Funny events in anti-woke world

[BrawlMan]

Michigan Gov. Whitmer’s name on hit list of militia gunman who murdered Wisconsin judge

A retired Wisconsin judge was found zip-tied and shot to death in his home on Friday. The man who allegedly murdered the judge had Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, among others, on his “hit list.”

www.clickondetroit.com

Definitely no plot against Whitmer, nope.

Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Michigan Gov. Whitmer’s name on hit list of militia gunman who murdered Wisconsin judge

A retired Wisconsin judge was found zip-tied and shot to death in his home on Friday. The man who allegedly murdered the judge had Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, among others, on his “hit list.”

www.clickondetroit.com

Definitely no plot against Whitmer, nope.

This should be seen as proof that these people want to murder their political enemies, and should be treated as terrorists.

 

[Silvanus]

YouGov sat on 2017 poll as it was too positive on Labour, claims ex-employee

Polling firm denies allegation it drew back from publishing some data showing Corbyn’s Labour doing well• Update: on 9 June 2022, Chris Curtis retracted his claim that the poll was suppressed [see footnote]

www.theguardian.com

An ex-employee of YouGov is claiming that the company deliberately held back a poll that was favourable to Labour in 2017 (the election in which Corbyn attained 40%, hugely outstripping expectations). YouGov was founded (don't forget) by two prominent Conservatives, including the current Culture Secretary, Nadhim Zahawi.

Corbyn was a very flawed candidate, and made a great deal of missteps, but it's difficult to deny that he faced massively disproportionate (and often downright improper/ unethical) hostility from the media, the polling companies, the BBC, and even sections of his own party. I feel like large institutions which are supposed to be impartial played a significant role in managing and manipulating public perceptions of Labour throughout Corbyn's tenure, and that it was essentially nowhere near a fair contest.

I mean, it never is completely fair, but this felt like another level.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

One idiot hilariously failed to use a bomb in his shoe to take down an airplane and now we gotta take our shoes off forever, but this idiot gets shot in the dick and took brain damage.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Pulling films from cinemas over Blasphemy accusations

Cineworld cancels The Lady of Heaven film screenings after protests

The Lady of Heaven film has been criticised by some Muslim groups as blasphemous.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Silvanus]

One idiot hilariously failed to use a bomb in his shoe to take down an airplane and now we gotta take our shoes off forever, but this idiot gets shot in the dock and took brain damage.

The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a plane is a good guy with a plane.

#GiveOurTeachersPlanes

 

[Avnger]

The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a plane is a good guy with a plane.

#GiveOurTeachersPlanes

As long as we don't have to increase their pay, of course. Those gubmint freeloaders already only work part of the year anyway. They can pay for the required flight lessons on their own dime.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Conservative Supreme Court delivers half the US population into an explicit police state

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Conservative Supreme Court delivers half the US population into an explicit police state

"Oh, but they'll only do this to those brown people, and they don't have rights!"

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

In lighter news, y'all want to see a roasting in progress?


Got so bad they turned off replies

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Fckin yikes. Just when you think they can't stoop any lower

 

[thebobmaster]

You know, when we call it "victim blaming", you aren't supposed to ONE UP IT.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

Too slow to sneakily edit this into last post, damn.



Oh Alex. Dragging this out will only be sustaining my sadistic thirst for your long overdue punishment.

InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could soon sue his own lawyers, as Jones and his company scramble to blame someone else for their legal failures in lawsuits over their lies about the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Jones and InfoWars have consistently lost in courtrooms across the country to families of the school-shooting victims who have filed suits over Jones’s claims that the massacre was a false flag. Last year, judges in Connecticut and Texas took the unusual steps of ruling Jones and InfoWars in default over trial, effectively declaring that they had already lost the cases as punishment for their many failures to follow legal procedure.

But the public shamings haven’t stopped InfoWars from floating the possibility that someone else is at fault for all their legal maladies. Namely, their frequently rotating members of their legal team.

In a February deposition obtained by The Daily Beast, a representative of InfoWars’ parent company said the conspiracy-theory outlet was discussing the idea of suing Jones’s former lawyers for legal malpractice.


“I did have concerns on behalf of the company regarding the company’s prior representation, yes,” Brittany Paz, a lawyer acting as a representative for the company, said.

The possibility that Jones will sue his own lawyers struck Mark Bankston, an attorney representing Sandy Hook families in a Texas case, as odd.

“It’s unusual to see a defendant turn on his lawyers in the midst of litigation, but it certainly fits the pattern of Mr. Jones blaming everyone else for his problems,” Bankston told The Daily Beast in an email.

Bankston is also representing the estate of a man InfoWars falsely accused of being the Parkland gunman. Paz made the remarks about InfoWars’ lawyers in that case.

Paz doesn’t say in her deposition which of their former attorneys InfoWars might sue. But she singled out three lawyers—Marc Randazza, Brad Reeves, and Robert Barnes—for special criticism. Paz also accused some of InfoWars’ lawyers of badly botching document discovery in the cases, an issue that has plagued InfoWars and prompted accusations from plaintiffs’ lawyers that Jones’s lawyers were deliberately sabotaging the process.

“I’m not really sure what documents were produced in which cases,” Paz said. “And that’s a problem with the organizations amongst the attorneys.”

InfoWars’ court problems have dragged on for years, and include an apparently accidental transmission of illegal child pornography to the plaintiffs’ lawyers as part of a document request. Jones’ companies recently tried to declare bankruptcy in an apparent attempt to further delay the lawsuits.

Both Randazza and Barnes have become celebrity free-speech attorneys among conservatives for their work on behalf of InfoWars and other controversial right-wing clients. Randazza once pleaded guilty to ethical violations in a Nevada Bar investigation into whether he had cut a side-deal with another client’s legal foes.

In a statement, Randazza told The Daily Beast said that other, “utterly terrible” lawyers who have worked for InfoWars are trying to distract from their own mistakes.

“The revolving cast of lawyers at Infowars has included some outstanding lawyers who are confident in their own abilities,” Randazza wrote. “It has also included some utterly terrible lawyers who made some of the dumbest moves I’ve ever seen. Those in the latter camp seem to be interested in deflecting attention from their incompetence on to the competent lawyers who compete with them.”

Reeves, who represented InfoWars in the Parkland case but told The Daily Beast he resigned from handling InfoWars legal cases shortly before the deposition, said in an email that he isn’t sure why Paz would criticize him.

“I am confident that nothing I did (or did not do) during my time representing Infowars constitutes any sort of malpractice,” Reeves wrote. “Any suggestion to the contrary is really nothing more than an attempt by other counsel to deflect from their own mistakes.”

Barnes and InfoWars didn’t respond to requests for comment. But it’s unclear how serious the rift between Jones and Barnes actually is, with the lawyer appearing on an InfoWars broadcast just a few weeks ago.

 

[Chimpzy]

Bring back shaming. Spiffy. Can do. Let's start with you lot. Like this:

 

[Thaluikhain]

Too slow to sneakily edit this into last post, damn.



Oh Alex. Dragging this out will only be sustaining my sadistic thirst for your long overdue punishment.

And if he doesn't win that one, he sues his new lawyers? Yeah, who is going to take that case?

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

And if he doesn't win that one, he sues his new lawyers? Yeah, who is going to take that case?

No idea how the law sees this in Texas, maybe there's more than enough con-celebrity "free speech" grfter lawyers willing to entertain Jones' blind stubbornness for a few extra quid and a tad more exposure to keep it afloat a while longer.

Bring back shaming. Spiffy. Can do. Let's start with you lot. Like this:

Someone didn't scroll up before posting (we must share similar sources it appears)

 

[Chimpzy]

No idea how the law sees this in Texas, maybe there's more than enough con-celebrity "free speech" grfter lawyers willing to entertain Jones' blind stubbornness for a few extra quid and a tad more exposure to keep it afloat a while longer.


Someone didn't scroll up before posting (we must share similar sources it appears)

I did notice. Intended to quote you, but guess I flubbed that somewhere

 

[Agema]

Fckin yikes. Just when you think they can't stoop any lower

It's the just the gentle preparatory forerunner to locking up black people, because statistically they are more likely to commit crime, too.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Fckin yikes. Just when you think they can't stoop any lower

This is why I call Republicans "punishment fetishists", because they just can't get enough of finding reasons to call others "bad" and making them suffer for it.

 

[XsjadoBlaydette]

This is why I call Republicans "punishment fetishists", because they just can't get enough of finding reasons to call others "bad" and making them suffer for it.

Some more than others perhaps, and not limited to that particular sample of opportunity for power. Surprisingly, low or total lack of skill to engage with empathy leads to awful manifestations of what's believed to be "justice."

I did notice. Intended to quote you, but guess I flubbed that somewhere

Your flubbery is noted, kind and glorious hairy citizen. Was a getting bit uncomfortable with sharing sources anyway

-

Louisiana police getting an overdue probing.

Justice Department opens probe into Louisiana State Police

The U.S. Justice Department is opening a sweeping civil rights investigation into the Louisiana State Police amid mounting evidence that the agency has looked the other way in the face of beatings of mostly Black men, including the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene.

www.snopes.com

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department is opening a sweeping civil rights investigation into the Louisiana State Police amid mounting evidence that the agency has a pattern of looking the other way in the face of beatings of mostly Black men, including the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene.

The federal “pattern-or-practice” probe announced Thursday followed an Associated Press investigation that found Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, outright racism.

“We find significant justification to open this investigation now. … We received information of the repeated use of excessive force, often against people suspected of minor traffic offenses, who are already handcuffed or are not resisting,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the Justice Department’s civil rights division. She added there were also reports of troopers targeting Black residents in traffic enforcement and using “racial slurs and racially derogatory terms.”

The federal probe, the first such action against a statewide law enforcement agency in more than two decades, comes more than three years after white troopers were captured on long-withheld body-camera video beating, stunning and dragging Greene on a rural roadside near Monroe. Despite lengthy, ongoing federal and state criminal investigations into a death troopers initially blamed on a car crash, no one has been charged.

AP’s reporting found troopers have made a habit of turning off or muting body cameras during pursuits. When footage is recorded, the agency has routinely refused to release it. And a recently retired supervisor who oversaw a particularly violent clique of troopers told internal investigators last year that it was his “common practice” to rubber-stamp officers’ use-of-force reports without ever reviewing body-camera video.


In some cases, troopers omitted uses of force such as blows to the head from official reports, and in others troopers sought to justify their actions by claiming suspects were violent, resisting or escaping, all of which were contradicted by video footage.

“This systemic misconduct was blessed by top brass at the Louisiana State Police,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. She described a “culture of violence, terror, and discrimination” within the agency, calling Greene’s death “the tip of the iceberg.”

Clarke said the civil “pattern-or-practice” probe is aimed at driving needed reforms, if necessary by suing to implement a federal consent decree. She added that Gov. John Bel Edwards and the superintendent of the Louisiana State Police, Lamar Davis, have pledged their cooperation.

Davis, in an internal email obtained by AP, told troopers to “hold your heads high” and embrace the federal scrutiny. “We have nothing to hide and can only benefit from learning,” he wrote.

Edwards issued a statement Thursday welcoming the investigation. “It is deeply troubling that allegations of systemic misconduct exist that would warrant this type of investigation,” he said, “but it is absolutely critical that all Louisianans, especially African-Americans and other people of color, have their faith, confidence and trust in public safety officers restored.”

Black leaders have been urging the Justice Department for months to launch a broader investigation into potential racial profiling by the overwhelmingly white state police, similar to other probes opened over the past year in Minneapolis, Louisville and Phoenix.

By its own tally, 67% of state police uses of force in recent years were against Black people, who make up 33% of the state’s population.

The action comes as Edwards prepares to testify before a bipartisan panel of state lawmakers investigating Greene’s death. AP reported last month that the Democratic governor and his lawyers privately watched video showing Greene taking his final breaths during his fatal arrest — footage that didn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Greene’s May 10, 2019, death.

Federal prosecutors also are still investigating whether police brass obstructed justice to protect troopers in the Greene case — and whether they sought to conceal evidence of troopers beating other Black motorists.

The head of the state police at the time of Greene’s arrest, Kevin Reeves, has denied the death was covered up but current commanders have told lawmakers investigating the state’s response that it was. The agency’s own use-of-force expert called what troopers did to Greene “ torture and murder.”

The AP also found that a former trooper implicated in three separate beatings, Jacob Brown, tallied 23 uses of force dating to 2015, 19 of which involved Black people. In one case that resulted in federal charges, Brown was seen on body-camera video beating Aaron Larry Bowman 18 times with a flashlight after deputies pulled him over for a traffic violation in 2019. State police didn’t investigate the attack until 536 days later, and only did so after a lawsuit from Bowman, who was left with a gash to the head and a broken jaw, ribs and wrist.

“Finally!!!” Bowman’s attorney, Donecia Banks-Miley, said in a text message upon hearing of the pattern-or-practice probe. “We still need transparency and accountability to help bring restoration to the pain that continues to occur with LSP and other law enforcement agencies.”