Salem Political Snark

Israeli people fight authoritarianism in their country as GOP promotes it in U.S.

At the moment Israel is being torn apart by the attempt of their right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to pass bills that would do away with the balance of power in that country by allowing the legislature to control the judiciary and stop investigations into wrongdoing by Netanyahu.

If that sounds familiar, it's akin to what Republicans in our House of Representatives want to do to protect Donald Trump from prosecution. 

A trio of House Republican committee chairs say the House of Representatives could soon take up legislation to strip state and local prosecutors of the authority to prosecute former presidents in response to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s potential indictment of former president Donald Trump.

Note: this would apply to former presidents.

So Trump could murder someone as the private citizen that he is now, and he couldn't be prosecuted at the state or local level. This seems completely unconstitutional, but a little thing like the Constitution doesn't matter to GOP politicians still determined to kiss Trump's ass any time the Orange One demands their subservience.

Fortunately, with the Senate and Presidency in Democratic control, there's zero chance a House bill prohibiting former presidents from criminal prosecution would become law any time soon. So for now there's no need for the public to protest this horrible Republican proposal.

In Israel, though, Netanyahu wants to begin to pass his Protect Benjamin Netanyahu Act next week. That's why massive protests have erupted in Israel after Netanyahu fired his defense minister for criticizing this highly controversial legislation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defense minister on Sunday, just a day after he called on the embattled premier to halt a controversial plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary.

The proposal to remake Israel’s courts has plunged the nation into crisis, spurring protests in major cities in recent weeks. On Sunday, Netanyahu’s decision to remove Yoav Gallant, a fellow Likud Party member, prompted at least 150 demonstrations across Israel, according to police.

Crowds gathered around the Knesset building in Jerusalem after police deployed water cannons near Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem. Some demonstrators hoisted Israeli flags and shouted, “De-mo-cra-cy!” while others set fire to a major highway.

...Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right national security minister, another once-fringe settler extremist, has come out in support of the reform, saying that Gallant had “surrendered to the blackmail of the anarchists” — a word he has frequently used to describe the demonstrators.

Ben Gvir has vowed to advance legislation that would cancel Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, in which he has been indicted in three separate cases and faces potential prison time.

Here's some Twitter tweets I came across today about the uproar in Israel.

Now we know Fox News doesn't care about news

Unless you're a MAGA sort of Republican who only watches Fox News, you should be aware that legal filings submitted by Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox have made it crystal clear that Fox News doesn't care about reporting the truth.

All it cares about is keeping its viewers happy by telling them only what they want to believe, not what they should know.

So bizarrely, Fox News hasn't been reporting on the lawsuit that is one of the biggest news stories in the country right now.

Because court documents show that both executives and on-air personalities at Fox News knew that the 2020 election wasn't stolen from Trump, but they were afraid to tell their viewers this truth out of a fear that they'd turn off Fox and go to even crazier right-wing media like OAN.

Thus Fox News spread lies about Dominion machines switching votes from Trump to Biden, and gave lots of airtime to other conspiracy theories concerning Trump's Big Lie that he actually won the presidential election.

Watching coverage of the Fox News scandal today, I was struck by a mention on MSNBC that for lots of Fox News viewers, probably a majority, Fox is the only place they go to learn about what's happening.

By contrast, liberals like me have many options. I watch CNN and MSNBC. I read the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other news sources that I find on Google News and elsewhere.

This makes the failure of Fox News to accurately report news more serious than it would be if avid conservatives could turn to other sources of information about current events in the United States and the rest of the world.

Sometimes I wonder how my mother, a hard core Republican, would look upon the sorry state of conservatism in our country. She was an intellectual. My mother loved to learn. She devoured books and magazines, along with listening to right-wing radio commentators like Paul Harvey.

I'm pretty sure she would be aghast at how so many modern-day Republicans care so little about truth. My mother could be an annoying person to talk politics with, because she had such strong conservative opinions.

But she always tried to be factual.

That's why even though as a divorced woman without much money during my childhood, my mother subscribed to all of the major news magazines in the 1950s and 60s. Time, Life, Look, Saturday Review, National Geographic, National Review (a conservative publication with smart, well written stories).

There's simply no basis for saying that in 2023 Fox News and MSNBC, say, are equally biased toward one side of the political spectrum. Fox News lies. MSNBC either tells the truth or admits when it got something wrong. 

 

This blogger is irked at a Florida bill aimed at censoring bloggers

Well, if Florida state Senator Jason Brodeur, a Republican, wanted to get himself criticized by bloggers, his introduction of a bill that would take away the free speech rights of bloggers was a genius move.

But unfortunately, Brodeur has other motivations than social media masochism.

That seems clear, given that Florida governor Ron DeSantis hates the media because they call him on his right-wing authoritarian bullshit.

It's unclear whether Brodeur's bill has a chance of becoming law.

Regardless, it grabbed the attention of the New York Times editorial board, which published "Florida Is Trying to Take Away the American Right to Speak Freely" today. Here's how it starts out:

A homeowner gets angry at a county commission over a zoning dispute and writes a Facebook post accusing a local buildings official of being in the pocket of developers.

A right-wing broadcaster criticizing border policies accuses the secretary of homeland security of being a traitor.

A parent upset about the removal of a gay-themed book from library shelves goes to a school board meeting and calls the board chair a bigot and a homophobe.

All three are examples of Americans engaging in clamorous but perfectly legal speech about public figures that is broadly protected by the Constitution. The Supreme Court, in a case that dates back nearly 60 years, ruled that even if that speech might be damaging or include errors, it should generally be protected against claims of libel and slander.

All three would lose that protection — and be subject to ruinous defamation lawsuits — under a bill that is moving through the Florida House and is based on longstanding goals of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The bill represents a dangerous threat to free expression in the United States, not only for the news media, but for all Americans, whatever their political beliefs. There’s still time for Florida lawmakers to reject this crude pandering and ensure that their constituents retain the right to free speech.

“This isn’t just a press issue,” said Bobby Block, executive director of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation. “This is a death-to-public-discourse bill. Everyone, even conservatives, would have to second-guess themselves whenever they open their mouths to speak or sit in front of a keyboard.”

I don't make any money from blogging. My three blogs have never had any ads, and never will. Anyone can read what I write for free. In fact, I have to pay Typepad, my blogging service, an annual fee. So I lose money from blogging.

However, I have nothing against bloggers who get paid. After all, reporters get paid for their journalistic work, and blogging is a form of journalism -- just less formal and more opinionated than most other types.

The MaddowBlog on MSNBC describes the Florida bill.

“If a blogger posts to a blog about an elected state officer and receives, or will receive, compensation for that post, the blogger must register” with the appropriate office within five days of the post, the legislation says.

As NBC News’ report added, the measure defines “elected state officer” as “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature.”

Those who failed to comply could face thousands of dollars in state penalties.

If this approach sounds at all familiar, it might be because Vladimir Putin signed a similar measure — known as the “bloggers law” — in 2014, requiring online writers to register with the Russian government.

This bill is so horrible, and so obviously unconstitutional, that in normal times few people would take it seriously. But we don't live in normal times. 

Under Trump and his MAGA devotees, the Republican Party has dedicated itself to disparaging the media and promoting lies that, bizarrely, when the falsehoods are pointed out by reputable journalists, earns the epithet of "fake news," even though it's the lies that are truly fake news.

And the Supreme Court has shown that it is capable of taking away fundamental rights of Americans on a whim, as occurred when fifty years of women having the right to an abortion was trashed just because three Trump-appointed justices felt they wanted to do this and were part of a 6-3 majority.

Read the entire New York Times opinion piece to learn how bad the Florida bill is. It does more than just require paid bloggers to register with the state. 

The bill goes much further than this attempt to hobble the press. It makes it clear that the new defamation rules would also apply to any single “utterance on the internet,” which could mean a tweet or a Facebook post written by anyone, or “any one presentation to an audience,” which could include statements made at school board hearings and other public meetings.

In a direct attack on a key aspect of free expression, it says that whenever someone is accused of discriminating against others on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation, that accusation is automatically considered enough to sue for defamation.

Any person accused of bigotry based on sexual orientation or gender identity could file a defamation lawsuit and be virtually guaranteed of winning by saying the discrimination was based on personal religious or scientific beliefs. The penalty for calling someone a bigot would be a minimum of $35,000.

John Fetterman's depression deserves deep compassion

Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman, the bald, goateed, year-round shorts and hoodie-wearing guy who beat Mehmet Oz in last year's midterm election after suffering a stroke, is severely depressed.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who suffered a near-fatal stroke in the midst of his campaign last year, checked himself into the hospital on Wednesday evening to receive treatment for clinical depression, a remarkable disclosure from a politician about mental health.

The senator voluntarily admitted himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington at the recommendation of the attending physician of Congress, Brian P. Monahan, who on Monday evaluated the senator and on Wednesday suggested inpatient care, Fetterman’s chief of staff, Adam Jentleson, said in a statement.

“While John has experienced depression off and on throughout his life, it only became severe in recent weeks,” Jentleson said. “After examining John, the doctors at Walter Reed told us that John is getting the care he needs, and will soon be back to himself.”

Ordinarily someone suffering from deep depression would elicit sympathy from everybody who heard about their condition. But given the nasty state of our national politics, I won't be surprised if some Republicans take cheap shots at Fetterman. 

After all, they made fun of his difficulty with understanding speech and speaking himself after his stroke, a problem that has continued. So joking about his depression would be in line with previous attempts to make it seem like Fetterman is incapable of being a United States Senator.

I'll try to be optimistic though. Hopefully Fetterman's openness about his battles with depression will help people around the country realize that depression isn't an emotion, like sadness. It's a serious disease.

It may not even make sense to call it a mental illness, since depression can be kicked off by physical problems, including a stroke. And treatment often includes taking an anti-depressant that affects brain chemicals.

This subject is close to my heart because I was diagnosed with a major depressive episode back in 2017. That happened after my bladder became dysfunctional, requiring me to use a urinary catheter five times a day to pee. 

Since that had major negative effects on my life, I started off sad and ended up depressed. Getting painful leg cramps that woke me up 4-5 times in the night caused sleep deprivation, which made my depression worse until I went to a sleep doctor and was prescribed gabapentin for the cramps.

In September 2017 I wrote a blog post, "Too depressed to do anything else, I'll write about my depression." This was when I first realized that what I thought was ordinary sadness actually was something much different: clinical depression.

It's a new experience, being depressed. Now, to be honest I haven't actually gotten a depression diagnosis. But my wife, Laurel, is a retired psychotherapist. And she tells me, "Brian, you aren't just tired. You're depressed."

At first I didn't believe her. But Laurel gave me a Psychology Today article, "Depressed Without Knowing It," and that helped to change my mind. 

I knew that several health problems had made me anxious, sad, worried, nervous about the future. I also was feeling a lack of energy, and was having trouble doing things that I used to enjoy. But since I'd never suffered from depression, being a pretty damn optimistic person, it took a while for me to realize that something different was happening to me.

...During the past few weeks I'd have occasional (OK, frequent) crying spells and near-panic attacks when I'd think, or tell Laurel, "I feel myself slipping away." Yet obviously there was still a Me able to say that. What I really meant is that the Brian I was used to being was feeling more and more foreign to me, like a person I used to know well, yet now was fading from memory.

If you've never been depressed, it's difficult to imagine feeling like the bottom has fallen out of your previously fairly content psyche. Again, depression isn't like the opposite of happiness. It's much worse than that. 

It's feeling like there's no meaning to your existence, or at least very little meaning to it. It's feeling so down, you can't find any hand holds that would let you climb out of your despair. It's feeling like you've got no hope of ever being the person you used to be, because that person is a distant memory.

Fortunately, all of those feelings turned out to be temporary, even though at the time it seemed like they'd be with me forever. I was able to see a psychiatric nurse practitioner at my primary care physician's office, who prescribed me Mirtazapine, an antidepressant. 

It took quite a few weeks, but eventually my depression lifted. As I'm confident John Fetterman's depression will. He deserves all the compassion that the American people can send his way, as does every other person suffering from clinical depression.

I debunk conspiracy theories about the Ukraine war

Recently I heard from someone opposed to the war in Ukraine. Their reasons sounded screwy to me, so I decided to fact-check what they said.

It just took me a few minutes of Googling to debunk virtually all of their objections to the Ukraine war, which in my opinion, is totally justified -- since it was Putin, the autocratic leader of Russia, who invaded Ukraine about a year ago for no good reason.

The United States, the European Union, and other allies are strong backers of the democratically-elected government of Ukraine against Putin's attempt to rekindle the bad old days of World War II, the last time a sovereign European nation was invaded by another country seeking to expand its territory.

Below, in italics, is what the person who messaged me said. My debunking of those conspiracy theories is in regular type.

FIRST FALSE STATEMENT. The US started the war in Ukraine when we overthrew the elected government that favored close relations with Russia. Obama and Victoria Nuland confirmed our involvement led to that 'revolution'. Yes, that overthrown government was corrupt, but so is the current government of Ukraine.

 

This was an easy statement to debunk, since the well-respected Politifact addressed this claim. Excerpts from their Pants on Fire conclusion.

It’s a conspiracy with mainstream crossover: The United States bankrolled the bloody political uprising in Ukraine.

We saw the claim pop up recently in a story on RT (the Russian-funded English language cable network), and found lots of talk about it on reddit, Facebook and other websites.

The claims have the same basic structure. While President Barack Obama publicly said Ukrainians have the right to determine their own future, the U.S. government pumped $5 billion into the country to promote regime change.

In a Facebook meme, someone put it this way:

Obama "spends $5 billion paying Ukrainians to riot and dismantle their democratically elected government."

So is there any truth to this claim? PunditFact dove in.

...Our ruling

Contrary to claims, the United States did not spend $5 billion to incite the rebellion in Ukraine.

That’s a distorted understanding of remarks given by a State Department official. She was referring to money spent on democracy-building programs in Ukraine since it broke off from the Soviet Union in 1991.

We rate the claim Pants on Fire.

 

SECOND FALSE STATEMENT. We also started the war when we broke our promises to not move NATO east after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Politifact also examined this claim. Here's some excerpts from their Mostly False conclusion. 

Two days before Russia invaded Ukraine with an assault that intelligence officials had warned was coming, conservative commentator Candace Owens insisted that the U.S. was "at fault."

"NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward," Owens said in the Feb. 22 tweet, which directed her more than 3 million followers to remarks from Russian President Vladimir Putin that she said showed "what’s actually going on." 

Owens’ comment echoed a grievance claimed by Putin and other Russian leaders regarding the West’s negotiations with the Soviet Union after the Cold War. 

The subject of the grievance is whether the U.S. and its Western allies promised the Soviet Union during negotiations over the reunification of Germany that they would not allow NATO to expand its membership east of the Cold War border.

...Our ruling

Owens said, "NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward."

There is an ongoing historical debate over comments that Western leaders, including Baker, made during post-Cold War negotiations, and whether what they said amounted to assurances that NATO would refrain from welcoming in countries closer to modern-day Russia. 

But NATO as an organization made no such pledge, and the formal agreement signed at the end of those negotiations said nothing about the alliance not expanding eastward.

We rate this claim Mostly False.

THIRD FALSE STATEMENT. This war and most of our other wars are primarily profit generators for our arms and oil industries.  Our inflation was caused by price gouging by the oil industry and not by the slightly higher pay for employees. The war gave us an excuse to blowup Nordstream 2 so that we could sell more gas to Europe. 

 

What's almost certainly false in this statement is the claim that the United States blew up the Nordstrom 2 pipeline.

 

I also disagree that the Ukraine war is primarily a profit generator for our arms and oil industries, since our motivation for supporting Ukraine is to protect a democratic nation against an unprovoked invasion by Russia. I do agree that price gouging by the oil industry is a primary reason for our high gasoline prices, but other countries also have higher fuel prices caused by Putin's war.

 

Snopes looked into the claim that the United States blew up the Nordstream 2 pipeline. It found that this claim was based on a single anonymous source, so it isn't very credible. Excerpts:

On Feb. 8, 2023, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh published on Substack a theoretically blockbuster revelation: A covert U.S. military operation in June 2022 was responsible for the September 2022 destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines that run natural gas from Russia to Germany. The claim has been met with skepticism by other journalists, denials from U.S. government officials, and credulous promotion in Russia.

In this article, Snopes explores the controversy, separating the factual background in Hersh's reporting that provides an air of plausibility to his blockbuster claims from the anonymously sourced assertions of a single person that hold — however weakly — those claims together. By email, we asked Hersh to respond to criticism that his article's claims are based on a single source. We also asked if any undisclosed parties verified or vetted any of that source's assertions as part of his reporting. In response, he told Snopes, "I protect my sources."

...The Bottom Line

This story, when deconstructed, is merely a pile of purported second-hand information allegedly collected by someone connected in some unknown way to deliberations of a highly secret, multi-agency task force. Such a story falls prey to the same criticisms of other more recent work published by Hersh, which has relied on similarly questionable anonymous sources.

If the U.S. did conspire to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline, Hersh's reporting has not proved that case. Hersh has, instead, made a very successful blog post that essentially transcribes a compelling story someone unknown to the general public told him.

Hersh was asked by the Russian news agency TASS about the identity of his source. He told them that, "It's a person, who, it seems, knows a lot about what's going on." 

FOURTH PARTLY FALSE STATEMENT. For evidence that this is a war for profit not for Ukraine note that Ukraine desperately needs tanks now, but instead of sending a few of the 4800 tanks we currently have, we are building new tanks at $10 million each to be sent in August.  Oil and arms guys love this war and do not want it to end.  We spend billions on weapons, killing Russians and civilians, and we have no body bags coming home. 

It's true that the United States is having new Abrams tanks built to send to Ukraine, rather than sending tanks from our existing inventory. A New York Post story says this is because the United States doesn't have enough excess tanks. The larger question is whether the Ukraine war is driving increased American defense spending. 

A New York Times story says that while the Ukraine war is a factor, the bipartisan push to increase our defense spending also stems from longer term concerns about threats from Russia and China.

The prospect of growing military threats from both China and Russia is driving bipartisan support for a surge in Pentagon spending, setting up another potential boom for weapons makers that is likely to extend beyond the war in Ukraine.

...Even more orders are coming in to military contractors from U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, as they too have concluded they must do more to arm themselves against rising global threats. Japan moved this month to double its spending on defense over the next five years, putting aside a pacifist stand it has largely maintained since 1945.

Marjorie Taylor Greene gives Joe Biden a gigantic gift

Watching last night's State of the Union address was highly pleasurable for me in several ways.

One, Biden gave a great speech with energy belying his 80 years. Two, ultra-MAGA-crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene gave Biden a great gift when she yelled "you lie" and other things at him while doing her best angry baboon imitation.

(To those who think it's insulting to baboons to pair them with Greene, the image popped up in my Twitter feed today, so complain to whoever came up with this inspired comparison -- which admittedly puts baboons in a bad light that they don't deserve.)

This was a truly memorable State of the Union address. Long-time observers of the ritual said that Biden's speech was the most confrontational in modern times, and maybe ever.

President Biden correctly recognized that while it was important to praise the bipartisanship that helped make his first two years such a legislative success, this is the beginning of what appears to be his reelection campaign, so the stark differences between how congressional Republicans and Democrats view our nation's problems and potential needed to be stressed.

Even so, the speech was shaping up to be fairly traditional until Greene and her MAGA cronies decided to ignore the advice of Speaker McCarthy to his caucus and act like jerks.

The impetus for their jerkiness, not that it takes much for the MAGA far-right to be pushed into this mode, was Biden absolutely correctly saying that some Republicans have called for the sunsetting of Medicare and Social Security, which would require that these essential entitlement programs be reauthorized by a Congress that currently can't do anything useful, given the new GOP majority in the House.

Gosh, where could Biden have gotten that sunsetting idea? Why, in part from Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who included it in his 12 point Rescue America plan that he fashioned when he was chair of the committee to elect Senate Republicans in the 2022 midterm election. 

(The GOP lost a Senate seat in that election, so obviously Scott didn't do very well.)

There it is, in the Government Reform & Debt section of Scott's plan:

Medicare and Social Security are federal legislation. So Biden was correct when he said that some congressional Republicans want to sunset these programs. And Greene's you lie outburst was wrong, which is par for the course in the world of Green's habitual purveyor of falsehoods.

But it got even better. Because Republicans at the State of the Union address kept complaining about Biden's accurate claim that some in the GOP want to sunset Social Security and Medicare. 

I loved it when Biden said that he admires conversions. Then he did some quick thinking and said that it sounds like congressional Republicans want to make sure that no cuts occur to Social Security and Medicare, that seniors will be protected.

That got a lot of applause, which meant that President Biden was able to negotiate an important aspect of upcoming budget talks with the GOP right in the middle of his State of the Union address. Now it will be virtually impossible for Republicans to try to make changes to Social Security and Medicare given how outraged they were at the very idea of this -- which, again, was part of Senator Scott's Rescue America plan.

Like most Democrats, I've been hoping that my party could find a younger alternative to Biden to run in the 2024 presidential election. I still lean that way, but Biden's masterful performance last night sure made me feel better about him. 

Whether he's able to keep up that level of energy in the coming election cycle remains to be seen. For now, what's clear is that he kicked the butt of Marjorie Taylor Greene, though she's so clueless, there's no way she'll ever understand how badly she got trounced by President Biden.

Elon Musk falsely claims thousands of NATO soldiers killed in Ukraine

For supposedly being one of the world's smartest people, Elon Musk sure can be amazingly dumb at times. 

I follow Musk on Twitter so I get to see both his interesting tweets about Space X, Tesla, and such, and his crazy tweets about things Musk obviously knows nothing about. Or does know about, and lies about them anyway.

Like, the war in Ukraine. Today I was astounded to see that Musk had replied to an obviously false tweet by Russian Market where it was claimed that thousands of NATO troops had died in Ukraine.

Yeah, Elon, it would indeed be a tragic loss of life if thousands of NATO soldiers had been killed in Ukraine. But actually there aren't any NATO soldiers in Ukraine, much less dying there. It's hard to believe you don't know this.

So I have to think that, like Trump, you've got a love affair going with Vladimir Putin, the Russian autocrat. David Frum called Musk out on his bullshit.

On the plus side, this tweet today shows that the support of the American public for Ukraine remains strong. So Musk is just part of a right-wing Russia-loving minority that prefers a dictator, Putin, over the democracy of Ukraine that Putin is trying to destroy.

We all have blind spots. But Elon Musk has an especially large blind spot when it comes to seeing disinformation in others, but not in himself. Truly astounding that on a day when Musk promulgated the false claim about NATO soldiers dying in Ukraine, he said this about the United Nations.

Look in the mirror, Elon, if you're trying to find the source of disinformation.

Police acting cruelly in Tyre Nichols videos infuriates me

Here we go again.

One more of many examples where police acted really badly, so much so five officers in the Memphis police department have been charged with second degree murder after they killed Tyre Nichols, a young man, for no reason at all.

None. Absolutely none. 

Now, many people here in Salem, Oregon are going to think, "Thank heavens our police department isn't like that." They're wrong. Our police department is exactly like that. 

Meaning, the Salem Police Department is like almost every large department in the country.

It's organized on a military-style basis. Officers in the department view themselves as protecting the city against "bad guys," rather than as public servants. Leaders of the department, including Chief Womack, are resistant to reforming the way things are done, such as by not having uniformed officers handle calls better served by a mental health specialist and medic.

So when I watched the videos of Nichols being beaten cruelly by five Memphis police officers, which led to his death in a hospital several days later, I was visualizing how easily this could happen anywhere, including Salem, because our country is so screwed-up when it comes to policing.

I saw five police officers taking turns punching and kicking and striking and pepper spraying Nichols even though he posed no threat to them. I saw the familiar sight of police officers all participating in an assault on a citizen whose car was pulled over for no discernible reason. I saw the officers joking around after the assault, ignoring Nichols, who they'd propped up against a car, all proud that one of them had held Nichols with his hands behind his back while another officer punched him in the head.

In short, what I saw was what I see every time I see a police officer: an average human being, many or most of whom have an above-average propensity for violence.

It's time to stop putting police on a pedestal. Bring them down to earth, where they belong.

Police are nothing special. They're normal people who get to carry a gun and enforce our laws. But when they act like jerks, they're worse than normal people, because five normal people don't beat up a young man until he dies from his injuries. It takes abnormally cruel people to do that, people who think they can get away with murder, literally, because they wear a police uniform.

What was released today by the Memphis Police Department were several videos of the Nichols assault. The body cam videos are confusing to watch. A video taken by a camera on a light pole provides the clearest, and most infuriating, view of the assault by the police officers. It can be viewed here.

If you don't want to watch the disturbing video, I completely understand. But I hope you will watch it. It's important to see how police officers act when they think they're above the law, because they are the law. Again, like jerks, strutting around like the cowards that they are, all proud that five large police officers were able to beat up a 140 pound young man.

A Black man. And the five police officers charged with his murder also are Black.

Which goes to show that while racism in police departments is a problem, an even bigger problem is the police culture that allows a group of officers to gang up on brutally beating a citizen without any officer raising an objection.

Nichols was pulled out of his car and thrown to the ground without any explanation. He was complying with police orders, but the asshole Memphis officers kept yelling conflicting demands at him. Like get on the ground when he was already on the ground, and show me your hands when they were holding his arms.

Understandably, Nichols took off running. Almost certainly he was afraid for his life, a totally valid fear, as it turns out. He was just a few hundred yards from his home. He wanted to run home to his mother. He yelled "Mother!" several times while the police were assaulting him. 

A New York Times story describes what happened next. Again, infuriating. 

Roughly eight minutes later, after a pursuit, officers locate Mr. Nichols in a suburban neighborhood, not far from his home, and tackle him to the ground. A severe beating ensues as Mr. Nichols cries out in pain and yells repeatedly for his mother. A body-worn camera and a surveillance camera capture police officers continuing their assault on Mr. Nichols, with one kicking him so hard in the face that the officer nearly falls down.

Throughout the beating, which lasts about three minutes, Mr. Nichols does not appear to ever strike back. Several times, he moves his hands to cover his face, seeming to cower from the officers’ blows.

As an officer hits him from behind with a baton, Mr. Nichols stands up and staggers while officers hang on to his arms. As two officers hold his arms behind his back, a third officer delivers a series of powerful punches. Finally, after that officer hits Mr. Nichols three times in the head while standing behind him, Mr. Nichols collapses to the ground.

Back at the scene of the traffic stop, body camera video from an officer who did not join the chase captures his reaction around the time that he learns that his colleagues have caught up with Mr. Nichols. “I hope they stomp his ass,” he says, twice.

By the end of the pummeling, Mr. Nichols is lying on his back, appearing dizzy. The officers drag him over to a police car and sit him up against it. The video images do not show him receiving any serious medical attention for several minutes.

Mr. Nichols, who worked at a FedEx facility and was the father of a 4-year-old boy, died in a hospital three days later.

Tyre Nichols, another victim of police violence

 

I hate war, but I love tanks going to Ukraine

Being a baby boomer (I was born in 1948), my life as an American liberal has featured several wars that I opposed. 

Notably the Vietnam and Iraq wars, at least the second Iraq war. I was fine with us going into Afghanistan to take down Al Qaeda and the first Iraq war seemed justified. Then there's been U.S. involvement in a bunch of military actions. Can't remember much about them.

So by and large I've been in favor of less military spending. Up to now, my generation, unlike the generation of my mother and father, hasn't experienced a truly just war like World War II. That affects how we view the defense budget, which seems excessive.

But as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine about a year ago, I became much more interested in modern warfare.

Putin's war crimes against the Ukrainian people -- willfully killing many thousands of civilian men, women, and children, along with bombing medical facilities, schools, power generation plants, and other non-military targets -- infuriated me.

I've been following the Ukraine war closely. I read stories in the New York Times and Washington Post. I follow the frequent posts of the English language Kyiv Independent on Twitter. Whenever a story about Ukraine appears on MSNBC or CNN, I perk up my ears.

The Ukraine war is a highly just war. Russia invaded Ukraine for no reason other than a desire to take over the country. There's only one "good guy" in this war: Ukraine. There's nothing positive that can be said about Russia's invasion.

Because Putin is an insufferable authoritarian, the only way the Ukraine war is going to end is by making it so costly for Russia, Putin is forced to give up on his invasion. Ideally Ukraine takes back all of the territory Russia has taken, including Crimea. 

At the very least, Ukraine needs to reclaim most of the Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine. To do that, it's been obvious for some time that the United States and our allies need to send heavier offensive weapons to Ukraine, such as tanks and fighter planes.

Finally, an agreement has been reached for the United States to send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, and for Germany and other European nations to send around 80 additional tanks, such as the German Leopard. 

Congratulations to President Biden and his national security team for navigating some treacherous political waters to get this done. Germany has been resisting supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine. Eventually Germany said it would do this if the United States supplied Abrams tanks.

At first our defense department balked, arguing that it wasn't practical to send the Abrams. However, with this issue threatening to create a rift in support for Ukraine among the United States and European Union nations, eventually a deal was reached to get Ukraine tanks from both the U.S. and E.U.

Great news. Ukraine has made excellent use of the weapons that have been supplied to them. There's little doubt that the tanks also will be put to good use in the fight against Russia. Now, how about those fighter jets?

Biden's classified documents screwup irritates this Democrat

Even though I'm a proud member of the Democratic "tribe," I also believe that when my political party does something wrong, I should be almost as irritated as when Republicans do that thing.

I said almost because I'm a realist: even though it would be nice if I could be evenhanded when it comes to wrongdoing by Democrats and Republicans, the fact that I'm a Democrat means that I'm going to look somewhat more positively on screwups by my fellow Dems.

Which is how most parents look upon their children.

When your child gets into trouble, you're disturbed, but you know that they're basically a good kid. But if a child you don't know does the same thing, likely you'll be less forgiving.

Even so, I find it difficult to forgive President Biden for the discovery of classified documents both in a private office and in the garage of his Delaware home. Sure, there are important differences between the classified documents found in the possession of Biden and Trump.

Nonetheless, this is a huge gift to Republicans.

Just when the House GOP was looking all disorganized and chaotic following the 15 acrimonious votes needed to elect Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, Biden's classified documents scandal makes the Democratic occupant of the White House look all disorganized and chaotic. 

After the FBI raided Trump's Florida home in search of classified documents he refused to hand over, and Biden criticized Trump for being careless with these documents, it sure seems like people in Biden's orbit should have made sure that he didn't have classified documents squirreled away, either knowingly or unknowingly.

The first discovery of Biden documents in a private office struck me as disturbing, but not all that bad. Maybe a staff member carried a box into the office that Biden never looked into. But when more classified documents were found stored next to his 1967 Corvette, I felt that was inexcusable.

I'm not a highly organized person. But I'm familiar with what's in all of the boxes stored in our garage. It just seems difficult to believe that no one in the Biden family was aware of what was in the classified documents box (assuming it was a box).

I also don't like how Biden responded to a question about this.

There was one further, odd comment in an exchange with Peter Doocy of Fox News. 

Doocy asked Biden what he was “thinking” by having classified documents “next to your Corvette.” 

Biden shot back that he would speak more about the matter soon and added, “By the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage. OK? So it’s not like it’s sitting out in the street.” 

Geez. Trump kept many of his classified documents in a locked storage room, and that came in for well-deserved criticism. So Biden shouldn't have implied that a locked garage is a proper repository for classified documents.

Hopefully Biden will handle this scandal better from now on.

It's great that he's being so cooperative with the Justice Department. I just wish Biden had been more honest and straightforward about how the classified documents came to be where they were found, apologizing for the screwup rather than making light of it in his Corvette comment.