official state media for a secessionist republic of one
It’s Sunday. If you don’t know that means Shamelessness, where have you been for the past year?
What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.
From Jesse Walker at reason online:
The speech will do little harm in itself. Schools shovel nonsense down boys’ and girls’ throats every day; today’s menu will offer just a slight change of flavor. But that’s why the protests are healthy. It’s a rare day when parents across the country explicitly tell their kids to take their lessons with a grain of salt.
Children shouldn’t be taught that the president—any president—is a beloved paternal figure with a grand plan for everyone. (From the original lesson plan:
Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?) Children should be taught the truth: that presidents are polarizing figures who are constantly dogged by controversy. That Americans don’t always agree about proper public policy, and sometimes they disagree enough to do something as drastic as keeping their kids home from school. That politics is about conflict, not listening in unison while a friendly face on a TV screen dispenses instructions.— Jesse Walker, reason online (2009-09-08): The President Is Not a Guidance Counselor
As you may know, today is National Labor Relations Day, a day of mourning and reflection in this secessionist republic of one. But, hey, it’s also a three day weekend, and since yesterday I was out all night at a literary function with L., I’ll also take this day to note that it’s never too late for Shamelessness.
What have you been up to over the past week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.
Senior Corporal Michael Vaughn. Dallas Police Department. Dallas, Texas. Cops are here to keep us safe by killing 10-year-old kids on bicycles while tearing down the road at at 30 mph over the posted speed limit with no lights and no sirens on.
If you or I slammed into a 10 year old on a bicycle while doing 70mph in a 40mph zone on a major thoroughfare like Belt Line, we’d be crucified in the press and locked away for years on a vehicular homicide charge. But since Senior Corporal Michael Vaughn is a cop, even though he admittedly violated established policies for safe driving and killed a 10-year-old child through his recklessness, he gets Internally Investigated and given a one day vacation from his job.
Officer William Salyers, Officer Lauren Bacha, Officer Zachery Moody, Officer George Romero, Officer Deborah Dennison, and Officer Bryan Wood. Chattanooga Police Department, Chattanooga, Tennessee. A young black man named Alonzo Heyward was drunk and extremely upset after a late-night party. He grabbed a rifle and pointed at himself late at night and started talking about killing himself. His family and his girlfriend were trying to talk him down like civilized people do when someone is not in his right mind and threatening to hurt himself; unfortunately, in the meantime, some bystanders saw what was happening and they called in the Chattanooga city government’s police force — who proceeded to Take Control Of The Situation by means of escalating belligerence, by surrounding Heyward, by pointing guns at him, by hollering orders, and then — when he didn’t snap to and immediately obey their bellowed commands — by tasering him down to the ground. And then lighting him up with 59 shots after he’d already been knocked to the ground when he moved to get up.
Cops claim they felt threatened by the way he moved
his rifle after he’d already been knocked to the ground by a 50,000-volt electric shock. The three non-cop witnesses on the scene (Heyward’s father, his girlfriend, and a neighbor) say they never saw Alonzo Heyward threaten to hurt anyone other than himself. They also say that Heyward was lying prone on the porch on top of the rifle when the cops first opened fire. While the cops were stopping to reload — they fired three volleys of gunfire before they decided Heyward was dead enough — the non-cop witnesses say they heard Alonzo Heyward ask the cops Why are you shooting me?
Since he certainly never posed a threat to anyone other than himself before the cops showed up, and almost certainly posed no threat to the cops, either, in spite of their belligerent escalation of the situation, it’s a good question.
Meanwhile, the six cops who lit up Alonzo Heyward — Officer William Salyers, Officer Lauren Bacha, Officer Zachery Moody, Officer George Romero, Officer Deborah Dennison, and Officer Bryan Wood — were given a seven day paid vacation by the Chattanooga city government’s police force (so that they could take some time to see a shrink at taxpayer expense). They are now back on the streets. The boss cops insist that their hired muscle acted properly; Police Chief Freeman Cooper told a Chattanooga radio station that the hail of bullets used to mow down Alonzo Heyward shows that our people did what we trained them to do.
No doubt. Eugene O’Donnell, a former government cop and government prosecutor who now teaches up-and-coming government cops how to be cops at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice [sic] in New York City, defended the hail of gunfire, saying that there is no magic number
of shots to fire and that Unfortunately this is replicated all over the country.
(Well, yeah.) When you send the police they bring deadly force with them. They come armed and they come predisposed to use force.
No doubt. Which is precisely why legally unaccountable, heavily-armed twitchy government cops shouldn’t be sent into volatile situations where a person hasn’t threatened to harm anyone other than himself.