The government tantrum shutdown may be over, but the destruction to institutions and communties will linger on. Conglomerate media companies are shedding journalists, Roger Stone got indicted… where to start?
The Florida Secretary of State (appointed by “not a racist, but the racists think he’s a racist” Ron DeSantis) has resigned in the wake of… (wait for it)… terribly racist photos of him in blackface emerged. This idiot, Michael Ertel, was caught on camera dressed as a lady “Hurricane Katrina victim” meaning he was in drag as well as blackface, doubling the amount of gross instantly. Looks like DeSantis’ administration is off to a really great start!
If you are not aware of The Trace, they do indispensable reporting regarding gun violence in America. Their latest report, published in partnership with BuzzFeed News, details the shockingly low rates of shooting crimes that are solved. Many are not even investigated. The rates of solving a shooting when the victim is a person of color are even more abysmal.
The entire piece is absolutely worth reading and other furthers my position that we need a complete restructuring of the criminal justice system from the top down. Get rid of cops, get rid of prisons. Let’s start over.
Related: data shows that black Americans are far less likely to get justice if they are murdered than white Americans. The system sucks.
Roger Stone has been indicted and was arrested at 6AM in Ft. Lauderdale Friday morning. The president is already circling a conspiracy theory that Mueller tipped off CNN, who were there to capture that beautiful moment with cameras. Stone’s indictments include charges of lying to Congress and witness tampering. Legal nerds may enjoy perusing the indictment document. Looks like he was also in contact with Bannon regarding Wikileaks. Also, shit like this:
Of course, Roger Stone was able to pay his six figure bond and is already out of jail, back on the grift and appearing on Info Wars. Many people in this country are not offered a courtesy knock on the door and often are unable to pay their bail and get out of jail in the same day.
This week in mass shootings that only made a blip in our hellspace of a news cycle: five people are dead in Louisiana after a 21 year-old murdered his parents and three others. Another 21 year-old is responsible for killing five women at a bank in Florida. No motivation is known for the SunTrust Bank incident. WTF is going on with young white males today? It’s no coincidence that America’s only terrorist threats are right wing extremists now.
An arsonist started a fire at Comet Ping Pong, the pizza place in DC that was the center of the pizzagate conspiracy before QAnon was a thing. Remember those innocent times, when a man fired shots inside Comet Ping Pong cuz he thought they had a sex dungeon? Luckily no one was hurt but obviously conspiracy theorists have not given up on this place.
Sentient corn husk Wilbur Ross doesn’t understand why people aren’t taking out loans to pay for groceries and their children’s insulin. This administration works very hard to be the most out-of-touch possible to the American people they supposedly serve.
The tantrum shutdown has finally ended (temporarily perhaps) mostly because air traffic controllers were halting flights, TSA agents were too fed up with the unconscionable state of things and weren’t coming to work. Also now the IRS is literally a year behind because thousands of workers stopped showing up. Thank you to all the government employees who had to suffer beause of this nonsense, and I hope that we can ensure it never happens again.
Nearly half the drivers stopped by Metro are black, which has helped drive up the share of African Americans stopped by the LAPD overall from 21% to 28% since the Metro expansion, in a city that is 9% black, according to the analysis.
Source: LA times
The LA Times has some disturbing data analysis regarding the LAPD’s elite Metro unit, which stops to search cars for guns and drugs. It’s essentially the mobile version of NYPD’s stop and frisk.
I present the following tweet about Facebook at Davos without comment:
Rolling Stone conducted an interview with Jack Dorsey and inadvertently revealed how totally normal Mark Zuckerberg is. I hope you like your lamb cold!
This week was a cruel one for journalism. BuzzFeed laid off its entire national news desk, in a move to reduce 15% of its workforce. Over one thousand people have been laid off across BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Gannett in total. Please subscribe to your local paper and support quality journalism while we still have it.
BuzzFeed’s CEO is getting some shit for being open to the idea of therapy dogs in the office, but not allowing laid off employees to receive compensation for the PTO they’d accrued. Can someone Call Chelsea Peretti and tell her to talk to her bro?