EXCELLENT! EXCELLENT!!! EXCELLENT!!!!

Should be required reading.

This is how they set up and implemented their attempted takeover. To push the pendulum back as far "right"-ward as possible. Basically to nullify the enlightenment of many of us during the 60s, and even farther back - to the New Deal (which they've always despised. They HATE having to help people. They hate even more virulently having to help pay for it).

They're the IGMFU Coalition. As in "I Got Mine, F-U." Never forget that.

This really makes me sad.

Because, sadly, it's also true.

I Love Morgan Freeman. He is distinguished and elegant, and eloquent.

Takes me back to the whole "Stand Your Ground" thing, wherein we first became really acutely acquainted with this latter-day defense - "I feared for my life." I sometimes imagine a commonly shared scripted line - "I feared for my life, I thought he had a gun, I thought he had a taser, he reached for his waistband, I was in fear for my life." And as it's shared, it's stressed - "you need to make sure you say THOSE things. Those Specific Things. And you're home free. You'll beat the rap." I can't help but wonder whether such a conversation is actually a shared thing, behind closed doors, in the privacy of the patrol car, in private.

There ARE scripts that are sent around. Just watch it in politics. Notice how many different operatives on one side of an issue use the same language, the same memes, the same framing, and they're all saying the same things. The same words and wordings. Sometimes even the same vocal inflections. It made me think back to Selection 2000, when GOP operative after GOP operative said the same things. Parroted the same things. "They counted once, they counted AGAIN, then they counted a THIRD TIME..." - said again and again, all over the place, as the GOP and bush/cheney people hoped to manipulate public opinion toward their contention that the vote count should be stopped. We're ahead. And that's that. We won. It was like watching a bunch of Chatty Cathy dolls - pull the string and they all say the same things. From the same blast-faxed, mass-emailed script.

Well, I'm wondering if maybe we defeat the whole "thug" thing by spreading it around.

Using it to refer to the cops and this maddening trend of ridiculous, obscene overkill. Their behavior that I have seen in these videos - certainly qualifies them to be called thugs. If it's used to refer to the police as well, then maybe that might blunt the immediate attempt to focus its reference directly toward African American males. Call it what it is. These police "officers" are THUGS. I think they've earned that description, openly and on the record. Theirs is very clearly thuggish behavior - from what we've seen.

Some officer driving a police wagon and deliberately slamming on the brakes or taking curves or turns recklessly, so the person in custody in the back, who's also restrained, cuffed, ankle-shackled, CANNOT brace themselves OR grab for something to steady themselves in a wild ride, especially if it's deliberate and extreme - IS BEING A THUG.

I think we have to take back that word, too. The way we've had to start taking back the word "Liberal." The way we've had to start taking back the word "Feminist." Let's be accurate. A thug is an overzealous white cop, too - as the videos prove.

I like it, too. Wouldn't it be great if they teamed up on the ticket?

She should ask him to be her running mate.

Unfortunately, true.

But I don't see the word "thug" applying exclusively to minorities. I actually see it as NOT as loaded a word as the "N-word" because, to me, the word "thug" applies just as accurately (if not MORESO) to the white cops. To the "Stand Yer Ground" dudes like george zimmerman. And the guy who shot into that van of young guys and killed one because he didn't like how loud their music was. HE is a thug. And he's a white guy.

The word "thug" does not have that narrow definition for me. What I saw with that jerk in Tulsa and his little police pals (whom he got hot and hopped-up pretending he was one of) - total thuggery. THOSE dudes were thugs. What I saw when the cops piled on that ONE guy in New York whose only crime was selling individual cigarettes - THOSE were thugs. They totally qualified. What I saw of the loading of the guy into the van - that bordered on thuggery, too. I find myself wondering if maybe his spine wasn't snapped, or compromised, by the very act of loading him into the van. I've seen too much thuggery among white cops. The images from the traffic stop where that cop had the black guy on the ground and was POUNDING on his head with his fist. Just POUNDING! Okay, ONE strike like that seemed too much. Hell, he was on the ground already! He was immobilized already. WTF? THAT looked thuggish, and THAT cop was white. I can still remember the images of the cops - all of them white - who beat up Rodney King. Sure looked like THUGS to me! Especially when it's a whole bunch of them pouncing on ONE guy. You guys never grew up out of the playground bully stage? Dear God!

The word "thug" does not carry the racial connotation to me. I've seen too much thuggery from whites, especially white cops. HELL, anybody remember that so-called "Brooks Brothers Riot" outside the office in Florida where some hapless election workers were trying to count the votes during Selection 2000? They were out there, ALL white people including a woman or two, pounding on the glass doors, yelling, menacing, acting threatening - CLEARLY attempting to terrorize those inside and get them to stop counting the votes (which is an outrage all by itself). THUGS! THUGS ALL!!! TOTAL DAMN SHITBAG THUGS. And they were ALL OF THEM white as the - um - proverbial sheet.

Well, that's how it was - and is.

How much coverage have you seen of the crowds of locals and neighbors who are out with brooms and trash bags, trying to clean up the mess and restore what was messed up? Where is THAT footage? Maybe an occasional man-on-the-street quickie with somebody talking about how they've been working and everybody got up and went to the torched stores and mopped up and cleaned and tried to clear away the broken glass and begin to fix the windows? Maybe ONE guy or ONE woman. And then the rest of it is the conflict, the fires, the wreckage, the mobs, the police actions, the tear gas and smoke and fire... "Roll tape!" "Can we see that footage again?" "Cue up the video of that (whatever it is) ...!" "Reaction to last night's (whatever it was)..." So all you see are the flames and fires and clips of out-of-control crowds - some of it aerial footage from the station's helicopter circling overhead. Shit - during the L.A. Riots, HOW MANY TIMES did we see reruns of when Reginald Denny was brutalized? HOW many times did we get to live that over, again and again, when Rodney King was beaten and brutalized and the fires and the smoke and the wreckage and the ...

It's somehow exciting. ACTION! DRAMA! MAYHEM! I remember visiting a location where a scene was being shot for some tawdry movie-of-the-week, another crime drama, and the director chuckled between takes - "Mayhem! It's mayhem! We're making mayhem! It's what it is! Mayhem! It's Fun!"

When I was at the AP, I remember the news editor sending the reporter off to Vegas to cover the Consumer Electronics Show - and it was "get the gee-whiz. We wanna see lots of gee-whiz." For print, photo, and broadcast. What do we see? It's a play upon one of what seems to me is basic human nature. In the old real estate commercials it used to be about "lookey-loos." People who'd just come in and look around because they wanted to look around but they weren't in the market actually to buy anything. Consider your average traffic accident. What happens immediately afterwards? People slow up as they drive by so they can ogle. Then you're in some monster traffic jam because all the idiots out there just had to slow down so they could see something. See what? Oh, maybe blood. Carnage. Dismemberment. Stuff you'd actually, instinctively, want to avert your gaze away from. But you've just gotta look. What about the fight on the playground during recess? Suddenly you've got gawker's block there, too - kids crowding around hollering "FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!!!!" Hell, even Chris Matthews does that, professionally! That shameless lummox even admitted it on camera once, as he confessed to some guest - "I like the FIGHT. I want a FIGHT! I like to see the FIGHT!" Like some ten-year-old out on the playground who wants to see the one kid knock the other kid down on the ground and draw blood.

STUPID. SHAMEFUL. EMBARRASSING!!! RIDICULOUS. And feeding the lowest common denominator.

SHIT I wish we could all just grow up a little.

I don't condone it either. We've seen it in the rise of the teabaggers. Acting out.

And it's just as destructive.

We were talking about this just a few days ago. We. Have. GOT. TO. Look. At. The. Causes. Of. This. GOT TO!

Otherwise it's just gonna keep happening and keep happening and keep happening.

What happens, for example, when you operate in close quarters with one or more people who have bad colds. They come to work or school and don't stay home or go to the doctor or otherwise get treatment so they can get well. They stay in place, and you keep getting sick. So does everybody else who has to operate in the same close quarters with them.

We were talking about 9/11. I remembered the very first thing that crossed my mind when I woke up that morning and saw the coverage and the one building that had already disappeared and the other that was on fire: "WHAT ON EARTH would make someone hate so much that they'd feel the need/urge/desire to do THAT?" "WHAT MADE THEM DO THIS?" "And shouldn't we get our asses in gear and LOOK AT THAT, SERIOUSLY, if we want to keep it from happening again?" Instead our country went out like Troglodytes with rocks and clubs - like the saying describing "if all you have is a hammer, then everything around you is gonna look like a nail." So it's just HIT HIT HIT HIT HIT. With no regard for the causality, what brought this on to begin with, what provoked this behavior. NONE.

It's like we don't even want to deal with that. Especially if it means we have to look very closely, painfully, realistically, and honestly, at what WE did, ON OUR END, to provoke it.

This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's a causality that nobody seems to want to bother with, although we ARE hearing a wee bit more attention paid to the causality in this civil turmoil we see now, breaking out all over the country because of Baltimore. Oh yeah, because of Ferguson. Oh yeah, because of New York City. Oh yeah, because of Tulsa. Oh yeah, because of Cleveland. Oh yeah, because of ... W.T.F.???????? HOW MANY incidents of the same ridiculous, incomprehensible, and murderous police overkill have there been since Michael Brown was killed? HOW MANY? And repeatedly. And nothing's learned. NOTHING is learned. The police get a free pass, and more victims are brutalized. And then the police get another free pass. And hey, kids! Get ready for the NEXT round! Because the only thing the civilian population can reasonably expect and count on in the future - is that there will be more brutality. And that the police will just continue on their merry way with impunity. There will be no consequences, no example made, no justice, no checking of bad behavior. Hell, I'D be furious too!!! Screw that - I AM furious!!!!

This shit is just gonna keep happening. More unarmed black men will be killed. More unarmed black teens will be hauled off to jail and appear in court the next morning in leg-irons - for doing very little and in some cases just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, congratulations, young man. You've got your first offense on record now. You just had your "coming out party" like some bizarro debutante, presented to society as a young criminal. You've just begun that merry journey down the sewer pipe to Hell. W. T. F. ???????????

I've written here before about that aspect of human nature that I've noticed through the years - people are LOATHE to admit they were wrong. Nobody wants to admit they were wrong. It's like we can't do that anymore! We don't DARE do that anymore! For Pete's sake, what would it do to our precious self-esteem? As a nation, I think it means that damned accursed "American Exceptionalism." As a people, it means the refusal to move forward and recognize we live in a different era and we can't just rewrite history to pretend that the shit in the past didn't exist or somehow was somebody else's fault. We see it in the climate change deniers. We see it in those wishing to turn the clock back on marriage and on women's rights, on civil rights in general, on VOTING rights!!! The right to VOTE!!!!!!!

THIS is what has to stop. Before any of this other stuff can stop.

Good to know for later years. We couldn't catch him!

We were thinking maybe to use some of those surgical gloves so we wouldn't leave our scent on him. I don't want to mess with 'em too much, especially at that age! I'll have more pictures later, but I THINK - not sure, but I THINK we're down to one now. There were two most of the day. Spotted one of the escapees in the tree out front! TEENY little thing, compared to the adult birdies. They don't start out with long tail feathers like the adults have. But this little guy fluttered up to a higher branch after sitting there awhile on the lower branch. SO DAMN CUTE!

And we're still left with one question - were there four up there, or five? Guess we'll never know, now. But I could swear I saw three little heads, with two additional little heads above them kinda like a pyramid (without the point at the top):

O O
O O O

Dang! Can't get the representation right. It's supposed to be a pyramid, not a right-angle.

Sing, birdie! SING!!!!

They forgot the highly antiseptic "mistakes were made."