Month: June 2020

Closing Thought–25Jun20

Today 70 years ago America’s most forgotten war began….

Seventy years ago, the Korean War broke out. On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, leading to one of the gravest crises of the Cold War.

For the leaderships of South Korea and the United States, the North Korean attack constituted a strategic surprise for which they were totally unprepared. Yet, within two days, the administration of President Harry Truman in the United States managed to mobilize the United Nations Security Council into adopting two crucial resolutions. The first criticized the North Korean invasion and called for its armed forces to withdraw immediately from South Korea; the second called on members of the United Nations to lend assistance to South Korea in its efforts to repel the invasion.

https://thediplomat.com/2020/06/the-korean-war-at-70/

What could possibly make the world go to war again just a few short years after the last one had ended?

The Korean war began on June 25, 1950, when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American officials were concerned, it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. After some early back-and-forth across the 38th parallel, the fighting stalled and casualties mounted with nothing to show for them. Meanwhile, American officials worked anxiously to fashion some sort of armistice with the North Koreans. The alternative, they feared, would be a wider war with Russia and China–or even, as some warned, World War III. Finally, in July 1953, the Korean War came to an end. In all, some 5 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives in what many in the U.S. refer to as “the Forgotten War” for the lack of attention it received compared to more well-known conflicts like World War I and II and the Vietnam War. The Korean peninsula is still divided today.

https://www.history.com/topics/korea/korean-war

I refuse to let this date go by without a mention of the brave men and women that fought and died in a froze wasteland on the Korean Peninsula.

Please take a few minutes to give these people the respect they are due.

“lego ergo scribo”

The Confederacy

There is lots of debate these days about the short lived Confederate States of America…..to some it is “heritage” (for me that is just a cover term) to others it was a repressive state dedicated to the ideal of white supremacy.

Let the old Professor take you on a trip down that historical lane…..

We can pretend that the cause of the war were several factors but the truth of the matter is…..Confederates fought the war mainly to protect a southern society of which slavery was an integral part.

For any of my history buffs….if you would like to see how the CSA was set up then here is a copy of the Constitution…..https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp

Here is the sanitized version of the CSA from the History Net….

The Confederacy, when used within or in reference to North America, generally means the Confederate States of America. It is also called the Southern Confederacy and refers to 11 states that renounced their existing agreement with others of the United States in 1860–1861 and attempted to establish a new nation in which the authority of the central government would be strictly limited and the institution of slavery would be protected. Secession from the existing Union led to the American Civil War, a bloody, four-year struggle that left much of the South in ashes and ended its hope of creating a new confederacy of states on the North American continent.

Confederacy

If you want a truly sanitized look at the American Civil War then let AARP show you the way…..https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-04-2011/8-ways-civil-war-changed-lives.html

Now let’s look beyond the sanitation of the events of 1861-1865……the Confederacy…..

For the four years of its existence, until it was forced to surrender, the Confederate States of America was a pro-slavery nation at war against the United States. The C.S.A. was a big, centralized state, devoted to securing a society in which enslavement to white people was the permanent and inherited condition of all people of African descent.

The Confederates built an explicitly white-supremacist, pro-slavery, and antidemocratic nation-state, dedicated to the principle that all men are not created equal. Emboldened by what they saw as the failure of emancipation in other parts of the world, buoyed by the new science of race, and convinced that the American vision of the people had been terribly betrayed, they sought the kind of future for human slavery and conservative republican government that was no longer possible within the United States. This is the cause that the statues honor.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/confederacy-wasnt-what-you-think/613309/

There you have the facts about the Confederacy.

Now a little extra for this post…..could the Civil War ended earlier than 1865?

In fact, some of the war’s finest scholars, and more than a few ‘armchair historians’ as well, have explored all manner of ‘what if’ scenarios. And playing these sorts of guessing games carries risks – anyone bold enough to hypothesize is often greeted with scorn, derision and ridicule. After all, Civil War buffs are a passionate breed!

Nevertheless – and grasping full well the firestorm such speculation often ignites among aficionados of the period – I will offer up a few speculations of my own, stipulating as I do, that they are my own humble opinions, and nothing more.

Missed Opportunities – Four Battles That Might Have Ended the U.S. Civil War Long Before 1865

Could the war had been avoided with a bit of a compromise?

The only compromise that could have headed off war by then was for the Southern states to forgo secession and agree to abolition. Conceivably Lincoln would have agreed to gradual abolition to avoid war; he certainly believed before the war began that he lacked the constitutional authority to emancipate the slaves unilaterally.

Once the Confederate states seceded and troops fired on Fort Sumter, the only solution possible was complete Southern surrender. And as the war continued, and slavery became an explicit justification for the conflict, emancipation became central to a resolution.

https://www.history.com/news/could-compromise-have-prevented-the-civil-war

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

New Pandemic Records

Today has the totals of Cases at 2.4 million and deaths at 122,000 I am still waiting for this to disappear as my president predicted it would….and if we had not done testing then his prediction would have come true.

Just yesterday we as a nation hit some new highs (from a virus that is not that bad)(sarcasm)…..

The US added 36,358 new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday, a single-day high that broke the previous record of 36,285 set on April 26, during what NBC News refers to as the coronavirus pandemic’s first peak. Similarly, Sunday set a new global record with 183,020 new cases, the highest ever reported in a single day, Time reports. On a podcast interview this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci said that over the course of his career in epidemiology he’s never seen anything like the coronavirus, the Hill reports. “I’ve never seen anything closely resemble the virus in the spectrum of what it can do,” he said. On Tuesday, while testifying before lawmakers, he made a similar comment, per MarketWatch. “I’ve been dealing with viral outbreaks for the last 40 years. I’ve never seen a single virus—that is, one pathogen—have a range where 20% to 40% of the people have no symptoms.”

In the US, California also set a single-day record Wednesday, with 7,149 new cases. As the Northeast has seen cases decline, southern and western states are seeing increases that officials say are tied to Memorial Day weekend, when many states began loosening restrictions. California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesay tied the surge in new infections to the state’s reopening of the economy, which has been gradually ongoing for about a month, as well as continuing social justice protests. Adopting what NBC 4 calls “an almost fatherly tone,” he said, among other things, “Washing your hands isn’t just putting your damn hands, forgive my language, under the faucet for two seconds and calling it a day. We’ve all seen that. Many have done that. But in this pandemic, come on. We can do a little more and a little bit better.”

News from the front lines in the Covid-19 fight……

9 out of 10 people polled thinks Pharma will raise prices during this pandemic….

Nearly 9 in 10 U.S. adults are “very” (55%) or “somewhat” (33%) concerned that the pharmaceutical industry will leverage the COVID-19 pandemic to raise drug prices. Similarly, 84% are very or somewhat concerned that the general cost of care will rise, and 79% are very or somewhat concerned their health insurance premiums will go up in response to the pandemic. In each of the latter two scenarios, 41% of Americans are very concerned.

The new findings, released today by the nonprofit West Health and Gallup as part of ongoing research on the rising cost of healthcare in the U.S., come from a nationally representative survey of 1,016 U.S. adults. Amid a mounting death toll, the results underline the knife-edge fears associated with paying for care in the U.S.

https://www.newswise.com/coronavirus/9-in-10-americans-concerned-pharma-will-use-covid-19-pandemic-to-raise-drug-prices/

Dems saw the polls and decided to act……to try and stop any price gouging…..

On the heels of polling that showed 88% of Americans worry Big Pharma will exploit the ongoing pandemic to hike drug prices, House Democrats on Monday introduced two bipartisan bills to prevent price-gouging for Covid-19 treatments and vaccines and to strengthen oversight of federal spending on coronavirus research and development.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/22/house-dems-introduce-bill-prevent-big-pharma-price-gouging-during-covid-19-pandemic

Nice try but how many see this going anywhere?  Most Dems are owned by lobbyists and that includes Big Pharma……do you really think this was anything but a piece of theater?

Be Well…..Be Safe……

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Let’s Form A Commission

Good grief we have been fighting for racial equality for how long?

And in the 21st century we have come back to the bad old days of the 1960s and the fight for equality and the end of racism…..and the civil rights movement thought they had accomplished that with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act……but apparently nothing was truly settled in those days with those Acts.

I know let’s form a commission to get to the bottom of this problem.  Seriously?  A Commission?  Action to let politicians feel good about their cowardice.

That seems to be the reaction that all politicians have to the spiraling violence centered around the deaths of black citizens…..Trump has a plan, Dems have a plan and the GOP has a plan….https://lobotero.com/2020/06/19/gop-answer-to-police-violence/……..and all of them basically call for a commission or study group or whatever the politically correct term is these days….but in reality they are just giving a delaying game in the hopes cooler heads will prevail……in other words they are calling for what they always call for….INACTION!

There is nothing new about these calls for a “commission”…..it has been going on since the 1960s….and look where we are today…..fighting the same battles they fought in the 60s…..where’s the progress?

There’s a limit to the relevance of the so-called race riots of the nineteen-sixties to the protests of the moment. But the tragedy is: they’re not irrelevant. Nor is the history that came before. The language changes, from “insurrection” to “uprising” to the bureaucratic “civil disorder,” terms used to describe everything from organized resistance to mayhem. But, nearly always, they leave a bloody trail in the historical record, in the form of government reports. The Kerner Report followed centuries of official and generally hysterical government inquiries into black rebellion, from the unhinged “A Journal of the proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy formed by some White People, in conjunction with Negro and other Slaves, for burning the City of New-York in America, and murdering the Inhabitants,” in 1744, to the largely fabricated “Official Report of the Trials of Sundry Negroes, charged with an attempt to raise an insurrection in the state of South-Carolina,” in 1822. The white editor of the as-told-to (and highly dubious) “The Confessions of Nat Turner, the Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Va. . . . also, An Authentic Account of the Whole Insurrection, with Lists of the Whites Who Were Murdered . . . ,” in 1831, wrote, “Public curiosity has been on the stretch to understand the origin and progress of this dreadful conspiracy, and the motives which influences its diabolical actors.” What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again and again?

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/the-history-of-the-riot-report

Now is not the time to be faint at heart…..protesters MUST not settle for talk…..they have in the past and look where we are today.

Stay in the streets!

Do Not Settle!

“lego ergo scribo”

Our Syria Policy

That’s right there is still a major conflict going on in Syria….it has been push to Page 3 with all the pandemic and protests….but make no mistake it is still as volatile as ever.

And Trump is gonna use one of his favorite things in the whole world….sanction…..to punish Syria.

More specifically the Caesar Act….

The Caesar Act, passed in Congress last year, took effect on Wednesday. It seeks to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into negotiations with Washington, while preventing foreign allies from assisting the reconstruction of Syria’s devastated cities and economy. 

It targets the supporters of the Assad government in politics, business and banking. From Russia to Europe, the Gulf, Lebanon and beyond, the new sanctions may freeze assets and trigger travel bans and arrest warrants against violators.

All that is just good and well….but our policy is not as all that as the neocons pretend……

Washington is deliberately hindering Syria’s economic and physical reconstruction as it pursues regime change in Damascus. Until Assad makes significant political compromises to his opponents, abides by U.N. Security Council Resolutions weighted against his own government, or agrees to resign — demands he has shown no willingness to consider — U.S. sanctions will remain intact and may even tighten. The 83% of Syrians already living in poverty are effectively being punished for the barbarity, corruption, and ineptitude of their government.

In addition to utilizing the power of the U.S. financial system, the Trump administration is also dipping into the U.S. military toolkit. Officially, the American people are told, U.S. troops stationed in Eastern Syria are performing counterterrorism operations against ISIS. The reality, however, is hundreds of American military personnel are being used to block Damascus and Moscow from accessing Syria’s meager oil fields. The logic is fairly straightforward: If Assad is unable to access these fields and export oil again, the financial pressure eventually will force him to offer political concessions to his Syrian adversaries. 

https://www.realclearworld.com/2020/06/16/our_syria_policy_is_broken_496391.html

All this is just the wrong policy…but not according to the Neocons….they say more and stricter sanctions will help the Syrian people…..

The collapse of the lira brought with it rapid inflation. The United Nations’ World Food Programme estimated in April that the cost of a basket of basic goods such as flour and oil had increased by 111 percent over the previous 12 months. Already impoverished by the war and reliant on foreign aid, Syrians are increasingly going hungry, even in areas where Assad’s grip has long been firm. Restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 made the situation more dire, although the regime has begun to lift them. Last week, Assad fired Prime Minister Imad Khamis as public anger rose in areas under the regime’s control. The population of major urban centers seems resigned to Assad’s rule, but there have been unprecedented protests in the southern province of Suwayda, where demonstrators called for Assad’s ouster.

The deprivation Syrians were already enduring raises the perennial question of whether the sanctions will strike a balance between the pressure they exert on rogue regimes and the costs they inflict on civilians. In the case of Syria, the grisly evidence of systematic mass torture has minimized the extent to which elected officials on either side of the Atlantic have questioned the justice of sanctioning Assad and his accomplices. Still, there are a handful of analysts who equate the thinking behind the Caesar Act with the mentality of the Assad regime.

Sanctions Against Syria Will Help, Not Harm, Civilians

Once again the Neocons prove that their only concern is regime change and NOT the good of the Syrian people.

Slapping Assad on the pee-pee does nothing to help the Syrian people that are hungry without health care or any benefits…..

These sanction are effecting more than Syria….Lebanon’s economy is tied with Syria and theirs will collapse with the Syrian….

Syria is also in economic freefall and the value of its curency plummeting. Before the war began nine years ago, $1 was equivalent to around 50 Syrian Pounds. Today, the exchange rate has $1 trading at almost 3,000 Syrian pounds. 

The collapsed financial system has made Syrians more dependent on Lebanon’s banking system, but it is facing its own financial crisis. 

With interlinked economies, the prospect of Lebanese banks dropping Syrian businesses for fear of sanction penalties has sparked concerns that the Caesar Act may worsen the situation in both countries.  

For instance, without access to Lebanese banks, goods and trading partners, the average Syrian may have no other choice but to turn to those empowered in their own country, likely Assad’s allies. 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-caesar-act-syria-maximum-pressure-campaign

Where does all this insanity stop?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

“De-Fund The Police”

Closing Thought–24Jun20

This one term has had a profound effect on the psyche of Americans….from reforms and change to they want to disband the police…..

In my opinion it is the worse possible term to use at this time in our evolving history.

Sorry to my die hard “law and order” readers but the police needs to change……they no long protect and serve but rather look like they are there to “punish and enslave”…..

But is there a way that a my responsive police department can be resurrected from the ruins of their history?

The vague and easily misinterpreted call to Defund the Police has been spreading quickly across the USA. Some may have a knee-jerk reaction to “just say no” to this call, but polls show a vast majority of Americans are concerned about improving the lives of people of color across the country. Reforms such as teaching police to de-escalate conflicts and enforcement of body camera use have support of about 90% of Americans. So, what could solutions to the current situation look like, how could they be paid for, and should relative costs realistically be coming out of police budgets?

Here are some steps you can take to make a difference:

educate yourself about public budgets, and how they can be improved
find out where and when relevant decisions are made, go there and be vocal
influence the media by writing to the press, being active on social media
mobilize your family and friends to take action with you
ensure that alternative solutions are created, proposed, and heard

Why and How to Defund the Police

I wrote about this on my op-ed blog, Gulf South Free Press……https://gulfsouthfreepress.wordpress.com/2020/06/11/what-does-de-fund-mean/

For example……how much has been given to PDs in military stuff?

According to a CNN analysis of federal data, the Department of Defense (DoD) has sent at least $760 million worth of military equipment to local law enforcement agencies since August 2017. This includes $5.3 million of gear used to quell protests, such as riot shields, gas masks, tasers, and other materials local law enforcement requested for “crowd control.”

Across the country, more than 8,000 police departments have been suppled with such equipment, at no cost, through the 1033 program, which allows the DoD to donate surplus combat material to law enforcement agencies.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/24/pros-j24.html

That needs to cease NOW!

Society cannot wait any longer….police reform is needed now and any postponement will only matter matters worse the next time.

Citizens want reform and change now….and they have taken to the streets….

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research surveyed 1,301 adults between June 11 and 15 and found majorities “overwhelmingly” in favor of a number of proposed reforms to the U.S. policing system. 

Nearly nine in 10 Americans are calling for requirements that police officers use body cameras and 86% say clear standards must be established and enforced regarding the use of force by police. Just five years ago, Americans were far less likely to say police violence was a serious problem facing the country.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/23/why-we-march-poll-shows-overwhelming-us-support-police-reform-increased

Not to be outdone the Dems have offered up a cosmetic bill of reforms…..

The Democrats have offered up their own slate of cosmetic changes largely mirroring Trump’s, including banning chokeholds and creating a national database of abusive officers, while also explicitly rejecting the demand, popular among protestors, to “defund” the police. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, has called for $300 million in additional federal funding to shore up police departments across the country, while Senator Bernie Sanders has said that cops need to be paid higher salaries.

Such measures will amount to less than nothing. They might as well propose to change the color of police uniforms. Inevitably, “reforms” from these representatives of the ruling class will end up strengthening the police.

If you would like more information on this subject then there are a couple of articles that could assist you…..

https://www.vox.com/2020/6/14/21290877/democrats-defund-police-omar-clyburn

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/12/21283813/george-floyd-blm-abolish-the-police-8cantwait-minneapolis

https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/6/8/21281069/abolish-the-police-black-lives-matter-george-floyd-protests-minneapolis-new-york

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Removing History?

#1 in series

Disclaimer:  My maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Mae Davis…..born in Alabama and according to family legend the cousin of Jefferson Davis….understandably not something that we spread around….

With the protests going on these days a new attempt to rid the very thought of the Confederacy from the society…..statues are being pulled down….flag being replaced and now Pelosi has done her part…..

“There is no room in the hallowed halls of Congress or in any place of honor for memorializing men who embody the violent bigotry and grotesque racism of the Confederacy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote. With that letter to Cheryl Johnson, House clerk, workers Thursday began removing from the Capitol the portraits of four of her predecessors, NBC News reports. The paintings that have been displayed in the Speaker’s Lobby are of Robert Hunter of Virginia; Howell Cobb of Georgia; James Orr of South Carolina; and Charles Crisp of Georgia. All served as speaker before or after their service to the Confederacy, at various times from the 1830s through the 1890s.

Orr “swore on the House Floor to ‘preserve and perpetuate’ slavery in order to ‘enjoy our property in peace, quiet and security,'” Pelosi wrote, while Hunter “served at nearly every level of the Confederacy,” including time as secretary of state and in the army. The Democrat, who has called for statues of Confederate leaders to be removed from the Capitol and their names to be taken off military installations, said she didn’t know about the portraits until recently. “We were taking inventory of the statues, and the curator told us,” Pelosi said. In the Senate on Thursday, per CNN, Democrats tried to pass a measure to remove the Capitol statues, but Republicans blocked the move.

Pelosi is just giving a knee jerk reaction to the events unfolding…..in my opinion this is a lame ass move.

I do not think this will do anything to advance the dialog we all feel we need……these men were part of the US Congress in their day and to try and write them out of history is just wrong.

Why not put a disclaimer on their portraits explaining who they were and what they did.

At what point to we stop pretending that these worthless exhibitions of caring will do anything to change the direction of racism in this country?

Should we not then by their logic remove evidence of Andrew Johnson from the official portraits of presidents…..simply because he was a “Reb” by birth?

I mean….. while in Congress, he supported the Fugitive Slave Act and the right to own slaves.

These statues that are being vandalized….I do not agree with the act….taking them down and moving them to a “historical” location seems more logical….I may hate these guys for what they did but it is American history that is being destroyed.

What purpose did these stolid artifacts that are now being dismantled serve? The French theorist of propaganda Jacques Ellul might say they were crucial machinery in the “propaganda of integration,” his designation for modes of enculturation which are so all-encompassing as to be imperceptible. When most people speak of propaganda, they refer to what he calls the “propaganda of agitation”—which would include, for example, the Pope’s exhortation to die in a Crusade in the service of Christ, the Nazi spectacle captured in the film Triumph of the Will, or George W. Bush’s “You’re either with us or with the terrorists”—all designed to arouse passions that lead to immediate action.

The propaganda of integration, conversely, is so quiet and pervasive it goes unnoticed. It instills an enthusiasm for conformity in individuals through the repetition of customs, rituals, and habits; it stabilizes society by planting ideologies so subtly and permanently in our souls that it effects a “persuasion from within.” In the United States, for example, television commercials, “historical” information installed in national park welcome centers, the presence of God on our coins, and the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at sporting events all scramble symbols of faith, consumerism, liberty, nature, community, wholesome fun, and patriotism into one deliciously indivisible mix. What some would call “propaganda” or even “indoctrination,” others would simply call the everyday facts of our lives.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/06/15/banality-racism-and-tearing-down-statues

I still think that the statues of our Founding Fathers should be safe from vandals…I may not like some of their lives but they did give the world a great republic.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/06/22/pers-j22.html

What does the public think?

As recently as June 6-7, a 44% plurality of respondents in a national Morning Consult/Politico poll said the Confederate statues should “remain standing,” while only 32% said they should be “taken down.”

By June 17, barely a week and a half later, a majority of voters, 52%, supported “removing Confederate statues from public spaces around the country” in a Quinnipiac poll, compared to 44% opposed to removal. Those numbers represented a historic swing from August 2017, when Quinnipiac found just a 39% minority favoring removal, with 50% opposing.

https://justthenews.com/nation/culture/anti-racism-and-erasing-history-public-support-leaving-confederate-statues-place

I think it is time for all concerned to take a step back and re-think their idiocies…is not destroying history the same as celebrating wrongs?

Please let level heads prevail in this situation.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Protest News That Did Not Make It

For damn near a month protests over police brutality was been waging and giving us bloggers lots to write about.

But there are a few things that did not make the nightly news during the protests…..

First…..

Via CREW:

During recent protests against the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers Floyd, Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to guard his DC Hotel, but not nearby national monuments, raises concerns that Trump is once again grossly abusing his presidential power to benefit his personal business

Amidst the backdrop of Trump’s violent response to the protests, from his deployment of the Park Police, Secret Service, and ICE and CBP officers to their use of pepper balls and tear gas against protesters, the president also appears to be privileging his own business with the protection of the National Guard. The public deserves to know the extent that Trump’s personal interests are improperly affecting the use of taxpayer resources and dollars.

Deploying the National Guard to protect his hotel while not protecting national monuments that are also located nearby is a clear abuse of power. Trump is prioritizing himself over the needs of the nation. According to John Bolton, the President exhibited the same behavior while he was talking to China and asking them for help in the 2020 election.

Not to worry….Trump adviser says their is no systemic racism……

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow declared racism extinct on Monday, citing as evidence the fact that some white people voted for Barack Obama

During an interview on CNBC, Kudlow said that Obama’s two successful presidential campaigns are part of the reason why he doesn’t believe in “systemic racism.”

“President Obama, the first black president, was elected twice, and he got 79 million white votes,” he said. “Therefore, I find it hard to understand something called systemic racism.”

DC police are pouting that they have to abide by rules and laws….now most say they may quit……

Nearly three-fourths of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department said in a poll that they are considering leaving the force amid a police reform bill recently passed by the D.C. Council.

The proposal would require law enforcement body camera footage to be released to the public more quickly following a police-related shooting and would restrict when officers can use lethal force. It also would prohibit the department from purchasing military-style equipment from the federal government.

Local lawmakers stopped an attempt by one council member at large who proposed to limit the size of the force and cap it at 3,500 from its current size of 3,863. However, several hundred on the force revealed to the D.C. Police Union, which represents 3,600 Washington officers, detectives, and sergeants, that they are looking to leave anyway.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/nearly-3-out-of-4-dc-police-officers-ready-to-leave-the-force-washington-police-union-poll

To those people that cannot think of a time when they will be held accountable for their actions and threaten to resign their position…I say let them go because they are probably the problem and not the solution.  Good riddance to trash.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–23Jun20

Summer is here for sure…this morning at 0500 hrs it was 85 with 81% humidity…..a joy to experience.(sarcasm in case you missed it)

When I was working in North Africa I experienced a couple of sand storms……plus the dust that the storms kicked up in the Sahara…..but I never thought that the dust from these storms would effect me here on the Gulf Coast…..and I was mistaken…..

Gulf Coast residents, get ready for brilliant sunsets—and a few possible health hazards. A massive dust cloud is heading west across the Atlantic and could affect the lives of people from Florida to Texas, AccuWeather reports. “According to scientists … this is an abnormally large dust cloud,” says senior AccuWeather meteorologist Dan Kottlowski, who adds that the dust “started coming off the coast of Africa several days ago, in fact maybe over a week ago. And it’s still coming. It’s almost like a prolonged area of dust.” Expected to hit the Gulf Coast between Tuesday and Thursday, the Saharan dust should bring hazy and brownish skies during the day.

But the Washington Post predicts sunsets that “appear markedly more vibrant, with deeper, more expansive brushstrokes of orange and yellow washing across the sky.” On the downside, the dust could mix with other particles (like smoke, ozone, or more dust) and negatively affect anyone with sensitive lungs. The dusty air might also curb storm development, preventing tropical storms or hurricanes from forming—but the dust will likely be long gone when hurricane season reaches full force in August and September. For the record, Saharan dust is nothing new in the Gulf Coast this time of year. But by all accounts, this one’s a biggy. You can follow its movement at NASA.

Hurricane season is expected to take a pause over the next week as a large plume of dust from the Saharan Desert in Africa moves across the Atlantic Ocean. Waves of dust off the African continent are common during the summer, as the trade winds blow west from the desert into the Atlantic. However, this wave is very large and very strong. It is expected to travel westward into the Caribbean by this weekend. Then next week part of the Gulf Coast, including Mississippi, may see this plume of dust arrive.

Saharan Dust from Africa forecast to arrive in Mississippi

I am hoping to get some sunset shots but so far it has been cloudy and overcast…..but I shall continue to try.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”