that torch to invite a new generation of barbarians to burn and loot and pillage, not serve and protect.
The modern urban mayor is epitomized by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has chosen not to crack down on the barbarians torching his city, but encourages them to keep the flames hot because "The symbolism of a building cannot outweigh the importance of life." That laughable, sophomoric statement isn’t going to save anyone or any structure.
That building is not a "symbol." It has value to the person who owns it. And that’s the problem with Frey and the generation of snowflakes who are moving into positions of power and responsibility. Quite simply, they don’t believe in private property. In fact, they see private property as a genuine evil. So, of course, it doesn’t matter if you burn it. It’s not worth protecting.
We saw this same attitude in Baltimore in 2015 when Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake expressed the notion that protesters should be given space to destroy.
#5
/\ CNN may have indeed "asked for it." Any publicity is 'good publicity.' CNN attacked by anarchists makes them 'CNN' look centrist and helps migrate the bullshi* to the South.
I would certainly NOT discount the possibility of well funded, leftest sleeper cells existing in major metro areas, awaiting opportunities and instructions. CV-19 crisis is passing. A new kak disturbance is urgently needed by the media, police haters, and Never Trump left.
Everyone knows the Old South is ultimately to blame [sarc].
#8
I would certainly NOT discount the possibility of well funded, leftest sleeper cells existing in major metro areas, awaiting opportunities and instructions.
I was informed yesterday that the Midwest Antifa Facebook page had boasting and videos on it, but when I looked there was nothing of interest.
#9
That building is not a "symbol." It has value to the person who owns it.
Yes, it does. And if they insured it, the insurance company sees it as "risk" while it is insured and "loss" when they pay a claim against that insurance. Then they have this little thing they do called "subrogation," which could be interesting for the city and the rioters both.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/30/2020 8:52 Comments ||
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#10
#8 I was informed yesterday that the Midwest Antifa Facebook page had boasting and videos on it, but when I looked there was nothing of interest.
tw, I'd defer to Besoeker regarding these folks' m.o. but it seems likely that a sleeper cell could hide easily inside one of the hugely popular vehicles devoted solely to politically correct mayhem.
Jack Dorsey has no problem with the left-wing Twitter channel (?) called "Unicorn Riot" which had 150,000 followers before the riots. Wouldn't be surprised if they have several times that number of followers soon.
#11
"That building is not a 'symbol.' It has value to the person who owns it."
Once upon a time, in America, young people aspiring to careers in practical affairs in fields such as law, government or business were taught the supreme importance to our western civilization of that bedrock idea, inherited from the Romans and enshrined at the center of English common law, of property. John Locke held that the right to property was on a par with those of "life" and "liberty."
As opposed to post-modern bullshit about property as nothing more than a "symbol."
#13
Snowflakes don't go to the "vibrant" parts of town and they are going to be quietly pissed that the "vibrant" part of town came and wrecked stuff in their neighborhoods. But they will vote for more of the same anyway.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/30/2020 12:32 Comments ||
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#14
This IS the Snowflake Generation. They riot because thdy werr invited to and they know there will not only be no consequences - they will in fact be rewarded with massive social credit. They're freedom fighters now - and we are the actual targets.
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/30/2020 13:59 Comments ||
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#17
...and just like that a distraction from Blue governors COVID-19 failures and Trumps standing in the polls. Quick another pail of crap to throw against the wall to see if it sticks.
[CityJournal] Once again‐as in Baltimore, following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, and long before then, in Watts, Newark, and Detroit‐the actions of rioters in an American city are being described as protests, or, by PBS, no less, as an "uprising." Even Minneapolis's hapless mayor, Jacob Frey‐under siege as his city burns‐graces the violence with understanding. "There is a lot of pain and anger in our city," said Frey, adding that "this is what happens" when long-standing issues of race and poverty go unaddressed. It's "not just because of five minutes of horror," Frey noted in a press conference, referring to the images of George Floyd gasping for air beneath a police officer's knee, "but 400 years."
Frey rightly called for the arrest of the officer, Derek Chauvin, and Chauvin has now been arrested. But Frey was wrong to ascribe anything close to justifiable motives to those who have torched a police precinct building and a youth center and looted stores serving their own community. It's as if we have learned nothing over two generations about what happens when public officials give license to the lawless, letting marauders proceed under cover of high-mindedness. We expect as much from inflammatory activists like Al Sharpton but deserve better from elected officials charged with protecting property, lives, and livelihoods.
It's time, again, to cite the work of political scientist Edward Banfield, whose seminal book about urban life, The Unheavenly City, includes a chapter, both relevant and prescient, entitled, "Rioting Mainly for Fun and Profit." In the wake of the 1960s' riots‐43 people died in the deadliest, in Detroit in 1967‐Banfield asserted that it is "naïve to think that efforts to end racial injustice and to eliminate poverty, slums, and unemployment will have an appreciable effect upon the amount of rioting that will be done in the next decade or so." This before the full rollout of the Great Society‐and, long afterward, the riots in Los Angeles, Baltimore, and now Minneapolis, where a $30 million affordable-housing project was just destroyed. Banfield's lesson was plain: Young men, not stopped swiftly and sternly by police, will be emboldened to loot and set buildings afire, simple for the anarchic thrill of doing so. The failure to distinguish between protest with purpose and lawlessness would fan the flames.
Banfield would likely judge Mayor Frey harshly, not least for withdrawing police from the city's Third Precinct and permitting rioting to go on in order to avoid confrontation. Yes, investigate the incident; yes, take stock of the Minneapolis police department. But don't dignify violence by calling it a protest, and don't abdicate your responsibility as a public official to uphold the rule of law and civil order.
Of course, Floyd's life matters‐but so do the hopes, dreams, bank accounts, and insurance costs of the small-business owners, including African-Americans, who provide goods and services to that precinct. Long before the death of Floyd, Frey's administration had made the idea that Minneapolis suffered under a legacy of racism part of its governing message. It's a bridge too far to connect such rhetoric with the current explosion of violence, but it does prove Banfield's point. No one truly concerned with the aspirations‐and grievances‐of American blacks should confuse riots with protests.
Historic images out of #Minneapolis of a police precinct on fire. A police station has not been destroyed or even overrun in decades if ever, not even during the Watts unrest of 1965, the Rodney King unrest of 1992 or the Ferguson unrest of 2014. pic.twitter.com/LuF5khymy1
#1
Banfield would likely judge Mayor Frey harshly, not least for withdrawing police from the city's Third Precinct and permitting rioting to go on in order to avoid confrontation.
I wonder if the mayor's choices were constrained by the tools at his disposal. The Minneapolis police force doesn't seem to be professional or competent. Justine Diamond's death at the hands of a poorly vetted and trained Somali cop comes to mind. I seem to have a vague recollection of some sort of affirmative action kerfuffle, but I could be wrong.
Maybe the MPD lacked the manpower to deal with the rioters. Maybe the mayor feared the MPD lacked the competence to suppress a riot without turning it into a bloodbath for one or both sides. Or maybe he just punked out.
#2
Doh! Forgot to mention another option: the National Guard. If the cops can't handle the situation, calling in the Guard seems obvious. But in this case, since Trump already suggested it, that course of action is off the table.
The City of Minneapolis has been run by the Democratic Farmer Labor Party since 1978.
#9
Justine Diamond's death at the hands of a poorly vetted and trained Somali cop comes to mind.
Somali-American policeman Mohamed Noor was thoroughly vetted at every step, and then the horrible results at each step were completely ignored. The political masters were determined to have their very own Somali policeman to show off as soon as it could be arranged.
#16
/\ The lack of "rioting" in Chicago following the Memorial Day carnage (12 KIA, 30 or so WIA). Yet another missed event. I must have been mowing the lawn.
#19
Walz said neither the City or the State had the numbers to stop the riots, in effect asking the Feds to step in so he can claim clean hands and blame Trump when the first looters get toasted.
1. Frey is a gutless POS. It's not beyond the realm of possibility, that he let this happen, to help the Dems chances in Nov. Orange Man Bad - caused riots due to Nasty Tweets, or some such.
2. Head of the MN Nat'l Guard - says never got a mission statement from the Gov - couldn't make up his own and send extra troops in.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/30/2020 11:00 Comments ||
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#24
Re 1968 analogy I don't see how these riots could benefit a hapless doddering white goof candidate like Biden.
The only scenario in which the Dems gain would be a repeat of 1992, when the LA riots fed into an existing "narrative" about how GHW Bush was inattentive to suffering on the home front caused by the recession of 1991.
Watch the Dems shift their narrative to memes like Trump's "inattention," "negligence," "tweet-fiddling while Rome burns" etc
#27
Our Intelligence community and FBI should be deeply involved right now in Determining internal and external sourcesfor the BLM and Antifa organizers behind this. the Governor of MN has it right this is terrorism and has foreign aspects to the coordinations ongoing. I am certain there are Chinese and/or Russian forces involved.
#29
#23 ^ because 1968 worked out so well for them.
It did, though.
They lost the next two Prez elections, but the generation of '68 marched through the institutions and now have (or have bequeathed to their heirs) the commanding heights of the culture, politics, law and even key sectors of the economy.
At some point a critical mass of the populace will either figure out that elections only have consequences when the left wants them to -- or the left will win everything.
#30
^ there's an older conservative professor of German at UC Santa Cruz who has an interesting theory about the 1968 generation's long march through the institutions. He says it was a freak (pun intended) event that happened only because the anti-war / hippy / New Left movement corresponded with the unprecedented and enormous increase in college enrollment during the 1960s. His claim is that, absent such a huge increase in numbers overall, the relatively small far-left minority would never have attained anywhere near so much influence over our culture and society as they did.
If he's correct, and if as seems likely we are about to see a historic decline in the US college population over this decade, then it could well be the case that we've passed the high water mark of leftist influence and we will see our culture and political center of gravity move back toward something more normal.
#37
Been warning on The 'burg for more n a year this was coming our way in 2020. Well here we are n the bodies and ruined lives are stacking up. It's way past time that Antifa is crushed and their sponsors sent to prison. No more fokkin around
Posted by: Rex Mundi ||
05/30/2020 16:21 Comments ||
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#38
The Anti-Riot Act (18 US Code Section 2101) makes it a federal crime to travel across interstate lines for the purpose of urging or instigating violence in furtherance of a riot.
The left is trying to throw shade at Barr for invoking this, but they're not likely to succeed: it's been upheld recently by a liberal Clinton-appointed judge in Virginia -- because it was used, ironically, by prosecutors against two white rioters in the Charlottesville riots.
That judge trashed their arguments to dismiss with a very strong defense of the Anti-Riot Act here -- this opinion seems like a fine precedent for future reference.
#41
M. Murcek, agreed but an opportunity is an opportunity and the chance that the Feds say or do something they can use are increasingly possible in a time of crisis.
#45
"We're not sure it's connected to the protests" is the Party Line, just like "We'll probably never know if it was connected to Islamic Terrorism™" when someone yells Allah Akhbar while killing civilians
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/30/2020 19:29 Comments ||
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#47
Local rag looked up the bookings - most are from Minnesota not carpet baggers; however, the "pro's" are much less likely to let themselves be arrested, so still an open question.
[Babylon Bee] MINNEAPOLIS, MN—Colin Kaepernick arrived at the Minneapolis riots last night, saying he was excited to be a part of the looting and violence.
Kaepernick tried out for the riots by throwing bricks into windows but missed every time. He was able to rush a Molotov cocktail into a target window and then spike it on the ground, but then he caught fire. Finally, in a last-ditch effort to get selected for one of the riot squads, he filmed a workout video and sent it to various protester organizations but hadn't heard back as of publishing time.
"While we appreciate Kaepernick's enthusiasm, we need someone who can lob a Molotov cocktail accurately," said a representative for the rioters. "We wish him the best of luck in his future rioting career. We believe Kaepernick will land on his feet with another rioting organization. Maybe Chicago or Louisville will want him."
The former quarterback quickly blamed his failed rioting career on racism.
Posted by: Minnesota Pats ||
05/30/2020 9:58 Comments ||
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#4
Hair stripes? Give me my hair back and I'll have them tomorrow. My old barber would be useless to the task, but somebody in Atlanta surely knows how to do that.
#1
So, if plane cabins are going to be "deep cleaned" after every flight, does that mean an end to passengers who just can't seem to manage basic hygiene?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/30/2020 8:49 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
[Washington Examiner] - It was early in the virus fight when only a few in the United States had died of COVID-19 that White House coronavirus task force leader Vice President Mike Pence and Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx went into the Oval Office with bad news.
Armed with a chart titled "Goals of Community Mitigation," they showed President Trump that without the type of social distancing they wanted him to put in place, the virus death toll could reach 1.5 million to 2.2 million. With it, the range would drop to 100,000 to 240,000.
"The president said, ’Do it.’ No hesitation," recalled the vice president.
The public was urged to stay apart and stay home to "flatten the curve" of the pandemic, and they did. Today, as many states begin to ease rules near the Memorial Day holiday week turning point that Pence predicted, the death toll, tragic as it is, stands at the lowest level on that chart.
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] In an interview with Hezbollah’s Noor Radio on Tuesday, on the anniversary of the liberation of southern Leb ...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... from Israeli occupation, Hezbollah’s leader His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah ...The satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb... spoke about the liberation and thoroughly listed all the "resistance’s achievements" since that moment in history. However,
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
05/30/2020 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under: Hezbollah
[UNZ] America’s most enduring problem, the problem of the blacks, has been dominating the news this week.
The attitude I bring to these news stories is one of weary despair. They are reported and discussed publicly in language that bears very little relation to reality, so that most of what is said and written is worthless. To speak honestly about race is in fact taboo, and genuinely shocking, for most Americans.
Here’s an example. Back in 2016 a black man in Charlotte, North Carolina was shot dead by a cop, also black. There were protests, riots, vandalism, and looting. A Republican local congressman, Robert Pittenger, said the following thing:
The grievance in their minds—the animus, the anger—they hate white people, because white people are successful and they’re not.
Congressman: Charlotte protesters ’hate white people because white people are successful’, by Peter Holley, Washington Post, September 23, 2016
Nailed it, Congressman. But of course, Pittenger was denounced by all the Great and the Good, and to save his career, issued a groveling retraction.
I’ve been living in America since the second Nixon administration, with some intermissions. For many years I assumed that this clinging to unreality could not be stable; that truth and honesty would eventually prevail; that we’d learn to speak to each other openly and frankly, citizen to citizen.
To my dismay and despair, the opposite has happened. As the years pass, we drift further and further from reality and truth, deeper and deeper into fantasy and denial. It’s very depressing; like being in a plane that’s lost all power and is just going down, down, down.
I love this country; I have two kids who will live out their lives here. Yet it’s hard to see any hope for America when the landscape of social commentary is smothered in shallow lies and infantile delusions.
#1
I love this country; I have two kids who will live out their lives here. Yet it’s hard to see any hope for America when the landscape of social commentary is smothered in shallow lies and infantile delusions.
UNZ Review paranoid racist babble! "Hope & Change" as well as lasting peace are coming. You'll see.
#5
I get so tired hearing about "400 years of oppression" and all that. The ultimate in victim mentality.
I bet if you asked ANY of those rioters to provide individual examples of "oppression" or "discrimination", you would probably get the blank-stare look.
#6
You can be as honest as you want to be about minority involvement in crime. If you like your job, etc., it's probably a good idea to keep your thoughts to yourself.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/30/2020 12:39 Comments ||
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#7
^ learned that lesson over 40 years ago.
Denial + virtue-signaling + politically-correct BS is what this country forces as a kind of restitution payment from current generations of Americans for the sins of a small % of the antebellum US population
#11
Cornel West traces US unrest to Obama failures: 'Black faces in high places' couldn't deliver
Skidmark I would say "wouldn't Deliver". They were too busy stuffing their pockets with taxpayer money and selling influence. Look at Maxine Waters. Many others.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
05/30/2020 14:33 Comments ||
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#12
#3 Cornel West traces US unrest to Obama's failures: black faces in high places couldn't deliver
Funny, that was the same major conclusion that Stephan Tgernstrim and other historians came to about the 1960s urban riots: the Johnson administration and the mainstream Civil Rights movement raised young urban blacks' expectations beyond reasonable levels. When they didn't see a major change in their personal living situations, they turned to violence and looting.
Thernstrim in 1998:
[The Kerner Commission] report does not satisfactorily answer the elementary question of why the riots occurred when and where they did.
Because the commission took for granted that the riots were the fault of white racism, it would have been awkward to have had to confront the question of why liberal Detroit blew up while Birmingham and other southern cities -- where conditions for blacks were infinitely worse -- did not. Likewise, if the problem was white racism, why didn't the riots occur in the 1930s, when prevailing white racial attitudes were far more barbaric than they were in the 1960s?
#14
Read somewhere recently that one of the problems in the black community is they spend rather than save so there is nothing to pass along to the next generation which ensures every generations starts at zero. This doesn't happen in more successful cultures that save to help their kids have a better life.
#15
IMO, RJ, if you have a country where one group (90% of population) has an average IQ of 100*, and another group (10% of population) has an average IQ of 80 - that country is better be damn clear about the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
PETAL, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi mayor who sparked outrage when he said he "didn’t see anything unreasonable" about the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody is resisting calls to resign, including from his own town’s board of aldermen.
[CityJournal] Once again‐as in Baltimore, following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, and long before then, in Watts, Newark, and Detroit‐the actions of rioters in an American city are being described as protests, or, by PBS, no less, as an "uprising." Even Minneapolis's hapless mayor, Jacob Frey‐under siege as his city burns‐graces the violence with understanding. "There is a lot of pain and anger in our city," said Frey, adding that "this is what happens" when long-standing issues of race and poverty go unaddressed. It's "not just because of five minutes of horror," Frey noted in a press conference, referring to the images of George Floyd gasping for air beneath a police officer's knee, "but 400 years."
[Babylon Bee] MINNEAPOLIS, MN—Colin Kaepernick arrived at the Minneapolis riots last night, saying he was excited to be a part of the looting and violence.
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
I love this country; I have two kids who will live out their lives here. Yet it’s hard to see any hope for America when the landscape of social commentary is smothered in shallow lies and infantile delusions.
