People in their tribe hear about this!

TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019

People in our tribe don't:
Michael Brown was shot and killed on August 9, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.

Four days ago, Candidate Harris posted this tweet:

“Michael Brown’s murder forever changed Ferguson and America. His tragic death sparked a desperately needed conversation and a nationwide movement. We must fight for stronger accountability and racial equity in our justice system.”

Harris remembered Brown's murder. Not long after, so did Candidate Warren:

“5 years ago Michael Brown was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael was unarmed yet he was shot 6 times. I stand with activists and organizers who continue the fight for justice for Michael. We must confront systemic racism and police violence head on.”

Here's the problem. The official Justice Department investigation found that Brown wasn't "murdered." Rightly or wrongly, the official report said that Officer Darren Wilson was justified in every shot he fired that day, due to Brown's threatening conduct.

That probe was conducted by the Justice Department of Barack Obama. The finding was explicitly endorsed by Attorney General Eric Holder.

Our liberal tribe was rarely told about the DOJ's findings. Presumably, though, Harris and Warren are familiar with the basic facts as the DOJ described them.

They proceeded with their tweets anyway, thereby endorsing tribal order and "Trumping" the tribal base. Or maybe they really don't know!

At the Washington Post Fact-Checker site, the candidates have been awarded four Pinocchios each. The Post's report is rich in detail about what happened in Ferguson that day.

We heard about this last night on Fox. Fox viewers are told about things like this, but "gaffes" of this type are withheld from us. We'll have more on matters like this a bit later on in the week.

Our question: Are we really the rational animal? Or are we perhaps more heavily tribal, wired to run on group fictions?

24 comments:

  1. Yeah, Bob. So, what was that thing yesterday, your friend dembot-hack Kevin's projection about about race-baiting?

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  2. Snopes.com (the Urban legends Web Site) has recently been accused of liberal bias because of their feud with the satire site, Babylon Bee. I just checked Snopes and found that they have not printed a correction of this Michael Brown myth. That would seem to be be an obvious myth for them to evaluate.

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  3. Bob,
    You sure have a bunch of racist scumbags as regular commenters at this site.
    As you said in an earlier post, not one of Trump's voters is a racist and they resent being called racist.
    You are a jester.
    They are lying sacks of shit without the balls to admit their true beliefs.
    I predict that Trump's acolytes will murder minorities at an increasing rate for decades to come.
    Bob, I know that the black people you admire include MLK (murdered), Ghandi (murdered), Mandela (imprisoned for decades), the congregation in S. Carolina who forgave Dylan Roof for murdering their families in church.
    Obama and his AG Holder declined to prosecute Zimmerman or the cop in Missouri. But to your readers Obama is the racist.
    Trump called for the execution of 5 innocent black teenagers who, after years in jail, were declared innocent.
    But Trump is not a racist.
    My suggestion to black and brown people: Get yourself a gun.

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    Replies
    1. Black and brown people have historically not done well with guns instead of signs and bullhorns, or better yet, court injunctions. A call to arms on either side is irresponsible. If I didn't know better, I might suspect you of being a Russian bot attempting to widen the racial divide.

      Somerby is what he is and he does undeniably attract racist commenters because he is mostly here to defend Trump and his asshole appointees. But that doesn't excuse playing upon racial tensions to whip up violence.

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    2. Oh. Trouble in dembot paradise?

      Dear dembots, please entertain us by continuing this lively dispute of the best way to patronize those unappetizingly sounding "brown people"...

      Delete
    3. The Black Panthers scared the shit out of Reagan when he was Governor of California. Almost to the point of banning high powered rifles in California.
      The murderers need to be fearful.

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    4. @4:10 Trump called for the execution of 5 black teenagers who were declared innocent. That's bad, although the these teenagers had been convicted at the time Trump called for their execution.

      You want to prosecute George Zimmerman, who was found innocent by a unanimous jury, and prosecute the cop who shot Michael Brown, who was cleared by the Obama Justice Dept. Yet, you know that these two men have already been cleared.

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    5. Who calls for the execution of teenagers -- they are children, not fully formed in their being. They can and do change, even after committing terrible crimes (which these kids did not). Calling for their execution is ignorant, at a minimum, and evil in its intent.

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    6. "Dear dembots, please entertain us by continuing this lively dispute of the best way to patronize those unappetizingly sounding "brown people"..."

      What's "unappetizing" about being brown? Your racist slip is showing, Mao.

      Delete
    7. “although the these (sic) teenagers had been convicted at the time Trump called for their execution.”

      In your confirmation-bias dreams. Trump took out the ads on May 1, 1989. The trials took place in 1990.

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    8. Yes, @11:51, the five had confessed and were convicted in those trials. The convictions were reversed in 2003.

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    9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    10. @11:51 PM is correct, David in Cal's claim "the... teenagers had been convicted at the time Trump called for their execution" was incorrect. Of course, we all get things jumbled sometimes (that being the case a quick check of dates is a best practice before posting, especially about long ago events). What's disappointing is DiC's response at 12:42 AM after being alerted to what the correct timeline was.

      ***************
      LINK

      ...Just two weeks after the Central Park attack, before any of the boys had faced trial and while Meili remained critically ill in a coma, Donald Trump, whose office on Fifth Avenue commanded an exquisite view of the park’s opulent southern frontier, intervened.

      He paid a reported $85,000 to take out advertising space in four of the city’s newspapers, including the New York Times. Under the headline “Bring Back The Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” and above his signature, Trump wrote: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers.

      They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”

      ...All five minors had already been paraded in front of the cameras and had their names and addresses published, but Salaam said he and his family received more death threats after the papers ran Trump’s full-page screed. On a daytime TV show two days later, a female audience member called for the boys to be castrated and echoed the calls for the death penalty if Meili died. Pat Buchanan, the former Republican White House aide, called for the oldest of the group, Wise, to be “tried, convicted and hanged in Central Park by June 1”.

      “Had this been the 1950s, that sick type of justice that they wanted – somebody from that darker place of society would have most certainly came to our homes, dragged us from our beds and hung us from trees in Central Park. It would have been similar to what they did to Emmett Till,” Salaam said....

      ***************

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    11. Thanks for the correction, CMike. The boys had confessed but were not yet convicted. Anyway, at that point in time, there was every reason to believe that they were guilty.

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    12. Hey Stephen Miller’s autistic parrot, relax! Your idiot boyfriend wasn’t using “boy” in the “charming” sense.

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  4. Turns out all the shitbags who couldn't vote for Hillary because she was so corrupt are ignoramouses. Who could have known?

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  5. By the way-Reagan was NOT a racist either. Also.
    A quick reminder: the Republicans took control of the southern states as soon as LBJ said before congress "We shall overcome".
    He also predicted exactly what would happen.

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  6. “That probe was conducted by the Justice Department of Barack Obama. The finding was explicitly endorsed by Attorney General Eric Holder.”

    Sad! It wasn't all that long ago that it was liberals and progressives who reflexively doubted the judgments and pronouncements of powerful insider orgs like the DOJ and FBI. Now, Somerby acts like there's no possible way the great public servants who people such orgs could ever display imperfect judgment or be wrong about some point.

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  7. Wait a minute. Democrat frontrunner candidates Warren and Harris are race baiting liars who cynically lie and count on the ignorance of their voters?

    They're even willing to call a good law enforcement officer a murderer if it pisses off the ignorant voters enough to get them to the polls?

    Didn't they learn anything from the Dallas massacre of 5 police officers they caused?

    Worst. People. Ever.

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    Replies
    1. Not for one second do I think 8:52 is calling Officer Snowflake of the Ferguson PD a "good law enforcement officer" just because he lied in his police report.
      Nope. 8:52 is calling Officer Snowflake of the Ferguson PD a "good law enforcement officer" because he shot an unarmed black teenager to death.

      Delete
  8. While we would perhaps not have used the loaded term “murder” as Harris and Warren did, it is fairly clear that low-income kid-lovin’ Bob Somerby is content to ignore the ghettoization that America has forced upon many of its low-income black kids and therefore the context in which a kid like Michael Brown faces a militarized police force ready, via justified killing, to end that young man’s life.

    And Somerby seems content to let the final incident of Brown’s life be the only thing that defines him, and is primarily concerned that the police officer was justified in his actions.

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  9. The media has overlooked the Justice Department's report on what really happened in Ferguson.

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  10. Whenever a statement begins with "the media" I know something stupid will follow. You certainly don't disappoint. The report was covered by all major media at the time of its release. Maybe you overlooked that.

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    ReplyDelete