Flock for Thee but Not for Me

When I first heard about the DC police union objecting to the use of Flock cameras, I thought that perhaps someone in the organization was showing some integrity.

Silly me, Police Benevolent Associations and their ilk have no integrity at all. 

What they were objecting to was the use of Flock cameras to enforce police accountability.

The national blowback against Flock license-plate readers is also hitting the Washington region, with D.C.’s police union and leaders in a Northern Virginia city raising concerns about the use of the technology in recent days.

Gregg Pemberton, president of the D.C. police union, said Friday the city’s department has used license plate readers for many years and is a powerful investigative tool. But he noted Flock’s technology can also create detailed files on people not suspected of any crimes.

………

Pemberton’s skepticism of the technology also comes as the union said it learned the police force’s internal affairs department had used the technology to investigate sworn officers.

The union filed misconduct complaints and a grievance about what it said was improper use of the technology, but Pemberton said department leadership has so far declined to investigate. The department has since restricted access to the system, according to the union.

To the degree that the Flock panopticon can be said to have a highest use, the investigation of potential police misconduct is that highest use.

The fact that the cops are gored by their own ox is a good thing.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I get that recruiting at the FBI is not what it once was, but recruiting people who frequent prostitutes and f%$# animals seems to be desparation.

Worst timeline ever, 

Kash Patel's FBI is being pilloried online after a new report revealed the bureau quietly loosened the vetting standards that once automatically disqualified applicants who had hired sex workers, stolen from an employer or engaged in bestiality.

According to CBS News, the FBI in June eased some background check rules so that those acts, most of them illegal, are no longer instant disqualifiers for would-be agents. A candidate may now get a pass on prostitution as long as they did not hire sex workers three or more times and not within the past decade, and someone who committed bestiality as a minor could still make the cut, sources told the outlet.

The change comes as the FBI lost more than 1,000 special agents in 2025, part of an exodus of firings, forced retirements and polygraphs since Trump returned to power. Critics say the loosened rules point to a recruiting crisis.

"How can this not be reflective of a recruiting problem at the FBI if you are lowering your standards on issues like bestiality and prostitution?" attorney Mark Zaid told CBS.

Only the very best people?

………Which Would Be Replaced by Something Even More Bizarrely Inexplicable

I am referring, of course, to the fact that Markwayne Mullin has been confirmed as the new Secretary of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi "Ice Barbi" Noem.

I did not think that it would possible to find someone worse than Noem.

I was misinformed.

The Senate confirmed Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Monday to serve as the next secretary of Homeland Security, putting the Oklahoma Republican in charge of immigration enforcement, one of President Trump's biggest priorities in his second term.

Mullin won the confirmation in a 54-45 vote. He will be the second secretary to lead the department during this Trump administration, replacing Kristi Noem. He comes to the helm in the midst of a shutdown that has left 100,000 of the department's more than a quarter-million employees working without pay.

Reality exceeds my capability for cynicism yet again. 

I Needed This So Much, and So Do You

I did not know that I needed this, but I really, really did;

Thank you Hank Azaria.

I have been a fan since Herman's Head. 

Today in What the Fuck

When I see a headline like, "Cops Forced to Explain Why AI Generated Police Report Claimed Officer Transformed Into Frog,"  I knew that I had to click through.

Law enforcement has quickly embraced AI for everything from drafting police reports to facial recognition.

The results have been predictably dismal. In one particularly glaring — and unintentionally comedic — instance, the police department in Heber City, Utah, was forced to explain why a police report software declared that an officer had somehow shapeshifted into a frog.

As Salt Lake City-based Fox 13 reports, the flawed tool seems to have picked up on some unrelated background chatter to devise its fantastical fairy tale ending.

“The body cam software and the AI report writing software picked up on the movie that was playing in the background, which happened to be ‘The Princess and the Frog,'” police sergeant Rick Keel told the broadcaster, referring to Disney’s 2009 musical comedy. “That’s when we learned the importance of correcting these AI-generated reports.”

Gee, I wonder what happened.

OK, I don't.  The headline was a spoiler. 

This is Gonna Get Ugly

I do not know how he does it, but Ken Klippenstein has gotten another bombshell scoop, in this case it's a leaked memo confirming that DHS is bringing in the military to support them when they target Chicago for mass abductions and violence.

I hope that Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have a plan to deal with.

One common sense measure that I would suggest is that when Illinois law enforcement encounters a masked aand heavily armed man without obvious and visible identification, that they arrest them.

Once they are fingerprinted, gotten their mug shot, and have had their names put on the police blotter, they can phone someone to bail them out.

The Department of Homeland Security has requested military assistance for upcoming ICE operations in Chicago, according to a “For Official Use Only” memo that I’ve obtained. A military advance team has already arrived.

The document requests “immediate Department of Defense support” for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) activities “to address public safety and national security.” It suggests that the support will be provided by active duty troops, making no mention of the Illinois National Guard.

The request specifically seeks “support infrastructure,” including highway access, fuel, and “other logistical nodes…” with the military staging out of the Great Lakes Naval Station in North Chicago, some 30 miles from downtown.

Dated August 27, the request is from Department of Homeland Security Executive Secretary Andrew Whitaker to Defense Department Executive Secretary Anthony Fuscellaro. Whitaker is a former Ralph Lauren Brand Ambassador and a longtime Trump politico.

Not good. 

About Right, I Think

Former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez (D) has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for corruption.

Seeing as how people jailed for federal crimes typically serve 85% of their sentence, this would have him in jail for about 9 years and 4 months.

Seems about right to me:

Former U.S. senator Bob Menendez on Wednesday was sentenced to 11 years in prison for operating what prosecutors called one of the most brazen corruption schemes in the country’s history, with bribes totaling nearly $1 million in cash, checks, gold bars and a Mercedes-Benz.

The longtime New Jersey lawmaker was convicted of all charges last year in Manhattan federal court, forcing his resignation after nearly 18 years in the Senate and a half-century in politics. A jury found that Menendez took bribes from three New Jersey businessmen who sought his help quashing criminal investigations and securing lucrative deals with officials from Egypt and Qatar. He is appealing.

Menendez, 71, is the first public official in the United States to be convicted of acting as a foreign agent. Text messages and emails showed how he maneuvered to get U.S. military aid and sensitive, unclassified information to Egypt between 2018 and 2022 from his powerful perch as the highest-ranking Democratic member and later chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It took long enough. 

I know that corruption is common in the toxic waste Garden State, but this has been an open secret for well over a decade.

Mind Blown

You just need to watch the first few minutes of the intro, though with Lee Marvin, James Coburn, and Leonard Nimoy starring in this particular episode, it is worth a full watch:

By comparison, look at this:

I did not realize how closely Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker hewed to the original.

Less Police, Less Crime?

There appears to be a correlation between Police department staffing and crime falling.

Of course correlation does not prove causation, the correlation points to something going on.

In late May, Politico ran an article with the trollish headline “White House to the left: We told you so on crime.” The piece was built on interviews with two anonymous advisers to President Joe Biden, who asserted that falling violent crime rates and the electoral defeat of a “progressive” prosecutor in Oregon had validated the administration’s “toughness” and vocal support for increased law enforcement funding. Its framing depicted the politics of law and order as a zero-sum game in which leftists—especially those who called to “defund” law enforcement in 2020 after numerous high-profile instances of police brutality—have been routed.

But while it’s true that voters generally chose not to support defunding efforts amid rising COVID-era crime rates, the administration’s more-cops triumphalism might not tell the entire story either. In a New Republic piece published the day after the White House’s Politico victory lap, for instance, Michelle Phelps—a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota who studies policing—noted that thanks to retirements and resignations, there are actually fewer police officers working in the Minneapolis Police Department now than there were before the protests triggered by the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by an MPD officer. And according to numbers compiled by the Police Executive Research Forum, a respected independent group, that’s true of major cities across the country as a whole. “In large agencies, sworn staffing slightly increased during 2023,” PERF writes, “but it is still more than 5 percent below where it was in January 2020.” (Caveat: PERF’s data relies on departmental self-reporting.)

In other words, while voters may not have wanted it to be the case, and it didn’t happen in the way that activists would have chosen either, many U.S. police departments have gotten smaller—and the violent crime rate is still plummeting. So what is going on? Slate spoke to Phelps, author of the new book The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence and the Politics of Policing in America, about the fallout from Floyd’s death in Minnesota and how it might relate to the politics of police and crime nationally. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

So, why is crime falling even has police department staffing has fallen?

Ms. Phelps gives a number of potential reasons,

• That a reduction in police leads to a reduction in over-policing, things like stop and frisk, pulling people over for burnt out tail-lights, etc., and so police are actually more focused on crime.
• That police reform efforts have led to non-police intervention efforts.

What Ms. Phelps does not consider, that the police who have left the force have been bad cops.

The ones who are most likely to leave or take early retirement because of increased scrutiny or Covid vaccine mandates, are more likely to be the violent, brutal and incompetent cops. 

This is why I have always felt that using training to improve policing is a recipe for failure:  The bad cops are largely impervious to training.  The solution is to make sure that the bad cops are no longer cops.

Support Your Local Police

As in many other cities, the officers of the Minneapolis police department are engaging in a silent strike in response to demands for greater accountability.

As a result, crime fell.

This says a lot about the relative value of police:

Former officer/current prisoner Derek Chauvin decided to personify endemic police racism by pressing his knee to the neck of an unarmed black man for nearly ten minutes. This display of power continued for three minutes after another officer told Officer Chauvin he could no longer detect a pulse.

This act saw Officer Derek Chauvin join the very short list of law enforcement officers convicted of murder. Before that verdict arrived, Minneapolis exploded. Shortly thereafter, so did the rest of the country.

Minneapolis PD officers responded as cops almost always do when a “bad apple” further turns public sentiment against them: they simply refused to do their job. Officers decided that if people didn’t love the police, they weren’t going to avail themselves of the benefits (whatever they are) of an organized police force. Of course, most officers were unwilling to give up their incomes in exchange for abdicating their responsibilities. They expected to get paid for doing nothing.

Others saw the writing on the likely burning wall: casual abuse of citizens and their rights was no longer being tolerated to the extent it had been previous to Officer Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd. They decided to exit the police business altogether, rather than deal with any minimal increases in transparency and accountability.

And what happened?

………

And, for a relatively brief moment, that simple math held. Crime did go up while the city was still dealing with 24/7 protests and an observable spike in disrespect for police officers and everything they stand for.

But that assertion has since been proven false. Reports flowing in over the last couple of years show cops aren’t all that essential to lowering crime rates. In April of this year, it was reported that crime rate decreases first noted in 2022 weren’t an anomaly.

According to MPD data, carjackings are down 46% year-to-date, robbery has dropped 34%, gunshot wound victims declined nearly 38% and assaults are down 7%.

The city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, credited this drop to a new task force and a renewed focus on subjecting repeat offenders to harsher sentences. Maybe. Maybe not. But it definitely wasn’t related to an increase in officers on patrol, contrary to the predictions of the self-interest groups listed above.

We are spending way too much money on policing.

Support Your Local Police

In response to a black man being as a hired as s supervisor, half of the Golden Valley, Minnesota police department quit, and crime fell.

It appears that cops, particularly prima donna racist cops, don't do much to reduce crime:

In a staggering report last month, the Department of Justice documented pervasive abuse, illegal use of force, racial bias and systemic dysfunction in the Minneapolis Police Department. City police officers engaged in brutality or made racist comments, even as a department investigator rode along in a patrol car. Complaints about police abuse were often slow-walked or dismissed without investigation. And after George Floyd’s death, instead of ending the policy of racial profiling, the police just buried the evidence.

The Minneapolis report was shocking, but it wasn’t surprising. It doesn’t read much differently from recent Justice Department reports about the police departments in Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, Albuquerque, New Orleans, Ferguson, Mo., or any of three recent reports from various sources about Minneapolis, from 2003, 2015 and 2016.

………

Lying just below the surface of that characterization is a starkly cynical message to marginalized communities: You can have accountable and constitutional policing, or you can have safety. But you can’t have both.

………

In accord with that view, some academic studies have found that more police officers can correlate with less crime. But the studies don’t account for factors that the Minneapolis report highlights — the social costs of police brutality and misconduct, how they can erode public trust, how that erosion of trust affects public safety — and they don’t account for the potential benefits of less coercive, less confrontational alternatives to the police. We don’t have as many studies that take those factors into account, but to see the effects in real time, you need only step over the Minneapolis city line.

Golden Valley is a suburb of about 22,000 that in many ways is as idyllic as its name suggests. The median annual household income tops $100,000, there’s very little crime, and 15 percent of the town is devoted to parks and green spaces, including Theodore Wirth Park on its eastern border, a lush space that hosts a bike path and a parkway.

But the town’s Elysian charm comes with a dark past. Just on the other side of the park lies the neighborhood of Willard-Hay. There, the median household income drops to about $55,000 per year, and there’s quite a bit more crime. Willard-Hay is 26 percent white and 40 percent Black. Golden Valley is 85 percent white and 5 percent Black — the result of pervasive racial covenants. 

The editor should have correct the last bit, it's not "Racial covenants,"  it's, "Racist covenants."

“We enjoy prosperity and security in this community,” said Shep Harris, the mayor since 2012. “But that has come at a cost. I think it took incidents like the murder of George Floyd to help us see that more clearly.” The residents of the strongly left-leaning town decided change was necessary. One step was eliminating those racial covenants. Another was changing the Police Department, which had a reputation for mistreating people of color.

The first hire was Officer Alice White, the force’s first high-ranking Black woman. The second was Virgil Green, the town’s first Black police chief.

“When I started, Black folks I’d speak to in Minneapolis seemed surprised that I’d been hired,” Chief Green said when I spoke with him recently. “They told me they and most people they knew avoided driving through Golden Valley.”

Members of the overwhelmingly white police force responded to both hires by quitting — in droves.

Gee, I wonder why?

An outside investigation later revealed that some officers had run an opposition campaign against Chief Green. One of those officers recorded herself making a series of racist comments during a call with city officials, then sent the recording to other police officers. She was fired — prompting yet another wave of resignations.

The typical Golden Valley police officer makes a six-figure salary with good benefits. The city has almost no violent crime. It’s a good gig. Yet in just two years, more than half the department quit.

Oh, that's why they all quit?

But what about the crime?

………

The interesting thing is that according to Chief Green, despite the reduction in staff, crime — already low — has gone down in Golden Valley. The town plans to staff the department back up, just not right away. “I’ve heard that the police union is cautioning officers from coming to work here,” Mr. Harris said. “But that’s OK. We want to take the time to hire officers who share our vision and are excited to work toward our goals.”

(emphasis mine)

Mr. Harris is quick to point out that Golden Valley may not be the perfect model for the rest of the country. “This is a wealthy community with very little crime,” he said. “We can afford to go through this change. I realize that may not be the case in other places.”

There is reason to think it may. When New York’s officers engaged in an announced slowdown in policing in late 2014 and early 2015, civilian complaints of major crime in the city dropped. And despite significant staffing shortages at law enforcement agencies around the country, if trends continue, 2023 will have the largest percentage drop in homicides in U.S. history. It’s true that such a drop would come after a two-year surge, but the fact that it would also occur after a significant reduction in law enforcement personnel suggests the surge may have been due more to the pandemic and its effects than depolicing.

So, defund the police and reduce crime?  Sounds like a win-win to me.

H/T Techdirt.

This Is How You Handle It

First bit is by the bigots, documenting their racism, the Sheriff's response starts at 1:30


And the T-shirt is available

The Volusia County, Florida (of course it's Florida) Sheriff Mike Chitwood has been facing demands for $100,000.00 in gold (nice touch) and an apology from an antisemitic militia because he called them scumbag.

His response has been to mail pacifiers to the would-be terrorists labeled, "Mike Chitwood hurt my feelings.

Good for him:

Members of an antisemitic hate group are demanding that Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood pay them $100,000 in gold and apologize for calling them “scumbags” in notices that resemble a lawsuit but are not.

The members of the "Goyim Defense League," a group that has littered Volusia County neighborhoods with antisemitic flyers, also want the sheriff to remove tweets about his “Scumbag Eradication Team” T-shirts.

The shirts depict the sheriff flushing some people, including one person with a swastika tattoo on his leg, down a toilet.

Jon E. Minadeo II, identified by the Anti-Defamation League as the leader of the GDL, was one of four members who filed the "notices." He complained he was targeted because the T-shirts depict sunglasses similar to his own next to the toilet.

Chitwood responded in a Facebook video post by tearing up the notices, tossing them in the trash, and calling group members "pieces of (expletive)."

But the sheriff did offer the group one thing: pacifiers.

“To acknowledge that we received this piece of crap on paper with misspelled words — you’re so intelligent — we will be mailing one of these to each one of you that filed a lawsuit,” Chitwood said. “And basically it says ‘Mike Chitwood hurt my feelings,’“ the sheriff said.

Chitwood then held a pacifier close to the camera.

“Here’s a shot for you to suck on the pacifier, because that’s about all you’re going to get from your lawsuit,” he said. (It's not a lawsuit.)

………

Chitwood responded in a Facebook video post by tearing up the notices, tossing them in the trash, and calling group members "pieces of (expletive)."

But the sheriff did offer the group one thing: pacifiers.

“To acknowledge that we received this piece of crap on paper with misspelled words — you’re so intelligent — we will be mailing one of these to each one of you that filed a lawsuit,” Chitwood said. “And basically it says ‘Mike Chitwood hurt my feelings,’“ the sheriff said.

Chitwood then held a pacifier close to the camera.

………

The sheriff's office stated Monday that the pacifiers had yet to be mailed.

I want that T-shirt. 

This is how you deal with these folks, you mock them, you belittle them, and when they make criminal threats, you charge them.

Not This Sh$# Again!

After Joe Biden betrayed the idea of DC self-rule with his signing a bill to cancel their long overdue update to their criminal laws, it looks like Republicans are going to try to overturn Washington, D.C.'s new police accountability laws as well, because if cops cannot shoot black people with impunity, it is an affront to Republican Jesus.

House Republicans are preparing for the next round in their perennial boxing match against D.C. home rule, this time targeting D.C.’s police accountability legislation after Congress voted to block the city’s criminal code overhaul.

But whether their new effort succeeds will once again depend on Democrats.

The looming congressional examination of D.C.’s policing legislation is expected to test the extent to which Democrats support D.C. home rule, as most say they do — and how vulnerable they could be to Republican political attacks that they are “anti-police.”

The Democrats are spineless cowards.

Unfortunately for them, people do not like to vote for spineless cowards.

It's bad policy and bad politics.

………

Not waiting to find out, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) penned a letter to House and Senate leadership on Friday opposing congressional efforts to overturn the bill, getting a much earlier start in lobbying Congress against the disapproval legislation after Mendelson and others acknowledged that murky and disunified messaging hampered the city during the previous debate over the crime bill.

This is a polite way of saying that Bowser vetoed the crime bill and was overridden, and may have encouraged Congress to overrule the law.

………

The Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022 would make permanent certain reforms the city enacted on an emergency or temporary basis after the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd in 2020, such as prohibiting the use of neck restraints. It also would expand public access to police disciplinary records and access to police body-camera footage in excessive force incidents. Additionally, the bill would require officers to issue Miranda-like warnings before conducting a search with a person’s consent, would prevent hiring officers who have committed past misconduct and would not allow the police union to negotiate police discipline, which the union strongly opposes.

This is really pretty weak tea, but the Republicans have a cudgel, and they intend to use it.

They don't care if it's wrong or if it's right.

Just do the right thing.

San Francisco Killer Robots, I Hate San Francisco Killer Robots

The police asked the San Francisco city council to approve their use of robots equipped to use deadly force. 

Last week, they approved their use in, "Extreme Circumstances," but following a freakout by the public that was rivaled only by the reactions to the death of Norton I., Emperor of the United States, the city council has unanimously reversed themselves, banning any use of killer robots.

Killer robots?  What could possibly go wrong?

San Francisco supervisors voted Tuesday to put the brakes on a controversial policy that would have let police use robots for deadly force, reversing course just days after their approval of the plan generated fierce pushback and warnings about the militarization and automation of policing.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to explicitly ban the use of robots in such a fashion for now. But they sent the issue back to a committee for further discussion and could vote in the future to let police use robots in a lethal manner in limited cases.

The board voted last week to allow the use of deadly robots in extreme circumstances. The police department said it had no plans to arm the robots with guns but wanted the ability to put explosives on them and use then to contact, incapacitate or disorient dangerous or armed suspects when lives are at risk.

The initial vote thrust the famously liberal city into the center of a debate about the future of technology and policing, with some saying arming robots was a step too close to something one would see in a dystopian science fiction movie. Though robot technology for policing has become more widely available, departments across the country have rarely used it to confront or kill suspects.

Three supervisors who rejected the policy from the beginning joined dozens of protesters Monday outside City Hall to urge the board to change course. They chanted and held signs with phrases like “We all saw that movie... No Killer Robots."

Supervisor Dean Preston was among them, and on Tuesday he told his colleagues the public hadn't been given enough time to voice their concerns about such a pressing issue.

“The people of San Francisco have spoken loud and clear: There is no place for killer police robots in our city,” he said in a statement after the vote. “We should be working on ways to decrease the use of force by local law enforcement, not giving them new tools to kill people.”

Yeah, pretty much.

If technology exists, cops will abuse it.

Whiny Bitches

I am referring to the San Diego Police Department, who has a sad because they will be required to reveal the technology that they use to spy on their citizens, because cops are always about, "Accountability for thee, but not for me."

They don't want any sort of civilian review of how they do their business, because the police believe that they should not be subject to any sort of accountability by the citizens whose taxes pay their salaries.

The term for what police want is a police state:

There’s very little that seems to anger public servants more than mandates requiring them to serve the public. For years, the San Diego police department has expanded its surveillance programs. And for years, these expansions have gone unchallenged.

But now that the city has passed an ordinance requiring more direct oversight of police activity, cops are singing the thin blue line blues and claiming the public has no business overseeing the business of public agencies. The cop pushback against slightly increased accountability has begun, as David Hernandez reports for the San Diego Union-Tribune. (h/t Michael Vario)

After years of work to create oversight of surveillance technologies in San Diego, an ordinance that will govern how the city uses the technology received final approval from the City Council this week.

The work began after residents learned in 2019 that the city had installed a network of about 3,000 cameras on streetlights three years earlier, and police used the technology to investigate certain types of crimes. Some residents expressed concerns over potential civil liberty violations and over-policing, particularly in communities of color.

Under the ordinance, the City Council must approve the use of technology that can monitor and identify individuals. City staff members will need to issue reports that outline the intended use of such technology, and the public and a newly created privacy advisory board will be asked to weigh in.

I know, this seems pretty anodyne, allowing civilian review of what sort of technology is being purchased by the police department, and how it is being used, but the police don't see it that way:

But this minimal push towards accountability has been greeted by the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) as a declaration of war on the department. Cops may have guns, badges, and a shitload of power, but any time someone demands a little more accountability, police officials make it clear cops have the thinnest skin and the most extreme sense of entitlement.

San Diego police Capt. Jeffrey Jordon said the department uses a host of technological devices that will require approval, including body-worn cameras, polygraphs and forensic lab equipment.

“I’m not aware of any other cities in America that have to report out this many pieces of technology,” he said.

If there is anything that the past 100 years or so of professional policing has shown us, it is that police cannot be be trusted with these decisions.  They will always abuse these powers for their own benefit and their own convenience.

That is what the whole corrupt "Thin Blue Line" is all about.

Confirmed

In calling for an investigation, Chief Justice Roberts has confirmed the authenticity of the 1st draft of Alito's opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

He has noted that, "It does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case," but that sounds like a distinction without a difference.

McConnell Caves

McConnel has been through enough government shutdowns to know that when they occur, it's always Republicans who get the blame, so he green-lighted a short term extension of the US debt ceiling.

I really don't understand how thought that it would work this time:

The US Senate has approved a deal to extend the government’s borrowing authority into December. The compromise between Republican and Democratic leaders would temporarily avert an unprecedented federal default that experts say would have devastated the economy.

With a 50-48 vote, senators agreed to increase the borrowing limit by $480bn, sufficient to prevent the US government from defaulting by keeping debt payments up until 3 December.

It's interesting, because the Democrats have been doing everything but saying, "Don't throw me in that briar patch," to McConnell, and ke keeps doing this.

I have to figure that this has nothing to do at all with the upcoming general elections in 2022, but instead has to do with the 2022 primary elections.  Appeasing the nutjob wing of the Republican party is driving this.

Well, as Napoleon said, "Never stop a man from stepping on his own dick."  (This may not be a 100% accurate translation.)

Pedro Castillo Sworn in as President of Peru

I figured that the elites in Peru would find a way put the relentlessly corrupt Keiko Fujimori in power, but I am happy to be wrong.

That being said, if he actually delivers on his promises to move toward a more just and equal society, I would expect that the aforementioned elites, as well as elements of the US state security apparatus, will attempt to overthrow him: 

Mr. Smith went to Washington. Now, Mr. Castillo has come to Lima.

The rise of Pedro Castillo, a previously obscure leader of a rural teachers union, to Peru’s highest office is the most glaring example yet of the power of the pandemic to upend politics in Latin America.

The ravages of the coronavirus, and the surges in poverty and inequality it has caused, have provoked nearly 1 million people to protest in Colombia and saw a communist elected mayor of Santiago, the capital of Chile, the region’s free-market model.

………

In an address to Congress, he celebrated Peru’s Indigenous peoples and blamed the Spanish conquest and the legacy of colonialism for the inequalities that persist in the nation today.

………

He outlined a vision for a much-changed country — one where attending universities would be free, but unemployed youth who were not in school would be conscripted by a military redeployed for engineering and public works projects. Indigenous languages would be used inside government offices and by state officials in parts of the country where they predominate. Immigrants who commit crimes, he said, would be summarily deported within 72 hours.

This guy is rather "eclectic", isn't he.

The priority for his new government, he said, will be coronavirus vaccinations, access to health care, economic revitalization, improving education and aiding the rural poor.

He sought to temper fears that his government would enact a series of far-left policies including nationalizations and land seizures, saying property rights would be guaranteed. “We will do none of that,” he said.

At the same time, however, he pledged to target “monopolies” that have driven up prices for everything from gasoline to medicines, and suggested the state might intervene in some sectors “to reduce costs.” He put on notice the foreign investors who he suggested had negotiated overly generous contracts with past governments to extract Peru’s natural resources.

“The state must have the freedom to promote, to monitor and regulate according to the interests of the majority,” he said.

Yeah, that will get the CIA and State Department in his corner.

………

Yet he faces a number of challenges from the start, including a struggle within his inner circle for influential positions within a cabinet he has yet to announce. He confronts a hostile, fractured Congress run by his political enemies, with a history of impeaching presidents.

Yep, you can be sure that someone at Langley is already drafting impeachment scenarios.

………

He has vowed to insert the state more deeply into the country’s lucrative mining sector, but has not explained when, how or to what extent. He is a social conservative who has opposed same-sex marriage but tried to focus his candidacy more on the nation’s economic plight, with pledges to fight the pandemic, poverty and unemployment.

Yeah, changing the status quo in resource extraction, even a little, will attract people who want to destabilize his administration.

………

Peru has had four presidents in five years. Two were forced out amid corruption allegations, and another over the use of excessive force against protesters. More than 50 lawmakers in the 130-member legislature are under investigation or facing criminal charges. Keiko Fujimori has been in and out of jail in the past two years amid allegations of money laundering and campaign finance violations.

A profoundly dysfunctional polity, that.

………

Yet his election produced as much fear as hope. Secretary of State Antony Blinken congratulated Castillo after he was declared winner. Privately, U.S. officials have expressed concern about the anti-American sentiments that pervade his party.

Why would anyone in Latin America have Latin America have anti-American sentiments?

Perhaps it might have something with supporting the worst possible rulers to further the interests of American capital for almost 200 years.

Given developments in Brazil, Ecuador, and Bolivia, I would expect some sot of similar form of coup, whether by the military or by "lawfare" will have him removed before he finishes his term.

This is How You Weed Out the Militia Types

Once again making a joke of, "Protect and Serve," police are some of the public servants least likely to get a vaccine.

This is a good thing:  It is a canary in a coal mine.

When you tell a police officer, get a vaccine, or you are suspended, and they take the suspension, 9 times out of 10, they are right wing militia types who have infiltrated the police.

These are the cops who generate your problems with brutality, racism, and million dollar judgement.

Let them go:

Police officers were among the first front-line workers to gain priority access to coronavirus vaccines. But their vaccination rates are lower than or about the same as those of the general public, according to data made available by some of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies.

The reluctance of police to get the shots threatens not just their own health, but also the safety of people they’re responsible for guarding, monitoring and patrolling, experts say.

At the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, just 39 percent of employees have gotten at least one dose, officials said, compared to more than 50 percent of eligible adults nationwide. In Atlanta, 36 percent of sworn officers have been vaccinated. And a mere 28 percent of those employed by the Columbus Division of Police — Ohio’s largest police department — report having received a shot.

“I think it’s unacceptable,” Joe Lombardo, the head of Las Vegas police and sheriff of Clark County, said of the meager demand for the shots within his force.

………

Police hesitancy also means officers may be vectors of spread to vulnerable people with whom they interact during traffic stops, calls for service and other high-contact encounters. That could thwart efforts to restore community trust in a moment of heightened scrutiny after last month’s conviction of ex-officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd.

“Police touch people,” said Sharona Hoffman, a professor of law and bioethics at Case Western Reserve University. “Imagine having a child in the car who’s not vaccinated. People would want to know if a police officer coming to their window is protected.”

Make it mandatory and fire the cops who refuse.  They are refusing to support public health.

You will end up with a better police force.

Sanity in Baltimore

Baltimore County States Attorney Marilyn Mosby has announced that she is formally ending prosecutions of drug posession. There had been a temporary policy in place because of the pandemic, but this is a permanent change: 

Declaring the war on drugs over in Baltimore, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced Friday she will make permanent her COVID-19 policy to dismiss all criminal charges for the possession of drugs including heroin.

The city’s top prosecutor also said she will continue to dismiss criminal cases for nonviolent crimes of attempted drug distribution, prostitution, trespassing, open containers and minor traffic offenses. Since her office stopped taking these cases one year ago, prosecutors have dismissed 1,400 criminal cases and a similar number of warrants, she said.

Violent crime, meanwhile, has declined about 20% so far this year compared to the same three months of last year, largely before the coronavirus pandemic, according to police statistics. Similarly, property crime declined 35% when comparing those time periods.

“Clearly, the data suggests that there is no public safety value in prosecuting these low-level offenses,” Mosby said.

………

In March of last year, Mosby instituted her policy to dismiss all criminal cases of drug possession, saying she wanted to reduce the prison population and risk of a coronavirus outbreak behind bars. The policy fell in line with other progressive strategies she has brought to Baltimore, including a plan started in 2019 to dismiss all marijuana charges.

………

Mosby noted 911 calls for drug use, prostitution and public intoxication did not increase over the past year. In fact, she said the number of 911 calls for drugs declined by one-third compared to the same months before the pandemic. The 911 calls for sex work fell by half, she said.

……… 

“The concept is to provide a behavioral health rather than a criminal justice response” said Edgar Wiggins, the group’s executive director. “We have known for some time that this can be an effective way to address the underlying causes of this behavior.”

 Nice to see some sanity in law enforcement.