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Post by Chesapeake on May 31, 2020 13:47:07 GMT -5
Just what we need: a pitched battle at the White House, encouraged by the CiC. That man won't stop until he's provoked a civil war. You just don't get it. It seems we have a difference of opinion as to who doesn't get it.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 31, 2020 13:20:58 GMT -5
This is all an outflow of the Pandemic response. Shutting down the economy has disproportionally affected those people in urban areas that depended on low wage service industries for subsistence. They've got no safety net. They're hurting and angry. Dry kindling waiting for a spark. And there are (always?) anarchists (Boogaloo Bois?) in this country looking for a vehicle to foment revolution. They're coming out of the closet and having a field day. Sad. VERY sad. I'm sure the pandemic and all its dislocations have some bearing on the riots. But my guess is the pandemic is only icing on the cake. The last time we had urban rioting on this scale and geographical scope was the assassination of MLK. In the case of Floyd, the victim wasn't famous at the time he was killed, but he became famous overnight as a symbol of the same thing MLK died fighting: systemic repression of African-Americans. I'm sure there would have been riots, probably on the same scale, without the pandemic. One way to prevent recurrences of what we've just lived through will be vigorous prosecution of the officers involved, plus a serious overhaul of law-enforcement training where needed, and I suspect that would be just about everywhere to one degree or another. The other cure will be fundamental changes in societal attitudes about race. That will be harder to pull off.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 30, 2020 17:08:20 GMT -5
Just what we need: a pitched battle at the White House, encouraged by the CiC. That man won't stop until he's provoked a civil war.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 30, 2020 13:38:35 GMT -5
I posted this on Facebook this morning.
My “outside agitators” story: In 1968 I was part of a team of Evening Star reporters covering the antiwar protests in D.C. One night City Desk editor Boris Weintraub sent me to cover a demonstration on the downtown campus of George Washington University. About 300 people were gathered in front of Lisner Auditorium, overlooking a block-long city park. A busload of DC cops in riot gear were standing by at the opposite end of the park, completely out of sight. The kids were noisy but perfectly peaceful. I don’t think they were aware of the police presence.
I interviewed a couple of them and left, headed east on the sidewalk bordering the darkened park, in the direction of the cops to talk to them. Halfway down I noticed about a half-dozen guys in the park, out of sight of both the cops and the kids, using crowbars to tear up some park benches. They were using the pieces to make a rudimentary barricade. They were working silently and efficiently, like they had done this kind of thing before. I stopped to watch.
After a few minutes they doused their handiwork with a propellant, lit it, and then started throwing Molotov cocktails in the direction of the cops. After a minute of bobbing white helmets, the cops charged headlong toward the flames, firing teargas canisters. The guys disappeared. So what the cops saw was a large gathering of protesters seemingly attacking them with fiery objects. What the kids saw was a violent, unprovoked attack by pigs. Mayhem ensued.
Denouement: my eyewitness account of what actually had happened ran on the front page of the Metro section the next day. What, if anything, might have been published if a reporter hadn’t happened along, I can only guess.
My takeaway: The recent violence that has overtaken the legitimate demonstrations over the George Floyd horror is being committed by the ideological offspring of those people that night in the park. Their governing political ideology isn’t civil rights, or fair play for all. It is anarchy.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 29, 2020 21:42:01 GMT -5
Bill - thanks for that piece by Liz Sawyer. Excellent reporting. It helped settle a Facebook argument.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 29, 2020 14:13:11 GMT -5
Bill, I know you work the features desk, but from the Strib's reporting you've seen, is it your impression Floyd had no pulse when they loaded him into the ambulance? Or did he still have vital signs, and that's why the docs worked on him for a while before declaring him dead?
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Post by Chesapeake on May 28, 2020 13:19:22 GMT -5
I saw a piece of reporting that George Floyd resisted getting into the squad car after being arrested and handcuffed. Which leads me to think (if true) that the officer resorted to a tactic that is pretty common among police departments, in my experience early in my career as a police reporter: to punish detainees for that kind of resistance, also to take the fight out of them so they'll be more cooperative. I obviously don't know if that's what happened here, but in any case the video makes clear this officer took an already questionable tactic way beyond the bounds of good judgment, with tragic results. The video brought tears to my eyes, as it did many others. That kind of thing just doesn't tend to happen unless the culture in a police department condones or encourages it. Those officers need to be punished to the max, for sure, but I suspect the whole department needs some serious retraining.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 27, 2020 16:56:08 GMT -5
Fascinating story.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 27, 2020 12:48:53 GMT -5
My Spot is one smart dog.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 22, 2020 14:21:46 GMT -5
No, but I can think of some other people I wouldn't mind sending them to. (Nobody here, of course.)
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Post by Chesapeake on May 22, 2020 13:24:19 GMT -5
I've been using N95 face masks. No problems. The N95s are reusable, too.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 16, 2020 15:34:40 GMT -5
The guy was a hoot.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 16, 2020 11:50:40 GMT -5
Ty - sincere apologies for getting your branch of service wrong. My other sentiments still apply.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 15, 2020 21:03:01 GMT -5
Navy Airman Clark?
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Post by Chesapeake on May 15, 2020 14:05:38 GMT -5
That is one impressive looking airman.
For what it's worth, I never regretted joining the Army right out of high school. Well, there was that time with that one drill sergeant, but on balance it was a very positive experience. It taught me a lot about discipline, working well with people, the nature of comradeship, and a lot of other things that helped me immeasurably in later life. Plus the pride of having worn the cloth of my country.
Godspeed, Airman Clark.
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Tremors
May 12, 2020 20:35:05 GMT -5
Dub likes this
Post by Chesapeake on May 12, 2020 20:35:05 GMT -5
Pretty hard to do when playing guitar. Actually when I hold my hand(s) straight out flat, there's no tremor. So whatever it is is early stage. Just another sign of getting old, I figure. But I don't like it. Back in the day (nearly 50 years ago now) I used to get to watch Earl Scruggs with the Review so close I could almost have reached up and touched his banjo. One thing that really fascinated me was watching his picking hand. His whole hand seemed to have slight tremors and each finger seemed always shaking slightly between assigned notes. Watching at close range I had to continually wonder whether he was going to get the note played or not. Of course he never missed a note but it always looked like he was goin to. He kept on another 40 years after that. That's really interesting, Dub. I noticed that twitchiness when I was working with him on developing the Earl Scruggs Center, c. 2010. I wondered the same thing, if it might help account for his almost supernatural picking speed. I never got around to asking him about that, but I bet it's safe to assume so.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 9, 2020 13:55:13 GMT -5
At my age I don't mind being reminded every now and then that somebody is dead.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 9, 2020 12:42:38 GMT -5
I kept trying the irs.gov get my payment website to tell me anything and it kept saying it couldn't determine if I was eligible. Then 2+ weeks ago (while I was in the hospital and had nothing better to do) I tried again and it changed to, we know you are eligible for it, just that, nothing more. Then 2 weeks ago today, it said it knew I was eligible, but I needed to prove who I was and put in my bank account information for direct deposit. Then all last week it said, we are going to pay you to your account that you gave us, we just don't know when. Then Saturday it said it would be deposited on Wednesday of this week and it was in my account on Wednesday. Similar story here. You can check your status at the link below, as well as enter bank account info for direct deposit (much faster than paper checks). I did it for myself and for several clients. www.irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-paymentThe link worked. Thanks! I entered my ID material, and it came right back with: "We scheduled your check to be mailed on May 15, 2020, to the address we have on file for you. We will mail you a letter with additional information on this payment." Maybe they had to wait for somebody to sign the check.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 8, 2020 14:06:14 GMT -5
I haven't seen mine yet, and I don't know where to go to complain, other than here.
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Post by Chesapeake on May 7, 2020 22:55:44 GMT -5
Questions:
1. So does Trump go into self-quarantine now? Stop meeting with science advisors? Withdraw from debate over when and under what circumstances to re-open the country? Just leave all that up to the states?
2. How will we know?
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