Lily Salter's Blog, page 1011
August 20, 2015
Donald Trump is the harbinger of GOP doom: The devastating history lesson that Republicans are completely ignoring
The Rev. Jon Pedigo remembers he was so angry that he instantly started planning a march from his parish in Morgan Hill to St. Joseph's Cathedral in San Jose. "I said, 'I'm going to take that frickin' cross from the church and I'm gonna walk to the downtown cathedral and demand that something be done,'" said Pedigo, now pastor of East San Jose's Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. The next morning he led 250 people on the 21-mile walk. "We filled the cathedral. We filled the park. It was amazing," he said. "We said, 'We will not put up with this, and we want God on our side.'"I don't know if God was on their side, but Latinos certainly did not put up with it. The Republicans lost the Hispanic vote in California and have almost zero chance of getting it back. The Hispanic population saw the ethnic hatred on display during that period, hatred which was enthusiastically stoked by the Republican Party of California. The demographic trends in the state guarantee that the GOP will be in the minority in California for a very long time to come. And needless to say, if anyone thought that after 20 years a younger generation might forget why their parents rejected the Republicans and give them another look, the primal scream we are currently witnessing in the 2016 presidential primary is giving them quite a refresher course. This story is almost a political cliche, repeated so constantly in the media that it has the taint of a moldy morality play rather than a true political lesson. Certainly it's been an article of faith that the Republican Party simply cannot win nationally if they don't find a way to attract some Latinos. This is what they themselves wrote in their post 2012 autopsy report:
If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay aityttention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percentof the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans,also view the Party as unwelcoming. President Bush got 44 percent of the Asian vote in 2004; our presidential nominee received only 26 percent in 2012. As one conservative, Tea-Party leader, Dick Armey, told us, “You can’t call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you. We’ve chased the Hispanic voter out of his natural home.” We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.Unfortunately, their base doesn't care about their models and their projections; they are convinced that immigrants are the source of all their troubles. And that's a huge problem. A recent analysis by Latino Decisions shows that Republicans need to get at least 47 percent of the Latino vote in order to win in 2016. (For reference, Mitt Romney won 23 percent.) I'm going to take a wild guess that Donald Trump and the cowardly clown car that's chasing him have just made achieving that 47 percent figure impossible. It's very hard to imagine that they can put this nativist genie back in the bottle. Even Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican American, was out on the campaign trail talking about "anchor babies" yesterday. All GOP candidates are getting drawn into the vortex, whether they want to or not. And some of them are just diving in had first: https://twitter.com/dennis_welch/stat... https://twitter.com/dennis_welch/stat... In case it wasn't clear, Dr Ben Carson, the man who is coming in second in many GOP presidential polls, is suggesting that the government use armed drones to kill undocumented immigrants. Pete Wilson was a bleeding heart liberal by comparison. Wilson's California Republicans are now a rump party of angry, white Tea Partyers and a handful professional operatives. It's a very sad motley group compared to the political juggernaut that produced Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. There used to be an old saying "As California goes, so goes the nation" meaning that California was the modern, forward thinking laboratory of democracy which started the trends that everyone else would soon follow. If that holds true in this case of this Latino bashing, the Republicans are in for a long road back from the debacle of 2016.There was a time back in the day when I used to joke with Republican friends that I would happily support a constitutional amendment that would ban all presidential candidates from California if they would agree to ban all presidential candidates from Texas. The joke, of course, was that my home state, "the land of fruits and nuts" had recently produced two conservative Republican presidents, Nixon and Reagan, while Texas's most recent contribution had been the man responsible for "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today." In those days of post-Vietnam liberalism, that trade seemed like an excellent deal for the left. It's hard to imagine now, but from Harry Truman until Bill Clinton, California voted for a Democratic president just one time, for John F. Kennedy in 1960. With a few exceptions here and there, California also voted for GOP governors and senators more often than not. Even though the state had a longstanding reputation for social tolerance and cutting-edge cultural change, politically speaking it was a conservative state, as red as Texas is now. There were obviously many factors that contributed to California's evolution into the deep-blue state it is today, from demographics to the culture war. But none of those things come close to the damage that then-Governor Pete Wilson did to the longterm interest of the California Republican Party in 1994, when he scapegoated Latino immigrants as the cause of all the state's woes. Wilson was running for re-election, and as part of his campaign to distract from the economic failure of his first term and increase turnout among his base, he ran on a platform promising to crack down on undocumented workers, and enthusiastically supported the infamous Prop 187, which set up a statewide system designed to deny any kind of benefits to undocumented workers, including K-12 education and all forms of health care. (He also supported a constitutional amendment to repeal birthright citizenship, currently guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.) Here's the famous "they keep coming" ad the Wilson campaign ran that year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLIzz... Wilson ultimately won the race, and the proposition passed with a 57 percent majority. Nativists everywhere applauded and cheered. Unfortunately, they apparently didn't know how to count. They failed to recognize that Latinos were the fastest growing ethnic minority in the state, and knew very well that all this "concern" about undocumented immigration stemmed from a nativist impulse that had little to do with economics and everything to do with bigotry. The reaction was swift:
The Rev. Jon Pedigo remembers he was so angry that he instantly started planning a march from his parish in Morgan Hill to St. Joseph's Cathedral in San Jose. "I said, 'I'm going to take that frickin' cross from the church and I'm gonna walk to the downtown cathedral and demand that something be done,'" said Pedigo, now pastor of East San Jose's Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. The next morning he led 250 people on the 21-mile walk. "We filled the cathedral. We filled the park. It was amazing," he said. "We said, 'We will not put up with this, and we want God on our side.'"I don't know if God was on their side, but Latinos certainly did not put up with it. The Republicans lost the Hispanic vote in California and have almost zero chance of getting it back. The Hispanic population saw the ethnic hatred on display during that period, hatred which was enthusiastically stoked by the Republican Party of California. The demographic trends in the state guarantee that the GOP will be in the minority in California for a very long time to come. And needless to say, if anyone thought that after 20 years a younger generation might forget why their parents rejected the Republicans and give them another look, the primal scream we are currently witnessing in the 2016 presidential primary is giving them quite a refresher course. This story is almost a political cliche, repeated so constantly in the media that it has the taint of a moldy morality play rather than a true political lesson. Certainly it's been an article of faith that the Republican Party simply cannot win nationally if they don't find a way to attract some Latinos. This is what they themselves wrote in their post 2012 autopsy report:
If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay aityttention to our next sentence. It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy; if Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies. In the last election, Governor Romney received just 27 percentof the Hispanic vote. Other minority communities, including Asian and Pacific Islander Americans,also view the Party as unwelcoming. President Bush got 44 percent of the Asian vote in 2004; our presidential nominee received only 26 percent in 2012. As one conservative, Tea-Party leader, Dick Armey, told us, “You can’t call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you. We’ve chased the Hispanic voter out of his natural home.” We are not a policy committee, but among the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party’s appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.Unfortunately, their base doesn't care about their models and their projections; they are convinced that immigrants are the source of all their troubles. And that's a huge problem. A recent analysis by Latino Decisions shows that Republicans need to get at least 47 percent of the Latino vote in order to win in 2016. (For reference, Mitt Romney won 23 percent.) I'm going to take a wild guess that Donald Trump and the cowardly clown car that's chasing him have just made achieving that 47 percent figure impossible. It's very hard to imagine that they can put this nativist genie back in the bottle. Even Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican American, was out on the campaign trail talking about "anchor babies" yesterday. All GOP candidates are getting drawn into the vortex, whether they want to or not. And some of them are just diving in had first: https://twitter.com/dennis_welch/stat... https://twitter.com/dennis_welch/stat... In case it wasn't clear, Dr Ben Carson, the man who is coming in second in many GOP presidential polls, is suggesting that the government use armed drones to kill undocumented immigrants. Pete Wilson was a bleeding heart liberal by comparison. Wilson's California Republicans are now a rump party of angry, white Tea Partyers and a handful professional operatives. It's a very sad motley group compared to the political juggernaut that produced Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. There used to be an old saying "As California goes, so goes the nation" meaning that California was the modern, forward thinking laboratory of democracy which started the trends that everyone else would soon follow. If that holds true in this case of this Latino bashing, the Republicans are in for a long road back from the debacle of 2016.
This new TV show is totally not about Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes and Scientology — and we’ll be watching, for sure
The script details star Kyle West's commitment to a spirituality center called The Institute for the Higher Mind, which is headed by a controlling best friend who takes credit for his career. Toward the end of the pilot, West offers to take the actress, who is at the time best known for her work on a TV series, on a date to Italy, where Cruise and ex-wife Katie Holmes were first photographed.But lest you jump to any conclusions, the story warns us that, “an E! spokesperson says Cruise isn't the inspiration: "The character of Kyle West is not at all inspired by anyone in particular. Kyle is a young, rising star who was recently left at the altar by his actress ex-girlfriend." Funny, it reminds me of a book that just came out last month: The novel “Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper,” in which celebrity ghostwriter Hilary Liftin writes about a fictional Midwestern girl who breaks out on a television show aimed at teens and then marries a huge movie star tied up in an unusual religion. But lest you think there’s any resemblance to anyone you might have heard of, forget it. Sure, there are some superficial similarities, Leah Greenblatt writes in her review:
But the strange, secretive religion her future husband is devoted to is called One Cell studios, not Scientology, and he jumps on the roof of a car to publicly declare his love for his young bride, not on Oprah’s couch, and a lot of other details (her hair, his height) could be anyone’s, which the book’s press materials are very, very careful to point out. So let’s all just be cool and agree that nobody needs to call their legal team, okay?I think I know the answer to the hasty disavowals (like Liftin’s statement about which actress she had in mind for her novel: “It's really pulled from all of the tabloids and this tabloid culture that we all absorb.... It's not about a specific celebrity but all the drama we see play out every week in the gossip magazines.”) — nobody wants a lawsuit from Cruise, Holmes or the Church of Scientology on their hands. But why are we so obsessed by the romantic life of Cruise, who may – depending on which gossip site you read – be on his way to a fourth marriage with a young, British-born personal assistant? Well, for reasons we can’t figure out, despite a saturation on all media fronts, new and old, fascination with celebrity just continues to grow. And Cruise has pulled off the unusual trick of staying bankable – whether in action-movie sequels or serious dramatic fare -- since the ‘80s. The idea that someone as rich and famous as him would need help finding a wife is sort of head-spinning. But the other context here is that arranged marriage – of which these may be a kind of, uh, eccentric version – has been part of human history vastly longer than the romantic marriage that currently reigns in the post-industrial West. And in a lot of the world, it’s still the rule. The Cruise rumors (and their thinly-veiled fictional counterparts) then become eerie throwbacks to the days when families made sure young people married well and to everyone’s — including the religious institution in charge's — advantage. One of the most chilling and fascinating parts of Lawrence Wright’s Scientology exposé “Going Clear,” which Alex Wright used as the base for his chilling HBO documentary released earlier this year, is the story of actress Nazanin Boniadi – now probably best known from “Homeland” – who, as Wright writes, was tried out as a potential Cruise wife and later dismissed. (The Church of Scientology contests some of Wright’s chronicle; it is summed up here by Business Insider.) According to Wright, the actress was pressured in the early stages to break up with her boyfriend. When she refused, he says the Church presented her the next day with a dossier of his cheating. (That relationship ended pronto.) The mind reels contemplating the whole story of this and the other failed attempts to get one of the world’s most eligible bachelors a "suitable" wife. And you don’t have to read the tabloids to be fascinated by them. One day, maybe these rumors will be put to rest as the real truths comes out — one way or another.We’re here to declare a new, budding subgenre: dramatizations of the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes romance that insist they are not really dramatizations of the Cruise-Holmes romance. The latest is a pilot acquired by E!; the Hollywood Reporter describes it as “about a TV actress named Megan Morrison who is offered a $10 million marriage contract with Hollywood's biggest star.” The huge Hollywood star, it turns out, is involved in an unusual religion. Here’s what the Reporter says about "The Arrangement," to be helmed by “Mad Men” producer Jonathan Abraham and which has recently begun casting:
The script details star Kyle West's commitment to a spirituality center called The Institute for the Higher Mind, which is headed by a controlling best friend who takes credit for his career. Toward the end of the pilot, West offers to take the actress, who is at the time best known for her work on a TV series, on a date to Italy, where Cruise and ex-wife Katie Holmes were first photographed.But lest you jump to any conclusions, the story warns us that, “an E! spokesperson says Cruise isn't the inspiration: "The character of Kyle West is not at all inspired by anyone in particular. Kyle is a young, rising star who was recently left at the altar by his actress ex-girlfriend." Funny, it reminds me of a book that just came out last month: The novel “Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper,” in which celebrity ghostwriter Hilary Liftin writes about a fictional Midwestern girl who breaks out on a television show aimed at teens and then marries a huge movie star tied up in an unusual religion. But lest you think there’s any resemblance to anyone you might have heard of, forget it. Sure, there are some superficial similarities, Leah Greenblatt writes in her review:
But the strange, secretive religion her future husband is devoted to is called One Cell studios, not Scientology, and he jumps on the roof of a car to publicly declare his love for his young bride, not on Oprah’s couch, and a lot of other details (her hair, his height) could be anyone’s, which the book’s press materials are very, very careful to point out. So let’s all just be cool and agree that nobody needs to call their legal team, okay?I think I know the answer to the hasty disavowals (like Liftin’s statement about which actress she had in mind for her novel: “It's really pulled from all of the tabloids and this tabloid culture that we all absorb.... It's not about a specific celebrity but all the drama we see play out every week in the gossip magazines.”) — nobody wants a lawsuit from Cruise, Holmes or the Church of Scientology on their hands. But why are we so obsessed by the romantic life of Cruise, who may – depending on which gossip site you read – be on his way to a fourth marriage with a young, British-born personal assistant? Well, for reasons we can’t figure out, despite a saturation on all media fronts, new and old, fascination with celebrity just continues to grow. And Cruise has pulled off the unusual trick of staying bankable – whether in action-movie sequels or serious dramatic fare -- since the ‘80s. The idea that someone as rich and famous as him would need help finding a wife is sort of head-spinning. But the other context here is that arranged marriage – of which these may be a kind of, uh, eccentric version – has been part of human history vastly longer than the romantic marriage that currently reigns in the post-industrial West. And in a lot of the world, it’s still the rule. The Cruise rumors (and their thinly-veiled fictional counterparts) then become eerie throwbacks to the days when families made sure young people married well and to everyone’s — including the religious institution in charge's — advantage. One of the most chilling and fascinating parts of Lawrence Wright’s Scientology exposé “Going Clear,” which Alex Wright used as the base for his chilling HBO documentary released earlier this year, is the story of actress Nazanin Boniadi – now probably best known from “Homeland” – who, as Wright writes, was tried out as a potential Cruise wife and later dismissed. (The Church of Scientology contests some of Wright’s chronicle; it is summed up here by Business Insider.) According to Wright, the actress was pressured in the early stages to break up with her boyfriend. When she refused, he says the Church presented her the next day with a dossier of his cheating. (That relationship ended pronto.) The mind reels contemplating the whole story of this and the other failed attempts to get one of the world’s most eligible bachelors a "suitable" wife. And you don’t have to read the tabloids to be fascinated by them. One day, maybe these rumors will be put to rest as the real truths comes out — one way or another.We’re here to declare a new, budding subgenre: dramatizations of the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes romance that insist they are not really dramatizations of the Cruise-Holmes romance. The latest is a pilot acquired by E!; the Hollywood Reporter describes it as “about a TV actress named Megan Morrison who is offered a $10 million marriage contract with Hollywood's biggest star.” The huge Hollywood star, it turns out, is involved in an unusual religion. Here’s what the Reporter says about "The Arrangement," to be helmed by “Mad Men” producer Jonathan Abraham and which has recently begun casting:
The script details star Kyle West's commitment to a spirituality center called The Institute for the Higher Mind, which is headed by a controlling best friend who takes credit for his career. Toward the end of the pilot, West offers to take the actress, who is at the time best known for her work on a TV series, on a date to Italy, where Cruise and ex-wife Katie Holmes were first photographed.But lest you jump to any conclusions, the story warns us that, “an E! spokesperson says Cruise isn't the inspiration: "The character of Kyle West is not at all inspired by anyone in particular. Kyle is a young, rising star who was recently left at the altar by his actress ex-girlfriend." Funny, it reminds me of a book that just came out last month: The novel “Movie Star by Lizzie Pepper,” in which celebrity ghostwriter Hilary Liftin writes about a fictional Midwestern girl who breaks out on a television show aimed at teens and then marries a huge movie star tied up in an unusual religion. But lest you think there’s any resemblance to anyone you might have heard of, forget it. Sure, there are some superficial similarities, Leah Greenblatt writes in her review:
But the strange, secretive religion her future husband is devoted to is called One Cell studios, not Scientology, and he jumps on the roof of a car to publicly declare his love for his young bride, not on Oprah’s couch, and a lot of other details (her hair, his height) could be anyone’s, which the book’s press materials are very, very careful to point out. So let’s all just be cool and agree that nobody needs to call their legal team, okay?I think I know the answer to the hasty disavowals (like Liftin’s statement about which actress she had in mind for her novel: “It's really pulled from all of the tabloids and this tabloid culture that we all absorb.... It's not about a specific celebrity but all the drama we see play out every week in the gossip magazines.”) — nobody wants a lawsuit from Cruise, Holmes or the Church of Scientology on their hands. But why are we so obsessed by the romantic life of Cruise, who may – depending on which gossip site you read – be on his way to a fourth marriage with a young, British-born personal assistant? Well, for reasons we can’t figure out, despite a saturation on all media fronts, new and old, fascination with celebrity just continues to grow. And Cruise has pulled off the unusual trick of staying bankable – whether in action-movie sequels or serious dramatic fare -- since the ‘80s. The idea that someone as rich and famous as him would need help finding a wife is sort of head-spinning. But the other context here is that arranged marriage – of which these may be a kind of, uh, eccentric version – has been part of human history vastly longer than the romantic marriage that currently reigns in the post-industrial West. And in a lot of the world, it’s still the rule. The Cruise rumors (and their thinly-veiled fictional counterparts) then become eerie throwbacks to the days when families made sure young people married well and to everyone’s — including the religious institution in charge's — advantage. One of the most chilling and fascinating parts of Lawrence Wright’s Scientology exposé “Going Clear,” which Alex Wright used as the base for his chilling HBO documentary released earlier this year, is the story of actress Nazanin Boniadi – now probably best known from “Homeland” – who, as Wright writes, was tried out as a potential Cruise wife and later dismissed. (The Church of Scientology contests some of Wright’s chronicle; it is summed up here by Business Insider.) According to Wright, the actress was pressured in the early stages to break up with her boyfriend. When she refused, he says the Church presented her the next day with a dossier of his cheating. (That relationship ended pronto.) The mind reels contemplating the whole story of this and the other failed attempts to get one of the world’s most eligible bachelors a "suitable" wife. And you don’t have to read the tabloids to be fascinated by them. One day, maybe these rumors will be put to rest as the real truths comes out — one way or another.
“Star Wars: Force Awakens” poster artist: “It is far and away probably going to be the best ‘Star Wars’ you’ve ever seen”
Donald Trump says he has no choice but to “scare” Pope Francis: “I’d say, ‘ISIS wants to get you'”
I'm gonna have to scare the Pope because it's the only thing ... The Pope, I hope, can only be scared by God. But the truth is -- you know, if you look at what's going on -- they better hope that capitalism works, because it's the only thing we have right now. And it's a great thing when it works properly.
How exactly would Trump "scare" the Pope?
"I'd say, 'ISIS wants to get you,'" Trump told Cuomo. "You know that ISIS wants to go in and take over the Vatican? You have heard that. You know, that's a dream of theirs, to go into Italy."
Trump, a Protestant, said that while Pope Francis had become increasingly political, he has "great respect for the Pope," adding, "I like him. He seems like a pretty good guy."
Republican presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, has taken to the burgeoning conservative tradition of criticizing Pope Francis in a new CNN interview. Speaking to CNN's Chris Cuomo, the billionaire businessman said he took issue with Pope Francis' warnings that capitalism can be "toxic" and "corrupt" and said he is "going to have to scare the Pope" in response to his critique of the free market:I'm gonna have to scare the Pope because it's the only thing ... The Pope, I hope, can only be scared by God. But the truth is -- you know, if you look at what's going on -- they better hope that capitalism works, because it's the only thing we have right now. And it's a great thing when it works properly.
How exactly would Trump "scare" the Pope?
"I'd say, 'ISIS wants to get you,'" Trump told Cuomo. "You know that ISIS wants to go in and take over the Vatican? You have heard that. You know, that's a dream of theirs, to go into Italy."
Trump, a Protestant, said that while Pope Francis had become increasingly political, he has "great respect for the Pope," adding, "I like him. He seems like a pretty good guy."
Josh Duggar’s Ashley Madison account: Celebrity infidelity doesn’t justify the outing of hacked clients
St. Louis police deploy tear gas against protesters in night of unrest over killing of 18-year-old man
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Officers arrested at least nine people and deployed tear gas amid protests in St. Louis over the death of a black 18-year-old who was fatally shot by police after he pointed a gun at them, the city's police chief said.
Chief Sam Dotson said at a news conference late Wednesday that a group of protesters who had blocked an intersection threw glass bottles and bricks at officers and refused orders to clear the roadway. Inert gas was used and when that had no effect on the crowd, police used tear gas to clear the intersection, Dotson said. Those arrested face charges of impeding the flow of traffic and resisting arrest, he said. A vacant building and at least one car were burned.
The demonstration was one of several Wednesday after the killing of 18-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey of St. Louis. Tensions were already high after violence erupted during events marking the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old fatally shot last year by a police officer in nearby Ferguson.
Two police officers serving a search warrant encountered two suspects Wednesday afternoon at a home in a crime-troubled section of the city's north side, one of which was Ball-Bey, the chief said. The suspects were fleeing the home as Ball-Bey, who was black, turned and pointed a handgun at the officers, who shot him, Dotson said. He died at the scene.
Both officers, who are white, were unharmed, according to a police report.
Police are searching for the second suspect, who they said is believed to be in his mid- to late teens.
Dotson said four guns, including the handgun wielded by the dead suspect, and crack cocaine were recovered at or near the home, where illegal guns were found during a police search last year.
Dotson did not say whether the handgun found in the dead man's possession was loaded. Messages seeking comment about that from police were not immediately returned Thursday.
A man and woman inside the home were arrested, Dotson said.
Roughly 150 people gathered Wednesday afternoon near the scene of the shooting, questioning the use of deadly force. Some chanted "Black Lives Matter," a mantra used after Brown's death.
As police removed the yellow tape that cordoned off the scene, dozens of people converged on the home, many chanting insults and gesturing obscenely at officers. Several yelling onlookers surrounded individual officers.
"Another youth down by the hands of police," Dex Dockett, 42, who lives nearby, told a reporter. "What could have been done different to de-escalate rather than escalate? They (police) come in with an us-against-them mentality. You've got to have the right kind of cops to engage in these types of neighborhoods."
Another neighborhood resident, Fred Price, said he was skeptical about Dotson's account that the suspect pointed a gun at officers before being mortally wounded.
"They provoked the situation," Price, 33, said. "Situations like this make us want to keep the police out of the neighborhood. They're shooting first, then asking questions."
The law gives police officers latitude to use deadly force when they feel physically endangered. The Supreme Court held in a 1989 case that the appropriateness of use of force by officers "must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene," rather than evaluated through 20/20 hindsight.
That standard is designed to take into account that police officers frequently must make split-second decisions during fast-evolving confrontations, and should not be subject to overly harsh second-guessing. The Justice Department cited that legal threshold earlier this year when it cleared Ferguson officer Darren Wilson in Brown's shooting.
Protests have become a familiar scene across the St. Louis region since Brown, who was black and unarmed, was killed on Aug. 9, 2014. A St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department declined to charge Wilson, who resigned in November.
Some of those who protested Ball-Bey's killing had already spent the morning in downtown St. Louis, marching to mark the anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Kajieme Powell. He was fatally shot by two St. Louis officers after police said he approached them with a knife. Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce is still reviewing the case to determine whether lethal force was justified.
In addition to the nine arrests at the Wednesday night demonstration, officers responded to reports of burglaries in the area and the fire department was called after a car was set ablaze, according to Dotson. He blamed the crimes on people seeking "notoriety" in a neighborhood "plagued by violence."
On Sunday, a 93-year-old veteran who was part of the famed Tuskegee Airmen - the U.S. military's first black aviators - was the victim of two crimes within minutes in the same area. The veteran was robbed and his car was stolen, but he was unhurt. His car was found Tuesday blocks from where it was taken.
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Officers arrested at least nine people and deployed tear gas amid protests in St. Louis over the death of a black 18-year-old who was fatally shot by police after he pointed a gun at them, the city's police chief said.
Chief Sam Dotson said at a news conference late Wednesday that a group of protesters who had blocked an intersection threw glass bottles and bricks at officers and refused orders to clear the roadway. Inert gas was used and when that had no effect on the crowd, police used tear gas to clear the intersection, Dotson said. Those arrested face charges of impeding the flow of traffic and resisting arrest, he said. A vacant building and at least one car were burned.
The demonstration was one of several Wednesday after the killing of 18-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey of St. Louis. Tensions were already high after violence erupted during events marking the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old fatally shot last year by a police officer in nearby Ferguson.
Two police officers serving a search warrant encountered two suspects Wednesday afternoon at a home in a crime-troubled section of the city's north side, one of which was Ball-Bey, the chief said. The suspects were fleeing the home as Ball-Bey, who was black, turned and pointed a handgun at the officers, who shot him, Dotson said. He died at the scene.
Both officers, who are white, were unharmed, according to a police report.
Police are searching for the second suspect, who they said is believed to be in his mid- to late teens.
Dotson said four guns, including the handgun wielded by the dead suspect, and crack cocaine were recovered at or near the home, where illegal guns were found during a police search last year.
Dotson did not say whether the handgun found in the dead man's possession was loaded. Messages seeking comment about that from police were not immediately returned Thursday.
A man and woman inside the home were arrested, Dotson said.
Roughly 150 people gathered Wednesday afternoon near the scene of the shooting, questioning the use of deadly force. Some chanted "Black Lives Matter," a mantra used after Brown's death.
As police removed the yellow tape that cordoned off the scene, dozens of people converged on the home, many chanting insults and gesturing obscenely at officers. Several yelling onlookers surrounded individual officers.
"Another youth down by the hands of police," Dex Dockett, 42, who lives nearby, told a reporter. "What could have been done different to de-escalate rather than escalate? They (police) come in with an us-against-them mentality. You've got to have the right kind of cops to engage in these types of neighborhoods."
Another neighborhood resident, Fred Price, said he was skeptical about Dotson's account that the suspect pointed a gun at officers before being mortally wounded.
"They provoked the situation," Price, 33, said. "Situations like this make us want to keep the police out of the neighborhood. They're shooting first, then asking questions."
The law gives police officers latitude to use deadly force when they feel physically endangered. The Supreme Court held in a 1989 case that the appropriateness of use of force by officers "must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene," rather than evaluated through 20/20 hindsight.
That standard is designed to take into account that police officers frequently must make split-second decisions during fast-evolving confrontations, and should not be subject to overly harsh second-guessing. The Justice Department cited that legal threshold earlier this year when it cleared Ferguson officer Darren Wilson in Brown's shooting.
Protests have become a familiar scene across the St. Louis region since Brown, who was black and unarmed, was killed on Aug. 9, 2014. A St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department declined to charge Wilson, who resigned in November.
Some of those who protested Ball-Bey's killing had already spent the morning in downtown St. Louis, marching to mark the anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Kajieme Powell. He was fatally shot by two St. Louis officers after police said he approached them with a knife. Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce is still reviewing the case to determine whether lethal force was justified.
In addition to the nine arrests at the Wednesday night demonstration, officers responded to reports of burglaries in the area and the fire department was called after a car was set ablaze, according to Dotson. He blamed the crimes on people seeking "notoriety" in a neighborhood "plagued by violence."
On Sunday, a 93-year-old veteran who was part of the famed Tuskegee Airmen - the U.S. military's first black aviators - was the victim of two crimes within minutes in the same area. The veteran was robbed and his car was stolen, but he was unhurt. His car was found Tuesday blocks from where it was taken.
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Officers arrested at least nine people and deployed tear gas amid protests in St. Louis over the death of a black 18-year-old who was fatally shot by police after he pointed a gun at them, the city's police chief said.
Chief Sam Dotson said at a news conference late Wednesday that a group of protesters who had blocked an intersection threw glass bottles and bricks at officers and refused orders to clear the roadway. Inert gas was used and when that had no effect on the crowd, police used tear gas to clear the intersection, Dotson said. Those arrested face charges of impeding the flow of traffic and resisting arrest, he said. A vacant building and at least one car were burned.
The demonstration was one of several Wednesday after the killing of 18-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey of St. Louis. Tensions were already high after violence erupted during events marking the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old fatally shot last year by a police officer in nearby Ferguson.
Two police officers serving a search warrant encountered two suspects Wednesday afternoon at a home in a crime-troubled section of the city's north side, one of which was Ball-Bey, the chief said. The suspects were fleeing the home as Ball-Bey, who was black, turned and pointed a handgun at the officers, who shot him, Dotson said. He died at the scene.
Both officers, who are white, were unharmed, according to a police report.
Police are searching for the second suspect, who they said is believed to be in his mid- to late teens.
Dotson said four guns, including the handgun wielded by the dead suspect, and crack cocaine were recovered at or near the home, where illegal guns were found during a police search last year.
Dotson did not say whether the handgun found in the dead man's possession was loaded. Messages seeking comment about that from police were not immediately returned Thursday.
A man and woman inside the home were arrested, Dotson said.
Roughly 150 people gathered Wednesday afternoon near the scene of the shooting, questioning the use of deadly force. Some chanted "Black Lives Matter," a mantra used after Brown's death.
As police removed the yellow tape that cordoned off the scene, dozens of people converged on the home, many chanting insults and gesturing obscenely at officers. Several yelling onlookers surrounded individual officers.
"Another youth down by the hands of police," Dex Dockett, 42, who lives nearby, told a reporter. "What could have been done different to de-escalate rather than escalate? They (police) come in with an us-against-them mentality. You've got to have the right kind of cops to engage in these types of neighborhoods."
Another neighborhood resident, Fred Price, said he was skeptical about Dotson's account that the suspect pointed a gun at officers before being mortally wounded.
"They provoked the situation," Price, 33, said. "Situations like this make us want to keep the police out of the neighborhood. They're shooting first, then asking questions."
The law gives police officers latitude to use deadly force when they feel physically endangered. The Supreme Court held in a 1989 case that the appropriateness of use of force by officers "must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene," rather than evaluated through 20/20 hindsight.
That standard is designed to take into account that police officers frequently must make split-second decisions during fast-evolving confrontations, and should not be subject to overly harsh second-guessing. The Justice Department cited that legal threshold earlier this year when it cleared Ferguson officer Darren Wilson in Brown's shooting.
Protests have become a familiar scene across the St. Louis region since Brown, who was black and unarmed, was killed on Aug. 9, 2014. A St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department declined to charge Wilson, who resigned in November.
Some of those who protested Ball-Bey's killing had already spent the morning in downtown St. Louis, marching to mark the anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Kajieme Powell. He was fatally shot by two St. Louis officers after police said he approached them with a knife. Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce is still reviewing the case to determine whether lethal force was justified.
In addition to the nine arrests at the Wednesday night demonstration, officers responded to reports of burglaries in the area and the fire department was called after a car was set ablaze, according to Dotson. He blamed the crimes on people seeking "notoriety" in a neighborhood "plagued by violence."
On Sunday, a 93-year-old veteran who was part of the famed Tuskegee Airmen - the U.S. military's first black aviators - was the victim of two crimes within minutes in the same area. The veteran was robbed and his car was stolen, but he was unhurt. His car was found Tuesday blocks from where it was taken.
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Officers arrested at least nine people and deployed tear gas amid protests in St. Louis over the death of a black 18-year-old who was fatally shot by police after he pointed a gun at them, the city's police chief said.
Chief Sam Dotson said at a news conference late Wednesday that a group of protesters who had blocked an intersection threw glass bottles and bricks at officers and refused orders to clear the roadway. Inert gas was used and when that had no effect on the crowd, police used tear gas to clear the intersection, Dotson said. Those arrested face charges of impeding the flow of traffic and resisting arrest, he said. A vacant building and at least one car were burned.
The demonstration was one of several Wednesday after the killing of 18-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey of St. Louis. Tensions were already high after violence erupted during events marking the anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old fatally shot last year by a police officer in nearby Ferguson.
Two police officers serving a search warrant encountered two suspects Wednesday afternoon at a home in a crime-troubled section of the city's north side, one of which was Ball-Bey, the chief said. The suspects were fleeing the home as Ball-Bey, who was black, turned and pointed a handgun at the officers, who shot him, Dotson said. He died at the scene.
Both officers, who are white, were unharmed, according to a police report.
Police are searching for the second suspect, who they said is believed to be in his mid- to late teens.
Dotson said four guns, including the handgun wielded by the dead suspect, and crack cocaine were recovered at or near the home, where illegal guns were found during a police search last year.
Dotson did not say whether the handgun found in the dead man's possession was loaded. Messages seeking comment about that from police were not immediately returned Thursday.
A man and woman inside the home were arrested, Dotson said.
Roughly 150 people gathered Wednesday afternoon near the scene of the shooting, questioning the use of deadly force. Some chanted "Black Lives Matter," a mantra used after Brown's death.
As police removed the yellow tape that cordoned off the scene, dozens of people converged on the home, many chanting insults and gesturing obscenely at officers. Several yelling onlookers surrounded individual officers.
"Another youth down by the hands of police," Dex Dockett, 42, who lives nearby, told a reporter. "What could have been done different to de-escalate rather than escalate? They (police) come in with an us-against-them mentality. You've got to have the right kind of cops to engage in these types of neighborhoods."
Another neighborhood resident, Fred Price, said he was skeptical about Dotson's account that the suspect pointed a gun at officers before being mortally wounded.
"They provoked the situation," Price, 33, said. "Situations like this make us want to keep the police out of the neighborhood. They're shooting first, then asking questions."
The law gives police officers latitude to use deadly force when they feel physically endangered. The Supreme Court held in a 1989 case that the appropriateness of use of force by officers "must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene," rather than evaluated through 20/20 hindsight.
That standard is designed to take into account that police officers frequently must make split-second decisions during fast-evolving confrontations, and should not be subject to overly harsh second-guessing. The Justice Department cited that legal threshold earlier this year when it cleared Ferguson officer Darren Wilson in Brown's shooting.
Protests have become a familiar scene across the St. Louis region since Brown, who was black and unarmed, was killed on Aug. 9, 2014. A St. Louis County grand jury and the U.S. Justice Department declined to charge Wilson, who resigned in November.
Some of those who protested Ball-Bey's killing had already spent the morning in downtown St. Louis, marching to mark the anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Kajieme Powell. He was fatally shot by two St. Louis officers after police said he approached them with a knife. Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce is still reviewing the case to determine whether lethal force was justified.
In addition to the nine arrests at the Wednesday night demonstration, officers responded to reports of burglaries in the area and the fire department was called after a car was set ablaze, according to Dotson. He blamed the crimes on people seeking "notoriety" in a neighborhood "plagued by violence."
On Sunday, a 93-year-old veteran who was part of the famed Tuskegee Airmen - the U.S. military's first black aviators - was the victim of two crimes within minutes in the same area. The veteran was robbed and his car was stolen, but he was unhurt. His car was found Tuesday blocks from where it was taken.
White America needs to wake up: Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders & the unacknowledged crimes of American justice
“Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.”Feelings matter for politics. And if “white hearts” don’t change, they are always capable of reconfiguring systems to maintain white hegemony. Moreover, I think when Black millennial voters continue to express their hesitancy about voting, that part of their desire for measures that fully overhaul the current system has to do with a fundamental distrust of white politicians and their white constituents. The Black Lives Matter movement engages white people in terms of whether they have personally grappled with their own white privilege. It counts as co-conspirators and allies those white people who are willing to call out the problems among other white people. White people who have not grappled with the ways they are beneficiaries of white supremacy or white people who revel in the singularity of their status as anti-racists (meaning they are unwilling to go back and challenge other white people) are viewed as suspect and, ultimately, as a liability. Hillary Clinton conceded to the Boston BLM leaders that their mistrust and skepticism are “historically fair,” “psychologically fair,” and “economically fair.” She also conceded that for the most part we should not expect “white hearts” to change. Thus she sounds a King-ian note when calling for legislation, sanctions and systemic changes to do what moral suasion cannot do. The problem is that nearly 50 years after the death of King, young Black people are not convinced that changing systems and laws without changing social consciousness will fix the problem either. For instance, in White v. Crook (1966), a U.S. District Court in Alabama struck down the all white, all male jury system after Black residents of Lowndes County, Ala., challenged the processes by which women in particular were excluded from participation on juries. Two of the attorneys for the plaintiffs were famed white feminist legal scholar Dorothy Kenyon and Black feminist legal scholar Pauli Murray. Nearly 50 years later, a sweeping new study has emerged to suggest that in Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia, prosecutors strike Black jurors from juries at “double or triple the rates” of other citizens. In Shreveport, Louisiana, Blacks are struck from juries at three times the rate of anyone else. Only 25 percent of jurors in Caddo Parish, where Shreveport is located, are Black, but the population is between 44 percent and 48 percent Black, and the town now has its second Black mayor. One of my two hometowns, Shreveport sends the most Black men to death row of any district in the United States, and is located in a state that incarcerates more people per capita than anywhere in the world. Having diverse and representative juries becomes critical in this context. The acquittal rates of Black defendants arise by several percentage points based upon how many Black people sit on juries. If fewer than 2 Black people are jurors, there are no acquittals of Black defendants. When the number rises to 3 jurors, the acquittal rate goes up to 12 percent. When the number is 5 or more, the acquittal rate goes to 19 percent. One could read this and conclude that Black people are biased toward Black defendants. That may be true. But these numbers also suggest that white people are roundly biased against Black defendants. The New York Times reporting on this study found that use of peremptory challenges by Shreveport prosecutors was particularly troubling. In one case, a Black man with dreadlocks was struck from the jury because the defendant in the case also had dreadlocks. Surely, the same hairy logic does not apply to white jurors and defendants. By contrast, a white woman who indicated that she would not challenge her jury peers if they made racially prejudiced remarks during deliberations was not struck from the jury. White v. Crook was viewed at the time as a broad corrective to a a jury system that had been a farce for African-Americans in the first half of the 20th century. But five decades later, African-Americans in Southern locales are still routinely excluded from jury service for a range of reasons that appear on the surface to be “race-neutral,” as one Shreveport prosecutor described his challenges. But there can be no “race-neutral” politics of jury selection in a place like Caddo Parish, which was widely considered one of the most violent counties in the country after the Civil War because of high rates of lynching. The Black Strikes study of its jury selection practices indicates that many of those practices were codified in the late 19th century in the same exact period that strange fruit swung from Parish trees on the regular. And to add insult to irony (and injury), a Confederate Memorial sits in front of the Caddo Parish courthouse. Perhaps this is what Hillary Clinton means when she assesses the concerns of the Movement for Black Lives as historically fair. And the latest data on the wealth gap certainly make clear that Black Lives Matter demands are economically fair. Another new study has found that “from 1992 to 2013, the median net worth of blacks who finished college dropped nearly 56 percent (adjusted for inflation). By comparison, the median net worth of whites with college degrees rose about 86 percent over the same period, which included three recessions.” So even when Black people go to college or try to do their civic duty and serve on juries, justice, whether social or economic, eludes them. At the same time, the mounting evidence of structural racism still has not managed to sway a significant swath of the white population. Candidates on the left are therefore going to have to find the sweet spot between calling for white people’s hearts and minds to change and doing the work of transforming systems. Bernie Sanders seems to have caught on, and has released a broad racial justice platform that talks about the need for system-wide transformation, an end to privatized prisons, re-enfranchisement of ex-felons, and sweeping policing reform. But none of these candidates on the left have yet managed to capture the hearts of young Black (potential) voters who keep shutting down their events. Many movement sympathizers of all races have expressed frustration with the strategy of the Movers, wondering what the point of challenging candidates is if they don’t believe in voting or don’t think the system can change. But I think we have to go back to the question of trust and changing hearts. The real question is “Can and will White people change?” It’s an uncomfortable question, because change means relinquishing power and privilege. Change means that white people have to stop thinking of the value of life as a zero-sum matter, as I heard one social media commenter put it recently. But Hillary Clinton only recently began to affirm that Black Lives Matter. Her initial, gut response was to proclaim that “All lives matter.” That she now says "Black lives" feels like equivocation to both supporters and detractors. And while her deflection about the necessity of legislation is not untrue, it is a convenient truth that allowed her to deflect from having to address the inconvenient truth about her own initial defensiveness to the proposition that Black Lives Matter. When White people say “All lives matter,” they betray a troubling belief that affirming the value of one group’s life diminishes the value of “all lives,” or more specifically white lives. This zero-sum calculus fails to acknowledge that white lives already have more value in the system. The way that juries are rigged to disproportionately convict Black defendants is just one example of how white lives are used to systematically disempower and devalue Black life. But more troublingly, we should all sit with the fact that white lives might actually have surplus value in the system -- by which I mean, they simply have more than their fair share of value. We could call it surfeit value (or excess value, if the Marxist terminology is off-putting). To be clear, every life is of inestimable value. But the point is, if some lives are overvalued, others are undervalued. So if white lives have surplus value, Black lives have depreciating value. Consider the way that pro-life advocates have taken to the cause of advocating for unborn Black children as their version of a racial justice program. Yet, when these children are born, they become victims of a set of anti-Black social structures predicated on the devaluing of Black life. Like cars, the value of Black lives depreciates as soon as you “drive them off the lot,” or birth them from the womb, as it were. Under a system of white supremacy, white people experience calls for social equality as a devaluing of white life, rather than as a necessary systematic recalibration of structures so that all lives matter equally. To do this, we don't make white lives matter less. We make Black lives matter more. Because the value of white life remains the measuring stick for the value of all lives, white people have to resolve not to see the rising value of other lives as a diminishing of their own value. And that requires a change of heart. The Movement is calling for a change of hearts and minds. Its call is rooted in the recognition that we don’t just live within systems; systems live within us, and those systems determine how we make meaning and value out of the world and people around us. Ultimately, those Movers who vote may vote for the candidate with the best articulated platform for racial justice. But until that time, they are going to be looking for leaders who honestly and sincerely get down to the heart of the matter.
Tig Notaro explains why she went topless for her new HBO special: “I was being heckled by my own brain”
Jeb’s Kasich jitters: Bush campaign getting increasingly nervous as Ohio governor picks up steam
A late entrant, Kasich is winning buzzed-about endorsements and has shot up in the polls here amid a multimillion-dollar ad campaign by his allied super PAC, New Day for America. Over the past week, two important members of Romney’s New Hampshire team — senior adviser Tom Rath and former state House speaker Doug Scamman — have signed on with Kasich. [...] Aides at Bush headquarters in Miami have been researching Kasich’s background, including the many votes he cast as a member of Congress, and are pitching reporters on negative stories about him. So-called opposition research is a staple of most campaigns, but it is telling that Kasich is now under the Bush team’s microscope. Some major Bush donors quietly have reached out to the Kasich team in recent days to learn more about the Ohio governor and express interest in possibly supporting him, according to Republicans familiar with the conversations.A spokesperson for New Day for America, the super PAC supporting Kasich, confirmed to Fox News that several Bush donors had been in contact with the organization in recent days but declined to elaborate. Kasich’s campaign manager, John Weaver, told Politico last week that "he received two calls from New Hampshire journalists who claimed they had received opposition research from the Bush camp," although the Bush campaign denies the allegation. Following the first debate in Kasich's backyard of Cleveland, Ohio, the Governor has seen his standing in the polls improve despite being one of the latest entrants in the crowded field while Bush has seen his second place standing hardly hold steadfast as political neophyte Ben Carson creeps ahead in many national polls. But it may more than Bush's troubling poll numbers that has some in his circle of support worried -- Bush's performance on the campaign trail is hardly inspiring. Take for example, this week's education summit in New Hampshire that put both moderates on the hot seat as the only two candidates who support the deeply unpopular (for the conservative Republican primary base) Common Core. Bush displayed a clear unease with an issue his campaign surely anticipated while Kasich effortlessly shrugged off criticism with confidence and ease:
Common Core. “What’s that?” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush joked Wednesday. Appearing at an education summit in New Hampshire, Bush and fellow Republican presidential contender Ohio Gov. John Kasich were both asked about their support for the controversial K-12 standards. Kasich took a blunter tone than Bush, saying they were “pretty good” and “I’m not going to change my position because there are four people in the front row yelling at me. I just don’t operate that way.”A Boston Herald/Franklin Pierce University poll released earlier this month found Kasich in third place with 12 percent of the vote, just one percentage point behind Bush and six points behind frontrunner Trump, who pounded Bush at a dueling New Hampshire town hall last night.
Original “Straight Outta Compton” script included Dr. Dre’s assault of Dee Barnes
In the scene, the fictional Dre, “eyes glazed, drunk, with an edge of nastiness, contempt” (per noted from the script) spots Barnes at the party and approaches her. “Saw that [expletive] you did with Cube. Really had you under his spell, huh? Ate up everything he said. Let him diss us. Sell us out.” “I just let him tell his story,” Barnes’ character retorts, “That’s what I do. It’s my job.” “I thought we were cool, you and me,” Dre fires back. “But you don’t give a [expletive]. You just wanna laugh at N.W.A, make us all look like fools.” The conversation escalates, Barnes throws her drink in Dre’s face before he attacks her “flinging her around like a rag-doll, while she screams, cries, begs for him to stop.”Defending his choice not to include the scene in the film at a Q&A a few days ago, director F. Gary Gray said they "couldn't fit everything into the movie” and he wanted to focus on stories that "served the narrative.” Whether Dr. Dre’s producer credit also helped impact the direction of the narrative is, at this point, merely a source of speculation.
