Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts

• It looks like protests were massive last night across the country and, even though curfews were sometimes broken, overall it was very peaceful. It's amazing how everything goes smoothly when protesters don't turn into looters and cops don't turn into wannabee video game shooters using rubber bullets and tear gas. 
• I've seen so many news stories which have phrases like "police allowed protesters to . . . . "  Think about that. Allowed.
• But we were not without at least some disturbing images last night. 
  
• Let me shoehorn in a 'Rona update: 1 active case in Wise County. Meanwhile, Texas sets an all time record yesterday for new cases, and the chart has gone nuts: 
  
• This really started in 1997.  Police departments have been buying military surplus for years.
  
  
  
  
• “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” -- Republican Congressman Steven King to the New York Times last year. How'd that work out for him last night? 
  
• A day later, I still stunned by the gassing (yes, gassing) of peaceful Americans in Lafayette Park so Trump could awkwardly stand before a church he didn't go into and hold a Bible he never opened.  But we've learned some interesting stuff in those 24 hours:
• Ivanka pulled the Bible out of a $1,500 purse to give it to her father.
  
• I was really surprised to see Defense Secretary Mark Esper in the photo-op.  He revealed yesterday in an interview, however, that "I didn't know where I was going" when they headed towards Lafayette Park. That statement can be philosophically applied outside the context of just the walk to the church.
  
• People photoshopping the marquee behind Trump wouldn't possible happen, would it? 
• The New York Times has reconstructed what led to George Floyd's death in a really, really good video. I suspect most of us don't know everything. It's here and shouldn't be behind a paywall.
  
  
• While some corporations threw up a "black out" image on their social media sites yesterday as a show of unity against racism, Ben & Jerry's didn't mince words. 
  
  
  
  
• The normally apolitical Taylor Swift really went scorched Earth last week. She has 86 million followers on Twitter. 
  
• I changed my Modern Day Racist Detector about three years ago.  I had to finally realize they don't wear Klan hoods or have a sign around their necks. And, I think this is important, the vast majority of them are very smart and are your friends and neighbors.  They probably don't even realize how racist they are. So this is the test I use: How would someone who holds similar views of the modern day White Supremacist, who is not only very smart but also realizes that he can't say Klan-like things in public, speak so that, on its face, his words sound possibly plausible and reasonable? Simplified, ask yourself, "Is that something a very smart Klansman would say?"  I don't brand someone a racist for failing the test, but I least consider it to be a possibility. 
• Here's a very random example. Joe Biden spoke out yesterday. I'm not saying Brit Hume is a racist, but I am saying my Detector at least has a faint beep going off. 
  
• I got stung by a wasp or yellow jacket this weekend. After whining to Mrs. LL that I needed some Benadryl immediately (because I've always had a reaction where the bite area will swell up like a fat tick), she just casually said, "It was probably a Murder Hornet." 
• I really don't travel that much, but in the last two years I've spent a weekend in Minneapolis, the city of George Floyd's murder, and stood in Lafayette Square. Here's one of two pictures I took in the park. I think that's the church Trump walked over to in the background. The White House would be to my back and to the right. Andrew Johnson, who we probably wouldn't want to hear from right now, says hi. 
  
• Messenger: Above the Fold

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We're finally on our own. This summer I hear the drumming, Four dead in Ohio."
  
• In what has to be one of the most surreal events in my lifetime, Trump proclaimed from the Rose Garden yesterday evening that he was “an ally of all peaceful protesters” while at the same time, just across the street, the National Guard -- wielding shields that said “Military Police” --  attacked peaceful, law-abiding protesters who were not in violation of any curfew or any law, with flash bombs, rubber bullets and tear gas. It was an amazing and disturbing moment in our history. 

  no words pic.twitter.com/CxKvBmlIgp

  — Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) June 1, 2020

  
  
  
  
  
  
• The American citizens were rounded up so Trump could walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church -- a walk which was captured in a picture for the ages.
  
• And then once at the church, he held up a borrowed Bible, upside down no less, in one of the most awkward, yet disturbing, thinly veiled coded messages of our time. 

  

  "Turn with me now in your Bible to Two Corinthians."

• Just watch it. He didn’t go to the church to meet with church leaders to calm violence and fears.  He didn’t go to the church to worship and pray for the country. He didn't even go inside the church. He didn't even go to say a few words to the nation. He went for a photo-op.

  And the dumbest thing I will ever see is... pic.twitter.com/bzIQPguWJa

  — Jon Wurster (@jonwurster) June 1, 2020

• The Episcopal Bishop of the Washington D.C. diocese was not pleased as she immediately took to the airwaves: "The President just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese — without permission — as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus."
  
• Preach on. 
  
• I don't know who this guy is, but he may be 100% correct. This stunt has Steve Bannon and White Christian Nationalist written all over it. It's not a call for peace. It's a call to arms. "They've been waiting for this moment their entire lives." (And don't overlook that Trump shoehorned in a Second Amendment reference in the Rose Garden before he trampled all of the First Amendment and the Establishment Clause of the Second Amendment.)
  
• There's a past tweet for everything.
  
• Speaking of a shining city. Video.
  
  
• Remember the case in Houston where cops lied to get a search warrant and then went in and murdered a couple and their dog? Well, the lead cop, who has since been indicted, was involved in the arrest of George Floyd in Houston over a decade ago.
  
• The protester from Bridgeport who was arrested in Dallas on Sunday has been identified as Katherine Marek, 20.  Note that she wasn't arrested for rioting but for the penny-ante charge of "Obstructing a Highway or Passageway". Hey, Katherine, you are our Liberally Lean Protester of the Week. 
• Last night, there was a fantastically large peaceful protest in Frisco (Frisco!), cops and protesters hugged it out in Fort Worth (video), and cops jacked with protesters in Dallas. Two out of three ain't bad. 
  
  
  
• And as the Pandemic has been benched, we have Wise County news: We now have one active case.  But Texas would like a word with us: 
  
• I just gave all the bullet points a last quick review. Back when I was a teenager we used to refer to someone who has been angered as being "torqued up." Safe to say I'm a little torqued up this morning. 

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• I don't even know where to start. Who would have thought we would be living in the likes of the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and the 1968 riots all at the same time. 
• It's been a flood of emotions.
  
  
• Regarding the riots over the last few days, I can't help but think about my oft-invoked Butterfly Effect.  The nation is on fire because a 17 year old girl just happened to be standing in a particular place at a particular moment in time with a charged cell phone in her hand. Without it, we never hear about George Floyd, and the police officers' false reports of the incident are taken at face value. 
  
• Regarding the Dallas arrests, who was this? The story doesn't list a name.  I want the name. 
  
• Looters obviously acted a fools, but police acted like fools as well. I've preached for years about the militarization of the police. When they show up looking like they intend to go to war, a war normally breaks out.  Here's a good compilation of outrageous police conduct over the weekend. From pulling and tasing a black couple as they were yanked out of a car, to tramping over a lady with a horse in Houston, to trying to kill protesters with a vehicle, or this vehicle, shooting canisters at homeowners as they stood on their porch, kicking a sitting protester in the head, or NYPD shoving a young girl into a curb.

  

  Right before the black couple are pulled out of the car and tazed.

• The NFL issued a statement this weekend. The modern day plantation probably needs to sit this one out. 
  
• And now to Trump - The Absentee President. Here's a timeline after his outrageous "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" tweet on Friday morning.
• On Friday morning he announced there would be a press conference on Friday afternoon. He then walked out, announced we were withdrawing from the World Health Organization, never mentioned the country being on fire, and turned and walked away without taking a single question.  Not a single word was uttered about the protesting across the nation.
  
• After protesters gathered outside the White House on Friday night, the next morning Trump tweeted about how "the most vicious dogs" were ready if protesters made it onto White House grounds. Sound familiar?
  
  
• He also wanted there to be "MAGA night" at the White House on Saturday night which is basically inciting a riot. They didn't show up, by the way. 
  
• On Saturday he confirmed what we all suspected that he believed: MAGA is a group that doesn't include black people. This really was shocking and got buried in all the news. Watch. 
  
• On Sunday, he just whined about fake news. There's not a president in the modern era that wouldn't have addressed the nation from the Oval Office by then. That's what leaders do.
  
• We learned yesterday that he was actually hunkered down in the secure basement of the White House on Friday. 
  
• And last night, as he refused to do his job and as a fire raged in Lafayette Park across from the White House, the lights at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were turned off. How poignant. 
  
  
• The number of press people who were fired upon with rubber bullets was sickening. See what happens when the leader of the free world calls them "enemy of the people" for four years? Yep, here's one where a cop pulled the trigger on this lady. Watch it. 
  
  
• America 2020. "Let me finish this mimosa, and I'll think about joining your little protest."
  
• And this from Fort Worth.
  
• Dude, you walked out of a 49ers-Colts game when you witnessed a peaceful protest. And your boss demanded an apology from the cast of Hamilton when they peacefully protested while you attended. 
  
• And what's up with this weird bit to just blame Antifa for the rioting?   There's no doubt that there is a small group of infiltrators (just watch this or this), but it's just as likely that it is proactive Proud Boy types as it is Antifa which has no organization.  And what's up with this stupid tweet below (which was retweeted by Ted Cruz)? Hey, I believe it was an organized event. Organized in a matter of days by a nation pissed off about an injustice which was caught on video and all that has come before.  The more you invoke Antifa, the more proof you provide that you just don't get it. 
  
• Oh, yeah. The Board is here. Texas is here. Wise County has 48 total cases and only 5 active cases (but the number hasn't been updated since Friday.)
• One random gripe: Closing Lake Bridgeport on an absolutely beautiful Saturday was stupid. (The lake dropped less than a third of a foot between Saturday and Sunday.) And if you want to know how this was all about a show of authority, you just need to know they finally opened it up at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday. Not dawn. At 9:00 a.m. That's a power trip.