In my late 50s, at a time of life when most people are supposed to be drifting into a cautious conservatism, I am surprised to find myself moving steadily leftward.
This is unexpected. It comes even as I am financially comfortable and enjoying my work. (I’m writing this from my summer home in Maine.) I’m not a natural progressive—I spent the last quarter century covering the U.S. military, first for the Wall Street Journal and then for the Washington Post, and now for Foreign Policy magazine. I have written five books about the Marines, the Army and our wars.
I am puzzled by this late-middle-age politicization. During the time I was a newspaper reporter, I didn’t participate in elections, because I didn’t want to vote for, or against, the people I covered. Mentally, I was a detached centrist. Today I remain oriented to the free market and in favor of a strong national defense, so I have hardly become a radical socialist.
But since leaving newspapers, I have again and again found myself shifting to the left in major areas such as foreign policy and domestic economic policy. I wonder whether others of my generation are similarly pausing, poking up their heads from their workplaces and wondering just what happened to this country over the last 15 years, and what do to about it.
The things that are pushed me leftward began with…
Now that a NYPD officer has succeeded in using an illegal chokehold to choke a Staten Island man to death, other videos are surfacing online showing that although the chokehold is prohibited by the New York police department, it is apparently used more often than not.
According to NBC New York, the subway arrest video was taken just three days before the death of Eric Garner, who died in police custody after being placed in a chokehold.
Public outrage following Garner’s death in Staten Island has prompted NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton to announce that the department will retrain all officers. Using a chokehold during an arrest is prohibited.
The subway arrest footage was posted online by Rev. Kelmy Rodriquez. He reports receiving it in an anonymous email, and according to NBC New York, Rodriquez notes the suspect was resisting arrest, but still feels the chokehold should not have been used.
The Manhattan arrest of 23-year-old Ronald Johns took place on July 14 at the 125th Street and Lexington Avenue subway station in East Harlem.
There are multiple reasons why the jobless claims data fall. The best reason however, is confidence in the economy, which leads to economic growth, which leads to fewer jobless claims being filed.
The number of unemployed workers applying for jobless benefits tumbled in the most recent weekly data to the lowest level in more than eight years, signaling that employers are letting go of very few workers.
Applicants for regular state unemployment-insurance benefits in the week that ended July 19 dropped by 19,000 to 284,000 — the lowest level since February 2006, the U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected initial claims of 310,000 in the most recent weekly data.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury 10_YEAR +1.98% edged higher, indicating traders growing slightly more confident in the economy.
This cannot be the outcome he was going for, it’s definitely not a good look.
Johnny Lee Banks Jr. of Birmingham and his wife, Zelda Banks, filed the lawsuit Tuesday. They’re suing the hospital, doctors and others for medical malpractice.
The lawsuit says Banks went to Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham last month for a circumcision. The suit alleges the man’s penis was gone when he awoke.
The suit says that the mistaken amputation has caused the man extreme pain, and that his wife also is suffering.
The suit names the hospital, a urology group, a medical clinic and two doctors as defendants. It’s seeking an unspecified dollar amount.
“You thought, ‘OK, we elect Barack and that’s it,’” Obama told a crowd of big-dollar donors gathered in the lush Hancock Park backyard of TV producer Shonda Rhimes. He reminded them that he’d warned that it wasn’t about electing him but about getting “our democracy to work.”
“I have got to have a Congress that has some sense and is willing to work and is willing to compromise and is focused on the American people. And we don’t have that right now.”
Obama is often candid about what he describes as Democrats’ chronic problem: low turnout in midterm elections. But his remarks Wednesday came with a sharper ribbing for a crowd he seemed to think could take it.
Democrats like the fun of a presidential campaign, Obama said. But “we’ve got to step it up in the midterms. Not when it’s easy, not when it’s sexy, not when there’s hope posters….”
While Democrats “don’t even know there’s an election,” Obama said, Republicans get to the polls.
“Lo and behold we’re surprised when John Boehner is speaker of the House! What happened to Nancy Pelosi? What happened is y’all didn’t vote. And that’s when all kinds of … stuff happened,” Obama said, pausing as if deliberating on whether to keep the rant clean. “That’s what it was — stuff.”
They have been gunning after the Affordable Care Act since it was signed into law by President Obama over four years ago. One would think that a party so energized around the idea if ending Obamacare would have a replacement plan already in place.
But you would be wrong if you thought Republicans had a way for you to have or maintain your healthcare after they take away the one you already have. House Speaker John Boehner dashed the hopes of those who thought Republicans had a plan – “not there yet,” Boehner said.
“You know, the discussions about Obamacare and what the replacement bill would look like continue. We’re trying to build consensus around one plan,” the Ohio Republican told reporters. “Not there yet.”
Yep. Not there yet, not there ever! That’s how the Republicans are working for you.
Surgeons in Mumbai have removed an astonishing 232 teeth-like growths from the mouth of a teenager.
Ashik Gavai, 17, sought medical help after suffering swelling on the right side of his lower jaw. He was referred to the city’s JJ Hospital, where doctors found he was suffering from a condition known as complex odontoma.
Ashik Gavai, 17, was suffering from a condition known complex odontoma. He had to have 232 teeth-like growths removed in a painstaking seven-hour operation at Mumbai’s JJ Hospital
Odontomas are haphazardly arranged tooth-like growths. They are composed of enamel, dentin (the yellowish tissue that makes up the bulk of all teeth) and pulp tissue (part in the centre of a tooth made up of living connective tissue)
Odontomas are haphazardly arranged tooth-like growths. They are composed of enamel, dentin (the yellowish tissue that makes up the bulk of all teeth) and pulp tissue (part in the centre of a tooth made up of living connective tissue).
They tend to occur in people in their teenage years, such as Mr Gavai.
Mr Gavai the growths removed earlier this week, in what the surgeons believe may be a world-record operation.
They claim current literature shows a maximum of 37 teeth being removed in such a procedure.
An Air Algerie plane carrying 116 passengers lost contact with air traffic controllers about an hour after leaving Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso late Wednesday evening.
Air Algerie Flight AH5017 was supposed to land in Algiers at about 5:00 a.m.
At the time of its disappearance the flight would have been over Mali, a nation under a threat warning from the Federal Aviation Administration due to insurgent fighting. The FAA has warned that flying below 20,000 feet leaves jets vulnerable to rocket fire. However, one source told the Associated Press that Mali rebels lacked the sophisticated weaponry to shoot down an airliner. (The same was said about Ukrainian separatists after the downing of MH17.)
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution clearly states that Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. The Amendment was originally designed for the federal government, but the section about cruel and unusual punishment was adopted by the states.
The execution that happened in Arizona yesterday is clearly the definition of cruel and unusual punishment.
When describing Arizona execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood, a reporter Troy Hayden of Fox 10 News, said it was “very disturbing to watch … like a fish on shore gulping for air. At a certain point, you wondered whether he was ever going to die.”
The process at the state prison in Florence began about 1:30 p.m. Wednesday and dragged on long enough that, more than an hour after the execution started, Dale Baich of the Federal Public Defender’s Office sent two other lawyers out to file an emergency motion asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt it, saying it violated Wood’s Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment. The motion noted that Wood “has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour” after being injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs.
Wood died before the appeals court responded.
“The experiment failed,” Baich said to reporters as he left the execution chamber. In a statement later, he added that “Arizona appears to have joined several other states who have been responsible for an entirely preventable horror — a bungled execution.”
I was raised on Staten Island. I won’t say I hated every minute or it because that wouldn’t be true. Every other minute. Staten Island is very Italian and very conservative. Many of those Italians hate blacks. Sorry just the way it is. Always has been. Not all but many.
So a black man was killed by cops on Staten Island. The names of the officers put on “desk duty” are Daniel Pantaleo and Justin Damico. The man they killed was Eric Garner. Cops seem to be killing lots of people these days and race doesn’t always factor in. There is also much more in the way of common excessive police force against all races. This time though it happened on Staten Island, where there are lots of white Italians who hate blacks.
There was a time, not too long ago where this kind of incident was rare. Where someone could use the term “rotten apple” when describing a rouge police officer. Not any more. Nope. There are far too many incidents like this one now. So the blame must be put in the recruiting process. They are simply not recruiting the kind of people they used to recruit to be police officers. You know, the kind of cop we would see in a Sidney Lumet film. Hardly perfect, but often compassionate and human. A human being.
Mr. Garner was a big man, all 350 pounds of him. He seemed to have been selling loose cigarettes, which I didn’t know people still did. A human being would see this as hardly an offense. Maybe a human being would say, “Come on buddy do that somewhere else, not on my beat” or “Put those away and just go on your way pal.” Something like that. I never wrote a Lumet film but the dialogue would go something like that.
Not this time. This time it escalated to the point where Garner was put in an illegal choke hold, yelling “I can’t breathe”, “I can’t breathe.” He had bad asthma, but these non humans didn’t know that, nor did they care. He was a black guy on White Island, doing something “illegal.” One has to wonder if it were a 20 year old Italian kid doing the same thing, what would have happened? Well that’s neither here nor there is it?
Let’s take the racial element out of this for a second. I know of a woman who is an anti-war protester. Here is a video of her being assaulted and arrested by police in Philadelphia because she was standing somewhere they didn’t want her to stand. This is public property, a park, she asks them why she can’t stand there, they don’t give an answer. Basically her liberalism is bothering them. The black officer in this video should be especially ashamed, since it was his relatives who were arrested and assaulted for wanting the rights he now has. I guess he thinks those rights include assault and battery of an anti-war protester.
Notice how these cops attack her when she turns her back. The same way thugs would attack someone when they aren’t expecting it, to steal their money. This brings up a question. Why does someone become a cop? Several people in my family were cops. Usually the answer was, “I wanted to make a difference.” Heck even “I needed a good job with benefits.” The first reason is honorable, the second is also fine, if not honorable. It seems that too many cops these days, especially the younger ones, would have to answer, “I wanna bust some heads!”
Of course that reason is criminal but they have a badge. Therefore the few, the very few times these cops are prosecuted, they are acquitted. That’s because the moron public has that good ole American, obey and submit mentality. If the person has a badge or a title, then they are above reproach. I mean they must be doing the right thing or at least for the right reason…right?
There has been a militarization of the police departments. They wear dark black and carry gear that is usually seen in war time situations. No wonder they feel like they are at war and need to act accordingly. They are no longer taught to respect the public, to deal with people on a human level. They are taught to “be careful out there.” Because everyone is out to get them.
All of this makes me wonder why anyone would want to be a cop. I hear people say all the time that these cops are only doing their jobs. Protecting and serving! But there is no “cop draft.” Nobody MUST become a cop. There are plenty of other jobs. Therefore someone should really really want to do it and for only the right reasons. This must be the question police departments ask to those who want these jobs. There must be an interrogation and those in command must be CERTAIN that the person applying is there for only the right reasons before their application is pushed through. Of course this is not a part of the hiring procedure in any police department in the United States.
No the U.S. police force has become a thug force. They are hiring too many people who get off on the fact that they can beat people up and order them around legally. The law is on their side. This is why we are seeing so much police brutality and murder by cop. There are protests in NYC now, People want the police chief, Bill Bratton, fired. The problem is that the department always, yes always, at least initially, backs the officer, as do most other officers. Here is a sample of what some of those officers are saying about the Garner murder.
The “Thin Blue Line” isn’t really thin at all. It’s a big glaring bold marked line that is easy to see and not hidden. There is very much an us vs. them mentality by cops. They don’t seem to realize that they work for the people, the people pay their salaries. The people are the bosses. Get it?
No they don’t get it. They dress in the darkest of blue or black. They carry tasers, guns, mace, handcuffs, batons, and they wear bullet proof vests. They are more protected than any citizen could or should ever be. I am all for the police not the citizenry to be armed. To protect us from each other. I’ve written about this in the past.
They don’t want to lose someone like me. I might need them on that beat but they need people like me on their side. The sooner they realize this the better. It’s beginning to slip away from them. I shudder to think about the consequences.
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