1/10 Sunday News Roundup & OT
Good day birdies!
I’ll start today’s thread with an op-ed in WaPo by Congresswoman Cori Bush.
This is the America that Black people know
My skin burned for 22 hours after I was pepper-sprayed. The memory of that burn stung with a new kind of pain on Wednesday as I, now a newly sworn-in member of Congress, watched in horror and disbelief as an insurrectionist mob overran the Capitol.
Back in July, we had been protesting at the police station in Florissant, Mo., where a police officer had recently run over a Black man with his car. The police had been beating protesters for weeks. They tear-gassed us to the point of suffocation for painting “Black Lives Matter” on a road, arrested us for putting our fists in the air and beat those who they’d taken into custody.
That night was no different from any other night. The officers rushed out of the station in riot gear, slapping their batons against their shields, holding shotguns loaded with rubber bullets and chanting commands. They chased us into the middle of the street, forcing us to backpedal blindly in the dark. The police were pushing with such force that people began falling to the ground all around me, finding themselves swarmed by officers who began hitting them with batons. I reached in to try to pull a woman away to safety.
They sprayed us with mace. It wasn’t your average mace, either. I used every trick in the book to try to make the pain stop — milk, water, dish detergent. But my skin did not stop burning for 22 hours.
On Wednesday, as I sat in the House gallery listening to my colleagues debate the certification of the electoral college votes, something prompted me to get up and leave. I left the chamber and quickly went to check on what was happening outside. The doors were locked, but as I stood on the second floor of the Capitol and looked out through windows in the doors, I could see Trump flags and Confederate flags gradually moving closer. I froze in disbelief. The next minute, my staffer was rushing me back to my office.
Once I was in my office and we secured the door, I felt a different kind of burn — this time inside. Watching on TV, we saw white supremacists stroll past Capitol Police, untouched and unscathed. Just minutes after we had locked our door, the mob entered the House Rotunda. The rioters broke windows, sat in the House speaker’s office and invaded the Senate floor.
There was no way to avoid the comparison or to duck the obvious answer: Would this have happened if the rioters were there to fight for Black lives rather than white supremacy? We’ve been tear-gassed for much less, beaten for much less and shot at for much less. We’ve been assaulted by law enforcement for much less.
But it’s clear to me that top law enforcement leaders on Capitol Hill had little interest in preventing this attempted insurrection. Videos have emerged of police taking selfies with protesters, walking them down the stairs and even opening gates for them. The front line of officers were not in riot gear, they were not wearing gas masks, they were not holding guns loaded with rubber bullets. And, above all else, there were no police dogs.
We faced police dogs when we fought for justice for Mike Brown in Ferguson in 2014. There were police dogs at protests for Black lives this year, from the East Coast to the West. The president himself tweeted in May that the “most vicious dogs” awaited protesters standing up for Black lives at the White House.
But there were no police dogs awaiting the white supremacists who gathered outside the Capitol. It was no coincidence that this tool of racial control was absent Wednesday, as rioters carried the flag of the slave-catcher’s Confederacy — and its modern manifestation, the Trump flag — through the House Rotunda.
Many have said that what transpired on Wednesday was not America. They are wrong. This is the America that Black people know. To declare that this is not America is to deny the reality that Republican members of the U.S. House and Senate incited this coup by treasonously working to overturn the results of the presidential election. It’s to deny the fact that one of my senators, Josh Hawley, went out of his way to salute the white supremacists before their attempted coup. It’s to deny that he appropriated the sign of Black power, the raised fist, into a white-supremacist salute — a fist he has never raised at a march for Black lives because he has never shown up to one. It’s to deny that what my Republican colleagues call “fraud” actually refers to the valid votes of Black, brown and Indigenous voters across this country who, in the midst of a pandemic that disproportionately kills us, overcame voter suppression in all of its forms to deliver an election victory for Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris.
This is America, and it will continue to be America, until white supremacy is dismantled. Justice starts at removing each and every representative who incited this insurrection. I’ve unveiled my first piece of legislation that would do just that. We cannot denounce white supremacy and allow its endorsers to continue serving in our government.
image courtesy of Tulsa World
More news, tweets, videos in the comments. This also serves as an open thread.
What’s up?
i hope you can nab some of it.
Thank you sooo much!
Capitol’s double standard: 2014 Lakota song
Thanks for this, Benny! already shared on FB
Well that could change with new blood in the DOJ
I HOPE so.
So $600 was sufficient, eh?
Joe Manchin is begging for a primary.
I certainly hope so. In that same interview, he said he admired senators like Kelly Loeffler who withdrew her objection after the Capitol riots occurred. Even Jake Tapper said Manchin was too generous in his comments.
the dems should use every tool at their disposal to keep him off of committees, lessen his power, even snub him. whatever it takes. they don’t call em whips for nothing.
The Dems though, mostly agree with him. Corporodems. The PEOPLE may not like things, but as long as the donors do…
Jayapal shouldn’t be walking at all if she just had a knee replacement (or even if was partial replacement).
At my last job one of the clients underwent a second knee operation and was stunned and amazed at the difference between the two procedures.
After the first one (not sure how many yrs previous) it took months to be up and back at it.
After the second he was pretty much immediately walking around. It sounds like they’ve come a long way.
I walk a lot straighter and I’m hoping it was a good first step as now I have to have a Big Toe bone infusion in a couple of months. I suspect my former right leg for years exacerbated any arthritis I have in my limbs. But it’s hard to keep up the exercises, so my leg isn’t still as strong as it needs to be for a full recovery.
You raise an important point. Jayapal has excellent insurance that she wishes we all could have, but she took advantage of it. She probably got the robotic surgery, and I’ve been told similar stories to one of your clients’ observations. Whereas I have regular Medicare cost benchmarked private-public insurance plan. Thus, I got more traditional surgery. I wish I’d had the robotic one.
interesting. i was thinking i’d want the human surgery if i ever have the choice. you think robotics are better… something to consider.
I have read that robotics can be more precise and steady than the human hands in some procedures. I would think that the robots were used on cadavers many times before live subjects
I must admit it didn’t occur to me that not everyone could/would get the top-of-the-line procedure. That client I referred to had the money for a good plan, so I bet he got the expensive one.
Good luck with the next procedure (I’ve never heard of that before), and I hope you continue to gain strength in your leg!! 💪🍀
My experience with hip replacement was similar. For the 1st one my sister had to come and stay with me at night and I couldn’t go up to my bedroom for 2 weeks. On the 2nd one I went up to my bedroom on the day I got home. The technology and procedures continue to advance. BTW, if anyone is considering whether to undergo hip replacement, I say do it. It works.
I’m so glad that you seem to feel better!
how’s yours now, benny?
See my response to Mags.
Why not? They have you walking on it the next day.
Actually, you walk on it the first night. But it doesn’t make one that functional other than to go to the rest room and walk with a walker.
Arnold slaps them down
pulls no punches
Damn that was good
Well done.
Wow. It’s really racking up the likes, too. Good. Lots of people watching.
This was even better than back in 2016 when Arnie suggested he and Trump trade places. We would have been a lot better off if they had.
I followed this jerk for some years. What was I thinking?
Jonathan Turley the Republican apologist
I think I have seen several times that Trump could be charged under incitement codes, but
recall that this is the only atty who stood up for Trump. Dems DID NOT FOLLOW THOUGH AND PRESS HIM ON REMARKS HE SAID IN EARLIER YEARS, rather they used the time with Turley to repeat their own lines. They didn’t cross examine him. Pisses me off.
He is concerned with protecting the constitution???? Well, then how could he support Trump, Republicans and spend so much time on Fox news???
Turley: Swift new impeachment would damage the Constitution
Emptywheel, Marcy Wheeler –most important to get a criminal investigation of wider plot than the impeachment
need to get new Atty General in place
now those who were part of the plot are in place
and Nancy is counting the votes
maybe the important point is to get republicans on record who are still supporting Trump
TRIAGE AND IMPEACHMENT: PRIORITIZE A LEGITIMATE CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE WIDER PLOT OVER IMPEACHMENT
meanwhile Nancy counts the votes
tried to copy the image but it didn’t paste. anyway, goes on to say the guy learned Fusion 360 and designed a solution, sent it out all open source, engineers picked it up and made it better, more people came on board and now there’s a container that uses “less plastic than most McDonald’s toys” and lawyers made sure it will always be open to everyone. no one can rip it off and charge a gazillion bucks for it.
Look at the flags of these two groups, they have one thing in common, one is officially a terroist group. IMO the other should be as well after the events on the 6th
and at least Hezbollah feeds people and educates kids and iirc, sets up medical help.